What kind of sets would you want to see as part of a Moderns/Near Future range? Delta? SWAT? Cartels? FFL? Yakuza? Royal Marines? Zombies? Lizard Alien Invaders? Rioters? Meal Team Six? Let us know!
What sets for Moderns/Near Future?
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Hudson Adams Moderator
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Assuming we are talking post cold war to near future.....
Everything! Seriously though, we are totally starved of anything modern/near future. The closest we come at the minute for near future is Mantic's GCPS who just need an arm/weapon swap with open faced helmets to be useful. The only modern is the overpriced Project Z.
I'm mainly interested in the possibilities for post apocalytpic (Stalker, Fallout, Terminator, survivors), Cyberpunk, alien invasions (battle of Los Angeles) https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=FD3mp4Js8EQ style games. So any modern infantry would be useful as a starting point. As well as armed civilians, mercenaries, special forces etc.
Historical modern is more unforgiving since you would probably need to link it to a conflict and date, still useful to me as conversion fodder and I'd love a reliable source of hard plastic AK series weapons.
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I would be interested in gangs... Think Necromunda but more so the original necromunda... basically gangs that you would see in contemporary times, or 80's inspired. Gang members that are generic enough that you could put them anywhere and they would not look out of place... with some other kit's bits, they could fit in with more future projects too, and with historic arms would not look out of place as counter culture resistance or street punks. Shadowrun Cyberpunk, etc.
Of course I want both male and female.
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Definitely SEALs, Delta, etc. I'd also be interested in some PMCs to use as mercenaries or the resistance for an alien invasion.
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@Hudson Adams
Geoff Maybury started this excellent thread:
https://wargamesatlantic.com/community/xenforum/topic/61959/today-and-tomorrows-war
It has lot of good ideas on modern/near future warfare kits.
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PMC takes the crown for me. Most versatile of all. And I agree with William, it would be nice to have both female and male mini's. Perhaps something like the Canon Fodder kits. Were arms and gear are interchangeable.
I would ask for Dutch Commando's or infantry, but that's pretty niche (but PMC + HK416, Glock17, Minimi and AWP (+ Mossberg, HK417 and P50) will do the trick for Commando's ;) ).
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We already have adequate lizard alien invaders with the lizardmen set. I would love to see some Yom Kippur War infantry and armed civilians for apocalypse survivors.
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Like I said on Facebook: 2 sets: Yakuza and Japanese SAT with cyberpunk bits in each, covers survivors and what you actually need for outbreak cops and both should remain simple enough to not end up with over priced bit box filler kits, also lets be honest everything happens to Japan in modern/near future fiction land why not just build around that🤣. Fits a lot of games and I already have at least one rule book for it (pictured below) and you can easily alter most other modern/SF rules around that theme:
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The only other set idea that would be cool and work for a lot of things is Stalker themed set(s), unless we are talking real conflicts in which case my vote goes to the Bush Wars and the Soviet Afghan conflict.
That said are you guys not already working on genric contracter types? why not just do them and either add Arab/Taliban heads and diffrent minionish helmets or make a custom sprue.
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Somali pirates immediately come to mind...
that said, some great suggestions so far!
Most important, please consider making both genders.
I would like to see more common national units than special ops first. Perhaps adding special ops add-on sprues to enhance the basic national sprues. A contemporary French set could do both standard French as well as FFL as far as marketing.
The current WGA Lizardmen are brilliant but could do with an add-on sprue to enhance their contemporary/sci-fi options as their hands/arms are different from your average human model.
Or if you could deal with the IP issues... “V” invaders, but from the original tv series not the reboot.Rioters would be brilliant. That is something commonly overlooked but can be used for a lot of other purposes. They can potentially be resistance fighters, common criminals, escaped prisoners, angry merchants, spies/saboteurs, etc etc.
If you have rioters, you need riot cops. They can be pretty generic and make cops from various different nations. Whereas as much as I would love to see regular beat cops, their uniforms are so jurisdictionally distinctive. Being a former Bobby, I would certainly like to see a box of contemporary British Police with an option for the iconic but impractical Custodian helmets. Tasers. Definitely tasers. Flat caps and patrol caps for armed officers. Pepper spray, PR24s, and extendable batons cascos(asps).
Perhaps make riot shields, round and rectangular, with clear plastic? Sell them on their own?
Perhaps a basic patrol officer cop set could later be enhanced with national add on sprues for specific equipment and headgear? ie Smokey the Bear hats for NY State Troopers and Mounties. Eight point hats for NYPD. Stetsons for Walking Dead County Sheriffs deputies. Etc etc.
SWAT can usually just be national combat troops painted in police colors.
How about a series of setsof emergency services paramedics, firefighters, doctors, and nurses? What about scientists (both sane and insane) as well as more mundane technical engineers? Road service crews in high vis vests and hard hats. Evil supervillain secret hideout minion workers.
Civilians of all kinds work well for all the Post Apoc skirmish games and many can be easily converted for other time periods, so sci-fi as well as WW2.
Teaming up with the Zona Alfa author to make a line of minis, including monsters and scatter terrain, to suit that game might be profitable.
Cartels is a good idea. Lots of potential for repurposing, like the rioters.
Pretty niche but iconic (meaning stereotypical) American hunters/farmers/fisherfolk would be neat. Limited use perhaps, such as post apoc but it is something not commonly available from others. Really would work best if marketed with a game, similar to what WGA is doing with 0200 Hours and Blood & Plunder: Raise the Black. (I am keen to see how well the WGA Aztecs kitbash with the upcoming B&P plastic Natives).
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@Grumpy Gnome What would make the scientists insane on the sprue? just the faces/heads? Or will they have butcher knives and jars of their own urine? I am intrigued, and now want insane scientists...
Since we are talking about rioters and near future, fast food workers, maybe a mascot in a giant chicken outfit or clown or king suit... and there should be options on the sprue to make them insane too...
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A set that could make classic Rainbow 6 style figures would be nice. The 6:Siege minis from that kickstarter showed that the series is quite a distance from its roots.
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@Grumpy Gnome Hi all, Tam. thanks for the starter, I`ve just put in the forum at least 3 sets what ever they chose to model first. Adversery, (good or bad) ,defendant (good or bad), and the victims pure civilians chidren etc, (The poor guys and girls who get in the way). E g`s Vampire, Wear Wolf, Civilians,- Under World. Swat, Deamons ,Civilians,- Sweet Home. Police/Troopers, Zombies, Civilians- World War Z etc. Survivalist/ Soldiers/Civilians. Aliens, Robots @ Drones-Falling Skies. Thats enough there to show the fantastic range of figure sources out their to game, before even mentioning real conflicts, and if you do it comes back to my start 1-3. Of course set four is all the lovelly modern toys we need, car baterys, laptops , phones, selfie stick( some one will want a photo with the monster) just list guys. William do yourself a real favor, check out. studio Miniatures Zombie range, for Chickens suits and more our scale. Eileen brought me the Superman Harry Poter set, Brilliant.
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@Geoff Maybury I know its not the same topic, but I would love a set of Underworld style modern monsters. Like an RPG character from the old World of Darkness game. Were-wolves (in human and hybrid form), Vampires, etc... Heck any of the changeing breeds. The Underworld movies Deathdealers like Selene. Or the Lycans.. But I know that is not what this thread is for. But I would definitely buy that set, or sets.
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@William Redford Actually our kid its definatally the place, if you look at my facebook post, I to would love to see those type of modern. If you think how many films and series, inspire our playing desires, but how many manufacturers are clever enough to go with those flows The industry is way behind many figure set designs, The Were- Wolf RPG, list many type of transitsion from human to wolf, Ralpartha made some. Since then no real subwolves have been forthcoming. Vampires and there kin are still at "Cristhhper Lee stage, Every thing needs a 2022 pick me up. All the best Will.
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Modern/Near Future? I think the first thing that comes to my mind is post-apocalyptic:
- "Mad Max" style wastlads gangers - mohawks, scrap metal, leather, spikes, and snarls.
- Radioactive/toxic mutants and cellar-dwellers.
- I'd be fine with one set of labcoat scientists, chemsuit mooks, and goons-in-suits, with a mix of guns and menacing science gear - assuming a typical five-figure sprue, then two labcoat guys, two suit-and-tie guys, and one chemsuit mook, with a mix of arms that can swap between them, would surely be fine. Why one set? What kind of faction is this? I don't know, but I figure they probably work together just fine, programming Skynet or the Matrix, dissecting an alien abomination, menacing kids-on-bikes, opening portals to dimensions of horror at Black Mesa, threatening local yokels, and so on, and will gladly shoot first and ask questions later if anyone is caught snooping around. It would surely serve all your men-in-black, cyberpunk corporate mischief-makers, secret agent or criminal mastermind, and government conspiracy needs, in one convenient box!
- A redneck militia - just add John Deere/Redman/Basspro trucker caps, hunting camo and vests, overalls, the classic jeans-and-Tshirt, shotguns, hunting rifles, AK's and AR-15s, and a hearty "Hold my beer!" Or, "Wolverines!!!!!"
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I thought this would be really niche, but a range of stalker/roadside picnic/zone alfa/metro survivors and mercenaries/zone raiders, accomponied by some anomolies and soviet "zone rifles" seems like it would be a good idea. The kits could have plenty of oppurtunity for customization and could easily be used semi-historicals (excluding anomolies). also, maybe an automobile kit that doubles as armored and wrecked cars?
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@Estoc Pfft, someone should just do a "Its not a Toyota Hilux honest" technicial kit if we are going to add vehicles to this line:
And the "Modern Merc" types they had preveiwed look like they would probably work for Zone Alfa/Stalkers though some added gas and ballistic mask head swaps would be nice maybe one or two of these:
Beyond that I think it would be smarter to do something like Yakuza or urban terrorists after them with maybe a couple of unarmed poses to make them civilians as opposed to a modern civilian set. I say this because those are more useful than just a "civilian set" and can double as civilians and Zed Apoc survivoirs. Take the Yakuza for example:
They look pretty much just like average joes overall, a few unarmed poses and you've got civilians. Likewise they will work great as apoc survivors since they have guns:
And melee weapons:
Overall they are useful for several things including whats on the box, have a clear theme with which build later sets on, and whats more already have games asking for them in warband levels.
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@Hudson Adams I have already preordered my copy of The Last War game in a box, so I am hoping you will get to doing cyber punk minis for Kill Sample Process and gothic horror ones for Forbidden Psalm: Dread Nights. Who knows maybe these could be another few "Game in a Box" offerings.
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@Yronimos Whateley I think how you formatted the mad scientist bodies works, since not only could you do an entire faction of mad scientists, you could mix some of those scientists in with your other warbands as the resident genius. Though I think having more suit and tie guys for a men in black vibe would work better. Given how WGA usually formats their sprues for six bodies in a 24-mini box, I would probably set it up as 3 Men in Suits, 2 Hazmat dudes, and 1 scientist in a labcoat. Problem with the Hazmat dudes is that like the Jaguar warriors, they're going to need their own arms to match with the body. Which would total to 12 MiB, 8 Hazmat dudes, and 4 Scientists.
Sounds perfect for a slightly less armored Majestic 13 force.
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Fair enough - there's a lot of wriggle-room for sleeves at this scale and you can get pretty far on something generic, but hazmat suit sleeves - like the sleeves for the Boxers and Afghans - are kind of a special case!
giving it a little more thought, I suppose that armless hands holding certain bits of smaller gear can free up a lot of room on a sprue, allowing the hands to be swapped onto either type of arm, while avoiding two-handed gear like rifles can help even more, but those sleeves are going to be a limitation to mixed body/costume types no matter what!
And @Brian Van De Walker 's Toyota Hilux suggestion is still awesome, I love it! For bonus points, just add explosive reactive armor packs, and they'll be invincible!
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Gosh you dirty necromancers rising dead thread topic from their peaceful rest, lol I love it.
Given I mentioned it on the FB group I will add it here, after mulling it over I think a good catch all set for altmodern gaming (cyberpunk,zed apoc, near future postapoc, strange real, etc.) would be tatical gear thugs in bullet proof vests armed with just a variant of H&K MP5. With the right head options they could double as terrorists, police, and hired help.
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YES. In the name of all that is abominable and eldritch, I command this thread to arise, and walk the earth once more!
That also sounds like a great set for SWAT, special ops, corporate security guards, the works.
Start with balaclavas/ski-masks, helmet-with-full-face-shield, and helmet-with-goggles-and-respirator head options, and you're hitting a lot of those SWAT/Terror-goon nails in one kit.
Keffiyahs could also complement such a set well either as headgear, or accessories to loop around the necks of the figures (like those scarves from the Partisans I set!)
MP-5's seem like a great, well-rounded weapon option, and for variety some other SMG types as well (Uzis are a classic option, as are MAC-10/11 style machine pistols. Skorpions and Bizon II's are interesting and don't seem to be common in this scale.) Include generic handguns (it's tough to tell them apart at that scale, anyway), tear-gas guns, riot guns, and maybe a sniper rifle or two. Flash bangs/grenades would fit the set, and perhaps a couple riot shields and batons round out the weaponry nicely. Doesn't need to be enough of all these items for everyone, seems like a mix of most of this sort of thing works better.
If there's any room left over for radios/phones, drone controllers, and perhaps small drones, even better.
Of course, assault rifle options for M-16/M-4/AR-15, Kalashnikov, G-36E, and other patterns would be missing, but could easily be kitbashed from other hypothetical modern sets to follow (one or more separate combat-grunt sets with such rifles, along with a couple SAWs and similar heavier automatic weapons, would probably benefit more from enough rifles to outfit all the figures with fairly uniform rifle options, compared to a "special weapons and tactics"/terror-goon set like this, where variety might work better....)
Short of a dedicated "historical" set of this sort, I would improvise with WA's Ooh-RahDeath Fields faction, though it's a bit limited to over-the-top sci-fi rifle weaponry and helmet heads, with only a handful of ball-cap heads and a couple sci-fi SMG, shotgun, pistol, and BFG options for variety. One really wishes there'd been some room for balaclava heads and a just a few more SMG, tear-gas gun, and other special weapon options! (Perhaps a great opportunity for an accessory sprue?)
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@Yronimos Whateley Nah, while that stuff is cool, it should all be in more focused kits (like USA, Tawian, China, Trigonist/Cobra, Merceniers,etc. armed forces). For what I am talking about here I would say make it a 5 guy half sprue kit like the Afgahns and keep it simple with just the MP5 as the "must have gun" and if there is room for more single hand weapons let the sculpter have fun. The real "diveristy" should be with the headswaps, maybe add some "Ghost in The Shell" style cyborg heads so we could finally get some more SciFi stuff that isn't in heroic scale for "grimdark proxy hammer".
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Depends on the sprue real-estate they choose to work in - the Conquistadors and WWII Italians had a lot more breathing room than the Afghans or Boxers. Yes, head options, asbolutely, and I can absolutely find uses for android/cyborg/robot heads! But, given a choice between a half-sprue and something bigger, I'd rather see the extra sprue real-estate and a few extra weapons bits, too.
And, it seems that WA can get a lot of stuff onto an Afghan-style half-sprue. For example, those very Afghans had five bodies, ten or eleven heads, four sword-and-shield kits, four or five long rifles, and a couple spare rifles and swords. Given the amount of space that the spare rifles and swords, and the shelds use, that's not bad at all. For a modern set, handguns, machine pistols, and batons need not take up much room at all (if kept as just a hand holding the item rather than a whole arm), and the fact that SMGs take up less room than full-length rifles or swords do (while the same left arm can probably be reused for different SMG or pistol options!) A larger sprue with more real-estate to work in could onlly expand the weapon and head options that could be included (The Ooh-Rah full sprue made room for four head options for six guys, seven rifles, two SMGs, a flamethrower, a shotgun, two BFGs, a sniper rifle, a handgun, maybe 20 miscellaneous left(?) arms, and a couple other accessories including backpacks. That a LOT of stuff, generally heroic-scale and bulky stuff with a large footprint on the frame at that!)
That said, I also appreciate the concept behind the Accessory Sprue, even if Accessory Sprue I was a bit of an odd one: With 20/20 hindsight, it seems to me that the first Accessory Sprue might have been better conceived of as a Cyborg add-on: both left and right mechanical arms, robot/droid heads, and beam/partical weapons (including those one or two heavy plasma(?) guns that seem to typically be included in a Death Fields box, and seem to be very similar to each other across different factions (so that they could have easily been shared via Accessory Sprue, freeing up room in the main Death Fields kits for something else! Well, too late now, I guess, given that the future of the Accessory Sprue concept is uncertain. (Then again, it seems to have made a comeback for The Last War, in a much more interesting format, so maybe it's not been abandoned yet!) A lot of "wish list bits" I'd otherwise hope to see in a boxed set could easily be offloaded to a well-balanced accessory sprue that could then be combined with a hypothetical Tactical set or Ooh-Rah or anyone else that fits.
Now, I can't help thinking of that Wargame-in-a-Box challenge when thinking of what might go into a new: what sort of options might be included in a set like this to encourage a Wargame-in-a-Box setup? Those alternative head options - balaclavas, police-style helmets and face shields, and the likee - are an easy way of doing that, as would even just one different weapon option for each guy on the sprue, so that the same tactical bodies could be built with a choice of at least two weapon options, and at least three head options, for different factions.
In the end, I think one possible ideal set (IMHO) would be one that could supply enough head and weapon options to support (optionally) splitting the box into two factions, waragme-in-a-box style, with a set like this one benefiting from at the very minimum two different styles of heads for two different tactical factions. A half-sprue can easily do that much. As many weapon and other head options as can be squeezed onto the frames after that are icing on that cake, and the Ooh-Rah set shows that a full-sizes sprue has enough room for at least six guys with four complete head options!each, and more than enough room for up to two sets of five "uniform" weapon kits each (six MP5s and six random, for example, with room for additional one-off weapons and a few small accessory bits besides!)
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@Yronimos Whateley They will already be doing that for the mercs, etc. if/when those ever get plastic 😆. Also you don't actually need diffrent guns for 2 diffrent factions, they can have the same MP5 variant, happens alot in the shows😆
The fact is the whole idea behind the MP5 totting terrorist/swat/whatever in bulletproof vest is it being a half sprue set with 40 figures to a box, that fights itself by letting the head choices and a paint job make diffrent factions. It could also work as a AB with modern that way as well (just swap some of the MP5s out with extra guns,etc. from the other set and presto).
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NPFL rebels from the Liberian civil war. :P
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I can't recall whether I already posted this here, but that does remind me a little of these imaginative weapons prototypes from Ghana, which honestly aren't any crazier than the usual fare for sci-fi tabletop gaming:
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They will already be doing that for the mercs, etc. if/when those ever get plastic
If they ever get to plastic - it's been a while since we've seen any teasers for them... whether that means they're on a back-burner, or they're one of the mystery sets that are planned for release soon, is anyone's guess.
And to be fair, the Ooh-Rah are already here, and hit most of the generic tactical guy notes out of the box. The catches are that there are only two SMGs per frame and the weapon aesthetics might not be to everyone's taste, but for what's on hand now, Ooh-Rah is a start, and there are other sci-fi SMGs on the Accessory Sprue, if you're willing to live with the weapon aesthetics.
As always, it's that balance between what one would like to see, versus what we've got, with what's likely to get developed in the shades in between.
Also you don't actually need diffrent guns for 2 diffrent factions, they can have the same MP5 variant, happens alot in the show
Extremely true - you absolutely don't need differentguns, or even different models or anything else, and I'm cool with that. Not sure if it helps to put it in perspective, but I'm old enough, poor enough, and isolated enough that my background in near-future miniatures wargaming was in packs of dime-store Green Army Men back in the '70s and '80s - if we were lucky, the "minis" were the same '60s Tim Mee Vietnam-era guys in two different shades of green (though still the same uniforms, weapons, and half-dozen or so poses!) One of my cousins had some grey WWII German guys in a different scale (somethin like a heador two taller), which added a little variety to our battles in post-atomic World War Three, while the cowboys from his cowboy-and-injun sets supplied reinforceents. Those Germans made fine near-future Soviets! Eight feet tall from Soviet supe-science, I'd guess today - we never worried about explaining it back then. But, that would last a couple weeks over summer before the cousin went back home and it was back to just the Tim Mee green army guys, which worked perfectly fine, too - it's what my brother and I usually had to work with, and it worked great, to be honest. (What would we have liked to have seen if the resources were there? That's a different story!)
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@Yronimos Whateley ....The Ooh-Rah are very clearly vanillia space opera troopers not modern anything pre-say except Cobra Vipers and Greenshirts from the "everyone has laser guns" Saturday morning cartoon show version of G.I. Joe instead the often more realistically armed comicbook adaptions🤣.
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