In this article we'll be taking a closer look at the four major factions that make up the combatants in Age of Tyrants, a forthcoming 6mm scale tabletop wargame...

Junkers

The Junkers are a military dictatorship run from the Senate on Ironglass. Despite the name, the Senate is essentially a cabal of generals who act as military advisors to the Dictator. The Junkers are the underdogs of the four dominant Pan-Humanic factions, and they see the Age of Tyrants as a golden opportunity to seize more power and expand their territory.

The Junkers home planet of Ironglass was the first colony to break away from Viridian governance in the First War of Secession. Ironglass is Viridia's sister planet, and was the first place colonised. It is a harsh desert world, and the Viridians used it as a penal colony, where the workers toiled to wring mineral resources from the arid sands. Inevitably a rebellion occurred and after a short war, the Viridians granted the Junkers their independence.

Junkers colonies tend to be modelled after Ironglass, and the Senate deliberately seeks out desert planets where their techniques and technologies give them an advantage over the other powers. They make extensive use of subterranean settlements, for many of the worlds are too hot to spend any time on the surface.

Junker technology tends to be adapted and jury-rigged from other tech, a practice that began on Ironglass during the war. The penal colonists adapted mining vehicles and equipment for military use, resulting in weapons such as thermite lances.

In warfare the Junkers favour an approach of massed infantry formation supported by heavy artillery. Of course they have tanks and transports, just as the other factions do, but their priority is to get their infantry into close assault, where they can do the most damage.

Viridians

Viridians operate a government based on free market principles. It's Assembly sits on the home planet Viridia, where the majority shareholders in the faction form a board and make decisions. Viridia is the second richest of the major factions, controlling a disproportionate number of wealthy Gate Planets, and the Age of Tyrants is a significant threat to their holdings.

The home planet Viridia is the cradle of human civilisation, and the seed from which Pan-Humanic Space blossomed. But at a critical point in the faction's history, all was nearly lost. The Viridian's world flooded due to climate change caused by their industrial processes. In the rebuilding that followed they pioneered clean energies based on solar power and hydrogen cells, and ultimately conquered the stars.

Viridian colonies fuel their Pan-Humanic trade empire with agriculture and clean burning biofuel products. The Viridians are the breadbasket of the galaxy, and people will always need food and water. As such they tend to colonise fertile tropical and temperate worlds, as well as ocean worlds for their fisheries and H2O.

Viridian tech tends to be based around renewable and clean burning energy, so their colony buildings are known as Solar Cities. The solar cities are pyramid like structures, plated in articulated solar cells to track their suns across the sky, and outside them lie terraced farms.

In battle the Viridians have a philosophy of leaving no man behind, so they have developed excellent manoeuvre warfare techniques. They tend to engage the enemy at longer ranges to avoid the meat grinder of close combat.

Syntha

The Syntha operate a socialist collective with the Utopian aim of becoming transhuman, managing and accelerating human evolution with biotech and merging with machines. The Syntha have their base on the Prime planetoid, where their colonies and government are managed by a massive SPOMM (synapsed prime-obsidian matrix mind) supercomputer, also called Prime.

The Syntha faction began as a Viridian research colony looking into the properties of Prime Obsidian, which is only to be found on that planetoid. The scientists on Prime began experimenting on themselves, in violation of Viridian law, and thus began the Second War of Secession. Prime won after wiping out a large portion of the Viridian fleet in an ambush, and were forced to give the colony its independence.

Syntha have carved their colonial niche by exploiting harsh environments. Because they control the supply of Prime Obsidian, they use more robotic labour than the other factions, and the robots can survive conditions humans cannot. They favour exotic worlds where they can harvest rare elements and minerals for their advanced tech, and build sealed settlements called Termite Cities.

The Syntha are easily the most technologically advanced faction, and as well as manufacturing SPOMMs, they are leaders in the production of surveillance and autonomous research devices such as probes and drones.

Syntha warfare during the Age of Tyrants is almost exclusively carried out by SPOMMs mounted in anthropoid robots called androsynths and vehicles. The SPOMMs aren't as tactically versatile as human commanders, but they never tire or panic under fire, making them relentless, implacable opponents.

VASA

VASA, the Viridian Aeronautics and Space Agency, are unlike the other factions insofar as they are the galactic policing body tasked with keeping the others in line and enforcing treaties. Based on the ice planet Vacillus, VASA are also commonly known as the Protectorate, and for them the Age of Tyrants represents a dire threat to the status-quo.

VASA began as the body in charge of Viridian space exploration, and oversaw the development of grav-shunting technology from a base on Vacillus, near the dead supergiant, Leviathan. Unlike the other powers, they never fought a war of secession, but instead established themselves as neutral overseers in the settlement talks following the other colonies' independence wars.

Nowadays VASA monitors trade and travel through the grav-wells and have enforcement powers to deal with smuggling and the movement of people and all manner of cargo. They prefer ice worlds for their settlements as they can use the modular prefabricated habitats they developed to colonise Vacillus.

VASA have access to some of the most expensive and high-end technology, which they purchase from the other powers under exclusive contracts. VASA can afford this as the richest faction in Pan-Humanic Space, thanks to the excise duties and tolls they collect from grav-well travel.

In battle VASA favour a blitzkrieg approach with heavy tank rushes, backed up by well equipped and highly disciplined infantry. Indeed no other faction can surpass their advanced tank tactics.

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Follow along as we get deeper into this exciting game world.

Mark Brendan

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