Icarus Miniatures Lay Down Some Covering Fire With New Concept
January 31, 2015 by brennon
Icarus Miniatures have previewed another piece of artwork for their Sci-Fi game (which you can download the rules for HERE). This time around it's the Support Trooper laying down a withering amount of firepower...
"The Alliance arsenal is vast and varied, but there are a core range of weapons. All Alliance Troopers are issued a standard side arm; though some choose to use more powerful pistols.
Each standard trooper is also given the Alliance Standard Issue 7.62x51mm Assault Rifle, the AAR-7.
The AAR base is highly versatile and can be modified in any number of ways, with each part of the structure easily removed and replaced."
The artwork is once again awesome looking and I really hope that the miniatures for this game are going to match their quality. Maybe we'll even get some spent shells to litter the base with? Is that hoping too much?
What do you think?
7.62×51 aka .308 is the standard NATO round… it has been for decades (along with 5.56×45 aka .223). So what is the sci-fi bit of this? I assume this has to be a very near future setting.
I don’t think either of those calibres are going anywhere any time soon, although I’d be happy to see the backside of 5.56. The capacitor and battery technology just isn’t there, and won’t be available in anything man-portable for some time i.e plasma, fusion, lasers, or even Gauss technology, although that is probably nearer. The emphasis has been to make the existing weapons, and the ammo, lighter, so you can carry more… and the current generation of weapons excel at turning multiple targets into red mist and bone chips. Don’t fix it if it ain’t broke.
Physical rounds can also have tactical and strategic advantages over directed energy weapons beyond the obvious power requirements, heat management, and stopping power/volume of ammo to weight ratios. Material rounds offer the option of fragmentation (including proximity detonation), ballistic tracking devices, tazer rounds, ‘smart bullet’ technology, and the impregnation of a round with a specialised chemical, radiological or even biological agent (utterly outlawed under current international treaty agreements, but in a sci fi setting when humanity’s back is up against the wall and greater stopping power or more combat options are needed, such avenues might well be explored). It is… Read more »
There is also the cost factor to consider. When humanity is spread across the galaxy over countless worlds, you need something cheap, easy to manufacture, and universal in terms of the weapons that can use it 😉
Some of the more specialised units in the Alliance may have more typically sci-fi weapons. like energy rifles; but for the common soldier, the investment doesn’t make sense 🙂
I was only suggesting that a more modern and refined calibre would be far more likely, since .223 has been deemed too ineffective (you only need to read the scathing remarks made by some of the troops involved in Mogadishu as one example but hey it is relatively cheap so a lot of the world is still using it) and .308 is a downsized .30-06 (7.62×63) so that round has it origins back at the start of the 20th century. There are a lot of new calibres and rounds that have superior ballistic properties. And that is just talking about… Read more »