Springtime for Martians and 15mm ey!

I did think that with the painting this project was going to be over, then got to thinking now I’ve painted them what should I use them for.

I remember when the Kick starter for this was originally announced, I wondered why they didn’t just bring out rules and the Martian side, and let the people buy for available 15mm WW1 ranges or even WW2 15 mm ranges to play the 50’s movie.

What I didn’t know was there was a series of books planned on the Universe by

Scott Washburn

https://www.amazon.co.uk/Scott-Washburn/e/B01BJYXPOS?ref=sr_ntt_srch_lnk_1&qid=1591618874&sr=8-1

They are a pretty good read  and now you can get the original 3 set in  America the as one volume and I’ve just recently read the one set in Europe, and intent to read the Texas one soon.

Despite above have no real plans to game that particular take on it even if it re-appears now someone has brought the licence ( I had heard it separately to Gerry on Sats Weekender )

I had brought them over a year ago to Game in the Gaps as Gerry eloquently put it (I have a feeling I will be buying the GW Necron ones as well) really planning to play against my WW2 FOW units.

Even during the D-day boot camp didn’t actually play the game, mainly as I was having to much fun painting stuff. But also had originally planned to use the armies for the Two Fat Lardies IABSM.

I still haven’t got round to playing FOW, but have recently had ago at Team Yankee playing solo.

I am no real fan of I go You go systems and prefer random activation, particularly at moment with having to go solo which is how I did the my first Team Yankee game.

One of the advantages of Team Yanked and FOW though is they now use pretty much the same game engine and produce very nice unit cards for both which are very easy to use as game aids. There are more detailed armour games with similar cards (the old board game Panzer for one) but dont actually need complicated armour rules for this type of game, as the heat ray the martians use will either kill nor not kill the unit in question.

So my current plan is to use the base game mechanics of the Battlefront system with all the cards for both WW2 and 3 era cards so either the classic %0’s movie or the Speilberg less classic!! era can be played with the Tripods. There will need to be other tweaks to the rules which I will go into later as I’m not sure if I will stick to Iabsm/Bolt action random activation for go for ED Texira’s system from Two Hour Wargames at the moment .

At the moment I’m drawing up a FOW/TY data card for War Tripods , and this is how far I’ve got so far.

A few thoughts on above so far movement is basically that of a Challenger, based on descriptions from Washburns books, the tripods are described as not being much faster than horses across country.

Given them a sheild roll to increase suitability , though not as impenetrable as in films with its defensive ability going down dependant on size of gun . This also fits in with Washburns take on Martian armour.

The multiple hit points follows above, but a hit in cockpit will kill easily as in the original book and the Washburn Sequals.

As for special abilities , hopefully any on reading this with more FOW/TY experience can come up with ideas.