Project 28mm Atomic Age Invaders and Horrors Part 1 General Overview (with pictures at the end)

 Well, the title of this blog entry gave it away what my next project is, but just to explain a little more in detail, this will be a 28mm scale, sci-fi skirmishing in the Atomic Age (with a 1950’s feel) through the lens of the classical atomic horror or alien invaders B-movies!    

 

First off, I love the whole Atomic Era of the 1950’s monster movies, whether they were alien invasions, a prehistoric monster awakened by an atomic bomb testing, or common animals mutated to giant size through radiation or Science(!).  I also enjoy the 1960’s and 1970’s alien invasion and monster movies too, however the “slasher / gore” effects slowly started to take over and they started to lose that “thing” that I enjoyed as they started to put too much effort on special effects to gross out the audience.   Likewise, I have always had a fascination for the Atomic Era in other things, like art, deco, music, etc., especially if it has a science or sci-fi hint to it.

With my loved those classic sci-fi monster movies, I have always wanted to game them.  I fiddled around with buying plastic ants to fight 1/300 WW2 Americans or some flying saucer looking models to fight 1/300 F-86 Sabers jets, but I never really did too much with those, not because I didn’t enjoy it, just lack of mojo at painting all of it and no real rules to game it.  I will admit, I have since found a rules-set for fighting giant ants, “Myrmidons: Invasion of the Giant Mutant Ants” (2013).  So, that might be a revitalized project sometime in the future.  Sadly, I saw a game on UFO dogfights with fighter planes way back in the day but didn’t jump on it at the time and it is long out-of-print.  I would love to find a copy of the Roswell set as it had a UFO, a weather balloon, and I believe a P-51D (or F-51D, but the switch from “P” to “F” was in 1948), along with a game mat of the Roswell area in New Mexico, and other gaming aids (flight stands, dice, etc). 

In 2009, Brigade Games released a game and miniatures for a 1950’s themed post-nuclear and zombie outbreak apocalypse called, “Atomic Cafe 1957”.  The miniature line has some great looking figures which most of them look rather normal and not that post-apocalyptic survivor’s look to them.  But their game never really took off, and sadly they never added on to this line of miniatures since then.  I have a copy of the rules, but never really investigated them for playability.  Maybe I will do a review of them one day.  I bought some of the figures back then, but they went into storage shortly afterwards as it was not high on my priorities back then. 

Then, in 2017, Killer B Games, started releasing several figures for their not yet released game for 1950’s themed alien invasions called, “Invasion X”, which eventually was released in 2019.  It was really with this last company, that made me go full aboard with this project.  Between Brigade Games and Killer B, they make up most of my figures, but there are other companies that I will be using.  We will discuss more about the availability of figures, including terrain and structures for the project much later in future blog entries. 

Now, let’s discuss my envision will be for what the games will be.

I am looking at trying to do skirmishing with a hand full of figures (1 to 5 per side) to a small platoon (30 or so) to a side.   I really want to keep it smaller than bigger as I rather keep the feel of the movies with a small cast and few extras vs a large battle.  But as I got the figures, I also want the ability to use most of them in a game, plus if / when I run this at a convention, I want to be able to have figures for several players.  Realistically, if I am going to do big skirmish games, (ie., more than 30 figures on a side), I probably will use 15mm or a smaller scale for those type of games. 

Because I know that no one rules will fit every case, I am currently looking at three miniature rules sets and one RPG system depending on the scenario that is to be played out.  The following are the list of the rules in probably the order that I will be using them. 

“Invasion X”, by Killer B Games:  This is the one that I really want to make the primary as it appears to be focused to the genre the best.  However, only after playing some games will let me know if this will be the system that I will love. 

“Fist Full of Lead” series, by Wiley Games:  This will probably be the rules system that will get the most use if I run games at conventions.  Basically, they are a simple to learn system with a bunch of different character traits to make most characters a bit different so I think it will be easier for players who have no experience with “Invasion X”.

“Xenos Rampant” by Osprey Games:  This is meant to be more of a unit skirmish game, say 20 figures or more, but you can make the units into reduce number of figures but will need a method of tracking hits on units.  I think it is very doable, and it will be simple enough for convention settings.  The fact that this system can work for single figure as well as multiple figures for the same type of unit, this might be the go to for most of my games in this genre. 

“Savage Worlds Adventurers Edition”, by Pinnacle Entertainment Games:  Yes, this is an RPG, but since I would like to make a string of games into a mini-campaign to include investigation and non-combat (the Horrors!) at times, I believe these rules will work because of the following:  Savage Worlds started off as miniature wargame rules (The Great Rail Wars) with a RPG integration with their then edition of Deadlands RPG.  It has evolved in several aspects and while it is sold as an RPG and most players use it as such, at its heart for combat mechanics is still very much a fast and simple miniature wargame.  I think this will be my back up if “Invasion X” really doesn’t work out as I can create the unique characters that will be needed for some games (the bumbling professor, the Rockabilly balladeer that can rally a group of teenagers, etc).

I am also considering giving the following rules a try, but I really want to limit the number of rules because I just can’t keep that many things straight in my head.  So, I might get them a couple of tries to see if they work better than what I think compared to the ones listed above. 

“Atomic Café 1957” by Brigade Games; a modified version of “5150” by Two Hour Wargames; “7TV” by Crooked Dice games, “Pulp Alley” by Pulp Alley, and a slightly conversion to “In Her Majesty’s Name, 2^nd edition” by The Ministry of Gentlemanly Warfare (this is the current editions as Osprey no longer has that license).  

Finally, I am adding the following rules for any big skirmish or battles in a smaller scale of figures (6mm, 10mm, or 15mm).  While this is outside of the scope of this project, I know that I will eventually be getting this started too. 

“Fist Full of Lead Big Battles”, by Wiley Games:  Pretty much the same reasons that I give above for the standard Fist Full of Lead series, except this system is design to use multiple bases for a unit.  If I find myself use the core rules, then I will probably automatically use these by default as they are basically the same mechanics. 

“Xenos Rampant” by Osprey Games:  For the same reason above that I gave for using these at individual skirmish level.  Likewise, if I find that I am using Xenos Rampant for most of my individual skirmish games, I will stick with these rules for the big skirmish games too. 

“Myrmidons: Invasion of the Giant Mutant Ants”, by Tobrosgaming:  This is a very specific set of rules for fighting giant ants in caves or sewer systems.  I will try it several times, but I suspect that I will steal certain ideas from it to add to whatever rules system I settle down with, like decision points. 

“Future War Commander”, by Specialist Military Publishing:  This will probably be the rules for the big battles where multiple tanks, artillery, fighter bombers, etc. will be involved against a sizeable alien landing force.  The rules have section on designing your own units, so I create units that might work, especially for other worldly vehicles or human’s wonder weapons that labs figured out how to defeat the aliens.  For those you don’t know, I have a collection of 1950’s US Army vehicles in 6mm, to include M103 tanks, M59 apcs, and even Honest John nuclear rockets! 

I already got the bulk of the 28mm miniatures painted, thanks to Fernando Painting in Sri Lanka.  I am going to be very open in that I just don’t have the time or mojo to paint miniatures anymore.  That is not to say that I will never paint again, just that I plan to keep using a painting service anytime that I really need stuff done.  I will be showcasing them off in the next few blog entries, so stay tune for future entries.  My goal is to break those future blog entries into the following: painted humans, painted aliens & monsters, future miniatures and terrain & structures to paint and assemble.  

Now for the pictures for this entry and what they are!

 

Not much to say other than these are the rules books, except for Savage Worlds. 

This is the assorted odds and ends that I picked up for this project.  In the back left is a “Miss Atomic Bomb 1957” candy mint box that I bought when I visited the National Atomic Testing Museum.  I really don’t know what I am going to do with it as it is too small for dice, but I will find some use for it. 

 

To the back right is a playing card box with the proper Radiation logo on it.  I have no clue what it was originally design for, but I will use it to carry my playing cards as they are needed in “Fist Full of Lead” and “Savage Worlds”.  “Invasion X” really doesn’t have a fixed initiative system, so I will probably use cards for that as well.  I will be making my own cards with an Atomic Monster / Aliens theme from ArtsCow.  I just have to figure out how to add the additional wordage on the cards for the special rules for Fist Full of Lead system.  

The next row is some dice I have, but I do have some other dice that I might throw it too.  The dice (and the one poker chip mixed in with them is a fun little set of glow-in-the-dark dice with bitty mushroom clouds inside them! (See close ups below).  They are from DnD Dice and called the Nuclear Fallout set.  They are in a 11 dice set: 1x d4, 4x d6 , 1x d8, 1x d10, 1x d%, 1x d12, 2x d20 (one has a radiation symbol in place of the “20” on the die), and the one poker chip.  I plan to use these in most of my games.  The far right is some Alien glow-in-the-dark dice from Koplow.  To be honest, I don’t like them, unlike most dice now with the icon or main icon being on the “6” side for a d6, these have the alien head on the “1” side. I am not also crazy for the alien’s eyes for some of the symbols but do like the landing UFO symbols.  I probably be using my Nuclear Fallout dice anyways. 

So, that leaves all the poker chips in the bottom half of the picture.  Well, Savage Worlds uses tokens for “Bennies” as they are called in the system.  These can be any item, but the commercially available ones are poker chips with some theme art in the center of the chip.  That is what I done here using blank poker chips and using period art or pictures, or modern art done to that period style printed up on stickers and added them to the poker chips, except in the case of the two mini poker chips at the upper middle, which I will discuss later.  I am not going to explain all the rule about what Bennies are for in Savage Worlds, but mostly they are used to do a re-roll of some bad dice.  I might also use them for markers for hidden units or dummy markers in other games.  The two mini poker chips have commercially available stickers on them.   I wasn’t sure how I plan to use them, but in “Invasion X” there are objective markers scatter around the board and I will probably use these for that as I want something smaller than a normal poker chip for that.  Eventually, I will probably replace them with custom built objective markers, like a mutated cattle miniature (oh yes, I am working on that!)