Thursday, January 24, 2008

Rustungmacht stalking 1946

Through the ruins of an unspecified European metropolis, the armoured soldiers of the Rustungmacht stalk the night. Their eyes glow red in the gloom as they pick their way over piles of broken bricks, their boots crunching into gravel beneath knee deep water. If the underground factories can only produce enough of these powerful suits of infantry armour then none of the allied pigdogs will make it home for Christmas '46.

Obviously, we're in Weird War territory again. At some point I'd like to write a real background piece for these, but for now the simple version is that these things are 1940s grade Storm Trooper armour for use in alternate histories of WWII. They are gas sealed, have nightvision, and are totally bullet proof -- just don't go thinking you can take a bazooka round to the chest.

Edit: Because a bunch of folks asked, here's where I got these guys (and I ain't even gettin' paid...): Eureka Miniatures.

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These are also the first real miniatures pictures I've taken with my new camera. Lets see how things turned out (again, pics link to big ass pics)...

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I've already described these guys in an "under the hood" article, and the painting is really simple, just highlighted panzer grey. I did add decals to the shoulders for the numbers, just to give you something to look at. The red eyes were what really brought them to life. It doesn't really come out in the pics, but they have a nice thick coating of gloss varnish over the eyes to make them look more like lenses.

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We've kicked around a few ideas on rules for these guys in Flames of War, but I've never fielded them. If I ever get around to comming up with something solid and doing a spot of play testing on it, I'll post it up here.

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Also, the name may or may not change, but I kinda like it. Using Google language tools, I figure it could maybe translate as "powered armature," or Power Armour, without using the word "panzer."

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2 comments:

Anonymous said...

Hey, I'm pretty impressed by this and when I found these on Eureka's site a while ago, I had the same idea regarding using them in FoW. I've been playing for the last 5 years myself, though we use a little dumbed down version of the rules to facilitate the fact that sometimes we use Battalion to Regimental size forces now for those truly epic days. Lol. We also made our own rule conversion for the original Gundam Anime(And just used a bunch of old action figures I had. I stockpiled some of them because I was a greedy child. xP) We've made numerous additional rules and play tested them(Still balancing stats though), if you'd like help coming up with a way to field these guys, contact me at Wolfjager44@yahoo.com
I'd personally love to field a platoon or two of these guys myself for fun. Maybe an entire smaller size company.

Eli Arndt said...

Wow, it's rewally nice to see some of these being used. I remember when I originally contacted Nic at Eureka about creating these when the 300 Club was brand new.

I was convinced they would never go anywhere and wanted some so badly I ordered all 300 for myself. Over the years I've used a few but still have a ton piled up.