Saturday, October 8, 2011

Totenkinder's Ahnenerbe Flashentroopers

Frau Totenkinder has contrived to give herself a slice of official mortal power.  Not since before the Carolingians has she had such opportunity.  For over a thousand years humanity has been averse to such direct interference by such powers as her, but with the new concepts they are embracing, the mortals are ripe for her to work direct and in the open once again.  She is in command of the newly militarized Ahnenerbe, the department for studies of culture and myth and the powers it can bring... who better than herself to control it?

Though troops are few in number, they have access to the latest and best technology this young empire has created. Most striking of these is the Flashentroopers. Armed with an energy weapon, rather than projectiles, these weapons are particularly destructive.  Just the stuff which Totenkinder may be able to fashion into a new mythos, given the proper time and collective focus of thoughts and fears about them. A minor shaping, but one that could prove useful in time.


These are from Dust Tactics, and painted up nice and fast.  The weapons remind me of the ones the Hydra soldiers had in the recent Captain America movie. 

In game play, shooting works as a simple d6 roll per shot with a 6 being a 'kill' (no save in the open) 5 is a 'wound' (save of 6 in the open) 4 is suppression if shooting 8 or more shots from rifles, or any from machine guns, and 1-3 is a miss.  Typically, Germans have bolt action rifles, which fire just 1 shot each.  American GIs have SARs which fire 2 shots each. An SMG fires 3, LMG fires 4, etc. with point cost for troops being 1 point per die they fire.  I am currently running these as Semi-Auto-Rifles to show their more deadly nature, but what I'd really prefer is changing them to be single shot like the Bolt Action, but change the die results to be: 5-6 is kill, 4 is wound, 3 suppression, 1-2 miss. In 'Captain America' these weapons were especially dangerous, vaporizing any they touch, though the rate of fire was less than the Americans who attacked them. 

But I haven't had a chance to discuss this possible rule with the group yet. So we'll see.  By Probability, the chance of a wound or better is 50% better than a Bolt Action Rifle, where an SAR is 100% better.  Granted, it has a better chance of a 'Kill', but it also has no chance of 2 successes, and it's chance to Suppress is greatly reduced, so I think a point value of 1.5 is about right- probably over costed a bit, but that'd be ok.  

I don't like the suppression rules at all actually.  They make no sense.  It's no easier to suppress with a squad of 3 heavy machine guns than it is with 1 sub machine gun... since it's a matter of rolling more 4s than 5&6.. regardless of the amount of dice thrown, the odds aren't changing.  Oh well, no game is perfect. 

1 comments:

Spacejacker said...

The Dust Tactics figures you're been doing are fantatstic, great to see what you come up with!

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