kallman | 19 Jul 2015 12:20 p.m. PST |
I am sure I am not alone in that as miniature war game players we have some big or not so big plans we someday want to create and run as a scenario for either our game group or for a convention game. Of course someday sometimes never comes for all of the usual reasons. While I have been able to successfully put on some of my ideas there are others I am sure are just a pipe dream either due to the shear scope, cost, time, or other factors. Regardless I thought it would be fun to share some of my "crazy" and not so crazy concepts and ideas and see what others thought or have you share your crazy ideas both successful and not yet realized. Here are some of mine: This one is Called Better Dead than Red I want to do a pseudo post WW II game with 40K Space Marine painted up in US tank colors and markings in an urban bomb devastated terrain setting (Berlin perhaps). Their opponents are red skinned Space Ork figures with Soviet uniform colors and markings. (Soviet genetic mutation experiments gone wild). I already have several units of Space Marines painted up in the way I have described along with a dreadnaught. I thought I would use either Tomorrow's War to create the unit, vehicle, and weapon profiles and given the heroic size of the Space Marine and Orks that 1/48 scale WW II vehicles would be a nice additional touch. Alternate on this idea above is instead of Soviet Space Orks I use the Dreamforge Storm Trooper, who come on we all know these are futuristic WW II Germans. And this one is called Orklips Now! This one I most likely will never do as the cost would be prohibitive. OK take yourself back to that iconic moment in film history and the movie Apocalypse Now which the Air Cav flying into the Viet Con stronghold while blaring Wagner's Flight of the Valkyries. Now replace that with lots of 40K Valkyrie gunship troop transports as the Air Cav against a crap ton of converted Space Orks as NVA or Viet Con with Orky type Hooches and Anti-Aircraft guns. Oh and of course you have to have the patrol boat and some Orky sampans and lots of Jungle. Orks don't surf! |
D6 Junkie | 19 Jul 2015 12:27 p.m. PST |
Cool ideas! I just want to play the battle of Lepanto at 1-1 in 1:1200. At 100 ships at the moment. |
Bashytubits | 19 Jul 2015 12:30 p.m. PST |
I plan on converting Avalon Hills Battle of Alesia into a miniatures game with 2' hexes and 6mm miniatures. |
David Manley | 19 Jul 2015 12:32 p.m. PST |
I think my Cod War game was a pretty crazy idea :) |
Moe Ronn | 19 Jul 2015 1:18 p.m. PST |
@Bashytubits with 2' hexes… Did you mean 2 inch hexes? Or do you really have a 100' by 120' area on which to play? |
boy wundyr x | 19 Jul 2015 1:38 p.m. PST |
Car Wars in the 1970s with die-cast vehicles model up with Stan Johansen's vehicle bits. Have the stuff but not the time. |
Kropotkin303 | 19 Jul 2015 1:39 p.m. PST |
I would like to fit a stylised Middle Earth on a 6 by 4 board with all the major citadels and do the LOTRs using mashed up HOTT rules. I'd probably need 2 6 by 4 boards at least. I have most of the armies. One problem is that I'd like to keep it set up for a long time. Something a bit like this: link Here's hoping. |
MHoxie | 19 Jul 2015 1:49 p.m. PST |
Glam-rock army for HOTT: Bowie and Ronson as heroes, just for one bound. Gary Glitter as a lurker. Brian Eno as a (techno) wizard. The Knights of St. John I'm Only Dancing as riders. Spiders from Mars as beasts. Hordes of glitter-kids. |
Weasel | 19 Jul 2015 2:17 p.m. PST |
A campaign where the commanders on both sides are computers tasked with fighting the war, and all the units are robots of various types. |
skippy0001 | 19 Jul 2015 2:21 p.m. PST |
Playing the boardgame 'B17' with a 148th cutaway B-17 and the crew statted out for roleplaying. The Star Trek races fighting over a Ringworld. Using Federation Commander. Star Wars versus WH40k Fleets/armies/skirmish/roleplaying. Space 89AD- Rome vs Han. |
Razor78 | 19 Jul 2015 2:30 p.m. PST |
I have worked on and off on a "Scarecrow of Romney Marsh" game that hopefully one day I'll finish |
John the OFM | 19 Jul 2015 3:21 p.m. PST |
Sedan Chair racing. Junta with 15mm figures. I have more than enough Flames of War figures. I just have to clean off my table and draw the map on a large sheet of vinyl I have. |
Mike Mayes | 19 Jul 2015 4:12 p.m. PST |
Evok Hunt Squads of storm troopers competing to see who can bag the most of those fur balls. Not sure which rules to use. Western Front WW1 Wings of War/Glory mashup with 6mm Through the Mud and the Blood. Need to figure out time. Dr. Who RPG/battle Start a Doctor Who RPG which morphs into a battle (probably Tomorrow's War) then ends as an RPG. Players would not know about the transformations in advance. Success in each phase would influence standing and status in the next. Just some thoughts Mike |
kallman | 19 Jul 2015 4:41 p.m. PST |
John! You still have not done the Sedan Chair Racing? This has to happen. Razor78 would love to see the Scarecrow of Rommey Marsh game. |
45thdiv | 19 Jul 2015 4:43 p.m. PST |
I have been thinking about doing another 1/6th scale WW2 game. This time a city fight. The cost is just too much though, plus the storage of the city would take up a lot of space. But i still have all of the figures just incase I go crazy and do it. It's been known to happen. :-) Matthew |
HMS Exeter | 19 Jul 2015 5:23 p.m. PST |
I already had mine. I tried organizing a 200th anniversary Trafalgar megagame using 1/300 ship models. It would have been held right before Fall In, at the same venue, so one event would have flowed into the other. Contract with the Eisenhower signed; Spanish and French commanders recruited. Spanish ship slots crewed out. Some French players set. But try as I might I could not get any Brits lined up. Nobody wanted to be Nelson. Go figure. When it became clear the event was not going to come together before the "my butt is on the line for several grand" bail out point, I had to pull the plug. That experience ground my horns down pretty good. I blew off Historicon that year in disillusionment, and came danger close from turning from the hobby altogether. I still have lots of grand ideas, and I still fiddle with pulling them together. Crete 1941 in 15mm, Syria 1941 in 15mm;1/300;1/1200, Middle Earth in 15mm, Wilson's Creek in 25mm, 13th Warrior in 28mm, retreat from Moscow in 40mm, cavemen in 25mm, 25mm Rorkes Drift,…but I know down deep that it will take a major sea change for me to ever really try to pull any one of them together and into the light of day. I still enjoy the planning and the daydreaming. At some level I have to suspect that the number of planned games versus the number of games actually presented is probably comparable to the amount of unpainted figures versus painted in our collective basements. Well, it keeps us off the streets at night…and its probably cheaper than bass fishing, as hobbies go. So at least that's something. |
Cmde Perry | 19 Jul 2015 5:26 p.m. PST |
Matthew: consider this post to be worth +1 to your "go crazy" roll…I played in your WW2 Italian villa scenario at Fall In!, oh, 15ish years ago – the one in which someone ran out during the game and brought back a Barbie doll for us American players to rescue. I *thoroughly* enjoyed that game! Which now brings me to the thread topic at hand: since playing that game, I've wanted to build a HEMTT in 1/6, to be used as the centerpiece of an attack on a FARP in Afghanistan. But as kallman stated in his opening post, "sometimes someday never comes", and so far that is true. Perry |
kallman | 19 Jul 2015 5:57 p.m. PST |
Yea Matthew I loved playing in both of your 1/6 scale WW II games at Fall In. Remember when we made an Iron Cross out of tin foil for that kid that played in the game and was the MVP for the German side? I am glad I started this thread there have been some wonderful crazy ideas and some have even made it into reality. I have noted that one of the issues with some these ideas is not only cost by the seer size and scale and time to pull it off. The H.A.W.K.S. are famous for pulling off some wild and cool games that they run at the HMGS east convention. But one of the things they seem to have going for them is a strong club group and it seems they collaborate on the projects. That would make some of these ideas easier to get off the ground not being the only person with the burden of buying, building, and painting everything. |
Timotheous | 19 Jul 2015 6:35 p.m. PST |
For a long time now, I have wanted to do a three-part scenario from the Iran-Iraq war. In the scenario outlined in one of the Harpoon books, the Iranians are launching a raid of elite guards against an Iraqi oil terminal, using surface combatants and aircraft to cover the landing. I thought it would be fun to run the surface actions with Shipwreck, the air combat with C21 or CY6, and then if the Iranians are able to land troops on the terminal, whip out a model of the terminal and fight it out with Flying Lead. But actually doing this scenario would be more work than I would want to spend, and I really don't have a handle on air to air combat rules. |
chuck05 | 19 Jul 2015 7:14 p.m. PST |
My craziest idea is to do an underwater game with skin divers and sea creatures and whatever else I can think of. Table level would be the sea floor and all the figures would be on adjustable flight stands. I would have boats at surface level that would be on flight stands too. The only thing holding me back is a lack of swimming scuba diver figures. I know that Reaper has two but that isnt enough variety for me. Chuck |
Coyotepunc and Hatshepsuut | 19 Jul 2015 7:42 p.m. PST |
I had this crazy idea of creating some fan supplements for my favorite rules, send them off to the company, and maybe get a little recognition from them. Crazy, I know o_0 They invited me to be a developer. |
Weasel | 19 Jul 2015 8:31 p.m. PST |
If anyone wants to make fan supplements for one of my games.. that's totally open :) |
Dan 055 | 19 Jul 2015 9:44 p.m. PST |
A lot of great ideas here. I can almost imagine how some of them would look in action. Weasel A campaign where the commanders on both sides are computers tasked with fighting the war, and all the units are robots of various types. Have you ever played the mini board game "Rivets"? I once wanted to play out a miniatures campaign using figures. |
Der Alte Fritz | 19 Jul 2015 10:08 p.m. PST |
I wanted to do a Western game with a wagon train and Indians. However, instead of a wagon train, pioneers would be driving RV vehicles and the Indians would be driving motorcycles instead of horses. Colonel Custer of the State Police ( on Harleys) would also show up on the highway in Montana. |
(Phil Dutre) | 20 Jul 2015 1:44 a.m. PST |
My craziest idea is to do an underwater game with skin divers and sea creatures and whatever else I can think of. Check out my AquaZone game I ran a few years ago: link See also a previous TMP discussion: TMP link |
(Phil Dutre) | 20 Jul 2015 2:07 a.m. PST |
Sometimes you just need to brood on one of those crazy ideas for some time (years …), refining, polishing them. My goal usually is to try to identify the core concept which makes it a "crazy" idea. The scale of the game? A specific mechanic? The theme? Once you have identified that, strip the original idea until you get something that's playable, but still "crazy" enough. E.g. for my mass participation wargame (>250 participants) "Red vs Blue" during Crisis 2013, this idea was several years in the making. Rethinking it all the time, we arrived at something that was quite successful. link Another one of my "crazy" ideas was to emulate the Fletcher Pratt naval games played in large sports halls with dozens of people. It finally turned into a patio game, big enough to give the same feeling of space: link The alternative is to keep dreaming about these "crazy" ideas without ever implementing them … but turning them into something playable is what games design in wargaming is all about ;-) |
JSchutt | 20 Jul 2015 2:33 a.m. PST |
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basileus66 | 20 Jul 2015 4:03 a.m. PST |
I planned to game the Hispanic-American Wars of Independence but set in the late 1500s instead in the 1800s. Actually, there were several plots to cut the links with the Spanish Crown, so I had the perfect excuse. Never passed the planning stage, though. |
Martin Rapier | 20 Jul 2015 5:23 a.m. PST |
Crazy ideas? writing the perfect set of WW2 rules. 40 years on and I'm not there yet…. |
boy wundyr x | 20 Jul 2015 7:54 a.m. PST |
Grrrr, I was typing on my phone on the weekend – that was a 1940s (not 70s) Car Wars project I started collecting stuff for. |
Who asked this joker | 20 Jul 2015 8:16 a.m. PST |
Panzer Blitz in miniature using Pico Armor and 2" hexes. I wanted to do this several years back when Pico Armor was relatively new and shiny. Just never got the cycles to do it. It could have been a relatively inexpensive way of playing miniatures on a hex board. |
legatushedlius | 20 Jul 2015 10:22 a.m. PST |
Appleworld! We have a big apple tree in our garden and I wanted to build wooden platforms, steps and gangways in the branches and and have Foundry elf nymphs fight it out! |
Clays Russians | 20 Jul 2015 10:22 a.m. PST |
Joker, in an old old ooooooollllllldddddddd issue of wargame digest someone did pzblitz with ghq micro armor it was in the mid 70s? |
JimDuncanUK | 20 Jul 2015 12:48 p.m. PST |
My craziest idea (never implemented) was to build a 3D model of an asteroid, probably out of polyurethane foam, an irregular shape, maybe 6 feet long, 2 foot wide and 2 foot high. It would be held up about 4 foot off the ground on a couple of poles. I planned to cover the surfaces with patches of steel paper with little ridges of rock in between. We would then play a Sci-Fi game using plastic miniatures with magnetic bases. Lines of sight would be interesting and possibly checked with a laser pointer. This would probably be dangerous (Ahem). We would probably have called it 'Rock Around the Rock' Fortunately it never happened. |
45thdiv | 20 Jul 2015 1:27 p.m. PST |
Thank for the kind recollections on my 1/6 scale ww2 games. Now for another crazy one. The Host has an indoor pool. A U-boat attack on a convoy. I have no idea how the game would work. Home rules for sure. And of course you would to communicate with the scuba diver operating the U-boat For the German player. I just think it would look cool. Matthew |
ITALWARS | 20 Jul 2015 3:36 p.m. PST |
my crazy idea would be to conceive and give birth ..both for personal use and for money…a device that , in few minute, produce ready painted minis…other similar idea would be to make animated toy soldiers that actually move and fire |
cosmicbank | 20 Jul 2015 7:07 p.m. PST |
RPG where you have a drink with Bill Crosby. |
Who asked this joker | 21 Jul 2015 8:32 a.m. PST |
Joker, in an old old ooooooollllllldddddddd issue of wargame digest someone did pzblitz with ghq micro armor it was in the mid 70s? Thanks for pointing that out Clay. I wonder if these are made available again via PDF? I know there are already miniatures rules as well for PB/PL. I read through them but they seem to take liberties with the rules…and not in a good way. |
ubercommando | 21 Jul 2015 2:39 p.m. PST |
I want to do a car chase game. The idea I've had is that the cars weave, dodge and try to force each other off the road but the road sections move as the chase goes on. |
Howler | 21 Jul 2015 8:45 p.m. PST |
An electronic way that would automatically determine range and if targets are in arc. Also auto detect what targets are available. Not a computer game but a miniature game. |
Gennorm | 22 Jul 2015 10:02 a.m. PST |
Put together a scenario for the Lamb War in the 1980s using the club's Cold Wat British and French with lorries, fermiers and gendarmes. |
Tekawiz | 23 Jul 2015 8:27 p.m. PST |
The RPG B17 is actually a pretty good idea. |
IronMike | 24 Jul 2015 4:00 a.m. PST |
Want a crazy wargaming idea? okay, here's one: Set in what I like to call the 'fun future' players take the roles of team managers of organized teams in the 'Virtual Combat League' the fun future's #1 virtual sport. The players have to work within their salary cap to recruit skilled commanders (and deal with their huge egos) to help them win matches, and battles are played over the course of a set season… |