Warzone - rebirth ^^

[Andy H]

Maybe it was just me that hated the Dark Eden stuff then   I would have liked to see them expand the other locations already mentioned in the rpg, especially Victoria and C-Base. To be fair, there was a lot of creative work in the Dark Eden setting, but I suspect it was a bad call from the business perspective.

[demi_morgana]

If you are after Trenchers, aren't there 40 in the bag of plastics that are sold by E-Bay/Prince August?

Pfff... These are crap compared to the metal ones

I am caught up in all this nostalgia so...more converted Vulkans (just the heads replaced with a visor):

Damn you for these beauties...

I am so glad the thread was started: the memories come back

[Jase]

Please stop doing this! It makes me want to dig up my Warzone stuff again too!

Found these Capitol models I painted some time ago:

[Inso]

Pfff... These are crap compared to the metal ones
Damn you for these beauties...

I am so glad the thread was started: the memories come back

I have no personal experience of the plastics but they look OK to me... not as sharp as the metal ones but fairly good unit fillers.

I am actually quite obsessed with the Vulkans...

http://insosworld.blogspot.co.uk/2012/06/happy-friday.html

[hubbabubba]

Some lovely memory lane photos here, but the minis in the opening post are great, love the photobackdrop, really atmospheric stuff.

[sundayhero]

the plastic imperial were regular troopers, not trenchers. The scale of warzone v2 miniatures was more "40K-ish" too. The 1st edition of warzone 's got figures we could call "super-super heroic 28mm" 

And they are plastic ! No one will accept to buy plastic minis ! Ouch I forgot I wasn't in 1995 anymore 

Since this topic is all ready hijacked, here's some imperial blood berets I recently (a few yzars ago) repainted :





That's what I call jungle fighters ! 5 minutes in the jungle and they'd probably have a heart attack causing by heat, but...kick *ss look !   


A lot of figures are in the same spirit in warzone. Some of them needs some conversion work (like the pretorian maculator), but except some real sculpting mistakes I will not give the references  overall figures are really great.

Zombies, giant monsters, steam punk, US action movies, ethnic variations, etc, etc... This game was innovating the scene. ANd it stills a great game, in my opinion.


Chronopia is even better, if you like fantasy. A more balanced figure range (with some really good sculpts, even today, see my stygians horde), really good background too (rulebooks can be readed as a regular book, since the backgrounds are really interesting, I think about fallen land, dwarven labyrinth, and land of 2 rivers especially).

[TheShadow]

wheres the Cybertronic love ? got a pretty large Cybertronic force in my storage bay (ie mums house !!)

[sundayhero]

Personnaly, I think cybertronic and dark eden were not develloped according to their potential and background (remember dark eden promises about giant beasts cavaleries and stuff like that).

In cybertronic forces, I just remember shock troopers wich were pretty cool with their original scifi guns. I'd be happy to see them again with good painting !

[Willypold]

It was fun reading this thread, lots of memories are flooding back!

No, I haven't actually played Warzone, but I was part of the team creating the entire Mutant Chronicles world, including the games. As an editor I was chiefly concerned with making sure the texts were ok, adding bits here and there. The game I was primarily involved with was Blood Berets, and the mechanics for that game were intended as a testbed for Warzone. The very first time the activation sequence was used outside of BB was during demo games I ran at the game convention Target Games organized in Stockholm in 1992. Later on BB was turned over to Bill King with the intention of using it as a basis for Warzone. Alas, my contribution there has not been credited, which, of course, is somewhat of a bummer!

Fact is, the squad activation sequence and the actions for BB (and later Warzone) was chosen because I wanted to find something with a more organic flow than the sequence used by W40K. At that time I had very little experience with other wargames.

There is also a rather convoluted story concerning the origin of the MC universe, starting when someone from Pressman approached Fredrik Malmberg, the CEO of Target Games, somewhere around 1990 or 1991. His question was - could Target Games produce something similar to Space Crusade? Something that was suitable for 5 players instead of 4? Milton Bradley had just released HeroQuest in the American market, and the man from Pressman knew that Space Crusade wouldn't be published for a few more years, so as not to compete with HeroQuest. Sure, said Fred, and we started with a thorough analysis of the mechanics of Space Crusade, trying to figure out what made it fun or not. The main finding was that playing the chaos troops was ok, but not that exciting in the long run. We decided pretty early that it would be more fun if playing the monsters could be rotated among the players, and that whatever victory points you earned should be spent on your momentarily ouf of play faction, which means that no more than four factions were ever in play at the same time. This, of course, was to be Siege of the Citadel...

Then you had the world - where did the troops come from? At that time TG published a number of roleplaying games - Mutant, originally a postapoc lowtech game set in Scandinavia 500 years in the future, the fantasy game Drakar och Demoner, which started as an adaptation of Basic Roleplaying in 1992 (this is the game that later on morphed into Chronopia), and the horror game Kult. The original Mutant was retrofitted into the preapoc world of the 2090's in 1990, with an obvious cyberpunk style, big corporations instead of nations running the world, etc. That setting was then moved forward, or rather functioned as a springboard, providing the idea of the five megacorporations, and then Kult provided the monsters... And there it was - Mutant Chronicles! I have vivid memories of the afternoon we all sat in the office lounge area trying to come up with a name - Fredrik threatened to call it ZoidVoid or something even more horrible unless we could find a better name! Eventually it all came back to the original Mutant, with the addition of Chronicles to make it sound a bit more awesome!

[Cherno]

Awesome! I really like hearing that kind of background information straight from someome who worked on these projects years ago

As a funny anecdote, one time I read an issue of Amiga Joker, a german amiga games magazine from the early-mid 90s. It had a review of Blood Berets in it and readers could win the game if they answered a simple question relating to it. When I read the review I immediately knew that I wanted to have this game, the background and plastic miniatures just did it for me. So I thought to myself "hm, not many people will send a postcard with the right answer to the quiz question, so why not send more than one?". And that's what I did, I send five postcards with the same right answer to the quiz to increase my chances to win the price. Shortly after I threw them in the mailbox, I went on a youth vacation, and when I came back there was actually waiting a big package for me... I won the game and I even got a congratulatory letter from the Amiga Joker editor!

So that's my little story about how I came into contact with the Mutant Chronicles universe, a short time later Warzone was released and my local game store had the miniatures which I bought some of.. The rest is history, as they say...

Again I would like to say thanks for everyone who worked hard on Warzone and Mutant Chronicles & the various boardgames, the prices the Siege of the Citadel game fetches on ebay should be an indicator of the value of your work

Edit: As for the original Blood Berets (Red Berets in Germany, even boardgame names got renamed if they sounded too violent  ) I only ever yplayed it once right after I got it, and from my recollection I played the Dark Legion and had a very hard time doing any damage to the Imperial forces with my worthless Legionnaires and the single Nepharite!

It's also interesting to hear how the Mutant Chronicle name came to be

[James Holloway]

In local store I found trencher: hero, seregant, t. with charger and t. sniper for about 3 bucks each - want them for the collection?

Actually, I have all those guys! Well, I am not sure about the sniper, but I'm almost sure. But thanks!

If you are after Trenchers, aren't there 40 in the bag of plastics that are sold by E-Bay/Prince August?

Those are regulars rather than Trenchers; Trenchers have the long coat or cape, and their helmets are rounder in outline. I have _two_ of those bags, since both I and my buddy in this Warzone-revival project had the boxed set back in the day. That's where the beginnings of my Imperial force have come from.

[demi_morgana]

Some lovely memory lane photos here, but the minis in the opening post are great, love the photobackdrop, really atmospheric stuff.

Cheers!

That's what I call jungle fighters ! 5 minutes in the jungle and they'd probably have a heart attack causing by heat, but...kick *ss look !   

Naaah, I bet under these 'uuuge shoulder pads there are solid air conditiong systems installed
As for Chronopia - can't say I ever seriously liked any of minis from the gange - seems like it's not my cup of tea. Although I got 2 or 3 models just to have something from the extinct range...

wheres the Cybertronic love ?

I must say the first model which blew me away was Eradicator - buddy of mine had it and painted it nearly the same as original, studio pj (at least that's what I thought 13 years ago or so): that time it was something unbelievable for me to see model with it's eyes painted
Recently I got the model with arm missing but I promissed myself to see it done on display base as soon as I can recreate the missing part. 

It was fun reading this thread, lots of memories are flooding back!

No, I haven't actually played Warzone, but I was part of the team creating the entire Mutant Chronicles world, including the games. As an editor I was chiefly concerned with making sure the texts were ok, adding bits here and there.

The celebrity!!!
Great to see here someone who'd been pulling some Wazone strings.
I read some theories about game's fell but since you are pobably the most appropriate person to ask:
did it REALLY had to end this way?

[Cherno]

Did anyone else enjoy the short stories, especially from the 1st edition, as much as me? It might be a case of serious nostalgia, but I thought they were awesome at the time, especially "Sgt. Carter" about a platoon of Free Marines plus Kane, the Brotherhood Inquisitor fighting against the Dark Legion in the junges of Venus. Classic stuff!

[sundayhero]

As a funny anecdote, one time I read an issue of Amiga Joker, a german amiga games magazine from the early-mid 90s

People who are loving warzone and amiga must be good people  I'm still using one amiga 1200 for retrogaming, and using modern interpretations of amiga (Aros, Morphos) too 

[Andy H]

Did anyone else enjoy the short stories, especially from the 1st edition, as much as me? It might be a case of serious nostalgia, but I thought they were awesome at the time, especially "Sgt. Carter" about a platoon of Free Marines plus Kane, the Brotherhood Inquisitor fighting against the Dark Legion in the junges of Venus. Classic stuff!

Presumably Bill King's work, as he'd just left GW and started on Warzone - he's a very talented writer.