Weird Great War

[Will Bailie]

Greetings, all,

I just watched the Young Indiana Jones' adventure, Mask of Evil (http://www.youngindy.com/adventures/vol3/MaskofEvil/index.html), from Volume 3 of the DVD collection.  In this adventure, young Indy encounters a bizarre Roumanian general with a penchant for impaling his enemies.  This struck me as a neat weird Great War scenario – the independent Rumanian warlord could entice Germans, Austro-Hungarian, Russian and Rumanian troops into his army.  Opponents running up against him might wonder at the lack of emotion shown by his soldiers… 

Does anyone make Roumanian soldiers for the Great War?  In order to counter this Wallachian warlord, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians might look for some special forces of their own – special jäger units (nachtjägers) – these troops seem most effective on the night of the full moon! 

Looking for more ideas, I came up with a couple of links:

http://strangemaps.wordpress.com/2006/09/21/9-germany-wins-world-war-i-french-worst-case-scenario/

This is obviously a propaganda piece, but there are some other interesting maps on the same page.

http://firstworldwar.cloudworth.com/strange-odd.php


Mr Plynkes' own Lost World adventure:
http://www.ebloggy.com/blog.php?username=Polynikes&id=1&start=6


Other ideas:

U-boot vs kraken (or other deep sea beastie) - a chance to use those u-boot models!  Inspiration from both the Land that Time forgot and the WWI strangeness mentionted above.

I read a short story some time ago (I've forgotten the author, my apologies for that) where the Four Horsemen of the Apocalypse show up at Verdun.  No one notices, since the Four Horsemen seem like pretty small potatoes to the participants.  Not sure if there is a scenario in that, though.

Any other ideas for taking the weirdness into the Great War?

Thanks,

Will

[Plynkes]

There's always Black Max, one of the Bat People. An evil Hun pilot who controls giant bats. He also had a creepy Dracula-style castle as memory serves.





This was all in a comic I had as a little kid. I remember there were scenes of the giant bats aiding Black Max in dogfights with plucky Entente flyers. Now that's just cheating.

http://www.internationalhero.co.uk/b/blackmax.htm


As for Romanians, I haven't seen any myself, but if you're not too much of a stickler you might get away with paint conversions of perhaps Italians or French. Like many armies they went through a period of wearing the Adrian Helmet.

[Plynkes]

Not Weird War, but that "Saving Private Townsend" story in one of those links you gave is very interesting. Imagine the final battle from "Saving Private Ryan" with Stormtroopers, A7Vs and Beutepanzers instead of Tigers and such.

How much cooler would that have been? Must game it!


The Beechey boys weren't so lucky as Pte. Townsend. Five out of eight brothers killed, and none of them were pulled out of the line.

[xeoran]

Theres a bunch of weird beliefs from WW1 too. Aside from stuff like the Angel of Mons you have persistant rumours of an Aussie chap leading a pack of men from all sides, driven mad and who now haunt abandoned trenches and dugouts, attacking all they see and eating their corpses...Sadly I can't remember the name of the fellow. Tosh but very inspiring tosh.

[Plynkes]

Also on the tosh front there was the vanishing Sandringham Company in the Dardanelles. Wild tales of a strange cloud of mist swallowing them up circulated at the time.

How about Turks and Tommies banding together to fight the evil mist cloud? (Though I'm not exactly sure how one fights a cloud of mist. I don't think a 303 round would be all that effective. "Company! On my command, flap arms to disperse the mist! Wait for it, wait for it...")

Or perhaps the cloud deposited them in another time or dimension?

[marrony]

We Are doing roughly the same thing!!!!!!!!!!!!!!! :look at my Demented Vlad pulp villian thread.Great minds think alike!

Ours is set after the great war, with the General having German veteran troops from the war as bodyguards and his has links wih the infamous iron guard.....

[Driscoles]

I read a book by Kim newman recently. its was about Richthofen and his flying circus. They were all Vampires. They were able to transform into giant bats. They had Spandaus attached to there wings and fought against the RAF which also had some Vampire pilots like Albert Ball but the RAF vampire pilots flew there planes. It was a really weird book but I recommend it.
Cheers
Björn

[Bullshott]

Does anyone make Roumanian soldiers for the Great War?  In order to counter this Wallachian warlord, the Germans and Austro-Hungarians might look for some special forces of their own – special jäger units (nachtjägers) – these troops seem most effective on the night of the full moon! 
Any other ideas for taking the weirdness into the Great War?

What do WW1 Roumanian uniforms look like?

Tiger Miniatures now do some fine Bulgarians for the Balkan Wars.

[Plynkes]

Their caps are quite different. More like Austro-Hungarian ones than Bulgarian, in fact. Plus the Bulgarians wore their own quite distinctive socks/leggings which nobody else seems to have.

But as I said, they did also wear Adrian helmets, so paint conversions from various other armies are possible if one is prepared to overlook a few differences.

[Plynkes]

By the way, if you're wanting to go for a Bram Stoker-esque take on our warlord, Transylvania was part of Austria-Hungary during the period of the Great War. So you could have him as Central Powers villain rather than Romanian.

[Hammers]

Why did Adrian helmets get so popular all over? Czechs, Russians, Chinese, Romanians, British... Was it the design or was it that the Ministre de la Défense accidentally added a zero on the order to the mill and was stuck with a surplus ten times what he needed?

[Plynkes]

British? I don't remember our lads ever wearing them. You can include this particular Brit, though, as I do own one.

Some of the Yanks had 'em in the Great War, though. And you can add Belgians, Spanish, Italians, Greeks and Serbs to the list as well.

[Hammers]

British? I don't remember our lads ever wearing them. You can include this particular Brit, though, as I do own one.

So did Churchill so you are in good company. But I think he wore it as a piece of personal flair. Apparently the British did some trials with it before settling on that upturned shaving basin variant.

Some of the Yanks had 'em in the Great War, though. And you can add Belgians, Spanish, Italians, Greeks and Serbs to the list as well.

Yes, this is what puzzles me since it doean't seem to have been that great a casque.

[Plynkes]

According to Wikipedia, price and ease of manufacture led to its popularity (rather than any protective qualities). They also list a bunch of other countries you could add to our list as well.

[Operator5]

If you are looking for some Weird Great War inspiration, dig up the G-8 and his Battle Aces pulp novels. Lots of weird stories (though most turn out to have more of a Weird Science behind them then anything supernatural).

And another thing to remember, Tarzan would have been alive during the time. Easily added to your WWI in Africa games.