Author Topic: Wargames Soldiers & Strategy 76 - The Martian Edition (Read 5363 times)

oabee · « **Reply #15 on:** 03 January 2015, 02:39:34 PM »

My issue came yesterday, and I am well pleased. Creative juices started flowing, and I quickly came up with the following. Hopefully my haste has not led me into too many blunders.

One of the most feared of the Martian drones is the Scorpion Drone with its tail-like tentacle equipped with a poisonous stinger. This stinger can be set to stun or to kill by its Martian Drone Controller. If stunned, a hapless victim can be seized by the drone’s grasping tentacle and drawn away as a helpless captive. The drone is also equipped with a slicing arm which acts like a great sword.

RULES

Scorpion Drone - 36 Points

Speed 9”, FV +2, Armour 10, Pluck 4. Weapons/Tools: All-Seeing Eye, Scorpion Stinger, Slicing Blade, Grasping Tentacle

Scorpion Drones are controlled by a Martian Drone Controller, who may control any number of drones within range and who must be equipped with a Radium Generator (20 points), which is like an Arc Generator in every respect except it can only control Martian devices. Any Martian with the Engineer ability and a Radium Generator may control drones if the Controller is taken out of the game. The radius of control for drones is 12” (measured from base to base) from the figure with the Radium Generator: as long as a drone stays within that range, it will follow the orders of any Martian. If a Controller is taken out of the game and no other Engineer picks up the Radium Generator, the drones may no longer move, but will use their Stinger to attack to kill one enemy within one inch or less during the Fighting Phase. If the Radium Generator is destroyed, the drones go completely dead.

Scorpion Drones are equipped with two weapons and may attack with each by using the Multiple Attacks rule. A drone may not, however, attack twice with the same weapon.

Scorpion Stinger
This weapon may be set to Kill or to Stun and may switch back and forth between settings at any time. Set to Kill, the Stinger operates the same as a Poisoned Axe. If set to Stun, a successful hit on the target requires a Pluck roll with a -2 modifier: if failed, the victim is paralyzed and effectively out of the game, but still alive. Put the figure on its side: it may no longer move. If the Pluck roll is passed, the Stinger has missed. The Antivenom Talent negates the -2 Pluck modifier for Pluck rolls, but does not prevent paralysis on a failed Stun Pluck roll!

Slicing Blade
This weapon operates the same as a Large Sword.

Grasping Tentacle
In the Movement Phase, this tentacle may automatically seize a paralyzed human-sized figure in contact with the drone. The drone may then transport the paralyzed figure with a three inch penalty to movement. Only one paralyzed figure at a time may be seized. While carrying a figure, the drone may no longer use its Slicing Blade. A drone may pick up or drop a paralyzed figure at any point in its movement at no cost.

oabee · « **Reply #16 on:** 03 January 2015, 04:03:08 PM »

Craig, even given my creative outburst (see above), I personally was going to head towards the John Carter version of Martian Conflict, more Burroughs than Wells, but still found your article enticing. I already had been thinking about using those drones (see above), but was envisaging them as under the command of Amazonian warriors from Mars. That dream is on hold until Tin Man Miniatures' Lost Worlds Princesses

Kickstarter ever gets shipped. In the interim I obtained Raging Heroes' Sci-Fi Blood Vestals

to serve as opponents of the Tin Man minis--perhaps Venutian Amazons?--with human companies caught in the crossfire as these warriors from other worlds use our planet as a battle ground.

But now your little Martian supplement has drawn me in a new direction. So-o-o-o....maybe a three-way battle between the Wellsian Martians and their tripods and the two Burroughs-esque Amazonian races, and good luck to any paltry human who gets in the way.

So many minis, so little time...