Wednesday, January 8, 2014

Achtung, Tentacles! More Weird War Thoughts

 

“Always with the tentacles!"

I blame young Kinch for putting me onto the Kickstarter campaign for the Modiphus/Spartan Games Achtung Cthulu project.  I was attracted to the project because of the excellent video with its creepy background music, and because of its compatibility with the Savage Worlds rules system, which I’ve invested in.   It looked tempting, and I filed it away as something to keep on my gaming radar screen.

Then, thanks to the Wargame News and Terrain blog (which I rely on more than TMP for hobby info), I see that Spartan Games has announced that the project will be a 2014 release, with some very interesting minis showcased.

So obviously Kickstarter works when you have two of the three top subjects of mass-market publishing, Nazis and the occult (the third, I am told, is cats, and if all three can be combined, you’re golden).  Sadly, Kickstarter projects for American Civl War ironclad rules and Indiegogo campaigns for ACW miniatures don’t have the same ability to get off the launch pad, which says something about where the mass audience for the hobby resides,  but I digress.

While my own Weird War Two visions are still unfocused, I like the idea of a more traditional vision of the occult, something I see as a mashup of Allo! Allo! and Hammer Studios.   I’m not sure that tentacled and slimy Ubersturmfuhrer Fishtruppen have a place in the milieu I am envisioning, though you never now.  Stargate SG1, which Mrs. Padre watched on Netflix over the holidays, all ten seasons worth,  always managed to serve up yet another universe-threatening enemy after the Egyptian god guys or whatever got defeated.   Maybe an “SG 1939” project could expand over time to have “S Commando” take on the fish men after the vampers and wolf men are defeated, but that seems rather crowded and busy, not to mention, unrealistic (I mean, cmon, you can’t have Nazi vampires AND fish men!).   I shall certainly be seeing what products the Achtung Cthulu project actually rolls out.

In the meantime, stay vigilant, chaps!

4 comments:

  1. Wow! I had a real laugh with the last part of the video!!
    I don't know if I'm sorry of having missed the project or quite happy to have saved my money for other projects ... it would have been veeeeeeery tempting for a guy like me, an avid reader of Lovecraft's novels in my late teens and a heavily IIWW oriented wargamer now!!

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    1. That last bit on the video is rather funny indeed. Thanks to a successful Kickstarter campaign, a geeky game designer gets to hang out with a blonde model. Who says war gamers don't get the hot girls? I agree, Lovecraft and WW2 is a fine combination, like red wine and tapas, or fish and chips.

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  2. I don't know, Serpent men Nazis were a feature of our CoC RPG sessions back in the eighties. Still, glad to see another fan of SG-1, we watched all ten seasons again lat year and very much enjoyed the show's mix of modern military versus False Egyptian Gods.

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  3. Hi Ashley! I spent some time watching SG1 in the background during my wife's Netflix marathon sessions (are there any other kind of sessions for Netflix?) and liked it, though some of the plot details tended to go over my head, as when Samuel Jackson died and came back to life, or Tealc got captured and beaten up AGAIN! or when Sam Carter met another love interest but he either died or was an alien or was otherwise unavailable. All things considered, it was good television, and who could resist Claudia Black's character towards the end?

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