There's No Truth in Martian Skin Color

I'm one of those common cases in historical miniature gaming. I am owned by the history. Even greater than the geekdom of playing games with toy soldiers is the geekdom of getting the history right. And it's getting worse as I get older.

No such problem on Mars. No history. Or at least I can more or less make it up as I go along.

In the summer of 2005 I painted up all of my RAFM Martian Legion figures. I singly mounted them on washers, primed 'em with my faithful Testors spray flat white enamel and had at it. I decided on the old Ral Partha dun horse color for their skin tone. I like it, the color was not too bright, but clearly not human. Bad move. I can't get it anymore and the Iron Wind substitute isn't the same shade of biscuit yellow. Oh, well.

After I showed off my Martians to collaborator Mark Waddington, he set about to paint his own pile of lead. However, he wanted to get it right, and make our figures more or less uniform. My response was that there are no Osprey books for Mars. "There is no truth in Martian skin color."

And this is the way we've approached our project. We've tried to focus on the fun. Our scenarios have told a story about Mars, but it is a narrative of our own making, tied into the Chadwick story, but not limited by it. One of our more noteworthy scenarios is Landship Down. Mark's design is loosely based on the story of Blackhawk Down in Somalia, a steam tank goes bust, supported by a couple of units of infantry, while the Brits mount a rescue mission complete with armor and air support. It's always a fiasco, because the colonials dither, while the Martians slowly pick off the defenders. Sad. Sad and sorry.

I designed a scenario around Fredrick Weyerhaeuser's purchase of some liftwood forest, and the rush to seize it by British and Imperial forces, while Weyerhaeser and his work crew try to defend it.

More to come soon about our rules, campaign plans, and upcoming games.

The two pictures come from our Landship Down scenario in February 2008. The first photo is of the lonesome British left to defend the broken down steam tank. The other picture is of the rescue force. No pictures of the Martians, but then they fought as though they were invisible.

Beginnings

I've been interested in Sky Galleons of Mars (SGoM) and Space 1889, since the former was published as a GDW board game and the RAFM produced their excellent range of figures in 1989. I took a gamble on some Game Tech miniatures which languished in an unpainted state for years. Finally I decided to reproduce the GDW map of Shastapsh on a felt mat and made hexes out of it.

Once the mat was made there was no stopping me. Limited by my small collection of Game Tech minis, one not likely to grow much with the demise of that fine company, I acquired some nice scratch-builts, adopted some of the nice Brigade models, and even painted up some of the Houston's plastics from two copies of SGoM. I developed several scenarios that I took on the road from the Breakthrough convention in Surrey, B.C. in 2002, to Dragonflight in 2004, and ConQuest 2008. All of the scenarios were based around an airship campaign to take or hold the city-state of Shastapsh.

I decided to add some three dimensional qualities to the city that could be just representational or be included in the scenarios. The buildings are all from the JR Miniatures 1/300 Middle East range. The domed houses are all painted different colors and glossed for an exotic effect. I also picked up the storage tanks, pipeline, and pumping stations that would be necessary for sustaining a water-starved landscape, as well as the bridges running from the central island to the mainland. I've used 1/600 scale ACW gun batteries, including mortars as the dreaded lob guns, beads on bases for tethermines. The altitude stands are based on friends' designs for a miniature version of Mustangs, the Avalon Hill World War II air combat game.

In 2004, at the final Breakthrough convention, after a my third and final scenario for SGoM, Mark Waddington and I began comparing notes regarding our knowledge of Space 1889, and our unpainted piles of lead. I didn't know Mark well then, but our comparing of notes set me to work the following summer on my boxes of Oenotrian legions.

The top two pictures show my game from ConQuest Northwest last February. The picture at right is of a Game Tech Whisperdeath kite. It is simply an incredible miniature. At bottom you get a view of my Shastapsh map with all of my goodies. This photo was taken in 2004 at the Breakthrough convention, when Mark and I began hatching plans.