Imaginary Armies

 Aren't they all.

I was feeling under the weather the other night and was on Twitter (famous last words,) when a very cute queer was spitballing ideas for her own Age of Sigmar setting,  but without the Sigmar and with her own armies and it reminded me of a thought exercise I sometimes do during my commutes. Occasionally I'll text people about army lists for armies or games that don't exist, but could exist. Here is an example.

LEADER - Ace Starpilot with ray gun and smart goggles

UNIT - x2 Sunchasers, with pole arms and rocket boots.

UNIT - x3 Plunkers (toolbox, comms, lookout with martian rifle)

CHARACTER - Mission Mascot - rocket boots

CHARACTER - Tincan Remembrot - translator unit with tazer hands

VEHICLE - TX7 Quad-Rover - bubble gun and psychic shielding.

So that's what its like. Since it was 3 AM, I did the responsible thing and started a blog post to keep myself company. I decided to give it some thought and make a list of five Factions that would be fun to have models for and play games with. Here they are in no particular order, for shits and giggles and such.

1.

A Monastic Order of Black Bears

Living in a castle high on a hill in the middle of the forest on the moon, these bears live sparsely, studying their order's doctrates by candlelight. The bears are largely bipedal, and have a number of cyborg augmentations that aid their vigil; most monks sport a cybernetic eye or four, or replacement hand/claw appendages that can rend flesh or turn pages. I think these bears would be more inclined to mount defenses than crusades, so they likely operate anti-siege turrets or wear night impenatrable mech suits with smooth plates and claws that mirror their pilots'. 

Chances are this concept is a mashup of Kozlov from Biomega and the B'omarr Monks of Star Wars, but who's to say. Implementation would probably be with very small units (max three models) with an emphasis on heroes and artillery. I'd expect a super elite army like this to have maybe 12-14 models in it, were it fielded in Warhammer 40,000, but I don't know that I'd put these Bear Monks into that setting. I'd like for them to have a chance for peace, as I'm sure they're really chill dudes when no one is attacking their monastary.

2.

Anthropomorphic Fantasy Pug Army

Like what it says on the tin. Folks will know from this blog that I like pug minis, to the point where when a company took too long to produce the pugs I'd ordered, I got to sculpting my own. Well I still like dogs, and dog armies sound rad, so I've secretly been craving a 28mm scale pug (with some corgis) army that matches the proportion of the gnomes from Old School Miniatures and the Chaos Dwarves from Admiralty miniatures (both of which I have rainy day armies for.) They'd probably be dressed like knights and merry men, and would basically serve as a stand in for Brettonians in Dragon Rampant, but I've yet to imagine their cavalry, and have a hunch that their reliquaries might carry dinosaur bones. Hopefully these get fleshed out a bit more before I start sculpting, but then again if I'm sculpting, its probably a miracle and I'll take it (most days I want to have sculpted more than I want to sculpt.)

3.

Moon Knights

Maybe its just me, but I would love to see someone hodge-podge Apollo 11 spacesuits and Arthurian knights. I'm sure some AI could generate a dozen iterations of the theme, but that's boring and who cares (I might be tired of the AI craze, can you tell?) But yeah, that's it. Knights and their horses in astronaut costumes, but with lances and chainmail.

4.

Doctor Frankenfrog

What if a frog with a tweed suit and a shotgun had a bunch of big buff homunculi and little froglet Igors? This would be a skaven-esque army, by way of downton abbey with hordes of servants, and then Frankensteinian Promethiae as the rat ogres. Ok, maybe this is a skaven list that I'd run for 6th edition WFB. Uh. Hold on while I do a weird thing.

• master moulder - leader
• warplock engineer
• 20 clanrats
• 20 clanrats
• 2 rat ogors
• 4 rat ogors
• warp lightning cannon 

Ok, there's a list for 3rd ed AoS I guess. Its probably really bad, but maybe its nice. I just like that you've got the lightning and the frankensteins, and synergies with the hq units for those monsters.

Oh, I bet you could do this in 40k with Genestealer cults too, huh.

• magus
• biophagus
• 5 abberant
• abominant
• 10 neophytes
• 10 neophytes

Ok, thats 27 Power Level for 9th ed 40k. Huh, I sure am a sucker for horde armies. No giant lightning gun here, but that's a small disappointment if anything. 

5.

 Slime Mold Mechanics

So my partner really likes slime molds, and how clever they are and how weirdly unclassified they are (taxonomy, am I right folks?) Slime molds have an uncanny ability to spread really far out, and then find the fastest route between food sources and itself, and then restructure it's form to optimize efficiency. This would be really neat to reflect in a wargame where any model in the force could be a warp point for the rest of the models if within a certain distance and unengaged with the enemy. I don't really have a theme in mind, perhaps some Osmosis Jones-ass taxi drivers who can seamlessly deliver passengers and packages depending on where their counterparts are stationed. 

Actually I like that. Has anyone made a cab company skirmish game? Dibs if not. 

Why did I do all that? Because I could. Because why not. Because maybe I will. Did you make a list too 👀👀👀 it'd be pretty cool if you did.

Big internal theme coming up in 3, 2, 1.

Sometimes we're so entrenched in what is, that we forget to imagine what could be. 

Hope you remembered too. See you next time.