Martin Evans

They Rode the Flying Saucers

Posted on May 22, 2020 by Martin Evans

Saucer-Jockeys Brave Extreme G-Forces in Deadly Sky-Fights!

It’s time for another look at one of the key components of Saucer War One.

You’ll remember last time, we met the Saucer Data Disc and learned that it connects to a series of smaller Discs that provide information about Weapons, Equipment, and, most importantly, the Saucer’s Crew. Let’s start our examination of these discs with the Crew Disc, and see how it interacts with the Data Disc.

I wonder what ANTIC’s Crew Familiarisation Course teach about these things…?

From the ANTIC Lenticular Vehicle Handbook (TD-34.1)

As mysterious and even ethereal as flying saucers may seem to Earthbound witnesses who gape at their impossible maneuvers, these marvels of super-science are nothing without their most essential components: The flesh and blood beings at their controls.

Being the Crew of a Saucer is no easy job. Regardless of their affiliation, all ‘Saucernauts’ share a common bond formed through their courage, skill, and willingness to risk death in the skies.

To the Noordicans they are Charioteers; chosen Priests of Technology entrusted with the most valued artefacts left by the gods. In Mondreich society, the Untertasseflieger is a hero, the ideal of Mondmenschen Perfektion and defender of Lunar Nationalism.

But the pilots of ANTIC are the cast-offs of Earth’s airforces; The misfits, the non-conservatives, the people whose politics, race or gender ostracises them in the narrow minds of generals and politicians. However, most ANTIC pilots have few professional regrets; they may never get to fly fast in their nations’ jets, but as Saucer Crew these mavericks fly a helluva lot faster.

Unfortunately, the faster one goes, the greater the G-force one is subjected to when you suddenly change direction. Anyone who has swerved in a fast moving car knows this G-force, and how it can feel as if one has been suddenly shoved aside by a huge, invisible hand. In a Saucer flying at several thousands of miles per hour, such a ‘shove’ is colossal, and can be as lethal as colliding with an express train.

So how do Saucer Crews survive these immense forces? With their Gravitic propulsion systems keeping them aloft, all Saucers generate their own gravitational field. Without going into the physics in detail, it is sufficient to say that this field insulates a Saucer’s Crew from the G-forces generated by the maneuvers of their amazing machines. In fact without this field, such maneuvers would kill anyone in a Saucer in a heartbeat, crushed and broken by the tremendous physical stresses.

As long as a Saucer keeps within the limits of its gravity field it can neutralise most of the effects of extreme G-force. ANTIC Crews call this ‘pointing it in the green’ or just ‘staying green’ after the triangular, green G-Stress Indicator on their instrument panels.
If a maneuver pushes the ‘pip’ on this indicator outside its triangle, then the G-forces upon the Saucer have exceeded the field’s capacity, and the Crew might feel the full power of the G-force on their bodies. If that force becomes strong enough, unconsciousness — or even death — is certain.

Of course, pilots will be pilots, and cannot be prevented from dancing on the edge, chancing death. The very nature of combat flying requires the acceptance of terrible risk, and victory sometimes requires ferocious maneuvers, subjecting Saucer Crews to dreadful G-stress. To help guard against this, every G-Stress Indicator has a G-Stress Ring that is specifically calibrated to its Crew. As G-Stress rises, so the Ring rotates, giving the Crew a visual guide to the danger they are in. If the Ring stays at ‘0’ then there is no danger. As the value rises between ‘1’ and ‘4’, the Crew will experience sluggish reactions and impaired vision. If it reaches ‘G-LOC’ the Crew have reached their consciousness threshold, and will pass out. Should it reach ‘G-FIN’ then it is likely they will be killed by the crushing force they endure.

So, that’s the background to the Crew Disc; In short, G-Forces are scary, but the super-science of a Saucer’s propulsion enables its Crew to get away with crazy moves.

Now let’s describe it in game terms. We’ll start with a break-down of the icons and what they mean:

Crew Check Target Number

Central to a Crew’s role in a Saucer is the Crew Check. This is the number you’re trying to beat when you want to Hit a Target, pull off a Stunt, attempt a Repair, and other tasks.

Gunsight Bonus

As you can probably guess, this bonus improves your chance of beating the Crew Check whenever you perform an Attack with a Weapon.

Abilities

These characterful additions provide some flavour to their game, and maybe give a little edge to the better, more experienced Crews like Herr Nowotny here. There are also negative Abilities, so watch out! More about Abilities in a future article.

Points Value and Allegiance

Exactly what they say. A Crew’s Points Value is added to that of its Saucer, along with any Weapons and Equipment to determine its Full Points Value. Allegiance is simply the symbol of the nation that can use this Crew in the game. Hauptmann Nowotny is a Mondreich Crew.

G-Stress Ring

Arguably the most important part of a Crew Disc, this ring records a Crew’s current G-Stress Penalty. This penalty reduces your chance of beating the Crew Check.

Here’s how the G-Stress Ring interacts with a Saucer’s Data Disc: At the start of a game, a Crew Disc is usually aligned to its Connector Point at the lowest number (0) on its G-Stress Ring.

A Crew Disc rotates with the amount of G-Stress that a Saucer generates: Clockwise when G-Stress increases…

and Anti-clockwise when it decreases…

A Crew’s G-Stress rises by +1 for each extreme Maneuver.

Usually, an extreme Maneuver is a Pivot that exceeds a Saucer’s Safe Zone, as described in this earlier article about the Maneuver Disc. (There are also Stunt Maneuvers intended to give a feel of 3D air combat, but we’ll discuss these another time.)

So, performing an extreme Maneuver requires a trade: It might give you a bead on an enemy Saucer, but your Crew take a penalty to their chance of scoring a Hit. Too many extreme Maneuvers, and you risk the Crew blacking out, or even being killed!

But its not all bad; a safe Pivot (Inside the Green) causes no increase to G-Stress.

Finishing a Maneuver with no Pivot at all (following the Exit Disc’s Centerline), reduces G-Stress by -1. (A very good thing.)

As ANTIC’s Handbook warns us: If G-Stress rises too high, the Crew can be imperilled as they reach G-LOC (Loss of Consciousness) and G-FIN (Final). (A very bad thing!)

Mix ‘n Match

Many Crew Discs are interchangeable with their nation’s saucers. This means you can switch them between Saucers to achieve certain outcomes, such as putting a hot-shot Beta Saucer’s Crew into a big Alpha Type to see what they do. (Rather akin to giving a B-29 bomber to a Mustang fighter pilot and telling them “Have fun!”)

Likewise, Weapons and Equipment are interchangeable, allowing a huge variety of configurations, each with its benefits and disadvantages. I’m hoping players of Saucer War One will enjoy experimenting with various combinations, and pitting their favourite ‘combos’ against those of their opponents.

We’ll be looking at Weapon and Equipment Discs in a new article soon, but what’s coming up before that? Put away your dice, folks, you won’t be needing them when I reveal the Fate Deck for Saucer War One…

Rules Design

All the Data Disc Data

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Martin Evans

Dialling-in Control of a Flying Saucer

Last time we previewed one of Saucer War One’s game mechanics, we looked at the Maneuver Disc and how it is used to move a Saucer miniature. For this week’s preview, we’ll eavesdrop on an ANTIC training lecture somewhere in the central Asian CAPER RED operations area, in 1955…

Welcome back, eager. young saucer-cadets! For today’s lesson, I’d like to introduce you to the most fundamental instrument in the cockpit of any saucer: The Data Disc. This multi-purpose dial tells a pilot at a glance the essential information they need to keep in the air, and fight their foes. No matter what saucer you are flying, you will learn to rely on your Data Disc, so let’s take a good look at this vital component.

Our example is a Data Disc for a Mondreich Haunebu II-C, which is essentially a simplified copy of the Noordican Biga. Are you listening at the back there?

Pulse Track

We’ll begin with the most important read-out on the Data Disc. Pulses define how many Actions a Saucer can take during a game Turn. While a saucer’s Pulses are in the healthy, Optimum range (OPT), all is good. But, damage from enemy weapons, or risky maneuvers (like ramming somebody else’s saucer!) can force down the number of Pulses a saucer can generate. If Pulses drop to 0, (CUT) then a Saucer’s reactor, gravimetric drive, and physical structure are so compromised that it cannot stay airborne and will crash. (Probably onto a ranch in New Mexico…)

Should a pilot find themselves in dire need, it is possible to push a saucer’s reactor to its Emergency (EMRG) setting. This allows the saucer an extra Pulse or Pulses, but there is the danger of the extreme pressure shattering the reactor vessel, blowing the saucer to pieces! (Which then definitely crashes onto a ranch in New Mexico…)

Distributor

Below the Pulse Track are these three numbers which tell us how the saucer can ‘spend’ its Pulses on Actions. Actions are use to do, well, anything really. Usually, one Action allows you to do one thing, such as place a single Maneuver Disc, or fire a single Weapon.
It always costs at least one Pulse to perform one Action.

The Distributor numbers show the maximum Pulses that can be spent on a particular Action: Maneuver (MNV); Attack (ATK) and Special (SPC). Because this is only an introduction to the Data Disc, I won’t go into details about Actions just now. Let’s move onto some other parts… Miss Konstantinova, are you flirting with your fellow cadet?
I expect better from a Hero of the Soviet Union, you know!

Callsign

Each Saucer in the game has its own callsign, to make it easier to keep track of each one during the game.

Points Cost

How much the ‘basic’ saucer costs when constructing a force of Saucers and Assets for a game.

Connection Ring

This orange circle has a number of what we call Connector Points around its rim. The Connector Points are: Crew; Special; Hardpoint 1 and Hardpoint 2. At each of these Connectors are placed an associated, smaller Disc;

The Crew Disc aligns with the Crew Connector Point.

‘Special’ things like Equipment Discs, and the Discs of Assets being transported, connect to the Special Connector.

And finally, at each Hardpoint a Weapon Disc can be placed.

Grav Shield

The Gravitic Drive was probably the Annunaki’s most important invention. It enables Saucers to zip around at thousands of miles per hour, making impossible break-neck turns without breaking necks. This seemingly impossible device generates intense gravitational fields. By focusing the fields at a point above you, it is possible to offset local gravity and up you fly, chasing the intense gravitational point you are generating.

One of the benefits of a Gravitic Drive is that the field deflects projectiles and energy, acting like a force field. This gives a saucer a sort of armour that can save it from damaging cannon shells and explosions. In game terms, this provides a ‘saving throw’ against damage.

Max Crit

This is the number of Critical Damage results that a saucer can absorb before it falls apart. Generally speaking, the bigger the saucer, the more Criticals it can endure. However, some Critical Damage is serious enough to force a saucer’s crew to turn tail and run for home, before they become exhibits in the Area 51 museum!

Saucer class and Type

The designation for this class of Saucer (Haunebu II-C), and its Type — either Alpha (the biggest of Saucers), Beta (middleweight all-rounders), or Gamma (small fighters and scout Saucers).

And that’s all you need to know to read a Data Disc. Next time, we’ll see how the Crew and Weapon Discs interact with the Data Disc, but that’s all for this lesson, cadets. Dismissed! Break out the vodka and spin me some Charlie Parker sides, Cats!

Miniatures Design

Biga is Better

Posted on May 15, 2020 by Martin Evans

Noordican Flying Saucer Closer to Physical Reality!

Many of you will have noticed (and I hope, enjoyed), the preview art of the Noordican Biga class Saucer last week. Well, someone who certainly did enjoy it was talented 3D sculptor Chris Osapai — and look what he’s made!

Yes folks, we have our first sighting of a Saucer War One miniature-in-the-making! Here’s a couple of renders of the Biga that Chris has digitally sculpted. Charioteers of Venus, rejoice! Chris says he blitzed out this beautiful sculpt in a mere six hours. Only six hours? I suspect alien mind control!

Chris has done a superb job of capturing the classic ‘Adamski saucer’ lines of the Biga, but with all the engraved detail that is such a hallmark of Annunaki technology.

Necrossia

Chris is also the creative genius whose Protokraken business has a very cool Kickstarter project called Necrossia that just successfully funded.

Necrossia is a set of 3D printing files of alien artefact scenery for 28mm wargaming.
I think a lot of the files are quite ‘scale agnostic’ and could be suitable for 15mm or even micro-scale wargames, too.

Although the Necrossia Kickstarter has successfully concluded, you can still get aboard for late pledges. Grab a 3D printer, and you’ll soon be surrounded by ancient alien monoliths!

Speaking of 3D printing, I suspect many of you will be excited to hear this:

Grow your own Flying Saucers from Vats of Chemicals

Inspired by Chris’ excellent Biga sculpt, I’m bring forward an announcement. The free print n’ play playtest version of Saucer War One is scheduled to be available for download in June-July this year. When it launches, we will also launch a set of six .STL files of ANTIC and Noordican saucers for home printing!

This will give budding UFO-jockeys a leg-up into getting their saucer fleets into action, well before physical miniatures are released.

Keep your eyes peeled for more previews of Noordican Sky Chariots soon!

Artwork

Know Your Flying Saucers #1: The Biga

Posted on May 8, 2020 by Martin Evans

Biga — Workhorse of the Venusian Skies

A treat for you all today – here’s a nice 3-view illustration of a stalwart of the Noordican’s sky-fleet: the Biga Gamma-Type Scout Saucer.

10.6m (35ft) in diameter with a crew of three, the Biga is the smallest of the ‘sky chariots’ inherited by the Noordicans from the Annunaki after their alien ‘gods’ fled from Venus and Earth 16,000 years ago. It is a very limited, short-ranged design that is dependant upon the giant Great Galley motherships for interplanetary travel. Usually armed with only a single Gravgun chamber which can fire through either of two emitters, the Biga is not exactly a terror of the skies. Its compact ‘turret’-style cabin is equipped with basic flight controls and average sensors.

Yet in spite of these limitations, the Biga is the most successful of all Annunaki saucers. Possibly built in the millions during the multi-millennia reign of the Annunaki, the Biga is durable, dependable, and perfectly capable of matching just about anything that ANTIC can build of the same size. Even with an average pilot at its helm, a Biga can run rings around anything larger than itself, and outdistance anything else.

Sadly, Bigas have developed an undeserved reputation as unsafe and unstable craft because they seem to have a propensity for crashing all over the Earth. In fact, since 1936, it is estimated that no less that 41 Bigas have come down in forests, smacked into mountains, or scattered themselves all over New Mexican ranches. In truth, these incidents were almost always because of the inexperience of their pilots, or an encounter with some unexpected Earthling technology that blew a Biga’s ancient fuses.

Biga’s have become infamous for their role in the Noordican campaign to return to Earth, and the often disastrous mistakes made along the way. It was a Biga that was naively handed over to the Nazi Thule Society, and was retro-engineered into the Haunebu saucer programme. A Biga crashed outside the town of Roswell, New Mexico in 1947, its gravity field inverting and compressing its crew into small, deformed corpses.

And most notoriously, it was a Biga that delivered Orthon, commander of the Earth Expedition, to Desert Center, California, in 1952. There, Orthon met one George Adamski, and started the Contactee Movement which led to riots, massed marches, and nearly succeeded in overthrowing several governments in the early 50’s.

What’s that? You never heard of any of this stuff? You think it’s all just a pile of debunkable looniness? Good. That means ANTIC has done its job really well…

More 3-views to follow soon, including ANTIC’s super-secret Silverhound fighter-saucer, and the Mondreich’s huge Maria class Koenigsuntertasse battle-saucer!

Watch the Skies!

Artwork

Being a Flying Saucer Ace is Hip

Posted on May 4, 2020 by Martin Evans

A little character concept art to kick off the working week.

1955: ANTIC pilot Tabitha LaSalle steps from her Silverhound fighter-saucer after returning to Ilha de Trindade Base, hidden beneath the South Atlantic.

But what is ANTIC? Why do they have hidden bases? And are bowties and berets compulsory attire for fighting alien invasions? Some answers and more artwork coming soon!

Miniatures Design, Rules Design

How a (tiny) Flying Saucer Flies

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Martin Evans

Anti-gravity Acrylic Rods are the Real Secret Free-Energy Device!

You know what really gets up my wargaming nose? What really sticks in my miniature-building craw? Flightpegs!

Yes, I said flightpegs! Those little, skinny plastic sticks that are supposed to keep ‘flying’ models eternally suspended above the Earth, balanced over a circle or square of plastic on the bottom that keeps the model from tottering over on its monopole mounting.

But do they? Reliably and without fear of gravity’s destructive influence? Do they never topple over, casting beautiful miniatures to their destruction? Do they never break, usually somewhere near where they’re glued into the model, thereby inflicting hours of re-drilling and re-mounting upon the frustrated modeller? Like Hell!

And that constantly frustrating aspect of ‘flying’ miniatures was what drove me to find an alternative solution. How to get the flying discs of Saucer War One in the air, keep them there, and on a mounting that didn’t rely on a single, skinny, breaking, balancing pole?

That was when I remembered the method used by a friend of mine many years ago to keep his 1/300 scale aircraft high above his earth table. (That’s a sand table, but with clean soil as the sculpting material, rather than sand. Makes for great, muddy battlefields.) With sculpted hills, valleys, and trenches, liberally sprinkled with tiny villages and forests, it was impossible for a conventionally-mounted miniature aircraft to stay upright as it prowled the skies, looking for tiny tanks to bomb.

The solution? My friend mounted his aircraft on a simple wire tripod. With three legs on the ground, it was virtually impossible for an aircraft to tip over, even while thundering down a thickly-wooded mountainside. And of course, because each of its three wires had a diminutive contact area on the table surface, it never damaged any miniature real estate.

So, this is how I envision the way the 1/200 scale miniatures of Saucer War One will achieve the magical, gravity-defying act of ‘flight’:

Each model rests on three identical, 2mm diameter pegs. Ideally, the pegs will be friction-tight so they can be removed for transport if desired.

I should probably point out a couple of things about the illustration above: Firstly, why the tiny trees, relative to the size of the saucer? That’s because I imagine the 3D scenery used in Saucer War One will be several scales smaller than the saucers. Perhaps 1/600 or 1/700 scale. This gives a forced-perspective sense of the saucers flying high above the ground, and allows multiple towns, villages, missile bases, etc, to be placed on the table without things getting too crowded.

Oh, and a note for boardgamers who are recoiling from their screens, horrified at the thought of all the crafty modelling and super-glued fingers this scenery stuff might involve: Saucer War One will include easy, flat, card Scenery Shapes that do the same job, requiring no trips to the Casualty department of your local hospital.

Pole to Pole

Monopole flightstands do have a real advantage in tabletop warfare; They provide a convenient, constant reference point to make accurate measurements from. That was something the tripod concept lacked… from where do you measure? I had to do some thinking for a while, but eventually I realised the tripod offered a new way to measure movement, weapon ranges, and move / fire arcs. Let me show you what I mean:

Here we see an ANTIC NS-99 ‘Silverhound’ Beta-type saucer viewed from above. (The ‘nose’ of the Silverhound is ‘up’ in this view.) The 3 Pegs are shown at the points that they touch the ground. See how they form a triangle? (Yes, I hear you cry “Obviously!” but stay with me, folks.) Each side of the triangle makes a movement / firing arc: Front; Left; Right.

It also provides a ‘blind spot’ called the Tailing Arc at the rear, which saucers don’t actually have, but is a disadvantage suffered by more conventional aircraft in Saucer War One. (I added it here just for the sake of being comprehensive.)

Why don’t saucers have this Tailing Arc? That will become clear in time, but essentially, because saucers can fly forwards, sideways and backwards equally well, they do not have the restrictions that winged fighters or bombers endure. They don’t really have a ‘tail’ as such.

The triangle formed between the Pegs is the saucer’s Safe Zone. So, what the heck is that? ‘That’ and all else will become clear (I hope), as we go through the steps in a Maneuver.

Let’s see the way we plot out a saucer’s movement using Maneuver Discs.

Maneuver Discs — The Keys to the Saucer

This is a Maneuver Disc. It is 89mm (3.5″) across, and by placing them edge-to-edge along the flightpath of a saucer we can plot its course during its game turn. Each consecutive Disc must be placed against the preceding Disc’s Exit Point. The Centreline is used with the Safe Zone to determine if a Maneuver is legal, or too dangerous. (You’ll see this in a moment.)

So, what’s with the Entry Arcs at the bottom? Each Saucer is one of three Types:
Alpha (the biggest, baddest saucers);
Beta (‘middleweight’ all-rounders), or
Gamma (spunky, little fighters).

Alphas are tough and pack a punch, but they lack maneuverability. They must use the narrow Alpha Entry Arc. Betas are a better blend of capability and maneuverability, and they use the mid-width Beta Entry Arc. Gammas are the hot-shot, crazy flyers of Saucer War One, and get to use the big Gamma Entry Arc when they perform a Maneuver.

(Each Type of saucer can also use the Entry Arcs of their less-maneuverable cousins, so a Beta saucer uses both the Beta and Alpha Entry Arcs, for example.)

Still with me? Okay, let’s see how the Maneuver Discs and Tripod Pegs work together to move a saucer.

Come Fly with Me

When a saucer or anything else in Saucer War One wants to do something, it must use a Pulse to get it done. A Pulse is a combined unit of ability, made up of its energy systems, aerodynamics, handling, etc. The more potent a saucer is, the more Pulses it has. I won’t discuss Pulses further in this post; all we need to know is that each Pulse that is ‘spent’ on performing a Maneuver entitles a Player to place one Maneuver Disc for their saucer.

The first Disc that is placed is called the Entry Maneuver Disc, and it is placed like this:

The edge of the Entry Maneuver Disc must touch at least 2 Pegs of the saucer, inside the Entry Arc that matches the saucer’s Type. As long as neither Peg is outside the Entry Arc, the Player can rotate the Maneuver Disc however they like. Now we can place more Discs!

Get the idea? As long as the Maneuver Discs can form an unbroken ‘chain’, edge-to-edge, the maneuver is legal, and the saucer can be moved to the end, completing the Maneuver. But what happens when it reaches the end?

This is where the interaction between the Maneuver Disc’s Centerline and the saucer’s Safe Zone comes in. The Saucer ends its Maneuver with its trailing Peg touching the edge of the Exit Maneuver Disc at its Exit Point. The Saucer can pivot on the trailing peg as its Player wishes, left or right, but, the pivot must leave the Centerline pointing inside the saucer’s Safe Zone.

This is because for all their uncanny maneuverability, even flying saucers have their limits before g-forces threaten to break them apart. ANTIC pilots are reminded of this with the saying: “Point it in the green, Dean!”

Of course, that’s the ‘in-game’ explanation for this restriction. In truth, this is to prevent any tripod-mounted unit in the game from performing bootlegger turns at the end of each maneuver, which would negate a major skill aspect of the game. There’s got to be a certain amount of judgement at play, both to help players remain engaged with what’s happening on the table, and to ensure occasional misjudgements with the missed firing opportunities, mid-air collisions, and other mirth they provoke!

Yes, you can veer drunkenly across the sky in your saucer! The real advantage a saucer has over any other unit in Saucer War One is its ability to place the Entry Maneuver Disc against any two Pegs. This gives them unrivalled maneuverability that will turn any jet fighter-jockey green with envy. Conventional aircraft must always place their Entry Maneuver Disc against the left and right Pegs (in the Front Arc), no matter what.

Well, that’s how my frustration with the minor real-world problem of flight pegs led me to the design solution of the tripod pegs, which in turn led me to the Maneuver Disc. Funny how inspiration sometimes comes from the necessity of change, born from things we really shouldn’t get so worked up over.

I hope you’ve enjoyed this insight into my design process. If you have (or even if you have not!) please feel invited to comment, or even email me. I’m always happy to hear what others think of my mad solutions.

See you next time!

Artwork

More than just Bumper Stickers

Posted on May 1, 2020 by Martin Evans

Why Visual Identity is Essential in a Game’s Storyline

Since the dawn of eyeballs, Humans have relied on symbols, icons and logos to quickly and positively recognise the meaning of a thing. We see this all around us, every day; the use of a crucifix to identify a Christian place of worship; a blue, white and red roundel proclaiming an aircraft as belonging to Britain’s Royal Air Force, and huge, curved, yellow ‘M’s that tell us “Caution: Unwanted kilos ahead!”

Wargamers are particularly aware of the important role that identity plays in their appreciation of their tiny warriors. The look of an army is just as significant as how it performs on the table. That’s why they labour for hours, covering fingers, furniture, and occasionally models with paint, decals and varnish. Even the most die-hard, tournament-centric, power-gamer will usually concede that a well-painted force, upon which much attention and detail has been lavished, is a thing of beauty, and something its creator can justly take pride in.

But how can identity apply in a game about flying saucers? Do saucers even have identity?

Flying saucer undergoing identity crisis

Every Club needs a Badge

From **Simple Heraldry Cheerfully Illustrated** by Iain Moncreiffe and Don Pottinger

Back in the days when knights in full armour hammered each other with sword and mace, there was a great need to distinguish foe from friend on the battlefield. When your visibility is limited by an armoured visor, or because you’re reeling from the anvil chorus being played on your noggin, you have to be able to identify the good guys from the baddies — fast!

To achieve this, knights and their followers took to wearing some form of identifying mark, and a clear combination of colours that left no doubt of their allegiance. This was known as a ‘livery’ and it formed the foundation for European heraldry.
We continue this tradition to this day, in both military markings and sport team strips.

Are you a fan of a team sport? If you are, you’ll instantly know what I’m aiming at here.
If you’re dedicated to your favourite club, you’ll immediately know their badge or motif. Manchester United have their ‘Red Devil’, for example, and it is very distinctive.
The Greenbay Packers have that big ‘G”, and fans who wear cheese hats. The Toronto Bluejays have — well, a bluejay. You get the idea.

Saucer War One kicks off in 1952 with three rival forces vying for supremacy. Two of them — The Venusian Noordcans and the Moon-conquering Mondreich — use saucers that are very similar, so they need their own ‘liveries’ to identify them from each other.

Part of their identity comes from their colour schemes. The Noordicans, in keeping with their ancient origins, maintain the gold, silver and bronze embellishments with which the Annunaki decorated their Sky Chariots. The Mondreich use the unique ‘splinter’ style camouflage patterns of the Luftwaffe. (You just know you’re going to want to paint those!)

But, wargamers are a very individual bunch. I can be certain that someone, somewhere, will want to paint their Noordican collection in sinister, jet black, or their Mondreich fleet as the My Little Pony Space Empire.

(Seeing pictures now, ain’t you? But hey, who am I to suppress creativity?)

So, how to link these many saucers in many schemes to a common identity? That’s where the factions’ symbols — their logos, if you will — come in.

Here’s the symbols of the three initial factions of Saucer War One. I’ll elaborate the rationales behind the choices of the first two in a future post, but for the moment, let’s focus on what proved the trickiest of the three to design: That of the Mondreich.

To Nazi or Not to Nazi?

Without saying too much (because spoilers), creating the Mondreich as a faction for Saucer War One was a real challenge. That might surprise those of you with an interest in Ufology or alternate history. ‘Nazis in space’ is a pretty well established sci-fi trope nowadays, after the many ‘revelations’ of German wunderwaffe flying saucers that were supposedly developed in World War Two.

But it wasn’t the background story of how the Germans got their saucers, or into space that was the pachyderm in the room. It was the Nazis. No matter how we might like to think of them as zany bad guys in Hugo Boss greatcoats and leather, let’s get serious for a moment: The Nazis are the people who plunged Europe into the most terrible conflict in human history, murdering millions in their insane quest for racial ‘supremacy’.
While no ideology was entirely innocent during the dark days of 1939—1945, a great deal of the burden of guilt is rightly dropped on the shoulders of National Socialism.

I don’t know about you, but I prefer my Nazis dead. So, I made the decision to keep Nazi symbolism out of the Mondreich’s identity*.

That pretty much left me with the Balkenkreuz — the national marking used by German forces throughout World War Two — as a base for the Mondreich symbol. That allowed me to keep a connection to that conflict, but turn my back on the Nazis, and get away from them. (Had to. They smell funny…)

So, I worked up some concepts, and then shared them with a number of Facebook wargaming groups for feedback:

One of the things many people commented on was the ‘Islamic’ vibe they felt was apparent in #3. (Although the crescent in middle east iconography actually dates back to the Byzantine Empire.) I had no desire to offend anyone’s religious sensitivities for the sake of a game, so changes were needed.

Thanks to the great feedback I received from dozens of people, I was able to whittle and hone the designs down to these:

Aside from comments about #1 being a rivet, and #2 looking like a German condom (ahem…) the reaction to these designs was encouragingly positive. People recognised the symbolism of the Moon with the Earth rising in the background, the balkenkreuz superimposed over the Moon upon its ‘dark’ side.

But a final pass was warranted, to make sure I had it right:

I kept the ‘rivet’ because I could imagine the first Mondreich saucer groundcrews quickly making this minimum effort modification as they struggle to keep their charges in the air in the early days of Saucer War One.

The other variations provide two options (always nice to have options!) for modellers when I release decal sheets for the Mondreich kits.

As I said, I received a lot of useful feedback from many people during the process of designing these symbols. But no design is ever completely finished, because it changes with each interpretation applied by fresh eyes. So, if you feel so inclined, do let me know what you think of the designs, in the comments below.

Thank you for reading, and I’ll see you next time!

*Just who the Mondreich really are, is a secret I’ll keep for now… stay tuned for future developments!

Background Writing

SW1: The Story So Far…

Posted on April 24, 2020May 10, 2020 by Martin Evans

SW1: The Story So Far…

Millennia before Human civilisation began, an alien race came to Earth with a sinister purpose. They were the Annunaki; A species of giants with intellects to match their stature, but utterly lacking in empathy for the millions of Earthlings they enslaved to serve their galactic empire. For thousands of years, the Annunaki robbed the Earth of its treasures, despoiled its lands and fouled its seas. Maliciously, they twisted and warped the DNA of Humankind to suit their ends, then sent millions of altered slaves to work mines on Venus and Mars, never to see their native Earth again. They built a mighty floating continent for themselves, from which their demands for tribute grew ever louder, for the Annunaki ruled as gods, and laughed at the ignorant savages that grovelled in worship before them.

Then, as suddenly as they arrived, the Annunaki vanished. In a day and a night, their floating continent sank beneath the waves, and the survivors fled for distant, dark corners of the galaxy. On Earth, the Annunaki became mere legend, entangled in the mythologies of the ancient world. Ignorant of its past, Humanity resumed its own course down the road of civilisation.

In the middle of the 20th century, the forgotten past returned. The ancient sky-chariots of the Annunaki began to reappear all over the world. They were rarely welcomed; Dim race-memories of dreadful things stirred in the minds of those who saw them. But where had they come from?

It was the Noordicans — descendants of the slave-miners of Venus — who had learned to master the flying machines of the Annunaki, and they were returning to Earth. Desperate to escape their dying homeworld, they brought with them a message of peace and love, but it was ignored by those who lusted after the ancient, war-winning technologies the machines possessed. In Nazi Germany, the secrets of the sky-chariots were unlocked, and fleets of menacing, field-grey discs escaped into space while the Thousand Year Reich burned and died.

The Noordicans retreated and tried again, but they returned to an Earth gripped by the first frost of the Cold War, where paranoia and suspicion ruled the day. Their sky-chariots were branded ‘foo fighters’, ‘flying saucers’ or ‘ufos’, and were greeted with fear and alarm wherever they went.

Only a few souls, innocent or foolish, were willing to hear the Noordican’s pacifist teachings. Those naive disciples sought to prevent an atomic war that seemed increasingly inevitable, as East and West rattled their sabers. Through these ‘Contactees’, the Noordican’s disarming creed began to spread.

While the Contactees preached the Noordican’s gospel of universal peace, other Earthlings suspected the Noordicans had ulterior motives. Why were these visitors from another world so adamant on nuclear disarmament? What was their true reason for abandoning their mysterious home of Venus? Why were the ships of these ‘pacifists’ armed with incredible weapons that could destroy anything sent up against them? In record time, a secret army — code-named ANTIC — was created to defend the Earth. With hidden bases spread all across the globe and equipped with the latest, most secret weapons Humanity could muster, ANTIC was prepared for the worst.

In the early 1950’s, it became all too clear what the worst might be: The Noordicans were emboldened by the hordes of Contactees clamouring for their salvation from nuclear destruction. Pressure was building on the governments’ of Earth. The Noordican incursions became more and more brazen, their saucers challenging the world’s air forces for supremacy. Earth would soon be engulfed in a new war to decide its destiny: Would it remain under the mastery of Earthlings? Or the prodigal sons returned from Venus?

It was the summer of 1952, and the invasion had begun.

Uncategorized

“What If I Told You It Was All True…?”

Posted on April 24, 2020April 24, 2020 by Martin Evans

I arched my eyebrows at Professor Vanes. “All true?” What was he talking about now?
I’d been warned by my colleagues at WKBW that this eccentric astronomer could be a little erratic in his ways.

“What if I told you it was all true?”

A moment ago, we’d been taping a perfectly mundane interview about reports of volcanic activity on Mars, just to fill a spot on a quiet evening’s newscast. But suddenly, the Professor pulled nervously at his salt-and-pepper goatee, and fixed me with a thousand-yard stare. I shuffled uncomfortably, failed to shrug nonchalantly, and turned the tape back on.

“All that crazy jibe about flying saucers,” the Professor breathed. “lights in the sky… aliens from other worlds… mutilated cattle… ‘Men in black’…”

I began to protest. I was a serious journalist, not some Enquirer hack who spent their days pasting Spock ears onto baby photos! Flying saucers? C’mon! It’s 1987 already!

“What if I told you it was all true?”

The protest evaporated on my lips. That stare now seemed to bore through the back of my head. I tried to laugh. It was the laugh of someone who’s realised they’re alone in an elevator with a nut.

“I see you start to smile. But not so fast, my young friend. Everything you’ve heard about UFOs is true. Everything. Since 1947, alien flying saucers have been intruding into Earth’s atmosphere, attacking our aircraft, abducting our citizens, manipulating our minds, and trying to take over our world.”

Professor Vanes reaches into a draw of his impossibly cluttered desk. I expect a knife, and tense to spring out the window.

But it’s only documents. Transcripts. Reports. Dozens of them. Some look forty years old. Many are older. There’s things signed by Truman and Eisenhower. A roll of film he says comes from a Russian fighter plane, shot down over China. Another of a captivating woman, hair to her waist, but dressed in what looks like a Nazi uniform.

And then he shows me the photos. Impossible photos. A base hidden on the dark side of the moon. Astronauts on Mars. Hundreds of thousands of people rallying for alien ‘contactees’, all over the world. A city floating over thick clouds, like New York got tired of the smog and came up for fresh air. And the UFOs — Saucers — everywhere. Flying over London, over Paris. Above Australia and South America. In hidden, underground bases. In snapshots of grinning pilots. Fighting in the skies over Washington D.C.

And — dear God — the aliens. Actual freaking aliens. Some look human, but aren’t. Some are definitely not. I don’t want to look. This can’t be real. Why can’t it be fake?

But there’s too much. Reams of it. The weight of evidence crushes down on me, grinding my comfy world-view to dust.

“Humanity was powerless to stop them,” says the Professor, and now I really am listening. “but something had to be done. The governments of the world needed to keep this at arm’s length, so they came up with a secret army to fight the invaders. Unseen, unrestricted, and utterly deniable.”

He leans forward. “Let me tell you about Saucer War One.”

Why the Hell couldn’t it have been just a knife?

Welcome to Saucer War One!

In Saucer War One you’ll discover the truth about the wars waged by the saucer pilots of ANTIC against the alien menace. Unseen wars fought right above our heads, 60 years ago!

Only now, with the accidental leaks of secret documents and photos from the archives of whistleblowers like Professor Vanes, can we disclose this incredible story. This is the suppressed history you never learned in school. The terrible, incredible truth of an underground government, alien civilisations, ancient galactic empires and the deadly duels of impossible aircraft, wrestling for supremacy.

Saucer War One is a tabletop miniatures game of flying saucer combat, set in the 1950s. Against a background of B-grade Sci-Fi films, Cold War paranoia, Bebop Jazz and Rock n’ Roll, Saucer War One takes you through an alternate history in which alien civilisations challenged Humanity for dominance of the Earth. Players field squadrons of beautifully detailed miniature saucers, maneuvering to bring machine-cannons, missiles, and exotic super-science weapons to bear. But victory is not decided by combat alone; Saucer War One is a fight for the hearts and minds of Earthlings. Can you gain the most believers for your cause, and ultimately triumph?

Hello everyone, Martin here again, out of spiel-mode now. So, there you have it; Miniature Martin’s first (intended) release. Saucer War One will be a comprehensive tabletop experience of a war that never happened (maybe…)

Over the next few weeks, I’ll continue to flesh out the world of Saucer War One, its personalities, nations, technology, and the causes and motives of it all.

There will also be insights into game mechanics and rules writing, ufology research and the amazing mythology that has grown around flying saucers. You might even find (as I have), that there’s much more to this UFO stuff than X-Files, tinfoil hats, and alien proctologists. You might even come to suspect that there really is something going on in our skies. (Don’t ask me what it is, though. If you know, bring a letter to the usual place on Tuesday. Make sure you are wearing a red carnation.) Also, there will be sneak peeks at saucer miniatures and game artwork, as they come to hand.

So, I hear the masses cry, (all three of you,) “When oh when can we get our hands on Saucer War One, and make our lives complete?!?”

Keep your eyes open, my dear saucerians. The objective will be to get Saucer War One off the ground in July, 2021, via the crowdfunding platform Kickstarter. Before that, we have an amazing journey ahead. I hope you’ll come along for the ride.

Watch the Skies!

Inspiration

Leonard Nimoy, this is All Your Fault

Posted on April 19, 2020April 19, 2020 by Martin Evans

Missing Persons… Magic and Witchcraft… Myths and Legends…
… Extraterrestrials…

With the aid of a time-dilating, anti-gravity generator hidden in Area 51, let’s travel back to 2016. I am lying in bed, unable to sleep. Something is interfering with my circadian rhythms. Something sinister and harmful. Something… alien.

It calls itself cancer. And it is trying to kill me.

Thankfully, I have a battery of high-tech weapons with which to take the battle to this single-minded enemy. Chemotherapy, keyhole surgery, and particle-beam radiotherapy are all unleashed upon it. In the end, I win the war. But the wounds of the fight dig deep, in both body and mind.

Sleep is a casualty of the war. To this day, if I manage four hours of zizzing in a row at night, I call people up to tell them the happy news. But back then, I had to accept that post-treatment pain and the collateral damage my organs endured meant an hour or two with eyes closed, followed by another wide awake.

And that’s when In Search Of… stepped in, and helped keep me sane.

Hooray for Youtube. Legally or otherwise, there’s a lot of stuff from the golden age of television that’s been loaded to the most-viewed video platform in the world. (There’s also a terrifying amount of utter drivel, mostly advocating the views of flat-earthers, free-energy gurus, and people who think Tesla was smarter than Einstein. Guards, seize them.) An iPad and Youtube did wonders for keeping my brain distracted in the small hours, waiting for the latest round of painkillers to kick in. And when I found a channel filled with all six seasons of In Search Of… I found the nostalgia and wonder of this old show released waves of endorphins, just when I needed them most.

Hosted throughout its run by Leonard Nimoy of Star Trek fame, In Search Of… was a half-hourly exploration of the unexplained. It covered a spectrum of topics we’d nowadays associate with the bizarre; The Loch Ness Monster, Bigfoot, The Bermuda Triangle.

It also dabbled in religions, both old and new. Who remembers the episode The Man Who Would Not Die about The Count of Saint-Germaine, and the kooky cult that grew around his legend in California?

It was a smorgasbord of the weird, with delicious sides of spooky music, hammy re-enactments, and very 70’s pseudo-science and spirituality. And to an eight-year-old me, it was glorious. It was my introduction to many sources of inspiration, and I happily filled my burgeoning brain with as much nonsense as it could carry.

One of those inspirations was the episode simply entitled: UFOs.

Having been bitten by the sci-fi bug at a very young and impressionable age, the idea of visitors to the Earth from distant worlds wasn’t something new. But the mystery of their origins and purpose was. Nature abhors a vacuum, and thus my neurones fired off dozens of ideas to fill the gaps in the story. Why are the aliens coming here? How can they get to Earth? And are they really that desperate for beefsteak? I needed answers, and went in search of… my own.

Which is why this all began. Sort of. But as I said at the start, we need to travel back to 2016 to really get to the beginning of how. You see, if you’re a gamer like me — incapable of contentedly staying within the confines of rules and mechanics that game designers spend hours slavishly honing to perfection, because you just know you can do better… *ahem* — then you might be familiar with what was percolating to the surface of my brain while watching the UFO episodes of In Search Of… Up rose those infamous words that have launched a thousand sets of wargames rules: There’s a game in that!

Thus I was soon sketching out ideas for a miniatures wargame of battling UFOs — flying saucers, if you will — duking it out in the skies of the Earth.

As you can probably guess from this long-winded diatribe, A single spark of inspiration makes not a worthy game. There’s a lot more to the process of creating something like this. Any creative endeavour is a lengthy, often costly, task. With game design, weeks of research, writing, designing, playtesting, revising and re-writing go into the process.

But in my next post, I’ll take you through the initial stages I went through in charting my course to creating the past you never knew; the secret history of Saucer War One.

Until then; Watch the Skies!