Tag: Know Your Flying Saucers

Posted in Artwork

Know Your Flying Saucers: The Silvercat!

Posted on by Martin Evans

ANTIC’S Answer to the Alien Threat Leaked!

Hello again, everyone! Today, I thought I’d share some new artwork from the Saucer War One Invasion ’52 sourcebook which will be released with the actual game when it becomes a physical reality. (Stay tuned to find out just when that should be.)
Let me reveal the blueprints of the NS-97 Silvercat!

Right-click to open a bigger image of the plans

This was ANTIC’s primary fighter in the opening days of Saucer War One. Rushed into service just in time to thwart the Noordican attempt to land on Washington DC in July, 1952, it was lightly armed and slow compared to the incredible machines thrown into the fray towards the war’s end. Nevertheless, the Silvercat was well liked by its pilots, and many of CAPER RED’s aces scored their first kills in this agile craft, defending the skies of North America.

When it becomes a 1/200 scale miniature, the Silvercat will be 53mm in diameter. It will have the option to carry an armament of either four 30mm cannons, or twenty air-to-air rockets.

Credit where Credit is Due

The Silvercat is very heavily based on a real lenticular aircraft design from 1950. Or more accurately, on a model of that design, which was a concept by this man – Nick Stasinos (in bowtie).

Stasinos was a graduate of a college programme run by Northrop Aviation — the people who built iconic American aircraft such as the P-61 Black Widow, the F-5 Freedom Fighter, and more recently, the suspiciously alien-looking B2 Spirit stealth bomber.

Clearly influenced by the sudden and dramatic rise in flying disc sightings since 1947, in 1950 Stasinos designed and built this neat study model of his NS-97 fighter. Sadly, it seems Jack Northrop wasn’t that impressed, because the NS-97 was never taken further than this. (Or was it…?)

Sadly, Nick Stasinos left behind a promising career in aeronautics for the life of an insurance salesman. Or maybe he actually went to work for JAPE — ANTIC’s R & D department — and the insurance gig was merely the cover he was given by the agents of PRANK to conceal his part in the war to protect the Earth?

You’ll have to wait for the Invasion ’52 sourcebook to discover the incredible truth of this and other secrets of the war we never knew!

See you next time, and remember: Watch the Skies!

Posted in Artwork

Know Your Flying Saucers #1: The Biga

Posted on by Martin Evans

Biga — Workhorse of the Venusian Skies

Biga flying saucer 3-view

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!