The Science And The Fiction...

Seeing as i vowed to post once a week, here is the next update. This update is to set the background to my sci-fi project and the fledgling conflict/world around which it is based. I received my order from GZG on Friday just two days after ordering- awesome! Thanks to GZG for their expediency as well as their fantastic figures and models which i am very happy with. Anyway, without further ado I give you the background story so far:

None now can remember what happened nearly 200 years ago, for none now are alive to recount the dark days of the breakup of the United Kingdom. A new dark age dawned and spread in this fair isle wreaking havoc, death and disease as it went. Anarchy reigned and with it all order completely collapsed and society as it was became extinct. At the time and since, very little information/history was recorded, for when a dark age dawns and anarchy reigns and people live on a day to day basis hoping to survive to see the next no one thinks to stop and write it all down. The breakup of the former United Kingdom and its causes are shrouded in mystery. However, folk tales of what may have happened to cause such a thing are now whispered round fires up and down the emergent states and three stories in particular are most commonly cited as the reasons for the dark days as they are known.

The first is that the last heir to the throne of the United Kingdom was assassinated causing a major constitutional rift and in this vacuum greedy, self serving men and women attempted to fill it causing civil unrest and an eventual breakdown of centralised government. The second story is that the growing poverty of the millions of working class, the extinction of the middle class through poor governance designed exactly to do that, and the wealth of the so called ruling elite became too much. The working classes rose in their millions and caused a total collapse of the economy aned local and centralised government as associated agencies lost control and fled such as the Police and then the army itself.

The third folk tale tells of widespread corruption within local and centralised government itself which resulted in poor governance which itself eventually led to the former United Kingdom becoming uncontrollably bankrupt and impotent. Unable to pay its workers such as the police and army, as well as millions others, mass unrest ensued to bring down the totally corrupt regime and its representative institutions.

The truth is that probably all three of these now folktales had their part to play in the total collapse of the former United Kingdom and somewhere each tale has a grain of truth running through it.

So in this power vacuum where anarchy reigned free and unchecked very little was recorded about these times. However, nearly 200 years on from this disaster, a number of states or factions if you prefer have arisenas regions slowly started to stabilise under these new fledgling states. These states have slowly become more and more powerful and are now hungry to further their control over the former United Kingdom. These new states all want to become the dominant contrlling power and once more unite this darkened isle. Each state have formed and evolved its own style of professional military force or at least a central military force. Otherwise these states would not have survived or grown in power.

Initially these emerging states formed fledgling forces of militias and home guard and defence forces. However, these soon evolved into offensive operations and then became semi permanent then permanent central military forces with their own distinct, individual units and forces.

As the states grew in size, power and stabilityeach state started to look to its neighbour for any potential weakness and examine how best to exploit any weaknesses found. The aim being to become more powerful than the next neighbour and so on.

Of around 100 of these fledgling states only 9 now exist and each very powerful in their own distinct way. It took 200 years of long, hard, bloody and costly fighting and now only 9 are left, each vying for total control and the extinction of its neighbours. Now each of the nine states are poised and ready for total war, a war to reunite the Disunited Kingdom. At the moment an uneasy peace exists but with units of all sorts poised at strategic border points up and down the landit is only a matter of time before the first steps are taken across the border and the first shots are fired. Units have their pre-planned cross border objectives and battle plans and remain on constant watch ready to defend or strike, whichever comes first in this torn and broken land.

The states are as follows:

New Fenland Republic (NFR)
MidGuard (MG)
United Scottish Kingdom (USK)
Kingdom of Wessex (KW)
Greater Cornwall (GC)
The Dragon Marches (TDM)
Northern Confederation (NC)
Tyranty of Northern Ireland (TNI)
Southern Irish League (SIL)

Its Been A While....

However, things have progressed (slightly) and I would like to update you all as I know you don't have anything better do than read my more or less erratic and useless blog. I am all excited and I shall divulge for to why now shall I. I have decided to re-focus my efforts on this blog (no seriously) and post at least once a week which will be much more manageable and you should see definite progress (don't laugh!). I am also going to branch out to do other things aside from 6mm historical wargames, and therein lies a clue as to the reason for my excitement this evening.

I have always wanted to do Sci-Fi wargaming and like everyone else here (I hope) I have dabbled with Games Workshop and the new Finecast is lovely but with yet another price hike on top of this new Finecast range I have turned my back on GW and decided to scale down a little as well. So as a result I have been doing some research over the months since my last post (I know, I know, its been ages, stop moaning. God wargamers are worse than fish wives and I live in the fens- I know about these things!)

Get on with it I hear you fish wives nag, so I was originally looking at doing some Future Wars Commander with 6mm stuff from Dark Realm Miniatures and Brigade but couldnt quite find the stuff or the feel I wanted. Also, I really liked the detail on GW stuff and didnt want to lose that too much as you would with 6mm. So I started to look into 15mm Sci-Fi stuff. The reason 6mm didn't cut it is because of detail loss but also I wanted and have done for ages (like, at least the last few days) to do a Sci-Fi air cavalry unit. During my research I came across this http://www.gruntz.biz/. This is a fantastic blog about all things sci-fi and the guy is developing a set of 15mm sci-fi rules backed by the major manufacturers with rules for all their products- great, thats the rules sorted. Well, once they are released that is as they are still in development currently.

Anyway, its all about the air cavalry so lets worry about the important stuff later, like rules, background, scenario's, history, bla bla bla which will actually allow me to play a damn game! I have ideas about all this anyway and will be pubishing them in this blog as well which may hopefully help to give other people some ideas and maybe inspire them to take on their first sci-fi project like me (GW doesn't count so shut up you fish wives!). So, the air cavalry (yes alright, alright already, gees...) I came across Ground Zero Games http://shop.groundzerogames.net/index.php?_a=viewProd&productId=1588, which I'm dure the less ignorant (like me) have already heard of, do a fantastic 15mm sci-fi range and they had exactly what I was looking for without me knowing what I was looking for!

These models are perfect for my sci-fi air cavalry unit. So I have placed and order with GZG today and I will now patiently (yeah right) awairt my delivery. My order was for x4 of the troop transporter versions with x3 units of NAC riflemen plus a unit of NAC AT soldiers. On top of this I ordered a command vehicle and x2 of the gunship version. This will be the first bare bones squadron of what will hopefully become an air cavalry regiment. I will start to reveal backgrounds and histories for the various factions and units blog by blog as this will hopefully be part of a rather larger 15mm sci-fi project.

I have already decided on an overall unit colour scheme which will be a sky blue colour both for the vehicles and the troops uniforms etc as camouflage is not a necessity in this dark new world. Each different faction and strategic unit will have its own colour schemes. Much like the individual Space Marine Chapters do but without the hundreds of pounds required (well I say that- my initial order wasnt exactly a small one but hey ho- you know what I mean).

I have also revamped my wargames station ready to receive the order and got it reasonably organised in the spare bedroom.

So, first post in a while, but with like photos and everything, so a deviation from the meagre norm of my blogs. Lots to look forward to. In all honesty there have been personal reasons for not posting for a while but now those personal things are more or less sorted in a roundabout way so I can (thankfully) concentrate on wargames a bit more. So all to the good then.

I will post again once my order from GZG arrives and we'll take a look at the goodies together shall we.

So in the words of my friends 'The Chavs'- laters innit.