Now imagine a world where all disease can be cured....

I have some cool new stuff to show off.  I discovered a game by chance last year called Warfare in the Age of Madness.  It is a post apocalyptic setting.  The world's goverments have collapsed, a plague decimated the population, blah blah blah.

The world is now popluated by independent war bands.  Warfare has devolved into small skirmishes over food and other sundries.  

The game pits two warbands against each other as they try to salvage supplies.  Every time a infantry stand is removed a supply marker is placed in it's stead.  That marker can now be salvaged for points.  Killing the enemy is secondary to gathering supplies.  This theme can be seen in the Mad Max movies. People are killing each other over gasoline or guzzaline.

I want to point out here that my warbands adhere to real life political groups.  Most of them are fairly radical.  I am not making a political statement nor do I adhere to these political views.  This is merely a game and entertainment medium for me.  I refer to the Iranian revolution in 1979.  There were several leftist and radical communist groups operating in the upheaval of the Shah's government.  Granted after Kohmeni took over they had to go back into hiding.  My point is that in my science fiction fantasy reality adventure I see all these fringe groups rising up.

My first warband is a Leftist Socialist Guerilla group called the Red Brotherhood.  The founder of this religious movement found an old copy of Chairman Mao's "Little Red Book".  He created a religion around the principles in this book.  His followers are trying to re-establish control and create a new Socialist Empire.  

This is the command stand.  Armin Bradshaw is a political officer in the Red Brotherhood.  He has been charged with suppressing the region of the south eastern US.  Tactics involve going into settlements and bullying them into cooperation.  His men take young boys and train them to fight for the cause.  This force consists of irregular fighters and rag tag boys with rifles.  What they lack in cooperation they make up for with religious zeal.

These stands are the support for the force.  The lone guy is a medic.  There are still plenty of medical supplies just waiting to be looted.  He can give a shot of morphine to a dying fighter and possibly save his life.  The two guys behind the bushes are a Forward Observer stand.  They scout ahead and radio in targets to the attached mortar team.  I like how the one guy is on over watch while the other guy spies on a position.  I seem to have misplaced the picture of the .50 cal HmG team and the Medium mortar team.  Oh well.  

Here are the Boys.  They are humble rifle teams.  I fancy them armed with Mosin Nagants.  Those rifles are so rugged and durable they will be around in 100 years.  These guys try to be stealthy and sneaky.  They use numbers and surprise to overwhelm the enemy.  A stand up fight against superior firepower would be fatal to them.  

These are the regular fighters of the Red Brotherhood.  They are well equipped with light machine guns and LaWs.  If they are in cover they can stand almost any opponent.  These men can freely quote from the book and almost all of them wear the red beret.  The red beret symbolizes the cause and the blood of the fallen fighters.   They are Rifle/MG teams.

The final addition are the veteran fighters.  They wear a red headband on their kevlar helmets.  It is adorned with inscriptions of the book.  This is imbued with the power of Lenin and will protect them from harm.  Given this idealism they are fearless and will assault the enemy with their frevor.  They are all CqB (Close quarters battle) stands. 

One nice option of this game is the battle field threats.  I decided to take this stand of infected.  Yeah, there are zombies in this game.  They exist but thankfully the writer of the game did not make this a zombie game.  The infected exist but are in the background.  The idea is that you may run into them if you are unlucky.  At most the game supports two stands of these guys.  Whoever has a team closer to the infected stand allows their OPPONENT to control the infected.  They are hard to take down.  I have another stand of these bad boys to paint up.  They are on the table.

My next army is currently in the works.  It is a mechanized force that I am very excited about painting.  The reason being is that I get to paint American vehicles in ww2 German camo schemes.  This force is a rebirth of the German Nazi war machine.  They claim to be Hitler's 4th Reich.  The first picture is a pair of m113 complete with camo netting and stowage.  

 The 4th Reich stockpiled as many weapons and vehicles as they could in preparation for the uprising.  Most of their weaponry is second hand US surplus.  This means they are mostly using old M16s and other cold war weaponry.  A few of the men will have MP40s and Mauser rifles and MG42s.  In all their preparations they did not plan on the apocalypse happening.  This Opel Blitz truck has been kitted out with steel plating and sand bags.  The gunner still needs a little work to be complete.  He does not have hands as I had to clip his rifle off.

 Here is my favorite stand so far.  This is a German Flames of War officer kitted out with an m16 and an ammo bandolier.  He looks great.  The sculpting part came out better than I thought.  He and his assistant will look great with pea dot SS camo.

 Here is the back view where you can see his rifle.

The last photo are objectives and booby traps markers.  The two stands on the right are supply caches that my warbands will fight over.  The stand in the back is a trip wire next to a tree.  The stand with the three lumps is a mine stand.  You can opt to make a stand an engineer team.  This lets you place a mine or IeD and also allows you to diffuse the ones the enemy places.  Booby traps are unique in that they are deployed secretly. You find them after one of your teams bumbles into one and it blows up.  

I have a few house rules for booby traps that make them less deadly but more capable of immobilizing a team.  When a team moves within 4" of the stand your opponent forces you to make a teamwork check.  If your team passes the stand is placed and you have the option to immediately move outside of the threat zone on your next turn.  If you fail then the team has triggered the trap.  On a 1-3 the booby trap goes off.  On a 4-6 the team is immobilized by almost setting off the trap.  They can choose to move and set it off or have an engineer team move up to assist them in disarming it.  Think of the scenario where someone steps on a mine, hears the click and stops in their tracks.  

Of course if the engineers fail to disarm the bomb then both teams make damage rolls for being caught in the blast.  

This is a great game.  I am working on the SS Hitler Jeugend infantry teams.  I also have a warband of battle hardened survivalists.  They are few in number but very hard to kill.