The Silver Rococo Bayonet

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 3]

Looking at wave 3 of the miniatures – the Vampires in particular – got me thinking that The Silver Bayonet may represent something of a missed opportunity. Everyone and their cousin make Napoleonic figures, in fact, there may be more lines of Napoleonic miniatures on the market – in every scale and material imaginable – than from any other historical period, probably even more than for WW II. There are even fantasy Napoleonics, such as Alternative Armies’ Flintloque/Slaughterloo lines or Minifigs’ Napoleorcs, if you can find them. The last thing we need is yet another Nappy range.

Rococo figures, however, especially civilians and courtiers, are another matter. While there is no shortage of 7 Year War, Austrian/Spanish Succession, French & Indian War or Marlburian military models, period citizens, ladies in towering wigs and giant cupcake dresses or peruqued dandies in knee stockings and lace are rather…absent….meaning such a line of figures would fill a market niche currently void.

And if the scenarios would concentrate on individual investigations à la Call of Cthulhu, Mansions of Madness, Arkham Horror or similar instead of military action, that would further drive the sale of the minis. Everyone already has 700 unpainted Grenadiers, but no one has a Mozart look-alike occult investigator.

[avernosKeymaster 33947xp 1]

It’s something I talked to Joe about when we interviewed him and totally agree you can jump about very easily to a fairly large period of history where the weaponry doesn’t change massively.

The Rococo look would be fantastic and a great excuse to pick up some of Foundry or Brigades ranges… mmm

As far as investigations go, the premise of the Silver Bayonet units is that they’re created to investigate and hunt monsters. I’m not sure what you mean about individual investigations over military action, or if that would be playable on the tabletop.

If you mean less fighting and more story you’d be better off sticking with the CoC or Vaesen and just playing a straight RPG

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 1]

What I mean would resemble those adventure gamebooks where you make a decision or roll dice and then flip to the appropriate page to see what happens next – only brought to the tabletop. Hidden, NPC or, in a solo game, adversary actions could be card-driven or maybe determined via dice roll on a chart, in the absence of a DM.

As for military action, it just seems a little unlikely to me that they would send a military detachment – sergeant,  sniper, sapper, grenadier or whatever to investigate milkmaids drained of blood or something moving in a graveyard at midnight.

 

 

[avernosKeymaster 33947xp 1]

That is pretty much how the game plays, there is a solo mode if you don’t want to play against another faction you can just play the game as is and the scenarios are a linked narrative campaign.

The military detachment makes sense in the background of the game. The napoleonic wars have been stopped by the advent of this supernatural rising hence the use of the military.

Have you played Rangers of Shadowdeep? That is a purely solo/co-operative campaign game albeit fantasy based. It may work slightly better for what you’re talking about. Although neither will do 100% of the job.

[panzerkaput 33943xp 0]

Bloody Miniatures have a lovely range of figures that would be prefect for a TYW version of Rust Old Sword, sorry Silver Bayonet. You have witchfinders, demons, witches, zombies and vampires of course. There are other ranges like Redoubt who do some lovely vignettes that would fit in well to this time especially as many thought it was the End of Days

 

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 1]

So you’re saying it’s basically Flintloque but with humans.

[briand123 1170xp 2]

I guess if you set it earlier than 18th century you would be finding that more characters would be capable in close combat and more would be armoured. But conversely gunpowder weapons wouldn’t be as good. I expect people could find granddad’s longbow or crossbow if they really needed to as well.

I’m painting up some ECW era miniatures to set this in that period, as well as being able to run it in the napoleonic period.

 

[wolfie65Participant 1238xp 0]

I guess what I’m envisioning would be more like an RPG: Local landowner, perhaps a Count, Rittmeister or something like that tries to find out what is happening to the milk maids and stable boys on his estate, assisted by the town doctor.

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