A kitbashed mutant for Mutants and Death Ray Guns

Here's the first of my kitbashed mutants for the forthcoming MDRG campaign. He's made from a GW orc head on a Reaper Bones hellcat body, with a bit of green stuff around the mane. 

This guy's randomly generated profile was this Q4, C3, Bestial (entailing Long Move), Stealth, Powered Hand Weapon. His bestial nature meant that he surrendered the power weapon to the warband's leader as he can't use it.

 

Back to Mutants and Death Ray Guns

I've been playing Ganesha Games' Mutants and Death Ray Guns (MDRG) for well over a decade - with the kids and with friends. But I've never played it properly: that is, I've never used the random-generation tables to create the sorts of motley gangs and warbands that the game is designed for, and I've never used the campaign system.

That is changing, though. I've got a gaming day with some friends next month. In the past couple of years, we've played quite a bit of Mordheim and a fair bit of Frostgrave. And we've all played quite a bit of Song of Blades and Heroes and/or MDRG over the years. So actually playing MDRG as it was intended seems the obvious thing to do. 

I played a sample game last night with my son, and we've decided to keep that going as a mini-campaign. The core Song of Blades engine is just so well designed: as my son said, "it always just feels more tactical". The activation decisions and push-your-luck risk/reward balance are tremendous features: there's very rarely a 'right' think to do. Instead, you have a range of cautious choices, some riskier ones and the opportunity to roll all three activation dice and go for something bold.

The game is very fast-moving compared with most skirmish rulesets: no fiddling with measuring tapes and very few rules that aren't immediately absorbed, so that the rulebook seldom needs to be consulted. When played with randomly generated forces, there's much less firepower than in the points-based games we used to play. And that really works well: it becomes a game of sneaking, stealing and ambushing rather than a shootfest.

I've rolled up a whole lot of random warbands for the October event and have started on some kitbashing to match the fruits of the dice:

This is a complete starting warband (a flying mutant leader with psychic powers; a savage human champion; an android with an RPG; a robot; and a mutated wolf):

 

Kitbashed goblins

 

The GW "goblin regiment" kit isn't a triumph of the miniature-maker's art. The figures are oddly proportioned (even for goblins) and look awkward (even in the official website photos). But as I'd picked up bits and pieces of the set second hand, I thought I'd kitbash a few goblins to make a small warband.

These fellows have arms from Skaven and gnolls and gretchin and gnoblar heads. Oddly enough, I was inspired to make them by the prospect of playing some swashbuckling skirmish rules - All for One (Eureka) or Flashing Steel (Ganesha Games). Goblins might seem an odd choice for that, but I thought fairytale goblins might work quite well as adversaries for seventeenth-century musketeers or the like. 

I can see these little fiends as being responsible for all sorts of villainy of the kind that takes swashbucklers to sort out. 

I'm also thinking of using them for those skirmish games that have (or can have) highly differentiated individual roles: Havoc, Advanced Song of Blades and Heroes, Battlesworn, Frostgrave and the like. So the chap with the two swords could be a duellist in Havoc, a treasure hunter in Frostgrave and a combat master in ASoBH. Similarly, the fellow with the polearm would be a spearman in Havoc, an infantryman in Frostgrave and a long-reach fighter in ASoBH.

They need strength in numbers, of course, so I'm putting together a few more - some kitbashed like these and others just built as they come. I'm aiming for arquebusiers, archers, crossbowmen, some heavily armoured fighters, at least one wizard and some boar-mounted cavalry.