AT-43

This article contains something which makes absolutely no logical sense, such as Nazi Zombie Mercenaries, Fucking Space Orangutans, anything written by a certain Irish leper or Robin Crud-ace, or Wizards of the Coast hiring the fucking Pinkertons over a children’s card game. If you proceed, consider yourself warned.

Prior to Rackham having their site shut down, they had a pretty badass tabletop miniature game called AT-43. The setting basically detailed the misadventures of a number of different factions kicking the crap out of one another in order to become the dominant one. The games were smaller-scale and ran a bit smoother than Warhammer 40K because the miniatures had handy stat-cards available. The general gist of the factions were as follows:

The Races

The UNA The United Nations of Ava is basically stereotypical space soldiers with guns. They are the USA and UN, In Space, and they kick ass with the best equipment there is.

Red Blok Human Space Communists with awesome power. Intent on kicking every other faction's ass in order to provide glorious communism to the entire galaxy and ensure humanity's survival.

Therians Killer cyborgs with skeletal, cybernetic troops. They're nasty pieces of work and you are cruising for a beatdown if you let them get close. Also known for Trolling the Universe.

Karmans Motherfucking Space Gorillas with Buddhist Philosophy and Crisis Suits. We're dead serious. This game is instantaneously awesome because Everything's Better With Monkeys.

The Cogs Killer space robots that pack temporal weapons that will fuck your shit up by teleporting you into space.

The ONI A big corporation that has Mercenaries, Zombies, and Mercenary Zombies. In Space.

Despite being fun and tongue in cheek with 99% less grimdark than your average 40k fair, these "codices" have a problem, they are very positive about their respective factions and how "they is invincible and righteous". Yet this attitude only really fits the Therians, who are prideful posthuman /b/tards, imagine if Necrons were even lazier and sat at computers all day instead of sleeping. Now this same problem crops up in the more shitty codices of 40k Grey Knights and 5ed Spess Marines specifically but believe it or not this is almost on that level of marysuedom. You thought Kurdance's Nid codex praised its faction, you ain't seen nothing until you read the smug self assurance of the Spess Gorilla one.

Inevitable Really

AT-43 miniatures are high-quality and slightly more reasonably priced compared to that of a certain other developer, and come pre-assembled and painted, along with tons of accessories and a terrain piece. This inevitably led to a number of fa/tg/uys to begin modding them to serve as miniatures in other games (most notably Warhammer 40K). Much lulz resulted, especially when using humorous examples (such as modding UNA Walkers to use as Gue'vesa vehicles, as this asshole did). The original paint is flat but a wash or dry brushing will bring out some scratches and detail that makes them look good.

The Game

Some parts of the game are fun and simple, the accuracy of shooting decreases with distance in a easy to understand manner rather than the bullets just disappearing at their designated maximum range. Other things were terribly broken. Namely the heavy vehicles. Each is armed with a template, which is fine, but the templates are so overpowered that they slaughtered all the other units leaving only two heavy hitters beating the fuck out of each other for three turns until one goes down. Balance appears to be the issue here. But without the tanks or heavy mechs that game plays fast and fun. You can probably homebrew something to fix it and for a 1st edition this is somewhat forgivable and could be solved with an FAQ. Too bad there will be no 2ed.

Damn It

Sadly Rackham's site's been down since getting DDOS'd back in December. And the company is going through Liquidation. Unless someone picks the line up there will be no more minis. :(

Links

The Official Site (Down as of December 9th, 2010) (probably shouldn't follow this link, as it has a JS:Redirector trojan on it.)

Gallery

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