GaryCon IX - Starship Troopers

Its been a week since Garycon and I'm just starting to feel like a human again. When the Con Crud hits, it hits hard. But its good to remember that its always worth it!

This year at GaryCon the Vorpal Chainsword represented, except I ran something a little different than I usually do at Cons. Instead of running a modern or AD&D role playing game about He-Man or Back to the Future, I hosted and refereed a couple of the out-of-print Starship Troopers miniature battles under the banner of the Dead Games Society as a change of pace.

Starship Troopers: Miniatures Resurrected

The other day I bemoaned about missing the excellent Starship Troopers miniatures game that left us far too soon due to licensing disputes. The game was only in production from 2005 to barely into 2007, but had one of the best wargaming rulesets I'd ever played. The initial models were based mostly on the CGI Starship Troopers cartoon from the early 2000s (yeah, unfortunately that CGI has NOT aged well). But the minis held up pretty good!

Come on you Apes, you want to live forever?!

So I decided to dig out any old Starship Troopers minis I still had and see what kind of shape they were in (after being in a box for ten years and three apartment/house moves). Figured I'd show a few pics of the resurrected minis below.

Starship Troopers Miniatures Game and the Perils of Licensing

I have a confession to make: I love Robert Heinlein's Starship Troopers.

Whether its the serious Starship Troopers novelization proselytizing about taking responsibility toward a functioning society, or the tongue-in-cheek mockery of a militaristic dystopian future, both takes on it are equally pleasing to me.

That's why back in the ancient times of the early 2000's I got heavily into the Starship Troopers miniatures game from Mongoose Publishing. It had everything, beautiful bug miniatures based on the cheeseball movie, fantastic rules written by the illustrious Andy Chambers of ex-Games Workshop fame (who's wargaming genius was not being recognized by GW during their foray into a 4th edition of Warhammer 40k), and Starship Troopers fluff written by Mongoose publishing, which is a gaming company that only employs writers who really love the shit out of the stuff they write about. Unfortunately Mongoose has a bit of a "holding onto the license" issue, which I'll get to...