Reichbusters: Projekt Vril is a fast and furious game
with lots of weird science, witty one-liners,
and heroic moments set during World War II.
It is late December 1944 and, on the face of it,
history has unfolded as we know it,
but that could be about to change.
Welcome to a brand new year on The Art of Caesura!
With a new year, I have a new miniatures game to share with you that I'm really excited about: Reichbusters: Projekt Vril!
One of my favourite video game franchises has always been Wolfenstein. I loved the old ones, I loved the new ones. There's something about being a big brash soldier gunning through Weird War II gothic Nazi castles that really tickles me. Aesthetically, Reichbusters is that in a board game. I mean it's called Reichbusters - my pulp, B-movie love is in overdrive! Interestingly, there was an actual licenced Wolfenstein miniatures board game made at a similar time to Reichbusters, but hilariously it doesn't look as Wolfenstein-y (or as awesomely over-the-top) to me as this game does.
This was very nearly "the one that got away". I was on holiday when the Kickstarter was happening, and while I was aware of it at the time, I said to myself "I'll wait till I'm home to do a proper deep dive before pulling the proverbial trigger". When I got home a few days later, I found - to my horror - that the Kickstarter was over having only run for a week (In my experience they usually run for a month). Life happened and I lost track of things, missing the late pledge. I looked on various Kickstarter re-sell sites and buy/sell Facebook groups but the prices people were looking for were pretty exorbitant. I got very close on two occasions (once off one of the former producers of the game!) but then found out that Mythic would be selling what they had left from the Kickstarter on their webstore - score!
Here's a visual summary of the game from the Kickstarter page:
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Anyway, I have yet to play the game, but have done a serious deep dive on it and am merrily painting away at the various international heroes, and Nazi monstrosities - we will be shining the spotlight on these in the coming weeks. Today I just wanted to give you a bit of an introduction to this game and the world in which the forthcoming miniatures inhabit.
Let's dig in! Reichbusters: Projekt Vril takes place at the end of WWII when the Allies had the Nazis on the run. Where this game diverges from history is that in the game the Nazis have been brewing all sorts of nastiness in Wewelsburg Castle using a new energy source called Vril. Interestingly, it seems Vril actually also has some basis in reality - being attributed to a real secret Nazi society back in the day.
In the game, you play a crack squad of larger-than-life international heroes (each one could be the star of their own movie). From the brutish British Brick and his two heavy machine guns to the experimented-upon and Vril-infused Irishman O'Reilly, to the Dutch master of espionage, Remmy and many many more; the heroes of Reichbusters are both very diverse and unique. And the enemies are even more so!
The enemies range all the way from German Shepherds and "regular" Nazi soldiers, to zombies and truly massive abominations...and even aliens! Yes, this truly is B-movie heaven!
The models representing all of these characters are really nice - and there are a ton of them! I won't say too much about them, because we'll be taking much closer looks at the models in the coming weeks.
In terms of gameplay, this is where Reichbusters has received some criticism. As I said, I haven't played it yet but have been keenly following the forums and various podcast episodes about the game. You can play either a campaign mode or one-off "Raids". Each mission starts stealthy - with you sneaking around Castle Wewelsburg trying to rescue /assassinate someone / gather important documents etc. but based on your actions (and the noise you generate) at some point the alarm will go off and all hell will break loose. Unfortunately it sounds like this latter half could use some streamlining, with pacing slowing down as the board becomes mobbed with enemies.
The two markedly different halves to each mission ensure that heroes of every role will get a time to shine, and the game uses a card mechanic that allow heroes to perform truly heroic feats once per game. By all accounts it really is awesome when you can pull off a wicked combination of cards to do something incredibly epic.
I hope I've got you jazzed for Reichbusters. I'm using it as an opportunity to learn a new painting style which I'm really enjoying, but we'll go into that in the coming weeks right here on The Art of Caesura!
If you'd like to read more, here are some relevant links:
Watching: MK 11 Interkontinental Kombat
Reading: Warcry rulebook
Listening: The Daily Zeitgeist podcast
Next Week:
Woof, woof, bellen, blaffen...
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