Imperial Mars

About

Whilst I appreciate that there have been several other sets of rules dealing with the "Steam Punk" ideas of late nineteenth century Earth nations reaching out, by some means, onto the Planets of our solar system, I have not yet found a set which provided the level and style of play I wanted. Therefore these rules were born, generally by plagarising the ideas of other excellent rule systems; "I stand on the shoulders of giants" (either Isaac Newton or the edge of the two pound coin, take your pick) Okay, so enough of justification, what are these rules all about. Well they were initially designed to provide a fun system for fighting actions on Mars between the gallant British colonial forces and the strange alien creatures of the Red Planet. The rules were originally intended to focus on the late 1870's, the height of the colonial period, before automatic machine guns grew to dominate the battle field, and close enough to the Franco-Prussian and Zulu wars to provide a goodly quantity of figures. I don't want to impose my views of Martian life on anyone and so I hope that the rules will allow you to develop your own alien races and their weapons. From the outset the limiting factor in gaming this "period" has been the limited selection of figures, particularly Martians. I had decided to use the 10mm scale as it provides that nice interface between 15mm and 6mm, giving enough detail for small actions without requiring vast detail in painting. However there is no reason that 15mm figures could not be used though the Tray size would probably need to be increased. The concept of "Steam Science Fiction" is not new. The basic premise is that the British, swiftly followed by several other nations, have found their way to Mars. The method of transport is not dealt with by these rules, but I envisage something like Cavourite from Wells' "First Men in the Moon". Once on Mars the earthmen quickly come into contact with native Martians. The historical analogy that we use in our games is somewhat like early to mid eighteenth century India. A network of small Princedoms and aging Empires. Thus the scene is set for a series of engagements between earthmen and Martians, with sepoys and mercenary units abounding. —description from the rulebook

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