Blast Nazis, robots and zombies with friends in the most
OTT vision of World War II to hit the tabletop yet. is is
Reichbusters: Projekt Vril, and it’s taking no prisoners
Words by Matt JarvisBOOM AND BUST
52
M
ythic Games isn’t a studio
concerned with restraint. Its
rst game, Mythic Battles:
Pantheon, slammed together
the gods and monsters of
Greek mythology in a fantasy post-apocalypse.
Its second, Time of Legends: Joan of Arc,
brought demonic and supernatural creatures
to the historical Hundred Years’ War. After
that, it pitted the twisted forces of unholy
darkness against the Puritan faith of Solomon
Kane and his cardinal virtues, given form as
beings of Courage, Prudence, Temperance and
Justice. It makes sense, then, that the studio’s
vision of World War II is just as bombastic,
outrageous and downright bonkers.
Reichbusters: Projekt Vril plays out during
the conclusion of an alternate-history Second
World War where a Nazi organisation has
discovered vril, a miracle substance with the
potential for power and worldwide destruction
beyond that of the atomic bomb. Faced with
the global threat, the Allied forces assemblean Avengers-like squad of the nations’ nest
heroes to stop them – that’s where the players’
Reichbusters make their entrance. It’s an
over-the-top setup worthy of a pulp comic
book, gore-splattered video game or riotous
B-movie, but it’s also not completely as out of
left eld as it might seem.
“We love mixing history and fantasy,” says
Mythic’s Az Drummond. “Reichbusters o ers
a kind of modern mythology of the Second
World War. e Nazis are some of the most
iconic villains in history. Giving them access
to an immeasurable source of power, the
equivalent of magical powers, opened up
a lot of fascinating perspectives. Especially
since we know that the Nazis were actually
doing occult research.”
Rather than facing just the Nazis’ human
embodiment of evil, the Reichbusters nd
themselves opposed by all manner of futuristic
and supernatural horrors created by the
organisation’s terrible experimentation on
soldiers by the evil ‘Vrilmeisters’, includingbloodthirsty and violent elite soldiers,
mechanised units and even zombies.
Drummond says the combination of dark sci-
and horror with an up-to-11 tone was inspired
by a mix of computer games such as rst-person
shooter Wolfenstein (best-known for its legendary
Mecha-Hitler boss), co-op video games Evolve
and Borderlands, pulp movies including the
grindhouse hackfest Machete and Sucker Punch,
and other ‘weird WWII’ settings from the tabletop,
like that seen in miniatures wargame Kon ikt ’47.
“ e game has been in the works for some
time now and was born from the passion that
the game’s designer, Jake ornton, has for the
WWII period and military aspects,” he says.
“As we playtested and evolved the game, we
realised that we had a really engaging game
of espionage and subterfuge, reminiscent
of 1950s and ‘60s war movies like e Dam
Busters and Where Eagles Dare. We wanted to
take the game a step further though and inject
some visual air and excitement that would
make it explode right o the table.”February 2019