Laserburn Nostalgia - a trip back to the 80s

 

Time for a bit of nostalgic time-travelling.  When I was up in  Glasgow at Xmas my mum presented me with a box containing 6 x 15mm figures and some card templates which she'd found when clearing out a cupboard.  I was immediately transported back to 1981 and games of Laserburn which my friend David and I played a lot when we were at school.

The figures were produced specifically for the game: I know I had more than the 6 survivors as we had enough for 2 sides but these are all that remain.  They'd been painted... I say painted, it looked like I'd daubed some paint on with my fingers!  So it was off for a Dettol bath and a good scrub before getting repainted.

These are Imperial Guard, specifically Black Guard, and a couple of Imperial Officers.  Actually, once they'd been stripped and primed I was quite impressed with the detail, given that they're over 40 years old.

I'm pleased with how they've worked out... thank goodness for Contrast Paints which really picked out the details of the power armour.

The figures are still available from Alternative Armies, including their main enemies, the Red Redemptionists (which I'm pretty sure I had originally), as well as a range of other SF infantry, robots, aliens and adventurers.  There are also a selection of not-Judge Dredd figures.

Alternative Armies also publish the rules we used with the figures... Laserburn... which came out in 1980.  These are very much a proto-Warhammer 40k set of rules for individual figures.  The background fluff and weapons etc were all moved over into the 40k setting a couple of years later by the author, Bryan Ansell.

 

We played a lot of Laserburn with our limited supply of figures.  We didn't have any terrain but had a large roll of wallpaper lining paper which we would roll out, draw the battlefield and buildings and, when the game was done we'd tear it off and throw it away, ready to draw another one.  Looking back, this was such a fun, creative way to play.

The rules are very much of their time... just look at that typeface!  And lots of modifiers and tables.  But they were a great sandbox set of rules for creating scenarios and I'm keen to give them another go.  Some of the background fluff hasn't aged well... the Red Redemptionists are Islamic for example... but that's not a huge deal.  It's all about the nostalgia feel.  And of course I'll need some reinforcements.  I've been perusing the Alternative Armies website where there are some really good value sets so I suspect this may be an unexpected wormhole I'm heading into... and I've just seen a mention of a forthcoming ruleset from Osprey which would be a good alternative if Laserburn don't hold up after all these years: Xenos Rampant...