A horde of Nazi vampires lands on the English coast during the Second World War and spreads fear and terror. But a group of intrepid veterans bravely stand in the way of the bloodsuckers. What must undoubtedly be the plot of a trash film is the core of ‘Vlad’s Army’, a feature pack for 7TV Inch High Spy-Fi. In this review, I present what the player can expect.
Feature pack: A favourite format
I have already presented a few feature packs for 7TV here. In short, they add a specific film genre to the basic game and provide new profiles, artefacts, special rules and a small campaign. So far I have ‘Orsa the Fearless’ for 7TV Fantasy and ‘Lurkers from the Deep’ for 7TV Pulp. ‘Vlad’s Army’ is intended for 7TV Inch High Spy-Fi, but I don’t see why it shouldn’t be used for Pulp as well. Thematically, it fits very well there and with the new rulebook, this sorting should also be obsolete.
I still really like the format, as the feature packs are lean expansions that allow you to quickly adapt the game to a genre with simple means and really get stuck into it without having to put too much effort into it. Of course, the VHS cover and the whole retro packaging also appeal to the nerd in me, so that it regularly results in an all-round beautiful product. What exactly is it about this time?
The gruesome game of Weird War
Weird War scenarios are played with Vlad’s Army. The term ‘Weird War’ refers to the fictionalisation of past, real wars with supernatural elements. The most widespread and popular of these are probably stories about the Second World War, especially about the Germans and alleged experiments. These stories feature undead soldiers, werewolf soldiers, mad scientists and unscrupulous SS leaders. People have mutations, are genetically modified or have bionic limbs. The legends about top-secret Nazi weaponry are actually true in these stories – of course Reich flying discs were developed!
Sure, it’s all trash and clearly belongs to the pulp genre. You shouldn’t think too much about taste. But I can’t answer the question for myself as to why it’s still fascinating. One of the worst chapters in human history is enriched with fantasy and science fiction and thus exaggerated. Nobody really needs that. However, the realisations of the topic that I know of always deal with the conflicts from the point of view of the Allies. The horrors of the Germans thus appear as nightmarish challenges that have to be overcome in a heroically exaggerated manner. There could hardly be a more unpleasant encounter than facing a genetically modified super soldier with an Iron Cross on his chest.
‘Weird War’ adaptations are probably familiar to many who have wandered through the pop culture landscape of recent years with half-open eyes, but as a scenario it has remained remarkably unknown – perhaps because it is so thematically unpleasant?
Weird war in pop culture
In terms of films, the popular Iron Sky 1 and 2 come to mind, which more or less skilfully play with the myths surrounding a secret Nazi moon base or a hollow Earth with Hitler and dinosaurs. The extremely violent ‘Operation Overlord’ from 2018 (produced by J.J. Abrams!) also impressively realised the theme and, according to critics, created an unused genre mix between war, horror and zombie film. Watch the trailer here:
PC gamers will also be very familiar with all of this from ‘Castle Wolfenstein’ and its spin-offs. In the context of the subject matter and the depiction of forbidden symbols in the game, the indexing of the first two games, which has since been lifted, came as no surprise.
Of course, the role-playing and tabletop game sector has long since discovered this scenario. Modiphius realised years ago that the theme could be mixed very well with the Cthulhu Mythos and turned it into the role-playing game “Achtung! Cthulhu!” including a tabletop spin-off. The creators of the well-known game ‘Konflikt ’47’, which is now published by Warlord Games, then really let off steam. In addition to soldiers, all sides also fight with mechs and walkers, the Soviets have Tesla tanks and bear fighters, the British have pitbull units and robots, the Americans mainly rely on walkers and soldiers in exo-skeletons. And the Germans? Well, they just do what Germans do in these scenarios. All kinds of undead, medical experiments and horrors from hell.
While we’re on the subject of the Second World War and Cthulhu, you could of course include Hellboy and his early adventures at this point, as he mainly fought Rasputin and Nazis. But that’s material for another article.
Vlad’s Army vs. Dad’s Army
Crooked Dice take a much more leisurely approach with the ‘Vlad’s Army’ feature pack for 7TV. The scent of Weird War hangs in the air, but I have to admit that my head cinema had run away with me a little too much beforehand. I was expecting a little of what I outlined above here. After all, Crooked Dice advertise the product themselves as ‘weird war’ and ‘Nazi vampires’. In reality, however, it’s all about the latter and the defence of England.
In this feature pack, the silent invasion of England by Nazi vampires takes place during or shortly after the Second World War. So far, so good. But I had deliberately overlooked the other half of the story: The collision of ‘classic horror movies’ and ‘gentle sit-coms’! Oh my! The latter is clearly the British sit-com ‘Dad’s Army’, which makes several very explicit appearances here.
I didn’t even know about this series until Warlord Games released a set with the characters from the series for Bolt Action a few years ago. As far as I know, you can’t stream it anywhere in Germany (but you can find some episodes on YouTube) and it’s probably not very well known in this country either. The situation is probably completely different in the UK. I may shamelessly quote from Wikipedia at this point:
“The series has influenced British popular culture, with its catchphrases and characters being widely known.”
In the ‘Vlad’s Army’ feature pack, the profile cards of the good side now consist of the heroes, who are clearly based on the characters from the series. So it’s all about old veterans defending a small coastal town against the supernatural invasion. So far so cool. Unfortunately, the profile cards are otherwise pretty generic and soldierly. No special heroes that would fit the theme. The evil side is pretty conservative with a few vampires and undead soldiers. I would have liked it to be a bit crazier. A supernatural super soldier a la Captain America could have been juxtaposed with the undead brood, for example. On the other hand, feature packs should of course only deal with a certain topic as atmospherically as possible. In any case, 7TV offers enough material for creative outbursts on your own initiative.
The Feature Pack
The feature pack is just as well-rounded as the other variants. In the once again cool Pseuo retro VHS case comes the Episode Guide, the usual matching Mdf tokens, Profile Cards, Maguffin Cards, Gadget Gards and of course matching Countdown Cards.
The episode guide uses the now familiar structure: ‘The story so far’ introduces the background story of the film being shown and is once again very creatively written. I like this kind of thing because it serves the meta-level of 7TV so well and immediately plants numerous thoughts of my own about the realisation. The following chapters ‘Campaign Play’, ‘Making Vlad’s Army’ and ‘Central Casting Call’ deal with the special features of this feature pack in the game and finally there is the usual mini-campaign. I haven’t played them, but the concept of the three games is entertaining and nicely fitting.
The tokens are used to mark the new status effects introduced with this expansion. One marker, for example, is for ‘Bitten’ – of course, if you fight vampires, you can be bitten. As always, the tokens are made of printed MDF – I’m not the biggest fan of MDF markers, but at least they are printed and look decent.
The additional cards bring a lot of fun back into the game. Countdown or Maguffin cards provide the game with genre-typical twists, while the profile cards provide both sides with a range of suitable units. For me personally, the heroic side cards fall down here, because I don’t know the original and the cards seem to be based pretty much on the characters from the series. For me, this means that I get a bunch of relatively generic soldiers who have different profile values here and there, but are essentially just a bunch of average soldiers. So far I can’t see the appeal of playing a group of old veterans, but maybe that will change once I’ve caught up on the series or come up with some crazy ideas of my own.
The gadget cards are charming and provide you with very suitable gadgets: the defenders have ‘Holy Water’, ‘Garlic’ or ‘Malt Whisky’ with them, while the undead attackers carry a ‘Coffin’, “Sunblock” or ‘Bloodbag’.
Vlad’s Army – Conclusion
All in all, this results in a nice thematic embedding in the standard rulebook, which should cover the scenario sufficiently (I haven’t played it yet) without overloading the game and making it too complex with additional rules. I find the scenario to be quite specific, but it’s also down to me not knowing the template (which can apparently be assumed to be general knowledge in the UK) and not being flexible enough to think of alternative applications at the moment. If you mix the profile cards with standard cards, I might still be able to make a round thing out of it. Maybe we’ll end up with Hellboy and a group of GIs against Rasputin and vampire Nazis after all.
I probably really need to play Vlad’s Army one day. At the moment I think it’s nice, but the combination doesn’t appeal to me too much. Let’s see what I can do with it if I mix the profile cards from this pack with others. It could be a lot of fun!