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With Blue Helix ready for its first battles, and the Earthlight Division getting a Horizon Wars makeover, another new unit is on my painting table now: the Tycho Grenadiers.
As their name suggests, the Grenadiers are a military unit from the Tycho Republic, one of the Lunar colonies to declare independence during the First Upheaval; Tycho was a former European Union colony. When the EU broke apart into smaller blocs, Tycho split off as well, as all the other formerly-dependent colonies did. Although most of the other lunar colonies became aligned with one of the major alliances of Lunar city-states, either the Delphic League or the League of Cresinon, Tycho did not participate and remains an independent entity to this day. It remains on good terms with the League cities, in particular the League of Cresinon, with which it shares a border and a very long trading relationship. The only city-state it’s not so comfortable with is Cheleyenka, which has strong ties to the Russian Confederation. Tycho has been forging stronger ties with ENSPUN and the countries of the East Asian Security Treaty as a result of its burgeoning cold war with Cheleyenka, but its most common stance is one of deliberate ambiguity as to its true intentions.
The Tycho Grenadiers are a private unit of militia volunteers – aside from a small cadre manning its orbital defense lasers, the Tycho Republic officially has no military, but the citizens themselves are mostly veterans of the abortive Russian Confederation attack during the First Upheaval, and have seen to their own defenses. The unit’s vehicles are fairly representative of Lunar forces: high-suspension, wide-base wheeled units predominate in the low Lunar gravity. Infantry is not as widely used, given the problems of manpower on the Lunar frontier; what forces there are tend to be highly-trained, armored or airborne drop forces, although the Grenadiers favor Lunacycle troops in two-man all-terrain scout bikes. The negligible Lunar atmosphere makes energy weapons a favorite, particularly pulse lasers, and ablative silicate armor makes even light vehicles very resilient.
The camouflage scheme is referred to as “Ultra-Violent” in military parlance. It does remarkably well in Lunar landscapes.
The figures are all Microworld Games “TEF” troops. I’ve always had a soft spot for them and finally got a small force together. Nice thing about Horizon Wars, you don’t have to get in over your head. I have Heavy Cav, Mobile Infantry (on sealed Lunacycles), Heavy MLRS Artillery, some Aircraft (Gravship VTOLs) and Light Mechs – if they ever get heavies, it would mean a major upgrade to their industrial capacity on the Moon, which is probably a good decade off as of now.
Now, as for what the Tycho Grenadiers are doing in the jungles of South America… well, as far as THEY’RE concerned, that’s nobody’s business but their own!
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