(198X) Corpses and Husks
Added 2025-03-07 08:04:52 +0000 UTCReplacements for the TTS module's placeholder corpse and vehicle/aircraft husk tokens. These are used as markers for dead units, serving a mainly aesthetic purpose with the occasional mechanical implications (e.g. lupar bloodlust and available corpses).
I wanted corpse tokens to be reflective of the personalities of each faction and to tell a little story of what's happened to your troops: after all, a "killed" squad may not necessarily have died to the last man. An uninjured Federal carries a wounded comrade out of action; a lupar limps out of action, as a dying man gnaws on the dead; constructs mill around impassively with no limbs, or stand as inert statues; and a Santagrine militiaman defiantly faces down the enemy among the glorious deaths of his squadmates.
From the onset I didn't intend to do a variant corpse token for every single infantry unit in the game. Simply put: the game is almost complete, and even with the most generous reuse/digital editing in mind I didn't feel like making another 25-something standees for what is essentially aesthetic polish. At the same time, the idea of doing an abstract symbolic corpse token (e.g. a battlefield cross for the Federals) felt like a bit of a copout.
The result, of course, is that there is some unavoidable disjoint in unit types. I tolerated a certain amount of this, but wanted to get at least the unit's race right each time: that is, dead humans shouldn't have a construct token, nor dead lupar a human token. Federals, Santagrines and Rygoles thus have a variant token reflecting their racial auxiliaries (Pup Carson Scouts, Black Fangs, and Petty Stater infantry, respectively).
Vehicles, helicopters and aircraft posed a similar problem (insofar as one tank turning into another seemed fine, but an APC into a tank or whatnot felt like a bridge too far). I went back a bit on my original intent and made a generic vehicle, helicopter, and plane token: each sufficiently mangled or half-buried as to conceal what it may have once been. These received faction-appropriate paint jobs. While they're not my best work for 198X by a long shot, they do the job dutifully enough.
