This is the second option in the poll, created by The Big Zabowski.
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The War
It’s January 1946.
Hitler is Dead. The Reich; still standing.
Stalin is power hungry having taken the Baltic, Poland, Romania, Czechoslovakia, Yugoslavia for their oil.
Mao has almost all of Asia and the South Pacific in his grasp, the Japanese people paying dearly for Nanking.
And what we knew as WWII is now on it's ear.
The newly christened Third German Reich has now allied with the United States and disintegrating British Commonwealth The Soviet Union has once again turned on it's allies and forged new ones with a blossoming Peoples Republic of Asia.
In a drastically different WWII, you are a crew member of what some refer to as 'Iron Joes’ or ‘Iron Ivans’.
These
turboshaft powered “Power Armors” are the next step in mechanized arms and armor, rising over 1.5 to 2 stories tall hefting large guns and machine cannons over the wastes of Europe and the Far East. Pilots of these machines are drafted from the Tank and Infantry divisions on either side.
These two or three man machines have proven themselves more mobile than their tank predecessors and rival aircraft as the 'it weapon' that many enlistees wish to use to 'fight the other side'.
The crème de la crème of both sides (Allied OSS/MI5 vs Communist KGB/MSS) have been molded respectively into a 'Delta Force/Navy Seal like task force. Assault teams each side hopes could tip the war in their favor using the best and brightest their countries can offer.
In a war still mired in ideologies.. whose will reign supreme?
The Axis and Allies have now been totally reorganized into the following 'loose' alliances:
The Sino-Russian Alliance- The Union of Soviet Socialist Republics
- Peoples Republic of Asia ( Maoist China lead Cambodia, Vietnam, Australia, New Guinea, Micronesia, Indonesia, India, Japan)
The Western Free Allied Forces- The United States of America
- British Commonwealth
- West France
- Democratic Republic of Spain
- The Republic of Italy
- The Greater Third German Reich
The armor would be around the height of a small house, 20 feet tall at the most for the 3 man heavier armor, around 10-15 feet for escort/fast assault 2 man recon armor. Operation of them would be similar to ground pounder GMs of 08th MS team, but using turbine powerplants and be reminiscent of tank warfare.
Nationalists from both sides wishing to 'escape the war and help their families' are ENCOURAGED! Japanese tankers driving British and US tanks in 'Bushido' like brigades looking to free Japan; Polish drivers wishing to crush Germany for what they did in 1939..
This game is a sort of Band of Brothers or The Pacific with giant mecha.
And here’s a bit of backstory.
It was early 1942.
With the death of a schizophrenic Adolf Hitler at the hands of a band of officers following the failure of the alliance with Japan, news traveled quickly through the multiple intelligence services all over the world. Italy, already taking a beating from bearing the brunt of the North African Campaign and supporting German and Vichy forces against Allied British, Canadian, and American armor was the first to collapse in a surrender agreement after a disillusioned army had turned on Mussiloni who too fell into a state of neurotic paranoia.
With the collapse of Italy, The Soviets met in talks with British and American delegates as to how to go about wrapping up the war with the Axis seemingly falling to pieces before them.
However, unbeknownst to the Russian commanders, Nazi Germany had in the few short months after Hitler's death, denounced the "Jewish" issue and handed over documents and practitioners of this atrocity to the Western Allies. Why? The Soviets had already taken up the 'Jewish Problem" flag under Josef Stalin as an even greater 'great purge'. Their goal was to smash a weakened Germany and annex them and their French and Italian neighbors before the Western Allies could muster a response.
With Germany begrudgingly accepting interim terms, they folded their forces in with those of the Western Allies in secret; an end result of France and Poland almost going rogue feeling betrayed at the actions of the ‘Imperialist Westerners’
With the political world now in as much a mire as the real world, the war itself ground to another crawl as if it were 1915 all over again. This gave Russia a chance to push for more power in the east, threatening Japan and its attempted annex of China while the lines in the West continued to stall.
Japan, at this time, actually had maintained American diplomatic relations when Emperor Hirohito disavowed and executed his military commanders after Nanking and Korea became a public affair within the British Empire and America. What resulted was a country that under the stipulation of remaining neutral would receive the support they wanted from the US.
However, the Soviets used this as a perfect opportunity to strike, supporting Mao Zedong in the success of a Communist Chinese superstate as it annexed a majority of SE Asia. Japan and the Western Allies cried foul at this, Chang Kai Shek’s forces all but massacred by Chinese and Soviet forces as they advanced south and east across the Middle east and Southern Asia.
They both then set their eyes on Japan and Australia..
On December 25th 1944, The Soviet Union and the new Peoples Republic of Indochina (PRIC), declared open war on the British Commonwealth, the German remnants, and America calling them 'traitors' to the cause of ‘freedom for the oppressed peoples of the world’. On the front lines a new weapon soon appeared within the Soviet ranks: A bipedal 'tank' loosely translated as "Power Armor". These hefty, bipedal and heavily armored weapons could be built just as quickly as the proposed T-34 Tank. Stalin supported these weapons seeing them as an even more awesome weapon for his people to stand behind; a battalion of Iron Giants to crush the indulgent, imperialistic, and Capitalist west.
And with an assault in January 1945 via air-dropped armor over Japan, the main islands were soon taken within a matter of months. It was brutal; no quarter was spared. Those left of Japan's people and government fled to Australia in an attempt to regroup and form a counteroffensive with the help of Australia.
It never came. Within 2 months Communist forces were already landing in Northern Australia.
It didn’t take long for the Communists to spread on the European front as well. With Communist supplied Free French and Polish SFR forces, Power Armored attacks began to spring up in the summer of 1945. Germany was hit hard by these attacks, and the Western Allies having to quickly adapt to the style being used by the Soviet forces caused the lines to fall back toward Berlin itself.
America, Britain, and the Third German Reich needed something to counter the new "Iron Giant" weapon that had been deployed by the Communists, taking only months to flatten Australia (which by November was now firmly in Russian and PRIC hands)
Their own Power armor would soon debut in Vietnam in December 1945; much to the shock of the Communists, as it was believed the Americans had been concentrating on Nuclear weapons. In truth, the US now had both. And a Nuclear strike on the Sino-Russian Saigon stronghold in January 1946 would soon spool up the war into something even bloodier than had been seen in human history.
It was truly East versus West . It was now a war of ideologies, with two legged metal men beating each other senseless across the world.
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