The wonderfully bizarre and dark world of Mars Attacks is coming to a table top near sometime in 2014. Nottingham based games company Mantic have announced that they have the license to produce a 28mm tabletop war game based on the classic trading cards produced by Topps, the same franchise that inspired the popular 1996 Tim Burton movie of the same name.

This means that scale models of giant ant monsters, big brained aliens with wacky rayguns and silly looking giant robots will be available sometime soon. Head of Mantic, Ronnie Renton said “We want to make sure the game works with all the of the big and interesting characters (and monsters) that feature in the cards, as well as a basic troopers, so we are designing a game system that scales up to support all the cool and big stuff. We will ensure the game really resonates with the style of the cards and the IP itself, and while we don’t quite know yet how we are going to incorporate some of the wilder aspects into the game, we are sure it will somehow”.

Mantic are best known for their extremely successful futuristic sports boardgame Dreadball, which has been praised for its elegant mechanics and simplicity, so we have high hopes for the Mars Attacks game. Mantic already produce a wide range of nicely sculpted fantasy and sci-fi models, so it should be interesting to see what they do with the iconic and extremely detailed Mars Attacks characters.

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