M1 Garand, solid design, does what it says on the label. Class.

For everything else there is the 20mm Lahti anti-tank rifle.

And this thread has officially turned into, "World War II weapons we'd give our Characters".

Well, "Money" Johnson's family has a number of SMLEs and Kar98Ks. Most of which were won the hard way.

That would be pretty cool.

Here are the stats I'd use for my little creature. I like the idea of going electronic, with caseless ammo though. Probably stick with a 9mm round, for what it matters in the 'one bullet fits all SMGs' abstraction of the rules..

Sterling Arms/CETME Mod 2068 'Lanchester'
Dmg: 5P, AP: 0 , Mode: SA/FA, RC 6, Ammo 60c, Availability: 8R, Cost: 3,600

The Sterling Arms/CETME Lanchester is one of their 'New Heritage Arms' line of weapons, designed to merge the aesthetics of weapons of the past with the latest in firearms technologies. The weapon itself is very heavy and large, compared to most modern submachine gun designs, and incorporates a wooden stock, along with actual (though reinforced) brass fittings. It looks almost exactly identical to the 20th century weapon it is designed to emulate, though internally it is very different, incorporating both an internal smartgun and an electronic firing system. The size, heft, and magazine configuration (the side-mounted magazine acts very much like a foregrip), along with the fixed wooden stock, give the weapon 3 integral recoil compensation. A gas vent 2 system, and an integral extendable vibroblade bayonet, are also standard. Unfortunately, the size and configuration of the Lanchester mean that it is classed as an assault rifle for purposes of concealment.

Vibro blade Bayonet (on Rifle)
Reach 2 Dmg: (STR/2+2)P AP: -2 Availability 6R, Cost 1,100

Give me a Sturmgewehr 44 please.

There's a great example of what I ment about some weapons having an aura about them. The 44 was probably one of the best weapons in WW2, the first true assault rifle(and one that the AK47 looks suspicously like) but it's faded while the 9mm MP40 is well known.

The Lugar got a reuptation in WW1 where an early semi-automatic was a shocker in the world of revolvers.

Weirdly while the 'tommy gun' didn't really have a life beyond Korea, the BAR, introduced in WW1 was still being used in Vietnam. but the weapon doesn't have the same common fame as a 'tommy gun'

More to the point, historically there were not two-handed broadswords—trying to fit a second hand inside the basket seems like a very, very bad idea.


Someone clearly didn't read up on the accuracy and reloading time of early firearms. There's a reason it took until the late Renaissance for portable firearms to figure significantly in military strategy.

~J

Not all broadswords were basket-hilted.

Cup and ring basket hilt

The origins of this type of hilt can be traced to the 16th century, and they remained popular for many centuries afterward. One of the most recognizable forms of the sword, arguably, is the Scottish basket-hilt. The Scots basket-hilt, of course, was not the only European sword with a metal, hand-enclosing basket, but its allure and variety continues to make it popular.

As these swords developed, the baskets became more complicated and more highly decorated. Early basket-hilts, though, are more restrained in their decoration. One surviving example rests in the National Museum of Scotland. Dated to the second half of the seventeenth, it is a good example of the earlier, more simplistic form. The knuckle, side, and rear guards are simple flattened bars of steel. Completely lacking are the plates between the side and rear guards. Instead of the elaborate file-work and piercings of its later cousins, the saltire bars are decorated with simple lines and a pattern known as the cup-and-ring. This style of decoration is made up of a central dot (known as a cup) surrounded by one or more concentric rings, looking to modern minds like a target. The cup-and-ring pattern is found on rock art in Northern England, Ireland, and Scotland dating back to prehistoric times. The pattern came back into popularity, being used on basket-hilts and as decoration on sporran mounts.

As metallurgy became more advanced the limitations on the length of the sword became less. During Joachim Meyer's time in 1570 swordfighting had become a sport. The two-handed sword which they used if one judges from the images was about 1.6~1.8 meters in length, had a long enough grip that was three fists in length. Often enough the left hand would be be close to the pommel if not gripping the pommel, while the right would be snug against the hilt.

The one handed sword used by Meyer is that of a curved blade with branch.

Chrysalis any links to images of those you've awoken my interest in British history and weapons.

The basket hilt was later in design. there were few enough basket hilts in the middle ages.

could it have something to do with design?

the luger have a very distinctive design, even for a semi-auto. and a tommy gun, especially with the 100 round mag, seems to basically stick to peoples minds.

also, when i think of the mp40, i see some gray uniformed soldier with it hanging across his chest. most other weapons of that time was not carried that way iirc...

17th century Scottish basket-hilted sword:
http://nms.scran.ac.uk/database/record.php...;searchdb=scran


Woodcuts from Joachim Meyer's The Art of Combat
http://www.thearma.org/pdf/JoachimMeyer.htm

Note the style of the single handed Schwerdt with ring and branch. It would take another hundred years for a basket-hilt to be introduced. Nonetheless I am sure that there were a few in Italian armouries in the 16th century, but not in common use.

And then, of course, there's the iconic pistols: The Colt Single-Action Army Revolver (AKA: The Peacemaker) and the Colt M1911A1.

"God created men equal, Col. Colt made them equal..." after all.

I thought the quote was:

God made some men tall and some men short, but Samuel Colt made them all the same.

-Frank

the one i have seen is "god created man, colt made them equal"...

close:
God made man
Samuel Colt made men equal.


sure and that's my point. thedesign sticks in people's minds making the weapon seem bigger/better/badder than it really is.

heh, i know a number of non-weapon products that could fit that bill. most of them seem to have a half-eaten fruit stamped on them these days...

and it can scare one silly to think about it to much that a good looking design can have more to say then the products actual performance...

Not always. The German 88mm was a damn good design, and stuck in people's minds.

The MG42 too.
And a damn good design too, they are still in use...

Ho, and they spawned the Smartgun for Aliens (whereas the Thompson and a Spas12 made the M41A Pulse Rifle)

The MG42 uses a bigass cartridge, too. It was called "Hitler's Buzzsaw" and I'll bet it could really saw a man in half, too.

The Modern MG42, named the MG3, uses 7.62mm NATO (7.62mm x 51mm).

Hitler's Zipper was the other knickname for it.

It got the name more for the rate of fire it had (Over 1000 Rounds per Minute) as opposed to the round it used, which was the standard Rifle/MG round for the German Army at the time, 7.92mm Mauser (7.92mm x 57mm; AKA the 8mm Mauser in Non-Metric countries at the time.).

The bigger and louder, the better!
That was the short answer when players were asking my first SR(2) GM why the Predator II was more expensive than the Predator I while it had the same stats, except for a lower concealability.

but have either the 88 or the mg42 captured outside attention like the tommygun, luger or mp40 have?

in a way, you dont have a proper gangster movie unless you have someone in a pinstripe suit wave a tommygun with a drum mag around. neither do you have a proper ww2 movie unless there is a german soldier or ss packing a mp40, or a german officer packing a luger.

on that note, there is also the us service rifle of the time, the m1, with its distinctive "ding" whenever a clip was emptied...

btw, didnt the predator 2 come with built in smartlink?

Yes that's why it was more expensive and had a lower concealability, but it wasn't written in the raw stats.

the devil is always in the description