Beadbot and the Bangarang

Welcome back, 

No, the post title isnt the name of a fancy band! 

A few weeks back I was sent the link to the Gutterlands website https://www.thegutterlands.com/ which is a bunch of background fluff around the models by the Billmakesstuff YouTube channel. The trash bash nature of Bill's models has really inspired me, and is the reason why there have been a few trashbash terrain posts of late. For me making models from stuff destined for landfill has always been a very rewarding aspect of the hobby. I blame the old 40K RT rule book model making section and possibly watching Blue Peter as a kid. 

I digress, inspired by Bill's models I had to try my hand at building Beadbots and picked up the Bangarang rules by Apocrypha_Now. Bangarang is a game to battle Beatbots in a Arena on the world known as the Tapu (also the Gutterlands). 

So what is a Beadbot? It is a robust style of generic robot that looks like they are built from beads, mainly because the tabletop model is built from beads. Part of thier popularity is the ease of repair and interchangeability of parts. AIs are easily swapped between bots. Bangarang rules also include rules for Scrapbots, Biobots and fancy uppers bots (rich folks' bots). 

Introducing Beadbot 01Buggi22. 

This is my first Beadbot following the basic instructions in the Bangarang rules. Some bits box delving found some extra bits such as 40k shoulder pads as hip joint covers. The weapons and back gubbins also came from the bits box. The colour scheme was chosen to appeal to my wife and I hope we can get some Bangarang games in future. I have found building the beadbot very therapeutic and there are more planned. Not just for the Bangarang.

Bangarang in the Wild Galaxy 

Robots of all styles are common across human space. As Beadbots are cheap and robust they are quite common. Scrapbots can be found too, usually on frontier worlds or in service in poorer communities. 

I quite fancy the idea of making a couple of beadbots as loaders in Spaceports (Dockerbots?). Bangarang arenas are common in frontier worlds where older Beadbots and Junkbots are pitted against each other for entertainment purposes of the masses.

Bangarang on Mattblackgod’s World

Beadbots still exist on Mattblackgod’s World but they are now symbols of wealth. Those factions lucky enough to own a functioning and surviving Beadbot would not risk damaging it in the Arena. Those few that do are usually showing off how wealthy they are, that they can happily wreck a functioning beadbot (which is the MBW equivalent of burning a million dollars). Junkbots are more common and often feature in the Bangrang in Last City’s Mars Arena. Meatyones occasionally feature too, captured mutated lumps of flesh dragged from deep in the wastelands. Uppers bots do not feature on MBW.

The fun of Bangarang has had me thinking of making all manner of Bots with different utilities for various factions in both the Wild Galaxy and Mattblackgod’s World. A Nth gen faction (robots) could also be created for Zone Raiders. Using similar beads keeps things in line with that faction's motif of all descending from the blueprint of a single ancestor bot. As a plus all this gets down on the contents of the bits boxes. 

I will also need to build some terrain for the Bangarang. It need 4 off 2x2x2 inch cubes, 4 off 2x4x4 inch cuboids and 2 off 8 inch bridges. These will have a junk look to them. My thinking is that I will also be able to use them as terrain for Mad Dan's Scrapyard (a future Last City location) and Zone Raiders. 

Thanks for looking, take care out there.