Well, in the interest of keeping my game design neurons popping, I have come up with this concept - it could be for Iron Sky (which are the terms I will couch it in for now), it could be something else entirely:
By way of background: The website is here http://www.ironsky.net/site/ but they also have a blog about developing a game for it here: http://blog.starwreck.com/2007/10/03/iron-sky-the-game/
The game has 2 distinct phases, in the first phase players are working cooperatively yet at the same time competing to build the "Nazi Moon Base". I'm imaging a grid of 9 squares, with the central module already in place (i.e. printed/fixed) and players drawing tiles/cards from a "Nazi technology" pool and playing them to the 8 squares (some rules about how what can be placed where etc) facedown so you don't know the exact configuration of the Nazi assets.
Then once the 8 tiles are laid they are revealed and one person is allocated the role of "Nazi Moon Menace". This could be simply the person who plays the last tile(s) to complete the base, making for an interesting decision making process about how/when/what to add to the base, or it could be by adding up some values on the tiles (say science, militarism, and occult) and then seeing which player has the relevant "persona" cards to take control of the base.
Then stage 2 begins, which is the "Invasion of Earth". At this point, the assets in the NMB are used to attack Earth and the remaining players (or perhaps there should be a team approach here*) try to stop them. At this point some mechanics required for how attacks are launched, how the combat is resolved how either party captures or destroys opposition assets. I'm liking the idea of combat based on a combination of the 3 variables above (science, military, occult). Also, I can imagine the game having a limited number of rounds in the 2nd phase, after all the Moon base would only have so many resources compared to the defenders on Earth. At the end players work out who achieved what, i.e. total victory, major victory, marginal victory, stalemate.
Luckily the game design process itself is inherently fun (for me) even if the game isn't!
D.
*Team approach:
2 players: obviously 1 vs 1
3 players: 1 Moon vs 2 Earth
4 players: 2 Moon vs 2 Earth
5 players: 2 Moon vs 3 Earth
Ideas for how the moon base builds it's attacks:
List of attack types (and corresponding dice):
unmensch (undead zombie uber-soldiers) (tech 1, occult 2)
kriegs-gaffe (combat apes) (tech 2, military 1)
V-astro (rocket) (military 3)
flying saucers (tech 1, military 2)*
death-rays (tech 3)
ragnarok device (occult 3)
Maybe have red, white and black dice representing the 3 attack types.
*nice thematic terms for flying saucers: Rundflugzeug, Diskus, Haunebu, Hauneburg-Geräte, VRIL, Andromeda-Geräte, Flugkreisel or ironically Reichsflugscheiben
Four moonbase tiles yield assets (i.e. producing 1 occult token, 1 tech token or 1 military token per turn) - I'm thinking there could be 8 different types of "manufacturing assets", so that 4 get played on to the base facedown so no-one knows the exact make up of the war machine.
The other 4 moonbase tiles can be used to "spend" the tokens to launch the attacks - once the moonbase construction phase is complete.
Meanwhile back on earth, the earth players must combat the attacks using Earthling technology/assets. Not sure how Earth will combat the occult attacks, maybe using the wrong dice-type is ok but suffers a 50% penalty...
I realise all this is pretty sketchy, but I figure that's what these blog/forums are for.
d3