Brigade Models

Previews, new releases, interesting stuff … and cakes !

Brigade Models - Previews, new releases, interesting stuff … and cakes !

Category Archives: 15mm SF

In the Cage

If you watch the news and see anything of the western forces in Afghanistan, you’ve probably noticed that a number of the military vehicles are driving around looking like they’ve been enclosed in a metal cage.

ridgback

This type of protection, variously know as bar armour, slat armour, grid armour, cage armour and probably a few other terms as well, is the modern development of the wire mesh skirts sported by Wehrmacht tanks during WW2. It’s designed to detonate shaped-charged warheads at a distance from the main hull and prevent the armour being penetrated.

Schurzen

We were approached by a customer (David Buckle, let’s give him full credit for the idea) who wondered if it would be possible to create 15mm scale bar armour using 3D printing techniques which could be fitted to his SF vehicles. We had a tinker and, although it’s not quite possible to make something that’s absolutely in-scale (the bars are too thin at 1/100th scale), we’ve managed to come up with something that we think is pretty convincing.

Initially we’ve made a set that comprises two long and two short pieces in Shapeway’s White, Strong, Flexible material. This is easy enough to cut and can be adapted to fit most vehicle types, and can be attached with superglue.

Shapeways – Bar Armour Single Set
Shapeways – Bar Armour Four Sets

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I also had a play-around and created a cage specifically designed to fit one of our vehicles – a Lynx APC. This fits snugly round the model and fits the shape precisely, with a gap at the back for the infantry access doors. If anyone is interested in specific cages for any of our other vehicles, let me know and I’ll see what I can come up with.

Shapeways – Lynx Bar Armour Cage

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I haven’t put the prices above because they are set in dollars and can fluctuate based on the exchange rate, and also the exact choice of material (it comes unpolished in black or white, or polished in white only). As I write this post a single set of armour is around £4.75, four sets together is roughly £16.00 and the Lynx cage is £4.00 in WSF polished.

You can order directly from Shapeways; however their shipping costs can be steep for small orders (US$9.50 fixed cost for any order). You can order these or anything else from our Shapeways shop directly from us – we’ll place one big order and spread the shipping costs. That’ll way will be cheaper, but you’ll have to wait a bit longer for your items.

Quick previews

Not one, but two parcels have arrived at Brigade Towers lately, bearing more prints of new models – lots of them. 2mm buildings, 15mm SF vehicles, spaceships and a few odds and ends as well.

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It’s going to take me a little while to work through all of them, clean them up and make them ready for moulding (including a dip in the infamous gunk tank), but we thought we’d tempt you with a few previews.

Firstly a 2mm model of St Mawes Castle in Cornwall, a 16th C. castle built by Henry VIII. I made it only because I spotted it in the background of a photo taken by the Brigadieress’ father and decided I wanted to investigate a bit further. It was used in some capacity in just about every war fought by Britain up to and including WW2, so it’s usable in many eras of wargame.

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This is a slightly unusual new item – bar armour, as seen fitted to various vehicles in Afghanistan. I’ve build two models, one set with four flat sheets of armour which can be cut and adapted to fit whatever vehicle you like, and another specifically designed to fit our new German Lynx APC. I have to give credit for suggesting the idea to customer David Buckle. We won’t be casting this in metal, instead it’ll be available as a print-on-demand item in our Shapeways store.

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Spaceships next – reprints of the British capital ships, plus the impressive looking Dreadnought (which makes the Pommerania look small !) and enough prints of the British fighters to immediately make production moulds.

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Lastly, some 15mm previews. The package contained quite a few models – three new hulls and around a dozen turrets. Here you can see a comparison between the new Garibaldi heavy tank hull and the Montsabert (the Garibaldi is a big beast), followed by the British Artemis APC and, probably my favourite from this set, the all new Gallieni tank destroyer.

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15mm EuroFed

The natural enemies in the Iron Cow universe to the Germans are the European Federation. Encompassing the southern states of the old European Union, the Federation is effectively controlled from Paris and seemingly perpetually in conflict with the North European states of the ONESS.
MontTass
Today we’re releasing the first batch of resculpted EuroFed vehicles, which were some of our most popular models in their previous form. The initial release consists of two variants of the Montsabert MBT and two of the Tassigny APC.

SF15-401 – Montsabert MBT – £8.00
SF15-401a – Montsabert MBT (support turret) – £8.00
SF15-403 – Tassigny APC – £8.00
SF15-403b – Tassigny with Missile turret – £8.00

We previewed a number of upcoming variants of both of these vehicles a while back, but can we tempt you with a preview of the larger Garibaldi heavy tank … ?

Garibaldi

Or how about the Galieni Tank Destroyer ?

Galieni

All of the older versions of the Montsabert and Tassigny have now gone from the website, but the newer variants will be arriving soon to take their place.

15mm Previews

With the recent release of the new German 15mm vehicles (and the impending re-release of the EuroFed models) I’ve been working hard lately at redesigning more of our 15mm range (and coming up with new stuff too).

First up, and just about finished is the South-African Rhino wheeled MBT. There are a few details still to be done, but mostly dull stuff like the attachment points for the main gun and wheels. It looks particularly intimidating in the low-down, front-on view. My next project is a 15mm version of the Wildebeest APC, which has not previously been available in this scale.

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At Salute we were fortunate to be situated next to Keith Armstrong of Armies Army, and I recently participated in his successful Kickstarter project and picked up a number of his very nice 15mm near-future British infantry figures. This has inspired me to go off and update our British vehicles to give Keith’s figures some transport and armoured support. The Apollo is much more like its 6mm counterpart – I was never really happy with the turret of the old Apollo model, it was too tall and not wide enough, so this version corrects that.

Apollo

The Artemis has had a much more thorough overhaul, making it bulkier and looking more like something that could carry a full squad of infantry. The turret has also been enlarged, with the same guns as the German Lynx APC showing their origin as fellow members of the ONESS.

Artemis

Release date ? Don’t know yet. Our first task is to get the British spaceships reprinted and remoulded, and I should be ordering the new prints for those in the next few days. I’ll probably take the opportunity to order some 15mm vehicles at the same time. But the nature of things with our part-time business is that I can make 3D models much faster than we’re able to get them moulded and released, so there will always be a queue.

15mm SF Germans Re-released

We’ve released the first batch of resculpted German vehicles in our 15mm range today. The initial offering is four models – standard MBT and heavy support versions of the Thor tank, and MG and autocannon armed versions of the Lynx APC.

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SF15-301 – Thor MBT – £8.00
SF15-301c – Thor Heavy Support- £8.00
SF15-303 – Lynx APC – £8.00
SF15-303a – Lynx APC with autocannon – £8.00

We’ve now removed all of the old versions of the Thor and Lynx; we’ll be adding replacements for the other variants (AA, command, rocket launchers etc) in the fullness of time.

Slamming the PacFed

If you went to Salute you probably saw the Warlords’ Route 66 Hammers’ Slammers game (you couldn’t really miss it, just inside the main doors). If you looked closely you’d have spotted, in a very fetching multicoloured blue livery, a number of our new PacFed 15mm vehicles.
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These have now been officially co-opted into the Slammers’ Universe as the Terran Authority Starmarines Advanced Police Units, and details and stats can be downloaded from the Hammers’ Slammers website.

Get Your Kicks

So … four more sleeps to Salute !

One of the downsides to running a trade stand at a show, especially one as busy as Salute, is that we don’t get much of a chance to wander round, chat to other traders and games, and also to see the games on offer.

However, this year I will be making a beeline to see one of the largest games planned for this year’s show, in fact one of the largest games we’ve ever seen; South London Warlords’ Route 66 game. This 36-foot long extravaganza is a 15mm SF game depicting the famous Hammers Slammer mercenary unit attempting to break through to a starport on Cullen’s World.

We recently sent some of our new PacFed models to John Treadaway, one of the co-authors of the Hammers Slammers Crucible ruleset, and he’s worked overtime to get them onto the table for Saturday, along with hundreds of other models from other manufacturers. He’s been kind enough to send us a few photos of the (almost) complete models and has let us use post here ahead of the day. So if you’re at Salute, make a beeline for the game, have a long look (you can join in) and then you can wander back over to us to buy some :-)

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Salute Release Pricing

Ten days to Salute (aaaaghh !!!). So here we go … details and pricing for some of the Salute Releases. We’ll update this page with more as we go along so you may want to revisit again before the day.

British Spaceships
UPDATE – please note slight changes to destroyer designations

SFSP-101 – Fleet Pack (2 Churchill, 2 Heavy Cruiser, 2 A-class, 2 S-class) – £22.00
SFSP-103 – Pursuit Pack (2 Inflexible, 2 Town class, 2 W-class, 2 D-class, 3 L-class) – £22.00

SFS-100 – Churchill class Battleship – £7.50
SFS-101 – Inflexible class Battlecruiser – £6.00
SFS-120 – County class Heavy Cruiser – £3.50
SFS-121 – Town class Light Cruiser – £2.50
SFS-130 – A-class Fleet Destroyer – £1.25
SFS-131 – D-class Torpedo Destroyer – £1.25
SFS-132 – W-class Escort Destroyer – £1.25
SFS-140 – L-class Frigate – £0.75
SFS-150 – S-class Corvette – £0.25
SFS-170 – Manxman class MWV – £1.50

As I suspected he might, Phil popped up with yet another mould which I didn’t know about – so AmRep players now get a new fighter type, the Goshawk.

SFS-262 Goshawk fighter (x12) – £1.50

Squadron Commander

SCR-1401 – Pedang class Interceptor – £2.50
SCR-1402 – Kampak class Attack Fighter – £2.50
Both available in blister packs of four models for £9.00 including bases

Indonesian 6mm Vehicles

IC-1401 – Indonesian Army Group – £35.00
IC-1411 – Indonesian Tank Company – £11.50
IC-1412 – Indonesian Infantry Company – £12.00
IC-1413 -Indonesian Artillery Group – £14.50
IC-1414 – Indonesian Armoured Convoy – £10.75
All individual vehicles – £1.00

6mm Desert Buildings

B300-109 – Villa – £2.00
B300-111 – Loading Bay – £2.00
B300-122 – Small Tower #2 – £2.00
B300-123 – Twin-dome Buildings – £1.75
B300-124 – Large Villa – £2.25

15mm EuroFed SF
SF15-401 – Montsabert Tank (tank or support variant) – £8.00
SF15-403 – Tassigny APC (twin-MG, gatling or missile mount) – £8.00
SF15-403b – Tassigny Missile Vehicle – £8.00
SF15-403c – Tassigny Command Vehicle – £8.00

15mm German SF
SF15-301 – Thor Tank (tank, heavy support or twin support turrets) – £8.00
SF15-303 – Lynx APC (twin-MG or autocannon turret) – £8.00

15mm Buildings
B15-201 – Small advanced house- £7.00
B15-202 – Medium advanced house- £9.00

Land Ironclads
VLI-8017 – British Flak Tower – £2.00
VLI-8018 – German Flak Tower – £2.00

28mm Great War
GW28-1139 – Belgian Civilians/refugees (x6) – £6.50

Two weeks and counting …

Salute
Two weeks and counting … well, slightly less in fact, just 13 (count ‘em !) days until Salute. Which is all a bit scary, it seems to have crept up on us again. We’re on stand TM04 – go in the main entrance, turn immediately right and walk to the far wall – we’re four stands down.

We’re finalising our new releases for the show – we know pretty much what we’ll have, and it’s quite an impressive list, around forty new models. And it might be more, as I never know if Phil’s going to turn up at the last minute with a new mould that he’s managed to squeeze in !

British Spaceships
We’ll have the first batch of ten models available, along with two fleet packs.

Indonesian Fighters
We’ll have the two new Indonesian fighters for Squadron Commander, also ideal as air support for …

6mm SF Vehicles
Phil’s finishing off the moulds for a grand total of ten Indonesian vehicles, plus army and company packs.

15mm SF Vehicles
We’ll have the remastered German Thor MBT and Lynx APC available, along with the EuroFed Montsabert and Tassigny (all with several turret variants). Stock of these may not be great.

6mm SF Buildings
We’ll have a number of new models in the Desert Buildings range – I don’t know exactly what yet, it depends on what Phil gets done !

15mm SF Buildings
We should have the first of the new City buildings available, and possibly more (who knows).

28mm Great War
We’ll have the Belgian refugees ready at last.

Of course we’ll have stock of all of the recent new releases – the Pommerania, PacFed vehicles, 2mm buildings etc. And don’t forget that we also carry Angel Barracks’ 6mm (figures only) at shows too.

Show Orders
We’re happy to take advance orders to be collected at the show. If you want to pay in advance, you can place an order from the website; go to the online ordering page and select ‘Collect in Person’, then place and pay for your order as normal. This won’t charge any postage costs, and then you can just turn up on the day and collect your items. Please get any show orders in by the end of Thursday 11th April, otherwise we may not have time to complete them.

Obviously you can’t order any of the new releases this way since they aren’t on the website yet (and we haven’t published any prices yet either). If you want to reserve any of these, or you want to make an advanced order but pay on the day, e-mail us and we’ll get back to you with a total cost.

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