Modelling work on the 15mm Soviets continues apace; in addition to the Kunitsa APC and Laska tankette already previewed, we have the following models ready for printing:
We’re working hard on turning these collections of bits and bytes into resin and metal reality – as expected, not everything has worked first time and we’ve had to get one or two bits reprinted because they needed tweaking (or, in a couple of cases, I managed to destroy them while making moulds …). But we’ll get there.
So we reach the end of our burst of new releases. The last items are all 15mm SF, although at opposite ends of the size scale. The prize for sheer bulk goes to the AmRep Curtiss Heavy Hover Tank, a behemoth at over 75mm long (excluding gun barrel). This is the first of our new wave of 15mm releases, 3D sculpted and scaled at 1/100th (slightly larger than our existing models).
SF15-202 Curtiss Heavy Tank £8.00
At the more diminutive end of the scale, we have the second two packs of PF’s excellent figures – Human Mercenaries and Alien Bounty Hunters.
SF15-003 Human Mercenaries (pack of 5) £2.00
SF15-004 Alien Bounty Hunters (pack of 5) £2.00
We’re working at bringing a rather steadier trickle of releases over the next year, rather than our intermittent bursts of lots of models at one go, and might even get things announced in advance – so keep your eyes peeled …
So welcome to the latest batch of new releases – this time, we’re adding eight (eight !) new buildings to our 15mm SF Desert Buildings, to allow a nice little town to be put together.
As promised we still have one or two last minute new items … so last minute we don’t even have photos !
There are three Aeronef models; the Heyworth Bomber (as previewed a couple of weeks back), British Victoria class Heavy Battleship, which is a magnificient beast and threatens to spark a new battleship-building arms race in the Aeronef world, and the Stirling Castle class Passenger Liner.
There are two small spaceships, the AmRep Phoenix class strikeship and the German Spatz class missile boat. Finally, and the first of our new revamped, 3D sculpted 15mm SF range, the AmRep Curtiss heavy hover tank. If I get a chance to take photos at any time this evening I will, but I’m still frantically painting the final bits for the Pegasus bridge game !
And last but not least, a customer advance ordered some of our Shapeways items for collection at Salute, and now it appears that he doesn’t want them (after we’d paid for and ordered them in before the show … grrr !). So we’ll have a few of our assorted Water Towers for sale, along with several sets of Power Pylons (all in 6mm). So why not take the chance to pick these up post free ?
Ages ago (well, six months-ish) we announced we were going to revamp the 15mm range – essentially scrapping pretty much all of the existing models, replacing them with new 3D sculpts and at the same time making all of the models slightly larger (since we seem to be on the smaller side of 15mm manufacturers).
For one reason or another, this process has taken longer than expected – both technical issues and real-life pressures have taken their toll. We’re hoping to have some initial castings of the rather magnificient M-83 Curtiss Heavy Hover Tank available to purchase at Salute in a few days, assuming nothing else goes wrong (the first mould was damaged when the master model was removed), so we will finally have released the first model in our grand plan.
Next up will be some Neo-Soviets – these are the most popular of our 6mm ranges so it made sense to start here. We have the 3D prints of the first two models already, the Laska tankette and Kunitsa APC, while 3D model of the Bizon tank is about 50% complete.
Once Salute is out of the way, we’ll take a well-earned breather and then crack on with production of these models.
We’re providing a few of our new 15mm buildings to the South London Warlords for them to feature in one of the their games at this years Salute. The first castings have just been finished so they will be off to the Post Office this lunchtime.
These are so new that even Tony hasn’t had a chance to see the first castings yet!
We previewed PF’s wonderful figures here a little while back. Phil has finally managed to find enough time between weekend shifts in his day job to make the moulds for the first two packs, which are now up on the website and available to buy -
Yet more building masters have landed at Brigade Towers during the week, both 15mm and 6mm (in some cases, the same model in both scales).
My favourite is this one, which we’ve nicknamed the Research Lab:
15mm Research Lab
6mm Research Lab
The 6mm Landing Pad (due for release very soon, by the way) has been scaled up to 15mm – you can just about land one of our Athenas on here with room to open the ramp, or it will take a smaller VTOL with comfort.
15mm Landing Pad
This one is another small house – unfortunately there’s a problem with the roof which means that we’re going to have to get it reprinted, but we thought we might as well show off the design !
15mm House
6mm House
Having had some test prints back from Shapeways, we’ve added two new items to our Shapeways store today. We’re making the doors and widgets that we use on our 15mm buildings available as seperate items so that you can customise our models or use them on your own scratchbuilds.
The first item is a selection of doors, both single doors (five designs) and a couple of larger double doors (two designs). You can buy either a set of ten or 20, the latter being ever-so-slightly cheaper per door.
CGI Image - doors
The other item is a collection of fans, vents and other widgets in six designs – two of each.
CGI Image - vents and fans
For the best detail we’d recommend having them printed in Frosted Detail or Frosted Ultra Detail acrylic.
Doors and vents in Frosted Ultra Detail acrylic
An economical alternative is Polished White, Strong, Flexible nylon – the detail isn’t quite as sharp but it’s still perfectly acceptable.
Doors and widgets in White, Strong, Flexible, Polished nylon
Available now from our Shapeways Shop.
As promised here are some previews of the other half of our first batch of 15mm figures, again straight from a hot mould.
Bounty Hunters
Mercenaries
Look out over the next few days for some painted previews of these figures, as the ones in the photos were immediately whisked away to be cleaned up, based and undercoated.
We’re looking to release the first of these very soon – within a week or two.
