Brigade Models

Previews, new releases, interesting stuff … and cakes !

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

Category Archives: Aeronef

Houston Gamers

Andy Bouffard of Houston Beer and Pretzel Gamers recently sent us a big bunch of photos of a recent combined arms Aeronef/Land Ironclads game.

What’s really impressive is the terrain setup – Andy bought a large batch of our 2mm buildings and fortifications to create a number of villages and towns. Although he ran out of time to completely finish off the painting, they still look pretty impressive – his approach of creating a series of tiles makes for a very flexible layout.

The group also have their own wargaming weekend coming up – Texas Broadside, which is run in the wardroom of the dreadnought-era battleship USS Texas !

Aeronef at Stoke Rochford – photo report

Last weekend, we ventured north of the Watford Gap to Stoke Rochford Hall, a converted Victorian country house which now serves as a hotel, conference centre, wedding venue and – for this particular weekend – a wargaming venue. Organised by David Frampton, who works at the hall, we were going to join in a large Aeronef game put on by Jon Rogers (you may remember his spectacular Aeronef game seen at Salute 2011 and other shows).

SRH

After a late departure (my fault, I had to fix some stuff for work before being able to get going) and an eventful journey (well, it was mostly OK apart from missing the turning off the A1 to Stoke Rochford …) we arrived slightly too late for dinner and had to be content with the local McDonalds. However, after a late night tour of the hall, a good night’s sleep and a hearty breakfast we were ready for a day’s gaming.

I won’t go into the full details, but suffice to say that Admiral Dewey’s Great White Fleet under my command took a bit of a pummelling from the combined forces of the British Pacific Fleet and a Confederate squadron.

Next year we are going to endeavour to make it up for the whole weekend (and not miss dinner this time !).

Credit for the the models goes to Jon Rogers (Great White Fleet), Trevor Brown (British) and Dave Marshall (Confederates).

Aeronef at Stoke Rochford – advance orders

A week or so ago we posted the flyer for an Aeronef weekend at Stoke Rochford Hall in Lincolnshire. There is still time to get in if you fancy a weekend of jousting in aerial battleships – e-mail David Frampton for details.

What we forgot to mention is that we will be there for the Friday evening ‘get to know you’ drinks and Saturday’s gaming session (we’d love to stay all weekend but prior commitments mean we have to be off on Saturday evening unfortunately).

This isn’t a wargames convention as such, more a wargaming weekend, but we will be taking a mini trade stand with us; it’ll only be what we can pack in a car, so we won’t be taking our full ranges by any means, mainly the VSF ones (Aeronef and Land Ironclads). However, if anyone wants to order anything in advance or ask us to take along some particular items to have a look at then please let us know – preferably by the end of Thursday, so we have time to pack and do any necessary stocking up.

We should have plenty of stock of the new 2mm buildings that everyone seems to like so much :-)

Australian Aeronef Championships

Every year, Phil LeHunt organises the Australian New Year’s Eve Aeronef Championships, hosted by the Monday Knights.

Planning is underway for this year’s event and the format will be similar to that of the last four years – three rounds, scenario driven – however this year there’s a change in fleet construction, with players using 150CP Aeronef fleets. (Instead of the 400pt fleets used in previous years).

This is the 5th year that the event has been held, and each year Brigade have provided some prize support for the winner and runner-up (we’d love to attend in person but shipping the stand over would involve just a bit of excess baggage charges !). You can read the umpire’s report on last year’s event to get a feel for how much fun they seem to have.

So if you’re down under, fancy a bit of ‘neffing on New Year’s Eve, contact Phil – I’m sure he’d love to see more players.

Arbuthnots’ Xmas Aeronef Game

Anyone who went to Salute last year couldn’t have missed the remarkable Aeronef game run by Jon Rogers and his Arbuthnot’s Aeronautical League of Gentlemen. It was a truly spectacular affair depicting a clash between US and Japanese aerial fleets.

Arbuthnots are putting on a mega-game over the Christmas break in Cheam, south London. Jon has put a post on our forum with details of where, when, how much and how to get there.

If you’re at all interested in joining in, e-mail me and I’ll put you in touch with Jon so that he can determine final numbers, fleet allocations etc.

Brigade will be there (well, I will). I’ll be there to join in the game rather than taking an official trade stand, but if anyone wants me to bring any orders along then I’ll be more than happy to – you can even use our new Collect in Person shipping to pay in advance if you like :-) .

New Releases

A very quick post at the end of lunch …

Most of the new releases from SELWG are now on the website; although photos are pre-production or simply non-existent, you can at least click the ‘Add to Cart’ button ! I’ll be working through the week to take new photos and update the site (if you’ve been following the blog then you pretty much know what the models look like anyway).

The Scandinavian Union aeronef have their own page.

The river gunboats are Neo-Soviet page. I’ll be adding options for different turret configurations as well.

I have yet to do the Belgian skirmish infantry, time has run out, but I’ll have a go tonight.

More Scandinavian previews

I found time to put together sample of each of the rest of the Scandinavian aeronef last night (at least those that came out of the mould OK – three of the castings had bent funnels so will have to be repaired and recast). The photo isn’t the best, but the models look great now the turrets have been added.

I’ve had a bit of fun researching some flags, so we have several new releases including the Union flag plus special versions of the Swedish and Norwegian flags with the Union flag in one quadrant.

We’re also adding the two turret types to our ever-expanding range of accessory packs, so you can use them for conversions or scratch-building.

The fleet pack contains one of each capital ship, two heavy cruisers, two destroyers and two torpedo corvettes, plus flying stands, a union flag sheet and a CD with Aeronef stats.

So the initial line-up for the Scandinavian releases is as follows:

VANFP-2300 Scandinavian Union Fleet Pack £22.00
VAN-2301 Oscar II class Battleship £6.50
VAN-2302 Lillehammer class Battlecruiser £6.50
VAN-2304 Frederiksborg class Heavy Cruiser £3.00
VAN-2307 Udbye class Destroyer £1.50
VAN-2309 Scheele class Corvette £1.00
VAN-2310 Vanern class Torpedo Nef £0.50
VAN-2311 Glomma class Patrol Nef £0.50
VAN-7231 Scandinavian Heavy Turrets (x12) £1.50
VAN-7232 Scandinavian Light Turrets (x12) £1.50
VANF-2302 Swedish Union Flag £0.50
VANF-2303 Scandinavian Union Flag £0.50
VANF-2502 Norwegian Union Flag £0.50

We should have plenty of stock of all of these on Sunday at SELWG.

As a further Aeronef-related goodie, we have a small number of copies of Uber Goober Games‘ Universal Airship Combat System rulebook. This is an expansion sourcebook for the Über RPG: Steampunk Ruleset, but can also as a stand-alone miniatures combat and campaign system. The rulebook sells for £12.

SELWG Releases

With just over a week to go to the show we’re firming up on the new models that we’ll have available.

After a successful run of the master moulds the other night, we have tins and initial stock of the Neo-Soviet BRK gunboat, in two variants with a choice of turrets. Although we’re selling this as a Neo-Soviet model, it looks pretty good with other turrets from our 6mm range (for example, I tried it with the German Helheim gatling turret and EuroFed Tassigny AA turrets because they happened to be lying on my desk). If you ask us nicely enough we’ll sell it with whatever turrets you require.

In the same master mould were the two Scandinavian Union capital ships. The cruisers and escorts will be in a second mould which we’ll be spinning today. We should have the full range of ten plus fleet packs and Union flags on the day. As you can see, the ‘Nef absolutely look the business when tooled up with all of their turrets and masts.

As a little experiment, I also made up a couple of our Land Ironclads scale fortresses with Scandinavian turrets (I would have done the 4-turret fortress as well but ran out of turrets !). The Maunsell fortress (right) needs a little bit of work (drilling out holes for the turret pegs) but they look fine.

The next confirmed release will be the 28mm Great War Belgian skirmish infantry in three variants – infantry in shako, Grenadiers and Carabiniers.

Don’t forget that we’ll also have stock of Angel Barracks 6mm SF civilians and RDF infantry with us as well.

That’s what we have confirmed so far, but there may be more if we pull our fingers out, so stay tuned.

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