Brigade Models

Previews, new releases, interesting stuff … and cakes !

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

Category Archives: New Releases

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

DSC_0618

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

DSC_0617

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.

Mediterranean Houses

Firstly … don’t forget Broadside on Sunday ! This is an excellent little show with an impressive list of traders (Wargames Foundry, Warlord Games, Ainsty … oh, and us !).

We have a long awaited release in our 2mm scenery range today. We’re moving into sunnier climes with the arrival of our Mediterranean village pack of 20 assorted buildings.

The design of these models is based on houses in the French region of Provence (because I have some very good reference photos for the area), but they would serve equally well for Italy, Greece and other European Mediterranean countries. We will of course have stock of these on Sunday – although not all that many, so if you want some make sure you find us early !

VLI-8019

VLI-8019 – Mediterranean Village – £5.00

We’re moving on apace with the development of many more sets in the 2mm range. This week I completed a late C.19th power station. It’s based on the design of the Lots Road station in Chelsea, London, but the dimensions have been scaled down to make it more manageable. It comes with a collection of small sheds and, since most of the older power stations in London are located right next to the Thames, I also added some coal barges, a tug boat and cranes.

Power Station

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 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.

ThorLynx

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.

More new 6mm Construction

May 2013 Group

The Mars Construction Company today proudly announces the available of five new standard pattern buildings, Constructed from the standard mix of Martian desert sand and polymer resins, they feature maximum protection from the Martian elements and come with a 50-year erosion guarantee. See the plans and various interior layouts at your local MCC office.

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 – Villa – £2.25

Fleeing from the Boche !

All six front

Another new release today – this time we’re going back to the start of WW1 and the German attack on Belgium. We have six new figures depicting Belgian civilians caught up in the fighting and fleeing the advancing German forces. All of the figures were sculpted from contemporary photographs and wear authentic clothing, and have random head variants.

They are available as a pack of six figures, as separate male and female sets (three figures each) or individually.

GW28-1139 Belgian Civilians (x6) – £6.50
GW28-1139m Male Civilians (x3) – £3.50
GW28-1139w Female Civilians (x3) – £3.50

Some not-so-good news as well. Having reviewed the British spaceship moulds, we’ve decided that we’re not going to release them immediately – some, especially the moulds for the larger vessels, are a bit unreliable and the quality of some of the castings simply isn’t good enough. We’re going to redesign some of the models slightly and get new prints made, followed by new moulds. This process will probably take several weeks (and is going to cost us quite a bit in new prints and moulds) which is disappointing, but we’d rather do that than push out models that aren’t to the standard we (or you) would expect.

But finishing on a positive note, we’ll have more new releases later in the week – 6mm buildings and 15mm vehicles :-)

Flesh and Steel

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Today we’ve added the third book in Legionnaire Games’ Task Force Zeta series of starship rules, Flesh and Steel, to the website.

TFZ-003 – Task Force Zeta: Flesh and Steel – £12.00

Task Force Zeta: Flesh and Steel pits the forces of mankind’s United Colonies against the Cyberon, a race of mechanical constructs, in sweeping fleet engagements across the known universe. This Fleet Pack includes:

  • A background history that describes the basic setting and the conflicts of the First and Second Wars between the United Colonies and the Cyberon;
  • Data Cards for 37 capital and escort vessels, along with a dozen fighter and shuttlecraft, in a new (and far more attractive) data card format;
  • A section with basic descriptions of each ship and fighter class in this Fleet Pack, along with availability charts for fighting pick-up games with ‘historically accurate’ forces;
  • A short selection of special rules to better reflect this universe (that can also be adopted for any game of Task Force Zeta);
  • Two battle scenarios;
  • Two Tactical Campaign Games, including a CG map, terrain notes for each of the 22 star systems on the map, and the addition of simple resource management to replace fleet losses during a Tactical CG;
  • Suggestions on where to find appropriate miniatures to better reflect the vessels of the combatants on your tabletop.

Archie !

Two new releases in the Land Ironclads terrain range today – although they would also be extremely useful in Aeronef games. We have two anti-aircraft installations, a British ‘Archie’ tower (Archie was the WWI slang for anti-aircraft) and a German FlaK tower.

VLI-8017

VLI-8017 – German Flak Tower – £2.00
VLI-8018 – British Archie Tower – £2.00

VLI-8018

Although the models are labelled as ‘British’ and ‘German’ and come with the appropriate turrets by default, you do have the option of selecting other turrets (US, French, Russian etc) to customise them to your own fleet or army.

Kartika Eka Paksi*

As promised, here are the first of a big batch of new releases. We’re starting with the Indonesian Republic – ten new grav vehicles and two 6mm scale Squadron Commander fighters

IndoTanks

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

SF300-1401 – T14 Suharto MBT
SF300-1401a – T14E3 Anjalika MBT
SF300-1403 – M58 Sugama APC
SF300-1403a – M58-C Wiranto Command
SF300-1405 – S422 Slamet SPG
SF300-1405a – S436 Binaija SPG
SF300-1405b – S511 Sibayak MRL
SF300-1406 – P147 Arjuna AA Vehicle
SF300-1407 – R35 Bhima Armoured Car
SF300-1408 – Kijang Armoured grav truck

Squadron Commander

IndoSCR

SCR-1401 – Pedang class Interceptor – £2.50
SCR-1402 – Kampak class Attack Fighter – £2.50
SCP-1401 – Pedang Flight – £9.00
SCP-1402 – Kampak Flight – £9.00

* – Indonesian Army motto – (Sanskrit, lit:”Unmatchable Bird with Noble Goals”)

Where are the new releases ?

So we know what you’re thinking … you released all of these shiny new models at Salute, why aren’t they on the website yet ? So here’s what’s going on …

QuestionMark

Firstly, we’d built up a bit of an order backlog over the last month or two (well, if truth be told we’ve had an order backlog ever since the 25th anniversary sale which we’ve never been able to clear). So to be fair to those people waiting for orders, we wanted to complete them before putting up the new items – after an order packing session last night this is almost done, there are only 3-4 left outstanding.

Secondly, some of the new items were rushed to be out in time for the show, and we haven’t quite got them ready for full release – we might have moulds and stock (well, what’s left after Saturday), but we don’t have decent photos of the new items for the website, we haven’t finished the stats to support the models in various sets of rules, etc. So we have a little bit of work to do to take the photos, generate stats etc.

And thirdly, we didn’t simply want to put up fifty new items to the website all at once and be swamped by subsequent flood of orders – having just cleared one backlog, we’d simply generate another. Frankly, Phil and I are knackered after Salute (it’s amazing how much work goes into preparing for one seven-hour show). So we’re going to release the new items gradually, one range at a time, over a couple of weeks or so in order to manage the demand. First will be the 6mm items – the Indonesian tanks and fighters – later this week.

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