From the Archives

We’ve been doing some tidying and maintenance at Brigade HQ recently – it does get a bit untidy, and there were several repair/upgrade jobs that needed doing that kept being put off. In the midst of this, while moving some moulds around we came across a several Land Ironclads ones that had been all but forgotten. We had previewed these long ago but they never quite made it to the website, and faded into obscurity. So we span the moulds up in the centrifuge, took a few castings to make sure they were OK and painted them up.

Land Ironclads rulebook cover

As a result, for the first time since (we think) 2011, we have some new Land Ironclads releases! Given that it’s been so long, and for those that don’t know, Land Ironclads is a set of Victorian SF land warfare rules published by Wessex Games. We don’t currently have any print copies, but the PDF can still be bought from the Wargames Vault. We make models for eight different forces including most of the major powers, plus some pesky Olympians, for that million-to-one chance. The models are 1/1200th, the same scale as our Imperial Skies fleets so you can use those for air support if you wish, and our Small Scale Scenery range is perfect for terrain.

Given that this is a collection of rediscovered moulds, there’s not really any theme to them, just a random selection of bits and pieces. We’ll start with a pair of British contraptions. The first is the Mk.V Artillery Conveyor, a self-propelled howitzer on a tracked armoured chassis. Meanwhile, scouting ahead is the Simms Motor War Car – this is listed in the rulebook and we thought it was made up, but it turns out to have been a real thing.

Mk.V Artillery Conveyor

Simms Motor War Car

Next we have some Steam Walkers – they’re about 6mm tall which in LI terms is about 25 feet, so the equivalent size to a tank. But we can also see a use for them as human-sized robots in 6mm. They’re in the Generic range rather than tied to any particular nation.

Steam Walkers

Finally, a pair of landing craft, naval rather than airborne and also in the generic range. There’s a larger boat that could carry a small (class-4 or class-5) Ironclad or a couple of bases of contraptions. The smaller ones would carry either a single contraption or a base of infantry.

Large Landing Ship

Landing Lighter

VLI-124 – Mk.V Artillery Wagon (x8) – £1.75
VLI-125 – Simms Motor War Car (x8) – £1.75
VLI-920 – Steam Walker (x12) – £1.50
VLI-980 – Large Landing Ship – £2.00
VLI-981 – Small Landing Lighter (x4) – £1.50