Author: Tony

All Along the Watchtower

Today we have some useful 15mm bits and pieces. The largest is a Watchtower, built to keep an eye on the myriad hazards that can threaten a small colony out in the wastelands. The design is the same as the one from our 6mm Town Walls range, but with the integral walls removed.

The other two items are handy items of cargo. The first is a set of eight small resin cargo cases, two each of four designs. The other set has 12 metal barrels, six each of two designs.

B15-185 – Watchtower – £8.00
SF15-943 – Cargo Cases (x8) – £1.75
SF15-944 – Barrels (x12) – £3.00

Stop the Cavalry

Just a quick update – after a longer than expected hiatus, our Great War Belgian cavalry are available again now that we have a new mould for the horses. So you can once again add lancers, guides and chasseurs to your 1914 Belgian army, along with officers and buglers for each type.

Upgrading the Great White Fleet

At the start of the year we had this grand plan to finish upgrading all of the models of the major powers of the Aeronef world. All six had already had their capital ships replaced by new 3D sculpts, and we’ve also added plenty of new designs – but we had all of the escorts and cruisers still to go. We did most of the British, French and Germans in 2019 (not quite all, there are one or two to go), which left Japan, USA and Russia for this year. The Japanese received cruiser and escort replacements earlier in the summer, and now it’s the turn of the USA to be re-equipped. It’s turned out to be one of the most extensive releases of all of the fleets – we’ve replaced nine existing models and added no fewer than six additional cruisers, destroyers and frigates, plus a new fleet pack.

You may notice one or two re-classifications amongst the ships; the US fleet had some anomalies (largish vessels termed as Frigates, etc) which have been corrected, although all of the names remain the same.

The largest vessel is the Kentucky dirigible; this has a new one-piece resin hull with metal bridge, mast and turret.

Three of the new vessels are designed in the same style as the Lexington class battlecruiser, and form a Fast Pursuit fleet – these are the Raleigh cruiser, Augusta destroyer and Huntsville torpedo destroyer. There is a fleet pack containing two each of the Lexington, Raleigh and Augusta.

Another new ship is the Olympia class Light Cruiser, seen below with the redesigned Maryland model.

VANFP-205 – US Pursuit Pack – £21.50

VAN-201 – Tallahasee Class Patrol Nef – £1.00
VAN-202 – Des Moines Class Destroyer – £2.50
VAN-203 – Michigan Class Light Cruiser- £3.00
VAN-204 – Kentucky Class Dig – £4.25
VAN-208 – Brooklyn class Destroyer – £2.00
VAN-209 – Maryland class Cruiser – £3.75
VAN-210 – Decatur class Corvette – £1.00
VAN-211 – Saginaw class Corvette – £1.00
VAN-213 – Baton Rouge class Cruiser – £3.25
VAN-218 – Olympia class Light Cruiser – £3.25
VAN-219 – Nashville class Frigate – £1.25
VAN-220 – Raleigh class Fast Cruiser – £3.00
VAN-221 – Augusta class Fast Frigate – £1.50
VAN-222 – Huntsville class Fast Torpedo Frigate – £1.50
VAN-223 – Scranton class Torpedo Corvette – £1.00

And we should get to the Russians by Christmas – the moulds are done, the sample models painted for the website so barring unforeseen events (global pandemic, anyone?) we’ll hit our target. And we then we’ll tell you our Aeronef plans for 2021…

A Tale of Contrast

I recently experimented with painting some 6mm vehicles using just Citadel’s new Contrast paints. I tried them out on some unreleased models – 6mm versions of the Prosperity army vehicles released a little while back in 15mm. I wrote up a post on our club’s blog (so please feel free to pop over there and have a look), but you can see the results below. For just five colours, I think they worked out pretty well.

Support Gulls

This week we’re moving down to 6mm for our new releases. We have the previously-previewed new support vehicles for the Flaming Sword of the Holy Brotherhood and ben Mehdi’s Legion. All manufactured by Gull Systems, they include the GS-1100C cargo carrier, GS-934 Recce Car and GS-700 jeep.

Making use of these, we’ve introduced three new 6mm detachment packs for ben Mehdi’s Legion – Tank Destroyer, Mechanised Infantry and Support.

HS6-2016 – GS-1100C Cargo Carrier – £1.25
HS6-2017 – GS-934 Recce Car – £0.75
HS6-2018 – GS700 Jeep – £0.50
HS6-2018a – GS-710M Mortar Jeep – £0.50

HSD6-4001 – ben Mehdi’s Legion Tank Destroyer Detachment – £10.75
HSD6-4002 – ben Mehdi’s Legion Mechanised Infantry Detachment – £4.25
HSD6-4003 – ben Mehdi’s Legion Support Detachment – £7.50

Anson Ahoy

We had a very good response to the news of the website reopening at the end of last week, which has kept us busy filling orders. However, we want to get back to the business of releasing new models, since we’ve built up quite a backlog over the past few weeks.

We’re starting today with a new Aeronef model, the British Anson class Battlecruiser. It’s comes in at an impressive 110mm long, as large as an Albert class Dreadnought although not as hefty. She mounts two triple turrets and a pair of superfiring twin turrets, along with a more than respectable secondary battery, and boasts an impressive turn of speed for a vessel her size. In Aeronef however, she does suffer from the “There Seems To Be Something Wrong With Our Bloody Ships !” optional special rule.

VAN-130 – Anson class Battlecruiser – £8.00

Combat Markings

We’ve had a large restock of Hammer’s Slammers decals arrive this week – so all of those that had been out of stock (and there were quite a few) are back again. Because of the sheer number of different decal sheets available (we’re up to 100 now) we don’t always hold huge numbers of each one, sometimes only 2-3, but for now everything is in stock, including the vehicle numbers.

The delivery also included no fewer than nine new sets which we’ve drawn up based on John Treadaway’s original artwork for each unit. These are slightly different in content from previous sets, in that they don’t have any numbers on them – you can use the separate vehicle number sheets for that. Instead, they have more unit markings and logos along with a variety of tac markings, vehicle names or slogans. We’ve tried hard to ensure that there are enough markings for a full detachment of a particular unit on each sheet (which is hard work with some units which have up to 15 vehicles !). Each sheet is 60x33mm except for the Fasolini sheet which is half sized – simply because a Fasolini detachment is mostly infantry and only has 3-4 vehicles. These sheets cover most of the new units we’ve introduced recently such as Prosperity and the New Ukrainians, alongside plugging a few gaps in older units. There’s a Broglie’s Legion sheet which also covers Baffin’s and Ben Mehdi’s command of the same unit.

Baffin’s/Broglie’s/Ben Mehdi’s Legion Decal Sheet

HSDEC-031 – Fasolini’s Company – £2.00
HSDEC-041 – Alaudae Legion – £4.00
HSDEC-311 – Foster’s Mercenaries – £4.00
HSDEC-321 – Harris’ Commando – £4.00
HSDEC-361 – Ander’s Legion – £4.00
HSDEC-371 – Guardforce O’Higgins – £4.00
HSDEC-381 – Prosperity – £4.00
HSDEC-391 – New Ukrainians – £4.00
HSDEC-401 – Broglie’s Legion – £4.00

The preview images on the website are deliberately noisy and low-res – the actual decals sheets are very crisp and sharp.

The Return of Old Faithful

Old Faithful is back – the centrifuge is back from the engineers, as good as new and hopefully fit for a few more years’ service. We’ve spent the last couple of days testing it out, and catching up on some outstanding orders and restocks for retailers, but they’re now out of the way. So we’re all good to go, and the shopping cart has been restored to the website and is ready to take orders.

In other news, we will not be running a sale before Christmas this year. 2020 has been a …weird… ten months so far and looks like continuing that way. We can cope with a normal volume of orders, but there are some personal reasons why we don’t want to take on the extra workload of a sale at this time. The plan is to delay it and we’ll hold it early in 2021, probably for the four weeks of February (there’s no point holding in January, everyone is broke that month !). Apologies if you’ve been expecting the sale, but nothing else is going to plan at the moment and this is unfortunately another casualty.

Stock Updates – the Good News

A box of books arrived last week, so Hammer’s Slammers:The Crucible is back in stock again. There’s also a large restock of decals on the way too.

And the Bad News…

We’ve run low on stocks of flying stands over the summer, and have just been informed by our supplier that their moulds are worn and need repairing so they can’t supply any, and this will probably be the case for some time. So at the moment we have almost none left for sales or to put in fleet packs. We’ve been through the website and amended all of the fleet and other packs to show that they don’t include bases for the moment, and reduced prices to reflect this. We are looking at alternatives – although frankly there don’t seem to be many (if any). And of course most of our models have pre-cast holes to fit these particular stands, so any alternative design still needs to fit these. We’ll try to keep you posted…

Boxes and Barrels

A few more previews today – some 15mm bits we’ve had on the back burner for a while. On the left are two types of barrel, on the right a set of eight cargo cases – both very useful stowage items. The barrels will be metal, the cases resin.

At the back is a watchtower for the Desert Buildings range. This has an entrance door at the back along with a built-in ladder for access to the upper platform (it would have helped if we’d photographed it from the back – you’ll just have to take our word for it…).

American Airpower

The last two of the major powers’ Aeronef fleets to be upgraded are the US and Russia. Both are in hand, all of the masters are finished and have been moulded, production tins cast and at least half of the production moulds have been made. So for once we’re well on track to reach our target of having them released by the end of the year.

These are the new US cruisers and escort vessels – fifteen in all. Nine of them replace existing models, but there are also six brand new models. These include a cruiser and two destroyers in the same style as the Lexington battlecruiser, which will form a fast pursuit squadron.

I’ve just finished painting them in the buff and white colours of the Great White Fleet, as you can see below.

I’ll show you the Russians once they’re painted!