Brigade Models

Sound the Bugle !

Posted on November 17, 2014 by Tony

I mentioned in the run up to Crisis that Phil has sprung a surprise on me by turning up with two new moulds of 28mm WW1 Belgians – NCOs and Buglers. He’s finished painting and photographing some sample figures so we’re pleased to say that they’ve been added to the website and are available for purchase.

There are eight figures altogether, four each of buglers and NCOs in the various headgear types that differentiated the infantry types.

GW28-1140 – Infantry NCO in Shako – £1.50
GW28-1141 – Infantry NCO in Side Cap – £1.50
GW28-1142 – Carabinier NCO – £1.50
GW28-1143 – Grenadier NCO – £1.50
GW28-1144 – Infantry Bugler in Shako – £1.50
GW28-1145 – Infantry Bugler in Side Cap – £1.50
GW28-1146 – Carabinier Bugler – £1.50
GW28-1147 – Grenadier Bugler – £1.50

Posted in Great War, New Releases | 1 Comment

South African Support

Posted on November 14, 2014 by Tony

Following up from last week’s South African release, we have new turret options for the two APC types released today. We have a support turret with a low velocity infantry gun that fires heavy HE or squash-head shells for clearing out enemy strongpoints. To keep the skies clear, there’s an AA turret with a single rapid-fire autocannon coupled with two twin Boomslang light AA missile launchers. The turrets fit both the Buffel and Wildebeest and all four versions are available from our website now.

As well as these four new vehicle options, we also have a new, half-sized version of our cargo container available.

SF15-603c – Buffel Support – £8.25
SF15-603d – Buffel AA – £8.25
SF15-607a – Wildebeest Support – £8.75
SF15-607c – Wildebeest AA – £8.75
SF15-915 – Small Cargo Container – £1.75

Posted in 15mm SF, New Releases | 2 Comments

All Washered Up

Posted on November 12, 2014 by Tony

You may remember a while ago I posted about some 15mm resin fireteam bases I made to suit figures based on coins (1 euro-cent and 2p UK coins in particular). We realise (and it has been pointed out to me many times) that, depending on your location, these coins aren’t necessarily easy to obtain – 1 cent coins can be hard to come by even for those living in the eurozone. To rectify this and make the bases more useful wherever you live, we now stock M8 (15mmØ) and 25mmØ penny washers which make excellent alternatives. The one downside of using washers is that the magnets, for which each base has built-in holes, don’t really work any more, but I guess you can’t have everything :-/

The bases have been moved to their own page on the website – I’ve also made some new formats which we’ll be adding to the page soon (as soon as the masters arrive and I make moulds !).

Posted in 15mm SF, New Releases | 2 Comments

A Sticky Lesson

Posted on November 10, 2014 by Tony

In the last year or so we’ve increased our 15mm range by leaps and bounds, both vehicles and buildings. We’re now casting more and more pieces in resin and learning new lessons about the material, one of which I think it could be very handy to pass on.

At the centre of our Salute stand was the 15mm colony base, a model with which I was extremely pleased. The display model was only finished in the last days leading up to the show. What’s not obvious from the photos is that the top surface of the building modules are a little shiny and somewhat sticky. I’d made the mistake of leaving the model in its box in direct sunlight for several hours and it had got a bit warm – the day was not all that hot, maybe low to mid 20s centrigrade, although the temperature in the corner where the colony base sat probably got into the 30s in the sunshine. This somehow affected the resin and made it ooze through the layers of primer, paint and varnish. The garage module, which I’d painted as a separate piece, suffered really badly, and the paint came off in one or two places when I touched it.

I’d also had a similar problem before when priming some advanced buildings – it was a chilly evening at the workshop so I used a small fan heater to help them dry. This ended up making them ‘sweat’ and some of the primer (Halford’s car primer, which usually sticks to anything) came off.

So the lesson is – don’t let your resin get hot! And especially don’t let resin items sit in direct sunlight for any length of time. They could end up sweating and oozing, even through multiple layers of paint and varnish.

The situation isn’t necessarily fatal, though. In the case of the colony base I gave it a coat of undiluted PVA glue. This dries clear, if a little shiny, so it had to be revarnished, but it looks ok. Obviously the PVA is quite gloopy and is like putting a very thick coat of varnish on, but it did dry clear and, in the end, it’s better than having a sticky, ruined, unusable model. I used a PVA from a DIY store (Wickes) designed for mixing into plaster and also sealing dusty walls, it’s probably a slightly different formulation from the type you buy in hobby shops and so better suited to stopping seepage.

Posted in 15mm SF, Painting and Modelling, Updates and General Waffle | Comments Off

New 15mm South African Releases

Posted on November 7, 2014 by Tony

After debuting at Crisis last week, the 15mm Hippo truck and Buffel APC are now on the website and available for purchase.

The Hippo is a six-wheeled flatbed load carrier capable of hauling very heavy loads across rough terrain. Although unarmed, a pintel weapon could be added to the cab hatch if required.

The Buffel is a lighter, four-wheeled counterpart to the larger Wildebeest APC. It comes with a choice of top hatch with MG, light twin MG turret or triple light missile mount (the same turrets as the Wildebeest’s forward mount). Further more heavily-armed variants are on the way in the near future

SF15-603 – Buffel Light APC – £8.00
SF15-608 – Hippo Heavy Truck – £8.50

Posted in 15mm SF, New Releases | Comments Off

Slammed Again

Posted on November 5, 2014 by Tony

About four months ago I put on a game of Hammer’s Slammers:The Crucible for Maidstone Wargames Society’s Open Day. At this distance the details are a little hazy now, but to be honest I don’t want to recall them too closely as I was handed my head on a plate by my opponent Dave Sime, who had never even played the rules before ! Although in my defence he was using the Slammers regiment, against whom it’s always hard to win (or, as I discovered, hard to even knock out one of their tanks !).

The game saw a large Slammers contingent (8 blower tanks, 8 combat cars, eight jeeps) taking on a combined Stewart Legion and Terran Authority Star Marine force which were defending a small communications base. Very early on I managed to knock out a blower (with, I think, a TAS Cougar grav tank) – this proved to be the high spot of my day. My Stewart power armour did tear some holes in the HS infantry for a while, and a bunch of Firefly combat drones caused consternation but no real casualties apart from a jeep, but that was about it. Several of Dave’s blower tanks had armament or mobility hits but I was just short of knocking them out each time and they’d soon be repaired and back on the battlefield.

So, without too much more dwelling on my comprehensive defeat, here are some photos …

(Slammers vehicles by Ainsty Castings, infantry and skimmers by GZG. TAS and Stewart vehicles and power armour by Brigade Models, TAS infantry and grav bikes again by GZG, Stewart infantry from Armies Army. Buildings and civilian vehicles by Brigade Models).

Posted in 15mm SF, Hammer's Slammers | Comments Off

Atlantic Wall Available

Posted on November 3, 2014 by Tony

We’ve just uploaded the Atlantic Wall sets to the website – two sets of metal bunkers and one single resin piece. The sets have a good representative selection of the many types of artillery, anti-tank and infantry bunkers built by the Germans around the Normandy coastline and of course other parts of Europe.

SSS-8043 – Atlantic Wall Set #1 – £6.00
SSS-8044 – Atlantic Wall Set #2 – £5.00
SSS-8045 – Grand Bunker – £0.50

Posted in New Releases, Small Scale Scenery | Comments Off

New for Crisis

Posted on October 31, 2014 by Tony

Last post before I go off to Crisis (in fact I’ve already left, this is a timed post !). We have a number of new items at the show in several ranges, which I’ll quickly summarise below.

Phil sprang a surprise on me this week by turning up with some new Belgian figures for the Great War range. We have kneeling NCOs and buglers for all of the infantry types, including ones wearing a side cap (some infantry units wore side caps instead of Shakos early in the war). These are so new that there are no photos, you’ll just have to come and find us tomorrow.

In 15mm we have the South African Buffel light APC and Hippo truck which have moved into full production and should be on the website early next week. The Buffel is available with the option of a hatch and pintel weapon, light MG turret or missile turret. Support and AA versions should be following shortly. We also have a few pre-production Angelshark VTOLs (literally just a couple left) if you would like to get one before the full release.

SF15-603 – Buffel Light APC – £8.00
SF15-608 – Hippo Heavy Truck – £8.50
SF15-704 – Angelshark VTOL – £8.00

You’ve already seen Bonn Station and the Atlantic Wall in 2mm, and these will all be available.

SSS-8042 – Bonn Hauptbahnhof – £3.50
SSS-8043 – Atlantic Wall Set #1 – £6.00
SSS-8044 – Atlantic Wall Set #2 – £5.00
SSS-8045 – Grand Bunker – £0.50

Plus of course we have the new Aeronef released at the end of last week.

VAN-214 – Herring class Biplane Light Bomber (x6) – £1.25
VAN-417 – Ader class Monoplane Fighter (x6) – £1.25
VAN-513 – Oryol class Biplane Bomber (x3) – £1.00

See you tomorrow ! If you can’t make it, then any of these items that aren’t already on the website will be added in the next week or two.

Posted in 15mm SF, Aeronef, Great War, New Releases, Shows, Small Scale Scenery | 2 Comments

Mur de l’Atlantique

Posted on October 30, 2014 by Tony

Amid all the shows and continuous stocking up, Phil has still found time to produce some new moulds. Amongst the new items we’ll have at Crisis will be our 2mm Atlantic Wall models. These ended up being so numerous that we’ve split them into two full sets plus a single separate resin bunker.

Set one contains larger artillery bunkers, some with separate guns. There is one M-262a Fire Direction bunker, four M-272 casemates with ex-destroyer turrets (as at the Longues-sur-Mer battery), four kettle emplacements with separate heavy artillery pieces, four H-669 casemates which would house conventional artillery pieces (as at the Merville battery) and three ammunition bunkers.

The second set consists of smaller Tobruk emplacements, anti-tank bunkers. etc. The Vf600-SK bunkers were sited on beach walls with the gun firing in enfilade down the beaches, but with an almost impervious concrete wall facing the sea. H-677 bunkers protected large 88mm anti-tank guns, while the smaller H-667 bunkers were equipped with 50mm guns. Tobruk bunkers (named after ones first developed by the Italians in Libya) were very numerous and could be equipped with a single machine gun, light mortar or a turret taken from a captured French light tank – several of our models have tiny FT-17 turrets. There is also a pair of larger AA bunkers which would both house personnel and also have a FlAK gun on the roof.

The largest model is the Grand Bunker (Der Grosse Bunker/Le Grand Bunker), used as an anti-aircraft control site but which dominated Sword Beach at Ouistreham.

SSS-8043 – Atlantic Wall #1 Artillery Bunkers – £6.00
SSS-8044 – Atlantic Wall #2 Small Bunkers – £5.00
SSS-8045 – Atlantic Wall Le Grand Bunker – £0.50

They aren’t on the website yet, look out for that early next week.

Posted in New Releases, Small Scale Scenery | Comments Off

All Aboard !

Posted on October 29, 2014 by Tony

Long, long ago, when Brigade started up, we made a selection of 6mm buildings as our first range. The very first building was a church, there were some townhouses, a bridge, small tower block etc, and we made destroyed or damaged versions of each one. The other day I came across some very old masters that never made it into the range, one of which was a model that had become something of a standing joke between Phil and I. For some reason I’d got it into my head to make a model of Bonn railway station, or Bonn Hauptbahnhof to give it the German name, a rather magnificient edifice built in 1844. It was a pretty detailed model and when Phil saw the first partly completed section he laughed derisively, declaring that a) I would never finish it and b) would be a nightmare to cast even if I did. He was of course correct on both counts – I never did finish it, but if I had the detailed stonework would have been a real headache to cast in resin without ending up with something shot through with air bubbles.

Ever since those days, the model has been part of Brigade folklore. However, with the advent of the Small Scale Scenery 2mm range and armed with this new-fangled 3D printing technology, I have made it my mission to finally bring the model to production in some form – and here it is, finally.

The sharp-eyed may have spotted it lurking in the background of some of the shots of the Stoke Rochford terrain, masquerading as Frampton Central Station. This version was very rapidly painted for the game, but still looks pretty sharp.

SSS-8042 – Bonn Station – £3.50

Posted in New Releases, Small Scale Scenery, Updates and General Waffle | 1 Comment

Brigade Models

Sound the Bugle !

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South African Support

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All Washered Up

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A Sticky Lesson

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New 15mm South African Releases

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Slammed Again

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Atlantic Wall Available

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New for Crisis

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Mur de l’Atlantique

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All Aboard !

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