Today sees the release of another new space station to follow the Argos and Orthros. Following the mythological canine naming theme, this one is called the Maera, the dog of Erigone, daughter of Icarius.
It’s a simple 3-piece kit with one metal and two resin parts. The lower stem has a peg which fits into the base of a flying stand. As with our other two stations it’s unarmed, but you can always add turrets from our accessories range for extra firepower.
SFS-6010 – Maera Space Station – £8.00
First up – we are aware that a small number of people are having problems completing orders through the website. The PayPal shopping cart isn’t allowing you to complete the order, either returning an error message or just simply sitting and spinning. If this is the case, please send us an email and we can generate an invoice for you that should work OK. Unfortunately it’s something that’s beyond our control, we just plug the PayPal shopping cart into our website and hope that it works (which it does most of the time).
This week’s new offering is this trio of buildings in our Desert Domes 6mm buildings range. We have a small circular tower, an oval shaped building plus a pair of small domes linked by a passageway. There’s also a new set with two of each of the new models, plus four of the existing small domed dwellings.
Of course you don’t have to use them as desert buildings – you can paint them grey or brown and use them in a different setting.
BP300-403 – Desert Domes Pack #3 – £15.00
B300-414 – Medium Oval Buildings – £1.75
B300-415 – Small Tower – £2.50
B300-416 – Twin Dome Building – £2.25
After a period of radio silence here, we’re back. We re-opened the website a couple of weeks ago, although we did it quietly to avoid being swamped by orders (which sort of worked).
We’ve also been working on some new releases, as we’ve been a bit sluggish on that front for a while. We have a number lined up across several ranges for the coming weeks, starting today with a pair of 2mm ancient structures.
The first is another addition to our range of Roman architecture – it’s a enclosed forum (marketplace) with a small basilica at one end and galleried walls around the outside. Most decent sized towns would have at least one.
The second release is much, much older at well over 4000 years. The Ziggurat of Ur is a large, iconic temple built by the Sumerian King Ur-Nammu in the 21st century BC near Nasariyah in present-day Iraq. The structure is over 60m wide and 30m high, built in the form of a stepped pyramid. Over the years the temple deteriorated and 1500 years later it was restored by King Nabonidus, the last king of the Neo-Babylonian Empire. Once again time took its toll, and the Ziggurat was little more than a solid mass of mud bricks. In the latter part of the 20th century the lower facade and main staircase were restored by Saddam Hussein, although the upper levels remain a pile of rubble.
Our version is obviously slightly conjectural, since no-one knows exactly what the upper levels looked like originally (even King Nabonidus’ rebuild was apparently rather different from the original form). But we’ve gone with a reconstruction that hopefully isn’t too far from what King Ur-Nammu saw all those centuries ago.
SSS-8193 – Roman Forum – £3.50
SSS-8194 – Ziggurat of Ur – £3.50
Just a quick post to confirm that, despite the recent bout of illness at Brigade Towers, we will be at SELWG on Sunday. Tony’s been taking his medicine and it seems to be working, so he was able to pop down to the workshop for the first time in a couple of weeks and load up this morning. The website remains closed at the moment, as we still have orders that need to be cleared first.
Stock may be a little patchy – Colours was a very successful show and we sold a lot of stuff, but that stock needs replacing and we simply haven’t been able to do that completely. Most ranges are ok, but there are a few gaps in our Imperial Skies fleet packs in particular.
We do have a couple of new items; while Tony has been on his sick bed, Phil has been working the 3D printer hard and adding a couple of new items to the list of Great War vehicles.
First is a crashed Nieuport 17 fighter – this would make a great scenario objective for a game.
Secondly we have the Russian Austin Kegresse half-track armoured car, plus a destroyed version.
Finally, we have the German Bussing A5P armoured car. These will be on the website very soon, Phil’s just finishing off the painted versions and photos for the website.
GW28-301 – Bussing A5P – £21.00
GW28-402d – Crashed Nieuport 17 – £18.00
GW28-501 – Austin Kegresse Armoured Car – £18.00
GW28-501d – Destroyed Austin Kegresse – £18.00
We’ve had to make another brief closure of the website this week. Tony has been struggling with some sort of viral or bacterial infection for a little while, and has finally had to admit defeat and take a few days off to report to the MO and try and clear it up. Since he does all of the casting, packing and processing of orders, it effectively brings operations at Brigade to a halt. So rather than accumulate a big backlog of orders while he’s off, it makes more sense to shut the website until he’s fighting fit again.
Image by the Gnome project, used under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 3.0 United States license.
As we push on with updating older models, we’re been slowly replacing ones which are tricky to cast or mould. One of these is the Kerberos space station, which is quite wearing on its moulds so that they need constant replacement. We’ve been working on a new version, codenamed ‘Kerberos Junior’ for a while now.
Today we’re unveiling the Orthros space station, which is very similar in design to the Kerberos but a bit smaller (roughly 2/3rds the diameter of the Kerberos) and much easier for us to cast and maintain. You can see the difference between the Kerberos and Orthros below:
In case you’re wondering about the name – well, Kerberos (or Cerberus) was a 3-headed dog from Greek mythology; Orthros was a 2-headed dog, so 2/3rds the heads for 2/3rds the size !
SFS-6009 – Orthros Space Station – £9.00
We’ve made good progress on orders this week – everything left over from before the holiday break went in the post yesterday, as did a good number of those that have arrived since. By the end of today we should be back to normal (whatever that is).
So by way of celebration, here’s the latest addition to our range of 3D printed Great War vehicles – the Ford Model T Ambulance. Over 5000 examples were built for the Allies by Ford, and their robust design made them very successful in the role. Mechanically very simple and easy to maintain and repair, their light weight helped them negotiate the mud of the rear echelon areas – and if one did get stuck, a group of soldiers could easily lift it free. As with most of our other vehicles, a destroyed version is also available.
The Model T Ambulance (intact and destroyed) will become part of our Surgeon General range, which is dedicated to raising money for the MacMillan Cancer Support charity.
Found behind the opposite lines is the enormous 21cm Mörser M10. Despite it’s name, it was really a howitzer – 216 were in service in 1914 before being replaced from 1916 onwards by the lighter and longer ranged M16.
GW28-202 – Ford Model T Ambulance – £10.00
GW28-202d – Destroyed Model T Ambulance – £10.00
GW28-302 – Mörser 21cm M10 – £14.00
On the day of the funeral of Queen Elizabeth II, we Brigadiers would like to add our condolences and pay our respects to our late Monarch. Because of the bank holiday occasioned by the funeral we’ll be delaying the reopening of the website until this evening. We’ll be back at the workshop tomorrow (Tuesday) rather than today as originally planned.
Image by West Midlands police, licensed under the Creative Commons Attribution-Share Alike 2.0 Generic license.
We’d also like to pay our own very small tribute by renaming the largest of our British spaceships, the Leviathan class carrier, which will now be know as the Queen Elizabeth II class. We must thank one of our New Zealand customers, Phil Lane, for the original idea.
SFS-111 – Queen Elizabeth II class Fleet Carrier – £12.00
Next week Tony’s off for a late summer holiday (staying in a posh tent like the one below), so we will effectively be closed for a few days. We’ve posted as many orders as we could get done in the time, although with the Royal Mail strikes this week it will be a few days before these finally reach you (however, today’s has been called off which will ease things a little). Any outstanding orders will be tackled as soon as we get back on the 19th of September. Because we already have a not-insignificant backlog of orders, we will be closing the webshop for a few days – you’ll still be able to browse, but we’ll disable the shopping cart. We don’t usually do this, but we feel it’s better to not take any orders for a short period than allow a very large backlog to accumulate which would leave people waiting a while for their orders while we work through it. Obviously we’ll post on here as soon as we’re back to normal again.
This afternoon we set off for Colours, which is happening tomorrow for the first time in three years – and this year entrance is free, to encourage as large an attendance as possible. We’re on the ground floor at the eastern end of the building, stand A26. The stand may look a little sparse – this year we’re pared things down for minimal set-up/pack-up time, so Tony can make a fast getaway, head back to the workshop, unload everything from his car and then reload it again the next morning with luggage and dog ! We’ll have the usual comprehensive selection of stock, just fewer display models.
The next addition to our growing range of 28mm WWI 3D-printed vehicles is the Berliet CBA truck, of which around 40000 were made between 1913 and 1932. It was the most common French transport vehicle of the Great War, with 25000+ reaching the French army, and were especially vital in keeping the frontline of the Battle of Verdun supplied. They were still in service during the 1940 campaign, carrying 75mm guns of the French Mounted Artillery regiments. These old guns, which were designed to be horse-drawn, couldn’t be towed at speeds greater than 5mph so they were transported on the back of the CBAs.
As with our other releases, there are both intact and destroyed versions – the latter looks particularly sad lying on its side… Phil has done a cracking job on the painted version, recreating the Berliet logo on the canvas awning in freehand.
GW28-401 – Berliet CBA – £21.00
GW28-401d – Destroyed CBA – £21.00
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