Germy Gets Creative

Following on from the addition of Germy’s micro-armour range to the website, he’s been getting creative with various models from our other ranges and seeing how they fit into his 3mm world.

He’s taken several spaceships and turned them into dropships with the addition of some simple scratchbuilt landing legs – this is a Fearless class assault ship and a Revanche strikeboat carrier from the British and EuroFed fleets respectively.

He’s also used our smaller 6mm mechs as much larger walkers – here’s a Kirin backing up an Executive force of smaller walkers.

Similarly, the new Osprey and Atlas power suits fit perfectly into the 3mm world, both in terms of size and style.

Here’s a 6mm Aigle dropship which again works perfectly in 3mm

And finally, he’s gone the other way, using 3mm walkers as small versions with 6mm infantry.

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The Ziggurat of Seán

While we’re in the midst of the sale we don’t have much in the way of new releases or other news to give you, but it’s a good chance to share projects and photos that people have sent us. This is a superb little diorama by Seán Holden based around our Ziggurat of Ur model from the Small Scale Scenery range. Seán has used the Ziggurat as the centre-piece with buildings from the Middle-Eastern village set (there’s also the odd interloper from the Mediterranean Village set). The whole is surrounded by walls and towers from the Modular Castles range. He’s named it The Hanging Gardens of Cranbrook !

We’ve created a pack so that you can buy all the pieces that you need to make this layout yourself – you can find it here.

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Tied up in Red Tape

Some not so good news, I’m afraid. In a few days time (December 13th to be precise) new EU regulations kick in called GPSR (General Product Safety Regulation). This has rather caught us by surprise; we only heard about it because other hobby manufacturers started asking about them. There doesn’t seem to have been any news coverage about something that massively impacts smaller operations like ours. Without wishing to go into too many details, it covers product safety, but also (and here’s the killer) requires companies selling into the EU from outside to have a presence (a ‘responsible person’) within the EU. There’s a pretty good overview of things here if you really want to read more. Of course we don’t have any EU presence, since we’re not a multi-national mega-corporation with offices in every capital city. There are specialist companies that offer solutions to this and we’ve been given contact details for one or two (big shout-out goes to Andy Foster at Heresy Miniatures who has done a lot of leg-work which he’s kindly shared) but getting this in place will take a little bit of time (and will of course cost us money – we’re hoping it’s not so much that it makes EU sales impossible for us).

As a consequence we will be suspending sales to EU countries from next Thursday (November 28th). This also covers Norway, Switzerland and Liechtenstein (the three countries in the EEA) who align with EU regulations. We may also have to suspend orders to Northern Ireland, as the Windsor Framework means that EU regs should apply there. This deadline will give us time to process and ship any outstanding EU orders and get them delivered before the new regs kick in. You’ll doubtless have seen similar notices from other indie hobby manufacturers saying similar things, so sadly EU customers are going to be out in the cold for a while.

We can’t guarantee what time of day the switch off will be, so don’t leave it too late (please don’t assume that it’ll all still be working at two minutes to midnight).

Posted in Shipping Stories, Updates and General Waffle | 1 Comment

A Christmas Miracle

For the first time in several years, everything seems to have come together, the stars have aligned and we’re able to run our Christmas Sale as we would want to. No-one’s ill, there are no domestic hindrances, pandemics, material shortages or equipment failures. So, starting today, you can get 15% off most* of the items on our website, and this runs until midnight GMT on Sunday December 15th (so remember this if you’re in a different time zone – it’ll end at 4pm on the west coast of the USA).

Use the code BRIGADEXMAS2024 at checkout – this is important, unlike the old website the discount isn’t included automatically, you will need to enter the code for it to work.

*There are a few exceptions and conditions, as you might expect … shipping will still be charged at the full rate, since we were unable to persuade the post office to match our offers. The discount covers our metal and resin models – it doesn’t apply to rulebooks, dice, bases, counters, decals or anything else that we don’t manufacture ourselves, simply because the margins on those items are much tighter. We’ve also excluded a couple of smaller or slow to produce ranges just to make life easier on ourselves – so Iron Stars and 10mm sci-fi buildings, 15mm buildings, plus the SLUG Industries buildings aren’t in the sale. There’s also a minimum order size of £10.

Posted in Special Offers, Updates and General Waffle | 2 Comments

Play Your Cards Right

Something that’s really very useful for Imperial Skies gamers today – blank ship cards, either for copying out ships from the book or coming up with your own designs. The 85 x 55mm cards feature the Imperial Skies logo on one side and all of the ship’s statistics on the other.

Because they are standard business card sized you can use A4 plastic wallets to store them in or, if you have a laminator, they can be protected with business card laminating pouches.

We wanted all of the ship’s data to be on one side of the card so we’ve had to redesign them slightly to make it all fit. The various parts of the cards are laid out as follows (you can click on the image for a larger version).

Once you’ve entered your ship’s name in the top box, you can fill the rest of the card in. Cross off any crew boxes that don’t apply (so if you have a Yashima class battleship which has eight crew, block out the last two boxes). Fill in the gun values for each of the three gun types in the colour-coded turrets, plus any bombs in the green bomb icon. For Torpedoes and rockets, enter the weapon type – (T) for Torpedo, (L) for Long-Lance or (R) for Rocket – with the number of that weapon underneath (so a British Stingray would enter ‘T’ with a ‘4’ underneath for its torpedoes while a Japanese S-12 would enter ‘L’ with ‘4’ underneath indicating Long Lance. An Austro-Hungarian Lussin rocket boat’s entry would be ‘R’ | ‘4’).

Put the ship’s speed in inches in the Engine box, while the turning circle (‘A’ – ‘E’) goes in the white box next to the turning icon. Block out any damage boxes that don’t apply – going back to the Yashima, you’d cross out all of the last two rows completely, plus the last two boxes of row 5 (so the box containing the ‘-5’ and the one to its left).

Finally, cross out any repair boxes that don’t apply (the Yashima keeps all three) and enter the points value in the final white box. So a completed Yashima would look like this:

ISK-014 – Blank Ship Cards (x50) – £5.00

Posted in Imperial Skies, New Releases | 1 Comment

Infection Spreading…

We have a further seven additions to Germy’s 3mm range today, for two new factions – the Mercenaries and the Freelancers. The former use tracked and walker mechs along with some nifty fixed defence turrets, while the latter field wheeled tanks and heavy dropships.

Germy has also been delving into our other ranges and repurposing models from different scales for his armies. This Executive walker force uses our 6mm Atlas power suits and a Kirin mech.

While this small Freelancer force features 6mm Osprey power suits.

GMM-314 – Mercenary Defence Turrets – £2.50
GMM-315 – Mercenary Light Mechs – £2.50
GMM-316 – Mercenary Medium Mechs – £2.50
GMM-334 – Mercenary Heavy Mechs – £4.00
GMM-424 – Freelancer Medium Tanks – £2.50
GMM-425 – Freelancer Heavy Tanks – £3.00
GMM-430 – Freelancer Dropships – £2.50

Posted in Germy's Micro Armour, New Releases | 2 Comments

Baby Baffins

Baffin’s Legion is one of the prime protagonists in the Hammer’s Slammers story The Warrior, clashing with the Slammers around the town of Morobad. We came out with the 15mm versions earlier this year, and now it’s time for their 6mm counterparts.

Baffin’s command vehicles in the town square of Morobad, seconds before Slick Des Grieux’s M2 tank reduced them all to scrap…

This initial batch consists of nine vehicles – it should have included all of them, but we’ve had a technical issue with the jeeps so they’ll follow on soon. But even without those you have plenty to make up a powerful force of GEVs. And of course they also use the existing M12 tank destroyer as their main heavy armour.

M12 tank destroyers exit the walled town of Morobad.

As with the 15mm models, we suggest using our Polish figures for infantry. And the ambulance model also becomes part of the Surgeon General range, raising money for the Macmillan Cancer Support charity.

HS6-2011 – M12 Tank Destroyer – £1.75
HS6-4502 – GD-719 Light Tank – £1.00
HS6-4503 – GD-804 APC – £1.00
HS6-4503a – GD-806 Calliope – £1.00
HS6-4503b – GD-807 Missile Vehicle – £1.00
HS6-4503c – GD-814 Command – £1.00
HS6-4503d – GD-815 Ambulance – £1.00
HS6-4504 – Ar842 Twin-Hull APC – £1.50
HS6-4505 – GD-621 21cm Hog – £1.50
HS6-4508 – GD-834 Logistics – £1.00

Posted in 6mm SF, Hammer's Slammers, New Releases, Surgeon General | 1 Comment

While We Were Away

In the excitement of getting ready for RE-Play yesterday, we omitted to pull the trigger on this week’s new release ! The last line of this post even mentioned that we’d have some at the show (which we did, to no avail since no-one knew about them…). So, a day or two late, we give you the Westfalen…

For the past couple of years our eyes (at least as far as Imperial Skies is concerned) have very much been focussed on the arms race in South America, and the state of the fleets in that New World. But while we’ve been away the other great fleets of the world haven’t been idle, and development of new vessels has continued apace.

The German Imperial Air Service recently accepted the first of the new Westfalen class battleships into service with a launching ceremony at Löwental Luftschiffhafen. At 374 feet overall, the new vessel is around 40′ longer than the Markgraf class. It carries a substantial main and secondary armament, although analysis from foreign correspondents who witnessed the unveiling indicate a possible lack of quick-firing small calibre guns for defence against fast-moving aircraft. Nothing is known of its propulsion or internal systems beyond the obvious three funnels sandwiched between a pair of main masts.

The Westfalen is expected to become the first vessel in the newly formed 9th Division of the 5th Air Squadron, presumably to be followed by at least seven further vessels of the same class.

VAN-329 – Westfalen class Heavy Battleship – £8.50

Posted in Imperial Skies, New Releases | 1 Comment

A Slight Delay

A few housekeeping bits today. Firstly, it’s your very last chance to get in an order for RE-Play this coming weekend at the Royal Engineers’ Museum, Gillingham. If you’re in the area and at a loose end, the museum is well worth a visit and as an added bonus you’ll get to see us and half-a-dozen other traders, plus a plethora of demonstration and participation games including our club, Maidstone Wargames Society.

Next up, there’s a slight delay on posting orders this week. Although we’ve finished and packed all orders up to the end of yesterday, we may not be able to post them until Thursday – the local post office is closed for a couple of days. Normal service will be resumed once they re-open.


It seems that the page for the Peder Skram model (last week’s release) didn’t publish correctly, which explains why no-one has bought one yet ! That has been fixed, so hopefully they’ll start flying off the shelves now.

And finally, we’ve fixed a bug which was preventing many of you from accessing our A Billion Suns ship allocation chart, which matches the models in our range with the different ship classes in the game. The file can be found here, and we’ve hopefully fixed the other blog posts where this link can be found.

 


RE Museum photo by Immanuel Giel via Wikipedia, licensed under CC BY-SA 4.0 DEED

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Flying North

We’ll start with a reminder about RE-PLAY next weekend at the Engineer’s museum in Gillingham, Kent. We’re on quite a small stand and may not be able to bring everything, so if there’s anything specific you’re after then you still have a chance to get in your order (use the ‘Collect at Show’ shipping option on the website).

This week we venture to Northern Europe and the Scandinavian Union. The Union air service had a requirement for fixed-wing support, and purchased a variant of the A1D Shinden fighter from Japan, known as the A1S Blixt. In order to extend their operational range over the vast tundra and frozen seas north of the Arctic circle, some sort of aircraft carrier was felt to be required. Initial efforts were concentrated on conversions of capital ship hulls, but for various reasons nothing came of this. Finally, the Danish airship firm of Knudsen & Grønbæk ApS put forward a solution based on their successful Kalundborg class of heavy freighters. The rear cargo hold was replaced by a main hangar which was extended above the main deck level and topped by a small flight deck, and a small secondary repair and maintenance hangar was built into the rear of the superstructure. The forward cargo hatch was plated over and the space used for a twin gun turret, while four barbettes were grafted onto the hull sides for triple-barrelled AA turrets.

The result is a class which serves more as a support tender rather than a true aircraft carrier. The vessels were built to commercial rather than military standards so, apart from the turrets and barbettes, they are completely lacking in armour. This perceived weakness has yet to be tested in combat, and the Peder Skram class has so far proved a success in long patrols in the frozen north.

VAN-2303 – Peder Skram class Aircraft Tender – £8.00

Posted in Imperial Skies, New Releases | 2 Comments