Holiday Time – Not

Posted on June 22, 2020 by Tony

Today I shouldn’t be here – The Brigadieress and I should be on a plane to France, or Spain, so somewhere else warm. But, like everyone else, we’re not. However, although we can’t go anywhere, I’m still going to have a few days off over the next fortnight – the weather forecast is decent so we’ll have a barbecue in the garden or take the dog to the beach (and I have a feeling that I’m also being lined up for some decorating or DiY work).

The upshot is that for the next fortnight, although I will still be processing orders, it will be at a slower rate and there will be a longer turnaround than usual. I will also be a bit slower at responding to messages and enquiries too.

Posted in Updates and General Waffle | Comments Off on Holiday Time – Not

Road to Recovery

Posted on June 19, 2020 by Tony

Today we have three very useful 15mm accessory packs. The first is a conversion kit for creating engineering or recovery vehicles, consisting of a crane and a dozer blade (which can be one of three types). It also has a converter so that it will fit either of our standard turret ring sizes. We’ve made up several example vehicles showing what can be done with the pack.

The other packs contain respectively one each of the three dozer blades, or two recovery cranes.

We also sell a pack of two smaller cranes (from the Hammer’s Slammers E8 recovery vehicle). These have non-standard turret rings, so the pack now includes converter rings so that they will fit our standard small turret rings, and plates so that they can be fitted to a flat surface such as a truck bed.

SF15-932 – Small Cranes (x2) – £3.00
SF15-938 – Engineering Vehicle Conversion kit – £3.00
SF15-939 – Dozer Blades (x3) – £3.00
SF15-942 – Recovery Cranes (x2) – £4.00

Posted in 15mm SF, New Releases | 1 Comment

D-Day!

Posted on June 16, 2020 by Tony

OK, so we’re a few days late …

Ian Maun has shown us some pictures of his 2mm D-Day diorama, and kindly allowed us to put the pictures on our blog. The following are Ian’s words on its construction:

The beach is sandpaper and the cliffs are layered cardboard and modelling clay, dry-brushed, with Woodlands Scenics grass-mats and trees.

The view is from the north, so the beach to the left is the eastern beach, and the beach to the right is the western. The eastern beach is still under bombardment from HMS Warspite (the Eagle model), HMS Roberts (Navis) and a Landing Ship Tank (Rocket). Following Salerno, Warspite’s ‘X’ turret is still out of action. No troops have yet landed. Shells are exploding and there are shell craters on the beach and in the fields. The town hotel is burning. The town buildings are a mixture of Langton and Brigade models.

The central beach is the main focus of action with troops and armour landing. The troops are Irregular Miniatures 2mm, as are most of the armour and other vehicles. The LCAs are mainly by Shapeways, and the LCTs are Irregular Miniatures and some unknown makes. Their blue and white camouflage has had black added to it sharpen the contrast. The beach defences include posts, Y-shaped defences with a Teller mine and ‘Czech defences’, six-sided Xs made from steel girders, or, in this case, Plastruct rod! The beach is covered in barbed wire (made from coiled 5amp fusewire), behind which are machine gunners
The Pointe du Hoc is under attack from American Rangers from the east, with landing craft and a rocket- firing LCA. The troops have ropes going up the cliffs, and have secured the nearer part of the Pointe, despite the barbed wire defences. Although I’ve copied the layout of the guns on the cliffs, I’ve not taken away the guns themselves, unlike the Germans! The village is made from Brigade models, and the gliders are Irregular Miniatures. The battery in the middle is a mixture of makes. German tanks can be seen on the road. There are many German troops in the field. Field Grey paint camouflaged them too well, so that has been lightened.

On the western beach, armour is coming ashore and troops are making their way to the narrow ‘draw’ on the right.

At sea is the second wave of the invasion, with a large number of LCIs, as well as other landing craft and landing ships, laden with troops and armour. Troop transports are standing off.

Posted in Painting and Modelling, Small Scale Scenery | Comments Off on D-Day!

Escorts of the Rising Sun

Posted on June 12, 2020 by Tony

This week our Aeronef redesign program sees new versions of several Japanese vessels, plus the addition of two new models. The Mikasa patrol nef, Nagatsaki destroyer and Akitsushima heavy cruiser models have all been replaced by new designs.

In addition we have two new models, the Atago class torpedo cruiser and Shirataka class torpedo destroyer. These carry the larger long range aerial torpedoes unique to the Japanese fleet.

These models replace the older ones in fleet packs, and there’s also a new Heavy Torpedo flotilla pack available with two Atagos and four Shirataka plus flying stands.

VAN-601 – Mikasa class Patrol nef – £1.00
VAN-606 – Nagatsaki class Destroyer – £2.00
VAN-616 – Akitsushima class Heavy Cruiser – £4.00
VAN-619 – Atago class Torpedo Cruiser – £3.25
VAN-620 – Shirataka class Torpedo Destroyer – £2.00

VANFP-615 – Japanese Heavy Torpedo Squadron – £14.00

Posted in Aeronef, Imperial Skies, New Releases | 1 Comment

German Transfer

Posted on June 10, 2020 by Tony

You can file this in the ‘why didn’t I think of it before’ category.

The background for the recently released Turkish Sultan Selim battlecruiser mentioned its German roots, and how the Turks converted it and then built more of the same design.

So what if we go back to the original Teutonic battlecruiser, replace the round turrets with more Germanic square ones ? Hey presto, we get the SMS Goeben (which is the name of one of the real Moltke class battlecruisers that the Germans transferred to the Ottoman Empire in August 1914). It’s exactly the same model as the Sultan Selim, just with German turrets instead (the turret pins on the round turrets are slightly larger so you’ll need a steady hand to centre the German turrets on the rings, and the rearmost turret is a very tight squeeze against the superstructure).

VAN-328 – Goeben class Battlecruiser – £7.00

Posted in Aeronef, Imperial Skies, New Releases | 1 Comment

And then there were none…

Posted on June 9, 2020 by Tony

Sadly, but inevitably, our show calendar for 2020 has been completely wiped out. The last scheduled event, Colours at Newbury racecourse in September, has (quite understandably) been called off by the organisers. At this point we might as well cancel the rest of 2020 and pretend it never happened.

So we’ll see you in 2021…

Posted in Shows | Comments Off on And then there were none…

Postage Increase to USA – Advanced Warning

Posted on June 7, 2020 by Tony

The Royal Mail have recently given notice of an increase in their prices to the USA; it’s a result of the decision by the US Postal Service to increase the prices they charge other postal services to deliver overseas mail within the US (it’s known as the ‘last mile’ delivery). The result is that Royal Mail prices to the USA are increasing by about 50% starting on July 1st – as examples, the cost of a 500g parcel (probably the most common size we send) is going up from £9.81 to £14.88, while a 2kg package goes from £18.97 to £29.41. You can read more about it on the Royal Mail website if you wish.

As much as we’d like to, we can’t afford to absorb this, so we’re going to have to create a special shipping category for orders to the USA. Where previously US orders would pay £4.30 + 14% of order value, this will now go to £4.30 + 20% of order value. We’ll probably introduce this a couple of days beforehand, because there’s always a lag between orders being placed and when we get to send them.

We may start using couriers more often, for parcels in the 1.5kg – 2kg range it could be cheaper to use Fedex or UPS.

Please note that this only affects orders from the USA; prices to the UK, Europe and the rest of the world are unaffected.

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

Chinese Reinforcements

Posted on June 5, 2020 by Tony

This week we have some more new spaceships, additions to our Chinese fleet. The largest is a new version of the Jiangzi Flag dreadnought, a version of the existing Jiangzi with an enlarged superstructure for fleet command facilities.

The Jiangzi Flag is accompanied by three escorts; the largest vessel (at the front) is the Hangzhou class frigate. The two smaller vessels, the Wenshan class corvette (l) and Nanhai class Scoutship (r) replace the old Da Nang and Wonsan models (we changed the names because their North Korean/Vietnamese origin seems to trigger warning flags in PayPal and payments for orders including them can get held up).

We’ve tweaked the CDSU Battle Fleet pack (SFS-504) so that you can select either two standard Jiangzi dreadnoughts or one plus a Flag variant.

SFS-502 – Jiangzi Flag Dreadnought – £6.50
SFS-541 – Hangzhou class Frigate – £1.25
SFS-550 – Wenshan class Corvette – £1.00
SFS-551 – Nanhai class Scoutship – £0.75
SFSP-504 – CDSU Battle Fleet Pack – £22.50

Posted in New Releases, Spaceships | 1 Comment

Six-sided Scenery

Posted on June 3, 2020 by Tony

More photos of other people’s stuff this week – this time a selection of 2mm scenery by our old friend David Frampton, organiser of the Stoke Rochford gaming weekends.

David uses his models for horse and musket-era games, basing them on hexes to suit the rules he uses. We think they look rather good…

Posted in Painting and Modelling, Small Scale Scenery | Comments Off on Six-sided Scenery

Lifting and Shifting

Posted on May 29, 2020 by Tony

We’re still very busy with orders currently – which is great, keep ’em coming! We’re turning them round as fast as possible, usually within 2-3 days, but then you’re in the hands of the various postal services. UK post is generally fine, some first class mail can take longer than usual (2-3 days) but the majority is still getting there next day. Overseas is a different matter. Mail to Europe seems to be about 7-14 days, so slightly longer than usual, but not excessively so. It’s a different matter further afield, however; to the USA, Canada, Australia and New Zealand, which are our most common destinations, 4-5 weeks is the norm, and 8-9 weeks is not uncommon (a customer has just told us of one package that arrived yesterday having been posted on March 30th). Everything is arriving, just late – we haven’t yet had to claim for a missing package this year. Patience is the key…

Next we have some show news; not unexpectedly, our next two planned shows, Joy of Six and Hereward, have been cancelled for this year. Neither are being rescheduled, so the next editions of both will be in 2021.

Onto some new releases. Because of workload I’ve been adjusting our release schedule a bit – I have a big batch of 15mm models (the last of our Salute lineup) that I’d like to get out, but I don’t seem to be able to find any time to build up stock in advance of releasing them. So instead we have some more 2mm items in the Small Scale Scenery range, stock of which is rather easier to manage!

First up is the largest piece, a railway turntable with a six-bay engine shed. It all comes cast as a single resin piece with the exception of the rotating track in the centre, which is metal.

Sticking on the track, we have these tiny railway cranes which come four to a pack.

And finally, more cranes but this time of the dockyard variety. Again there are four in a pack, two each of two types. I’ve made a mini layout with one of our resin jetty pieces and some dock warehouses.

SSS-8148 – Dockside Cranes (x4) – £2.00
SSS-8149 – Railway Cranes (x4) – £1.50
SSS-8158 – Railway Turntable – £3.00

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