Waldheim Dragoons in 6mm

Posted on February 7, 2020 by Tony

The Waldheim Dragoons, an armoured mercenary regiment, use the missile armed A2 variant of the Icarus M2 blower tank – the same vehicle that equips the Slammers regiment, but with different armament. These are supported by the lighter M56 Daedalus medium tank along with two slightly different air-defence variants. These models came out in 15mm last year, today we’re following with the 6mm versions.

The Daedalus is speedy hover tank, armed with a 10cm powergun and a 2cm tribarrel on the commander’s hatch. The M564 Calliope carries no fewer than four linked tribarrel gatlings, which in Crucible terms amounts to a massive 12 shots per turn! The M562 variant has the same turret as the M564, but is armed with two rapid fire lasers (still amounting to eight shots per turn) and a pair of Manta light missiles for taking on more heavily armoured targets.

Crucible playsheets for the Waldheim Dragoons can be found on the Hammer’s Slammers website (along with many others).

HS6-1912 – M56 Daedalus Medium Tank – £1.00
HS6-1912a – M564 Daedalus Tri-barrel AA Tank – £1.00
HS6-1912b – M562 Daedalus Laser AA Tank – £1.00

Posted in 6mm SF, Hammer's Slammers | 1 Comment

Formidable!

Posted on January 31, 2020 by Tony

You have to say the title in a French accent for it to work properly!

Today, we’ve completed the redesign process for the first of the major powers of the Aeronef world. With the release of nine new escort vessels, all of the French models have been replaced with new, 3D-printed versions (in case anyone was thinking that we’d already finished the British fleet first, there are still a couple of odd models that need to be done).

Today’s batch of new models includes two destroyers, three frigates, three patrol craft and a monitor. The smaller vessels are one piece castings with separate masts where appropriate, while the three largest vessels have separate gun turrets and (in the case of the Suffren monitor) side guns. The patrol craft are now supplied as a sprue of three vessels instead of singly.

VAN-405 – Le Brouchet Class Torpedo Frigate – £2.00
VAN-407 – Hussard Class Motor Torpedo Nef (x3) – £1.50
VAN-408 – Descartes Class Destroyer – £1.00
VAN-409 – Vaillante Class Destroyer – £1.00
VAN-411 – Perigeaux Class Patrol Nef (x3) – £1.50
VAN-412 – Hoche class Patrol Nef (x3) – £2.00
VAN-413 – Suffren class Monitor – £2.50
VAN-414 – Regnault class Destroyer – £2.00
VAN-415 – Siroco class Fast Torpedo Boat – £1.00

We’re hoping to get the German escorts replaced as well in the very near future – there’s just one mould to go.

Posted in Aeronef, New Releases | 1 Comment

No Show

Posted on January 28, 2020 by Tony

Some more show news today; SELWG, a long standing event held in the Crystal Palace Sports Centre, has been cancelled, for this year at any rate. They’ve basically reached the end of their tether with regard to the venue – access for traders has always been problematic, with only two doors to the main hall which are reached by a very narrow road and a loading area that is very tight for vans and lorries. Fortunately this should only be a one-year break, as the SELWG club is looking for for a new venue for 2021. You can read their post on the SELWG Facebook page.

Following the cancellation of ROBIN, this is the second show to be culled from our planned roster this year, which is not great for us.

So to cheer everyone up, here are some new upcoming 15mm vehicles, due for release in the next few weeks…

Posted in 15mm SF, Hammer's Slammers, Previews, Shows | 1 Comment

EuroFed Battlecruiser

Posted on January 24, 2020 by Tony

Today we have another of the models we previewed over Christmas – this is the EuroFed battlecruiser Tetuán.

At 74mm long, the vessel is larger than a Liberte class battleship, with heavier main weapons and a higher top speed. This all comes at a cost however, and the Tetuán’s aren’t as well shielded and are lighter in secondary armament.

The Tetuán is a one-piece resin hull with separate metal turrets.

SFS-402 – Tetuán class Battlecruiser – £6.50

Posted in New Releases, Spaceships | 1 Comment

New Range – 1/700th Coastal Forts

Posted on January 17, 2020 by Tony

We’ve had a few enquiries recently about how compatible our Small Scale Scenery range is with 1/700th scale naval vessels. The SSS range is 1/1000th, so they work out to be a bit small, which some people don’t mind – we sell a lot of models to 6mm gamers who prefer their buildings to be closer to ground scale. Others like their scenery and other models to match, so we’ve decided to cater to that camp by scaling up some of our coastal forts to the larger scale.

We’ve started small – both in size and number of models – with an initial offering of three items. All are single-piece models in resin.

Over 100 Martello towers were built around the coast of Great Britain during the Napoleonic Wars, of varying types. This pack contains two typical designs, one with a single cannon and the other with three.

Fort Vauville is a tiny fortification on the west coast of the Cotentin Peninsula in Normandy. It was one of a number of similar constructions built by Vauban in the latter half of the C.18th.

St Mawes Castle is one of Henry VIII’s Device Forts, built in the 1540s. It has been continuously garrisoned at various times since, including during the time of the Spanish Armada, the Napoleonic Wars and both World Wars.

B700-025 – Martello Towers (x2) – £2.00
B700-026 – Fort Vauville – £1.50
B700-029 – Castle St Mawes – £3.00

Posted in 1-700th Scenery, New Releases | 1 Comment

Shining Bright

Posted on January 15, 2020 by Tony

At Crisis last year, I was shown some pictures of our EuroFed spaceships by Eric Pigat. Nothing unusual about that, we love to see photos of our models painted up, since many of you seem to do a much better job with them than we do !

The difference with these is that Eric had modded them with LEDs to light up their engines – he has drilled through the models to route fibre optics from the engine to the base which houses the power source. He has even managed it with the tiny fighter craft, which is pretty amazing. They look absolutely stunning, as you can see from the pictures below. Bravo, Eric!

Posted in Painting and Modelling, Spaceships | Comments Off on Shining Bright

Deep in the Desert…

Posted on January 10, 2020 by Tony

We have some new 6mm buildings today – they’re in the style of the Primitive Dwelling from the Desert Buildings range, with flat roofs, external staircases and support columns. Rather than bundling them in with the rest of the desert buildings range (which is getting pretty big now) we’ve made them into their own range which we’ve titled Desert Outlands.

There are four so far (plus the existing Primitive Dwelling, which has been included in the range and recoded as B300-805), all of which are dwellings of some sort. You can buy them individually, or we’ve created a pack with two of each model in apart from the Small Dwelling, of which there are three.

We also have a new piece for the Town Walls set – a pack of four 45° Wall Sections to give you more flexibility when designing your layout. You can see them surrounding the buildings in the picture above.

B300-187 – 45° Wall Sections (x4) – £4.00
BP300-801 – Desert Outlands Pack – £2.00
B300-801 – Large Dwelling-1 – £2.00
B300-802 – Medium Dwelling – £1.50
B300-803 – Small Compound – £1.50
B300-804 – Large Dwelling-2 – £2.00
B300-805 – Small Dwelling – £1.00

Posted in 6mm SF, New Releases | 1 Comment

A Billion Suns

Posted on January 8, 2020 by Tony

If you haven’t already heard of it, A Billion Suns is a new set of spaceship rules from Osprey. They have been written by Mike Hutchinson, author of Gaslands, so come with a great pedigree, and are due for release in August*. Mike has been kind enough to include a number of photos of our models in the book, which he has painted himself (very, very well it must be said, as you can see from the photos below which are all Mike’s work). We plan on stocking the rulebook as soon as it appears.

We’ve been lucky enough to have been included in the playtest group and have played a number of games as it has evolved. The rules are very different from any other set – not just in the combat mechanisms, but the whole premise of the game which is much more about resource management than huge fleet actions. Rather than trying to explain it here, we’ll just point you at the rule’s homepage, where you can find out all about it. There’s also an active Facebook page which you can join and ping questions at Mike.

*UPDATE – Mike has posted on the Facebook group recently – the release has been pushed back from May until August this year.

Posted in Previews, Spaceships | Comments Off on A Billion Suns

Show Business 2020

Posted on January 6, 2020 by Tony

We’ve updated our show list for the year with confirmed bookings and others that we hope to attend but that we’re still waiting on confirmations of dates and attendance.

One notable absentee is RobinCon in Nottingham; although we were booked and confirmed for the show, it appears that the organisers have had some operational issues and decided to pull the plug (for this year at least) – but at least this was done with plenty of notice and as far as we know everyone that had booked a stand or ticket has been refunded (we certainly have). Hopefully they’ll be able to resolve things and come back in 2021. You can read more on their Facebook page should you wish to do so.

There are no new events – we have made a tentative enquiries about a couple of other shows but there’s nothing concrete at the moment, so the list looks like this:

23rd February : Cavalier, Angel Centre, Tonbridge
18th April : Salute, ExCel, London
14th June : Broadside, Sittingbourne, Kent
July*: The Joy of Six, Hallam University, Sheffield
September* : Hereward, Bretton Centre, Peterborough
12th September : Colours, Newbury Racecourse, Berkshire
October*: SELWG, Crystal Palace, London
7th November* : Crisis, Hangarie 29, Antwerp, Belgium
* – dates/attendance TBC.

We look forward to seeing you at our first event in Tonbridge, or anytime after that.

In the meantime, here’s a video from YouTube of our stand at at Salute 2018 (thanks to Robin Fitton for that)…

Posted in Shows | 3 Comments

First of the Year

Posted on January 3, 2020 by Tony

It’s the first Friday of 2020, and thus also our first new release of the year. We’re starting with a pair of new buildings in the Small Scale Scenery range from the Middle-East.

The first is a larger mosque with four minarets – this isn’t based on any particular real-world prototype, but instead is a more generic model. The main body is resin, the minarets are separate metal pieces.

The second model is the Roman fort of Qasr Bshir (also spelt Bashir) in Jordan. This fort, known as Mobene back in the day, was part of a chain intended to protect Arabia from nomadic tribes. The original is in surprisingly good condition given that it’s roughly 1700 years old!

SSS-8146 – Grand Mosque – £2.50
SSS-8147 – Qasr Bshir Fort – £2.50

Posted in New Releases, Small Scale Scenery | 1 Comment