A ‘Tenshu’ is probably best described as the equivalent of a keep or Donjon in a Japanese castle. This one was made and cast in 1/300th scale by Phil Page (aka 6mil Phil on Instagram) of Slug Industries. As you would expect from Phil, it’s a superb handcrafted piece of terrain that will grace your Samurai battlefields.
SLUG-004 – Tenshu – £55.00
Sample model painted by Gareth Beamish (ADC Painting)
We’re very pleased to announce that we’ve finally sorted out all the paperwork with our new EU representative and we’re able to ship to EU destinations again!
We were planning to announce this last week, but we wanted to clear the holiday order backlog first. That’s it, you’re all good to go over there on the continent !
Recently we previewed some new 6mm turret installations for the Yenpalo which we had on the stand at Joy of Six. Today they arrive on the website, along with their 15mm counterparts.
There are five types of turret in each scale – mass driver, fusion cannon, twin light fusion guns, air defence and missile. The remote turrets are operated from a control chamber within the armoured bunkers which the crew access via a door at the rear.
6mm Yenpalo Turret Bunkers
In addition, we have this pair of Yenpalo heavy combat drones (in 15mm only this time). The size of a small vehicle and armed with either railguns or missiles, these autonomous, semi-intelligent UAVs hunt out enemy targets without risking any Yenpalo lives.
B300-1008 – Yenpalo Turret Installation – £1.50
B15-1008 – Yenpalo Turret Installation – £10.00
SF15-1109 – Zahaq Heavy Drone – £3.00
The eight occupants of Pioneer Station’s Hiber-D chamber were dressed, alert (although still short of caffeine) – and disturbed. They’d just been rudely roused from hibernation – many weeks earlier than scheduled – and greeted by the sight of some of the station’s android autocrew causing mayhem.
Things had gone quiet outside the door, so Helen slid it open a crack. This time, nothing flew at her head – the Janebots had clearly become bored and wandered off somewhere else.
“What now ? ” she asked. “Come on Madiwa, you’re supposed to be in charge”.
“Yeah, thanks.” replied Madiwa Aquino, one of the station’s command staff. “Ok, so we have no idea what’s going on. Ideally we need to head for the command centre, but that’s three decks up. I say we head for the hold first, it’s close to here. If the droids have malfunctioned then I’d feel safer if we had something to defend ourselves. There’s a weapons locker in the office and we can find crowbars and other stuff that will do at a pinch”.
Apart from Dr Whitman, who wanted to stay put and wait for someone else to rescue them, there was little dissent. “Bullneck” Thompson took the lead, wielding a pool cue like a club, and they started on the short walk to the main cargo hold. As he rounded the first corner, Thompson froze.
“Droid” he hissed, as if whispering would prevent its sensitive auditory sensors from hearing him. “A 483”.
“What’s it doing ?” asked Harker Spitz.
“Nothin’. Just standing, like it’s in ready mode”. He advanced slowly towards it and it didn’t react. Feeling braver, he closed the distance to the droid and checked the display LEDs on its back, then visibly relaxed a little. “It’s OK, it’s just in normal wait mode as far as I can see”.
The rest of the group followed warily round the corner, and they could see one of the secondary cargo access hatches ahead.
Someone had the bright idea to send the droid in first. Helen, who was used to working with the hulking yellow automatons on a daily basis and so knew the sort of simple language that they understood, instructed it to enter the cargo hold via the secondary entrance and leave the hatch door open behind it. It clanked down the passageway, operated the large control plate and the hatch swung open.
The stench hit them as soon as the droid stamped inside. Thompson was first through behind it – and threw up almost immediately as he stopped just beyond the threshold. Madiwa pushed past Helen to follow him, and saw what had turned Bullneck’s stomach.
Blood. So much blood…
SF28-221 – Corpse with Crowbar – £4.00
SF28-222 – Corpse on Desk – £5.00
SF28-223 – Corpse on Chair – £4.00
SF28-224 – Corpse on Medical Gurney – £4.50
Today we’re delving into the nether regions of the space station and investigating the cargo hold. This is where the station’s stores are kept and sorted, inventory is checked and so on.
There are two sets of cargo – set one has several sets of crates and pallets, while set two has another stack of crates plus a pallet truck for moving stuff around, and several sets of shelves for storing smaller items. All are 3D printed in grey resin.
Cargo Set 1
Cargo Set 2
All of the items can be bought individually if you don’t want a complete set.
SF28-720 – Cargo Set 1 – £30.00
SF28-721 – Small Crate Stack – £12.00
SF28-722 – Pallet – large boxes – £7.50
SF28-723 – Pallet – small boxes – £7.50
SF28-724 – Pallet – loose boxes – £10.00
SF28-725 – Cargo Set 2 – £30.00
SF28-726 – Large Crate Stack – £15.00
SF28-727 – Pallet Truck – £6.00
SF28-728 – Shelves (set of three) – £12.00
The final part of our South American project is finally here – the Armada Aérea de Venezuela takes flight today.
The mainstay of the fleet is the General Urdaneta class battleship, named for a general and hero of the Spanish American wars of independence. It sports a pair of twin main turrets amidships, and four secondary turrets along with a large battery of casemated light guns.
Escorts are provided by several classes of destroyers and frigates. The AAV currently has no vessels classified as cruisers, although the heavier destroyer classes are a match size-wise for many other nation’s light cruisers.
Border monitoring duties are taken up by small patrol craft, supported by Mariscal Sucre class tenders. These refuel and resupply the Sabalo class patrol cutters to extend their range and endurance. Others are used as motherships for torpedo strike flotillas, carrying additional torpedoes to rearm their flock of Caribe class torpedo launches.
VAN-3501 – General Urdaneta class Battleship – £8.00
VAN-3502 – Mariscal Sucre class Tender – £8.00
VAN-3503 – Yavire class Destroyer – £2.00
VAN-3504 – Naiguatá class Destroyer – £2.00
VAN-3505 – Warao class Frigate – £1.50
VAN-3506 – Small Craft – £1.00
At this point we sit down, take a deep breath and begin planning the next phase of Imperial Skies world domination…
Just a quick reminder to get any orders in for Joy of Six on Sunday – we’ll be in the workshop right up until Friday, but the sooner you can get the orders in the easier it’ll be for us. You can either place an order via the website (use the collect at show shipping option) and select to pay up front or on the day. Or you can just send us a list (use the contact form) and we’ll sort it out for you. This is important if you want anything from the ranges that we don’t bring with us (you can see the full the list of what are bringing in the previous Jo6 post).
We were hoping to have several new 6mm releases on the day but time (and other projects) has rather got away with us. We have managed to get one release ready, however; those implacable alien fiends, the Yenpalo, get these new fortified turrets. There are five different weapon variants, and we’ll have stock of all of them in Sheffield on Sunday.
We’ll also have a couple of the Slug Industry Japanese castles, which, as you can see, is a wonderful model.
The crew of Pioneer Station went into the hiber pods as scheduled at the end of May. The plan was for them to remain in sleep mode for a month while the planets of the Gliese-876 system did their synchronised dance.
Previous accidents on other stations had led to some rigidly observed protocols around hiber sleep when entire crews go under. Crew members from the same discipline are assigned berths in different compartments – imagine if the entire maintenance team perished due to a power outage in their assigned compartment, leaving no one to fix the clogged toilets (or worse, a leaky reactor) when the rest of the crew woke up. So key crew are scattered around different compartments, and hopefully at least some will wake up! The compartments themselves are distributed around stations rather than being concentrated together, so that a single system failure doesn’t affect all of them at once.
The eight crew members in Hiber-D all gradually came to as the lights slowly came on, dimly at first to give their eyes a chance to adjust. As the lid of his pod cracked open, Michael groaned, blinked a few times, rubbed his eyes and glanced over at the readouts. He sat up, rubbed his eyes again and looked more closely. Surely that wasn’t right – they should have been under for 32 days, but it was only June 10th ? Why were they awake now – and why was the compartment empty? There should at least be a Janebot waiting for them, ready with towels, coffee and toothbrushes, and if any of the crew had shown signs of distress during their sleep period then the medical droid might be there too. But they were waking up alone, and there was no coffee for Madiwa, so she was going to be cranky.
The rest of the early wakers stirred groggily. Madiwa predictably looked around for her caffeine hit, saw none and swore. In the absence of any medical droid, Whitman checked everyone’s readings for signs of hiber sickness. Helen walked towards the door – “I’m going to hit the head” she said, and palmed the door switch. She began to walk out as it slid aside, but as she took in the corridor outside her eyes widened. The mechanic suddenly ducked as something whirred over her head and clanged off the far wall. She jumped back in the compartment and hammered on the switch three times, triggering the emergency closure mechanism. The door slammed shut as something else shattered on the outer face.
She turned to face the rest of the crew. She was as white as a sheet, but in a relatively calm voice she told them “There are three Janebots walking down the corridor waving chairs and clubs, and one has just thrown a wrench at me. Braman appears to have ripped a conduit off a wall somewhere and is swinging it like a baseball bat. And I swear I saw Nurse Ratched wearing a crew smock running towards the comms centre. The Autocrew has gone nuts!”.
We met some of the Autocrew last time – here are a few more. But there’s something not quite right with these
The LNH-047 Science Droid is an android designed to help in the research side of the station. It is capable of performing quite complex lab tasks, and the wetbrain gives it the ability to help the science team figure out the ecology and geology of the two rocky Gliese planets. It has a hardened exoskeleton which can withstand the conditions planetside and is ideal for sending to the surface to collect data and samples. Only Dr Whitman knows why the Pioneer’s LNH is nicknamed Braman.
Janebots are general purpose helper droids which are found in numbers on just about every planet, ship and installation. Although they have wetbrains, they are simple designs and are cheaply mass-produced by the thousand (at least, as cheaply as a sophisticated artificial intelligence android can be). They are not designed to specialise in anything in particular, they just make life easier and more comfortable by doing the mundane stuff. They fix drinks, fetch snacks, wash, clean, make beds and are on hand for every little task. Need a pen ? Ask a Janebot to fetch one for you. Shower drain clogged with hair ? Janebot will sort it out. Identical in appearance, they are distinguished by their variously coloured clothing, and crews often name them after these colours – so the Pioneer Janebots are known as Amber, Rose, Jade, Violet and so on.
And we met the VCS-060 medical droid last time. This one has appropriated some crew clothing, possibly by forcibly removing it from its former owner first, and seems to have picked up a bonesaw along the way.
Each figure is available individually, or we have a set which includes these five figures plus the heavy duty, medical and security droids from the last release – so eight figures in total.
SF28-210 – Autocrew (8 figures) – £25.00
SF28-212 – Corrupted VCS-060 Medical Android – £4.00
SF28-215 – LNH-047 Science Droid – £4.00
SF28-217 – “Amber” Janebot with Stool – £4.00
SF28-218 – “Jade” Janebot with Club – £4.00
SF28-219 – “Rose” Janebot with Knife – £4.00
Designed by and printed under licence from David Sheff.
Background images by Handiwork Games.
It’s hot here – so much so that casting in the workshop has been starting at an ungodly hour to take advantage of the cooler early morning temperatures, and then is abandoned at lunchtime when the sun hits the metal roof with full force. So apologies if we take an extra day or two with your orders, but resin casting in 30°+ temperatures is tricky as the resin starts to cure in the pot before it can be poured, and parts of the centrifuge get too hot to touch so metal casting is problematical as well.
Adding to this, the local post office, along with a number of others in the area, had IT issues yesterday so we weren’t able to post the orders that we did have (apart from those going by UPS – they’re safely in the system). The week is not going to plan…
But let’s move on a week or two – July 14th sees our next show, the Joy of Six at Sheffield Hallam University.
This is a great show focussing on the smaller side of wargaming with a number of excellent looking 6mm games and most of the country’s micro-manufacturers in attendance – besides us you find Baccus, Scotia, Heroics and Ros, Rapier and more.
We take a cut down selection from our ranges –
You can place an order for collection via the website – use the ‘Collect at Show’ shipping option to avoid postage charges, and you can choose to pay in advance or at the show. If you want us to bring anything from any of our ranges other than those listed above then you’ll need to order in advance – so if you’d like some 15mm Slammers, Imperial Skies, spaceships or our new 28mm sci-fi range, make sure you get your order in beforehand.
We’re stepping into the lower levels of pioneer station today. Not for us the shiny science lab, the calm efficiency of the command centre or even the clinical medical centre. Nope, today we hit the head. Any sailors will know exactly where we’re going with this. For those not in the know, ‘The Head’ is the bathroom – according to the US Navy website ‘
The term “head” is one of those terms from the age of sail that has stuck around until now. The head is the bathroom, and the term comes from the fact that in old square-rigged sailing ships, the wind was almost always from astern (Connell and Mack). Therefore, Sailors would go to the “head” of the ship so as to not relieve themselves “into the wind.”
So now you know.
Our head consists of two toilet cubicles, a shower cubicle and a sink unit. You can buy them as a set, or each part individually. The cubicles even have opening doors, and there’s room inside for a 28mm figure to do … whatever they need to do. The Brigadier looks particularly proud of this one.
SF28-740 – The Head – £19.00
SF28-741 – Toilet Cubicle – £6.00
SF28-742 – Shower Cubicle – £8.50
SF28-743 – Sink Units – £3.00
Models designed by David Sheff, produced under licence. Background image by Handiwork Games.
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