Base-ick Instinct

Posted on September 11, 2023 by Tony

Yes, that’s probably a terrible headline…

But today we have several new types of resin bases aimed at 15mm models.

The first is a set of flying stands for grav vehicles and VTOLs. There are five different bases, pre-textured with rocks and dirt and with a hole in the middle. They are supplied with a ~200mm length of acrylic rod which you can cut to suit your requirements (it made more sense to us to supply this uncut rather than dictate how high your vehicles would be hovering).

We also have three new types of resin figure base. These all have slots for five figures, so will suit games such as Osprey’s recent release Xenos Rampant. There’s a base with regular spacing for normal troops, one with slightly more irregular spacing for creatures or hordes, and a compact variant for smaller figures. All slots are for figures on 16mm round bases – Euro 1-cent coins are perfect if you can get them, or our M8 washers are the same size. The two larger resin bases have holes for magnets (not supplied). The bases are supplied unpainted and untextured – the photos below show what they look like once painted.

SF15-946 – 5-figure Regular Base – £0.60
SF15-946a – 5-figure Irregular Base – £0.60
SF15-947 – 5-figure Compact Base – £0.40
SF15-948 – Grav Vehicle Bases (x5) – £3.00

Posted in 15mm SF, New Releases | 1 Comment

Killer Whale

Posted on September 8, 2023 by Tony

First a reminder – it’s Colours tomorrow, hopefully we’ll see some of you there.

And another reminder – we’re on holiday next week, the website will remain open for orders but nothing will get dealt with until we return on Monday 18th. This covers orders from the 7th of September onwards – unfortunately restocking and loading for the show yesterday meant that we weren’t able to tackle a couple of orders that came in during the day.

And now – something new for the Antipodeans; the Orca class Battlecruiser sets off for distant stars, bolstering the PacFed spacefleet.

A two-piece metal kit, it boasts four engines (more engines = more speed, of course !) and photon torpedo tubes in the main hull.

We’ll have some in stock on Saturday at Colours, and any mail orders will be dealt with when we return from holiday.

SFS-702 – Orca class Battlecruiser – £4.50

Posted in New Releases, Spaceships | 1 Comment

Time for a Short Break

Posted on September 5, 2023 by Tony

After last Sunday’s return to the Hereward show for the first time in four years, we’re gearing up and restocking for Colours on Saturday.

After this, it’s holiday time again – Tony is off to the south coast with the Brigadieress and the hound for a few days R and R. Unlike last year, when illness had left us badly behind, this year we’re in a much better state and pretty much up to date with orders. So we’ll leave the website open, with the obvious caveat that any new orders won’t be dealt with until we reopen the workshop on the 18th.

Hopefully we’ll be able to cram in another new release before then, there should be enough time before setting off for Newbury on Friday afternoon.

Posted in Updates and General Waffle | 2 Comments

Man the Walls !

Posted on September 1, 2023 by Tony

We’ve created some new versions of our 6mm sci-fi Town Walls with walkways on the inside (well, we assume you’ll put them on the inside !) so that guards and defenders can keep a lookout for any attackers. We have straight walls, some with stairs from ground level, along with corner pieces.

In addition, we have a second type of entrance – our original version was open, whereas this one has small towers either side of a two-piece metal gate.

All of the new pieces have the same end connections as our existing walls and can be interchanged. We’ll have some stock of these at Hereward on Sunday.

B300-189 – Gateway with Towers – £2.50
B300-190 – Walls with Walkway (x4) – £6.00
B300-191 – Corners with Walkway (x4) – £6.00

Posted in 6mm SF, New Releases | 1 Comment

The Autumn Season

Posted on August 26, 2023 by Tony

After a couple of months off, we return to the show circuit for the three autumn shows – Hereward next weekend, Colours the weekend after and SELWG in October.

As always we welcome orders to be collected at the shows, either paid in advance or on the day. We need these sooner rather than later – this is especially true for Hereward, since that’s rather crept up on us (we had to bump another blog post today to get this one in !) and there’s an inconvenient bank holiday due on Monday which reduces our spare time this week. But any Colours orders will be welcomed as soon as possible, since there are only a few days between the shows so any spare casting time that week will likely be taken up by restocking. Obviously you have a bit longer as far as SELWG is concerned.

You can either send us an email with your order and pay on the day, or alternatively you can place an order via the website (using the Collect in Person shipping option to avoid shipping charges) and pay in advance. As usual we’ll be taking cash and credit cards on the day.

Click on any of the show logos below to go to their pages.

Posted in Shows | 1 Comment

Leader of the Pack

Posted on August 24, 2023 by Tony

Pack animals have been used by military forces throughout history, supporting special forces and insurgents into the 21st century. So we persuaded Jeremey ‘Germy’ Claridge to convert our Shomix Herd Animals into sci-fi equivalents. There are two models carrying a collection of assorted baggage which would be perfect for special ops scenarios.

They could also be teamed up with our SAC or PacFed mounted infantry to create fully mounted special forces teams.

Shomix pack animals accompany a strike team through the jungles of Nozama Prime.

SF15-015 – Shomix Pack Animals (x2) – £1.50

Posted in 15mm SF, New Releases | 1 Comment

Hit the North

Posted on August 18, 2023 by Tony

The República de Colombia is the northern-most South American country, and occupies a unique position with significant coastlines on both the East and West of the continent, either side of the border with Panama. Because of this, it has developed a large force of long-range fixed-wing aircraft to patrol the regions of the Caribbean Sea and Pacific Ocean off its shores.

The tandem-winged Libélula (Dragonfly) long range patrol craft are capable of staying in the air for days at a time, refuelled in-flight by Nodriza class support vessels. Replenishment is a tricky operation that involves the aircraft flying alongside and slightly below the mothership, matching course and speed. Cranes are used to lower supplies and fuel lines into a large dorsal hatch where they are gathered by the crew. This involves considerable skill on the part of the pilot, and a not-insignificant amount of bravery on the part of the handlers on top of the plane. Each Nodriza can handle two aircraft at a time, and carries food, fuel and spare parts to keep a whole squadron in action for several weeks.

The Fuerza Aeroespacial Colombiana also operates several wings of Albatros gunships; these have bombs for attacking surface targets, and light, rapid-fire guns for aerial targets.

Colombian aircraft in close formation with a Nodriza mothership.

The FAC also has a small force of conventional aéronef, based around the aging Cundinamarca class light battleships, built locally but armed with British-supplied weapons. These are backed up by several smaller classes of vessel.

Colombian patrol group

VANFP-3101 – Colombian Fleet Pack – £24.00
VANFP-3111 – Colombian Air Squadron – £16.50
VAN-3101 – Cundinamarca class Light Battleship – £7.00
VAN-3102 – Marroquin class Light Cruiser – £2.50
VAN-3103 – Almirante Tono class Destroyer – £1.50
VAN-3104 – Defensora class Patrol Vessel (x2) – £1.50
VAN-3105 – Nodriza class Support Vessel – £6.50
VAN-3106 – Libélula Patrol Aircraft (x3) – £4.50
VAN-3107 – Albatros Gunship (x3) – £4.00

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

Early Bath

Posted on August 11, 2023 by Tony

This week we have further additions to the Roman buildings collection in the Small Scale Scenery range.

First up we have a Roman baths complex, based on a reconstruction of the ones in Weißenburg in Germany, discovered in 1977. It has the distinctive vaulted roofs over the various hot, warm and cold baths, and a circular laconicum (sweat room – equivalent to a sauna).

Weißenburg Roman Baths

Next is the Mausoleum of Galerius, also known as the Rotunda of Galerius. This was built by the Emperor Galerius in AD306 in Thessaloniki, Greece. The 30m dome is comparable to, although much smaller than, Rome’s Pantheon and was possibly intended as his mausoleum. It has been through multiple uses over the years, as a Christian Basilica and church and Muslim mosque, from which use a minaret still survives. Nowadays it’s a designated historical monument, although the Orthodox church still uses it for certain events. Our model shows it as built, without the modifications of later years.

Mausoleum of Galerius

Previewed before Joy of Six, the next new item is the Porta Nigra, or ‘Black Gate’ from Trier in Germany (the name refers simply to the type of stone used, rather than anything more sinister). It was built in AD170 as the largest of the four gates in the city walls. In the Middle Ages it too was repurposed as a church, with significant additional building works including a spire – it also lost the top of one of the original towers in the process. This was reversed in 1804 when Napoleon ordered that it should be restored to its Roman form. Again, this model shows the gate in its original form.

Porta Nigra

Finally, we’ve created some new wall sections for the Modular Castle set. These have curved bastions with shallow roofs which match those of the Porta Nigra, so you can recreate a walled Roman city. You can see them in the image above with the gateway.

SSS-8203 – Porta Nigra – £2.50
SSS-8204 – Mausoleum of Galerius – £2.00
SSS-8205 – Roman Baths – £2.50
SSS-8120e – Walled with Roof Bastion (x2) – £1.50

Posted in New Releases, Small Scale Scenery | 1 Comment

From the Archives

Posted on August 4, 2023 by Tony

We’ve been doing some tidying and maintenance at Brigade HQ recently – it does get a bit untidy, and there were several repair/upgrade jobs that needed doing that kept being put off. In the midst of this, while moving some moulds around we came across a several Land Ironclads ones that had been all but forgotten. We had previewed these long ago but they never quite made it to the website, and faded into obscurity. So we span the moulds up in the centrifuge, took a few castings to make sure they were OK and painted them up.

Land Ironclads rulebook cover

Land Ironclads rulebook cover

As a result, for the first time since (we think) 2011, we have some new Land Ironclads releases! Given that it’s been so long, and for those that don’t know, Land Ironclads is a set of Victorian SF land warfare rules published by Wessex Games. We don’t currently have any print copies, but the PDF can still be bought from the Wargames Vault. We make models for eight different forces including most of the major powers, plus some pesky Olympians, for that million-to-one chance. The models are 1/1200th, the same scale as our Imperial Skies fleets so you can use those for air support if you wish, and our Small Scale Scenery range is perfect for terrain.

Given that this is a collection of rediscovered moulds, there’s not really any theme to them, just a random selection of bits and pieces. We’ll start with a pair of British contraptions. The first is the Mk.V Artillery Conveyor, a self-propelled howitzer on a tracked armoured chassis. Meanwhile, scouting ahead is the Simms Motor War Car – this is listed in the rulebook and we thought it was made up, but it turns out to have been a real thing.

Mk.V Artillery Conveyor

Simms Motor War Car

Next we have some Steam Walkers – they’re about 6mm tall which in LI terms is about 25 feet, so the equivalent size to a tank. But we can also see a use for them as human-sized robots in 6mm. They’re in the Generic range rather than tied to any particular nation.

Steam Walkers

Finally, a pair of landing craft, naval rather than airborne and also in the generic range. There’s a larger boat that could carry a small (class-4 or class-5) Ironclad or a couple of bases of contraptions. The smaller ones would carry either a single contraption or a base of infantry.

Large Landing Ship

Landing Lighter

VLI-124 – Mk.V Artillery Wagon (x8) – £1.75
VLI-125 – Simms Motor War Car (x8) – £1.75
VLI-920 – Steam Walker (x12) – £1.50
VLI-980 – Large Landing Ship – £2.00
VLI-981 – Small Landing Lighter (x4) – £1.50

Posted in Land Ironclads, New Releases | 1 Comment

More Pint-Sized Great War Marvels

Posted on July 28, 2023 by Tony

Phil’s been at it again, scaling down more of the Great War range to 15mm.

There are five more models, starting with a trio of US vehicles – the diminutive Ford 3-ton tank, the Jeffery quad truck and Jeffrey Armoured Car.

US 15mm Great ar Vehicles

(l-r) Jeffrey Armoured Car, Ford 3-ton tank, Jeffrey Quad truck

Next we have the intact version of the British Mk.IV male tank, of which over 1200 were made. The Germans captured as many as 40 and equipped four companies of Beutepanzerwagen (roughly translates as “looted armoured vehicle”).

And finally a model that has yet to make it to the 28mmm range, a crashed French Nieuport 17 plane which would be ideal for a ‘rescue the pilot’ scenario. As well as the French Aéronautique Militaire, the N-17 served in the British, Italian, Russian and Belgian air forces during WWI and over a dozen others after the conflict had ended, surviving well into the 1920s.

Crashed Nieuport-17

GW15-102 – Mark IV Male Tank – £10.00
GW15-201 – Ford M1918 3-ton Tank – £3.00
GW15-203 – Jeffrey Quad Truck – £5.00
GW15-204 – Jeffery Armoured Car No 1 – £5.00
GW15-402d – Crashed Nieuport 17 – £7.00

Posted in 3D Print, Great War, New Releases | 1 Comment