Kidō Butai

Posted on April 10, 2025 by Tony

If you spotted this at the bottom of another post the other day – well done ! We posted a slightly blurry image of a bright red spaceship, which I’m sure many of you twigged was an addition to our Japanese fleet. It’s the Amagi carrier, which sizewise matches up to the Iwari dreadnought. It’s accompanied by two new fighter types, the Katana interceptor and the Bisento attack fighter. We’ll have stocks of these on Saturday, along with some Japanese carrier group packs

SFSP-1503 – Japanese Carrier group – £24.00
SFS-1510 – Amagi class Carrier – £12.00
SFS-1560 – Katana class Interceptor – £1.50
SFS-1561 – Bisento class Attack Fighter – £1.50

If you were wondering, the Kidō Butai (“Mobile Strike Force”) was the Japanese navy’s tactical designation for its combined carrier battle groups at Pearl Harbour.

Posted in Previews, Salute 52 (2025), Spaceships | 2 Comments

Firedrake Escorts

Posted on April 10, 2025 by Tony

Anyone remember the Firedrake, the massive multi-wheeled tank destroyer that we released at Salute 51 ? It’s part of a force that appeared in David Drake’s final Hammer’s Slammers story, ‘Save What You Can’. The Republic of Bessarabia face off against the Slammers and their employers, The Commonwealth (and, as is often the case, come off second best). Several vehicle types beside the Firedrake are mentioned, and we’ve produced all of them in the nick of time for Salute on Saturday. They’re so last minute that in fact they don’t have names yet, just descriptions.

The story is set in a snowy landscape so we’ve gone for a white/grey/pale blue winter camouflage scheme.

HS15-5002 – 8×8 Tank – £8.50
HS15-5003 – 6×6 APC – £8.00
HS15-5003a – 6×6 Support Car – £8.00
HS15-5003b – 6×6 Rocket Launcher – £8.00
HS15-5004 – 4×4 Scout Car – £6.00

Posted in 15mm SF, Hammer's Slammers, Previews, Salute 52 (2025) | Comments Off on Firedrake Escorts

Agri Update

Posted on April 10, 2025 by Tony

You’ve already seen our new 15mm Agricultural Colony multi-part buildings. But we’ve continued beavering away and have some more updates. We’ve made some more variations of the basic buildings which includes a large industrial style door which can be used to convert one of the buildings into a garage or workshop.

And there’s a brand new building body, based on the 6mm shops that came out earlier this year. The basic shop body comes with the usual assortment of doors, windows and other bits, along with an external boardwalk (that matches up to the standard building base) and a large shop sign on the roof.

There’s also some other bits and pieces – a short corridor piece that can be used to connect two buildings together, and a connecting base that can be used to bridge the gap between two buildings on bases.

See all of these at Salute on Saturday – remember, stand TE15.

Posted in 15mm SF, Previews, Salute 52 (2025) | Comments Off on Agri Update

Wall Furniture

Posted on April 10, 2025 by Tony

This should be a handy set for 28mm scratch-builders and converters everywhere. It’s a set of 35+ useful widgets and greebles to decorate interior corridors or external building walls. There are comms panels, junction boxes, screens, air vents and more. There are also some radio aerials and antennae for vehicles and the outside of buildings. The set would be also be great for making dioramas or small set pieces for photographing models in. Click on the image below to see exactly what’s in the set.

Tony has put together a small example piece of corridor section to show you what we’re thinking. The basic structure is simply two pieces of Foamex glued at a right angle. The floor grating is made from plastic cross-stitch mesh bought in Hobbycraft divided up with plastic card strips. The door is one of our resin interior doors which will also be released at Salute, the ladder is a 3D print (we may or may not have some of these at Salute – you’ll have to check with us on Saturday). You can see air vents, bulkhead lights, a screen, junction boxes, CCTV and so on. The parts in this test piece are all 3D prints (left overs from the production process) but the final pieces will be metal castings.

B28-902 – Interior Doors (x3) – £1.50
B28-906 – Wall Furniture – £10.00

Posted in 28mm SF, Previews, Salute 52 (2025) | Comments Off on Wall Furniture

Research and Development

Posted on April 9, 2025 by Tony

Another new set in the ever-expanding 28mm sci-fi range. This is a research lab full of workbenches, strange bio-tanks containing who-knows-what (one of which appears to have ruptured) and computers conducting nefarious experiments.

And here are some handy shelving units holding all sorts of supplies.

We’re still finalising the set contents and prices for all of the 28mm scenic bits and pieces – come and see us at Salute (stand TE15) where we’ll be able to show you the whole range.

Posted in 28mm SF, 3D Print, Previews, Salute 52 (2025) | 1 Comment

Ottoman Battlewagons

Posted on April 8, 2025 by Tony

We’re rapidly approaching your last chance to make an order for Salute – our last day in the workshop is Wednesday (the 9th), Thursday is for packing stuff and sorting out the displays, then on Friday we’ll head off to ExCel to set up the stand.

We’ve also reached the point where we’ve run out of time to finish painting everything for preview, so you’re now getting models in their undercoat (hopefully they’ll be painted in time for Saturday). This time it’s a pair of Ottoman Turk capital ships for Imperial Skies. The Barbaros battleship and Abdulmecid fighter carrier are based on the same twin dirigible hulls, with the Barbaros sporting a heavy main turret and two secondary turrets on the lower hull. The Abdulmecid has a large flight deck with accommodation for the fighter group within the capacious gas bags, although defensive armament is very limited.

These new resin-hulled models replace the old all-metal ones.

VAN-2007 – Barbaros Heyreddin – £8.50
VAN-2013 – Abdulmecid Fighter Carrier – £8.50

And since we’ve now stooped to posting unpainted stuff, we’ll just leave this here…

Posted in Aeronef, Imperial Skies, Previews, Salute 52 (2025) | Comments Off on Ottoman Battlewagons

Command and Control

Posted on April 6, 2025 by Tony

Bit of a SNAFU with the posts this evening, the wrong one went up, but that’s quickly been deleted and this is the correct post ! So there’s nothing to see, just move on to the next bit…

We have further Salute additions, again in the new 28mm sci-fi range. This is the Command Centre, a set of control desks, chairs, a holographic map table, computer servers and room dividers. As you can see from the chunky beige CRT monitors it’s in the style of 80s classics such as Aliens and Bladerunner. It’s where the Brigadier likes to run everything from.

There are several room sets like this on the way, how much we have next Saturday at the show depends on what Phil gets painted and how hard he can push the 3D printers!

And as an added bonus, we have these solid looking security barriers in case you need to block the corridor to C&C to prevent the zombies/zenomorphs/pirates from reaching it.

Posted in 28mm SF, 3D Print, Previews, Salute 52 (2025) | 1 Comment

Hexagonal Living

Posted on April 4, 2025 by Tony

We don’t usually release too much in our smaller scale ranges at Salute – we tend to find that they get overlooked in the plethora of big shiny new releases from us and other companies. So we save them for other weeks where they can stand out on their own, or at events such as Joy of Six which is dedicated to the smaller scales.

But there can always be exceptions. Some of you may have come across Germy (Jeremey Claridge) on our stand at previous Salutes, he lends an extra pair of hands and in particular mans the Celtos end of the displays. He also sculpts for us, and you’ll have seen that we’ve become the new home to his fantastic 3mm sci-fi range. So in his honour we have some new releases to complement his tiny tanks which will debut at Salute 52. Jeremey also painted all of these sample models for us.

There’s this unusual twin tower block, inspired by a Spanish holiday hotel !

Followers of the Germy website might recognise these, based as they are on some of his paper models.

And we also have this new dropship model. It’s a new design, but nearly identical to Germy’s original model – the difference is that this is a one-piece resin item, which is much easier to cast than the old metal one which came with a healthy dose of flash and five fiddly parts to assemble.

And we will of course have the rest of the range with us as well.

GMM-344 – Mercenary Dropship – £2.50
GMB-106 – Twin Towers – £3.50
GMB-107 – Hex Buildings – £4.00

Posted in Germy's Micro Armour, Previews, Salute 52 (2025) | 1 Comment

Shipping Update

Posted on April 3, 2025 by Tony

In a short break from Salute, we’ve been updating our shipping charges with an eye on the new Royal Mail prices that come into effect on Monday. The good news for once is that ‘updating’ doesn’t necessarily mean ‘increasing’, at least not for everything.

We’ve changed our UK ‘First Class’ option to use Royal Mail Tracked 24 instead (we’ve been doing this for a while anyway). This gives you tracking information (fairly minimal admittedly, usually only confirmation of despatch and delivery) and has allowed us to drop the price for small parcels by 20p. We also offer a First Class Signed-for service if you need that.

We’ve significantly overhauled overseas postage, since the new updated RM prices broke some of our existing price calculations. For US customers, we’ve been able to reduce the shipping costs of tracked services for parcels over 250g (only by a small amount, but that’s better than nothing). We’ve stopped quoting for standard untracked airmail, since for some reason it’s more expensive than a tracked service, so there’s no reason to use it. We’ve also been able to reduce the cost of courier services a little bit. On a related note, and to forestall the obvious question, we have no idea yet if the new US tariffs will affect individual consumer orders to the US, we’ll have to wait and see.

For the rest of the world, prices have increased a little bit across the board although not as much as we feared they might have. We now offer Standard (untracked), Tracked and Tracked/Signed options for all destinations. There are some odd anomalies in the price/weight brackets where sometimes Tracked/Signed is cheaper than Tracked and sometimes it’s not – you’ll just have to pick the best option available.

And finally, one of our first tasks after Salute will be to get EU services up and running again so that we can once again ship to Europe.

Right, that’s it – time to get back to Salute preparations.

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

The God of War

Posted on April 2, 2025 by Tony

So Josef Stalin called artillery, apparently.

New in the Salute 2025 lineup are these two PacFed grav artillery vehicles – the Tanami Railgun and Kakadu Rocket Launcher. They bring much-needed long range firepower to the PacFed forces.

SF15-708 – Tanami SP Artillery – £8.50
SF15-708a – Kakadu MRL – £8.50

You can see our full Salute lineup here (which is updated each time we announce something new). And don’t forget that you can place orders in advance through the website using the ‘Collect at Show’ or ‘Collect at Salute 52’ shipping options so that you aren’t charged postage.

Posted in 15mm SF, Previews, Salute 52 (2025) | Comments Off on The God of War