Brigade Models

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.

Keep those Salute orders coming in, folks – as we mentioned last time, the website is now setup for orders for collection at the show for UK and overseas visitors. And the sooner we get the orders the better, so that we have enough time to prepare them.

Onto more new stuff for release at the show, and more new 15mm figures. This time a set of four starfighter pilots, two with their sidearms drawn. They’d be ideal for a scenario rescuing the crew of a downed fighter, or as background characters on a starship. Like the previous starship crew, they have been sculpted by Martin Baker.

So … how come there’s less than three weeks left until Salute !? Last time we checked we had ages, now there are just (checks calendar) 17 DAYS !!!

We’ve already had a few orders for the show, but we’re always happy to take more. UK customers are always able to order for shows using the ‘Collect at Show’ shipping option which means that you won’t pay any postage. However, since there are always a large number of overseas visitors that make the trip to Docklands for the event, we’ve set up a specific ‘Collect at Salute’ shipping option. This allows customers in Europe and beyond to place an order on the website and pay for it in advance and not be hit with any shipping charges. We have to set this up individually for every country so we haven’t done the whole of Europe – if your country is missing the option and you’d like to place an order for Salute, let us know and we’ll get it fixed for you. Or you can also just email us a list of what you would like and we can either send you an invoice, or you can pay on the day.

And so, onto another of our new releases for the show. This is a set of armed starship crew in the same style of uniforms as our existing starship crew set. Two are armed with rifles, the other two pistols – they’d make the ideal backup to an away team beaming down to an unexplored planet, although their life expectancy is probably limited… Despite the title of this post, we’ve resisted the temptation to paint them in the traditional red shirts of expendable crew, and instead have gone for these stylish 70s inspired beige uniforms with coloured sleeves (guess what classic TV sci-fi programme Tony has been watching lately …).

Our 6mm Agricultural Colony buildings range came out just over 18 months ago and has proved to be pretty popular, and has been added to a couple of times (and there are more in the works). Now we haven’t introduced any new 15mm buildings for a while, and so the ideal range for us to scale up had to be those.

But we had a think about it, and instead of just a straight scaling up of the 6mm models, we took a different approach. We stripped all the accoutrements (doors, windows etc) off of them and reduced them to simple shells. The external components were then made as separate pieces that could be positioned anywhere on the shells.

The building shells have a lip around the bottom half, just to make them look a bit more interesting. This means that where necessary the components have been designed with a rear profile to fit over this lip. Fortunately this profile is the same on all sides of the buildings so it doesn’t limit placement of the doors and other parts.

So far we have four different building shells – a simple rectangular building, two L-shaped versions (mirror images of each other) and a smaller, lower square shell which works as a shed or utility building. These buildings in this preview are made from one of the L-shapes (blue and green) plus the shed (yellow). Components consist of doors (three types), windows, roof units (four), aircon units (three), side extensions (two) and a large shed/garage door.

The idea is that we’ll sell the buildings as complete kits – something like a shell with a door, a couple of windows, a roof unit, an extension and an aircon unit. Extra components will then be available in separate packs so that you can further customise them. We’ve built up a couple so far and it’s surprising how different they can be made to look by utilising the different components and reorienting the doors so that a different face becomes the ‘front’ of the building – it’s not immediately obvious that that the blue and green buildings in the photos are the same basic model. These are both made up from the set of parts listed above.

One distinctive feature of some of the 6mm buildings is the raised bases, intended to keep the inhabitants safe from nocturnal vistors. So we’ve also made a resin base with metal legs that is large enough for a single building. You’ll be able to buy the buildings with or without a base (and a set of steps), or again buy the bases as a separate item.

Coming to a Salute near you in the next few weeks…

So last week’s release that was delayed because it wasn’t ready ? It’s still not ready. So instead, here’s another Salute preview.

Another part of our grand 28mm sci-fi scheme is a set of building components – doors, windows, aircon units and other parts so that you can create your own buildings. You can use whatever you like as the base for the building – a simple cardboard or plastic box, an interesting lump of polystyrene, an upturned picture frame or something more esoteric like a plastic plant pot or unusual piece of plastic packaging. Moulded card packaging (the sort of shaped inserts used to hold parts in place inside an outer box) are also fertile ground for SF buildings.

The simple dwelling we’ve put together as an example is made from a small folding crate which Tony picked it up from a homewares shop in France. It has the perfect look for a prefab building with its corrugated sides and corner detailing. It’s been roofed with a piece of 3mm PVC foam board (Foamex) and we’ve then added some of our new doors, windows and steps by simply glueing them to the outside with all-purpose adhesive. Yes, the roof looks a little bare, we’re waiting on some roof vents to complete the look, then it can be painted.

You can see the original box below in its folded and unfolded state, plus the rear of the building.

The Brigadier looks reasonably pleased with how his new home is coming along …