As a bit of Monday morning eye-candy, here are some photos of an Aeronef game run at the Houston Beer and Pretzels club recently. The game, as the name suggests, was a Mediterranean encounter featuring some splendidly painted Ottomans, Austro-Hungarians and British. We’ve put a few photos below, but you can go the the HBP site for more (and other Aeronef galleries besides).
UPDATE – an AAR has been added to their blog which is a bit of fun 🙂
Finally, we’re there – after a fortnight of hard slog, late evenings and lots and lots of casting, we’ve finally cleared the order backlog (and just in time too, as the weather has turned rather chilly).
Apart from a couple of orders that need special cast-to-order resin items, and two orders that arrived this afternoon after I’d left the workshop, every outstanding order has been cleared. Around twenty or so went in the post box just now, and I have around ten large boxes that need to be taken to a post office in the morning. What a relief for us, and good news for those of you that have been sitting patiently waiting for your orders – we very much appreciate everyone’s understanding.
So next week I can finally get back to working on new items. We have several bits already moulded and ready to go – eagle-eyed readers of Wargames, Soldiers and Strategy might even have spotted a new model of ours in their review column that hasn’t yet made it to the website.
I’ll also be starting on the 3D design work for the four new battleship models that were unlocked as part of the Imperial Skies Kickstarter, and I’ll be posting work-in-progress images of those as I go along.
I know I’m supposed to be slaving away at the workshop again today, and I will be soon, after I’ve dropped off the latest batch of orders at the post office. But I had to share these photos first, which arrived yesterday.
These are 6mm versions of some of our 15mm figures, created by Martin Baker (who also sculpted their larger cousins). To start with he’s made infantry and support weapons for the Poles and PacFed, thus giving us conventional lighter infantry as well as heavily armoured figures. Given their size, we think the detail on these is pretty amazing. We’ll be releasing them in the next 2-3 months.
Happy New Year from us at Brigade Towers – better late then never! Unfortunately, it’s still a quarantine zone here, with Phil joining me on the sick list this week. Our plan had been to post some previews of new models over this past week, but that’s something that fell by the wayside in favour of more recuperation time.
I will be returning to the workshop tomorrow, and the highest priority will be to work through the backlog of orders that has built up as a result of me falling ill during the height of the sale. At a rough guess there is about two weeks’ solid work to clear these, so that is what I’ll be doing to the exclusion of all else for the next fortnight.
We have tried over the past couple of years to release something new every week, but there have been times when we have simply been too busy to keep to this. Certainly at the start of this year we have quite a hefty workload so it’ll be a couple of weeks before anything new appears. We did have some new releases lined up which were intended to come out now, but these will be delayed until existing orders have shipped.
Imperial Skies
The Imperial Skies kickstarter ended just before Christmas, moving well past the initial target to reach four of the stretch goals for new ships. The ship date for pledges is April, and the hope is for us to have copies of the rulebook on the stand at Salute if at all possible. We have still to do the 3D design work for the four new models and will post updates on those as we go along.
15mm Science Fiction
The last of the old forces still to be replaced with new sculpts are the Chinese. This was supposed to have happened in 2015 but there simply wasn’t room in the schedule, however we hope to get them out in the first quarter of this year. Having said that, there is another rather exciting 15mm project in the works so it remains to be seen if we can do both or if the CDSU get pushed back a little.
We do already have masters for a number of new 15mm buildings ready for moulding, both additions to the existing ranges plus some completely new types.
Small Scale Scenery
Our first new releases of the year, when they finally appear, will be from this range, and will be further supplementing our selection of fortifications.
We’ve also had requests for some more modern buildings so we’ll be adding post-war houses and apartment blocks to the range before long.
6mm Science Fiction
Our 6mm SF buildings continue to shift in large numbers, and there will continue to be additions to the selection of structures that we have on offer. We have ideas for further types as well as more in the style of the existing designs.
We’re going to update our range of 6mm figures – our current figures have served us very well but we’d like to widen the range of what we have available.
As far as 6mm vehicles go, we’re likely to see additions to the existing forces this year rather than any complete new armies.
Spaceships and Aeronef
For both of these ranges, we have a policy of slowly replacing older models with new sculpts. The priority is to tackle those models whose moulds need replacing – if we’re going to make a new mould then we might as well do it properly and update the model at the same time. One of the main spaceship fleets is likely to be entirely replaced with new models at some point in the year.
Shows
We should be attending all of the shows we went to last year, although one or two have been rescheduled slightly which should ease the congestion in the last third of the year. We’re also pleased to announce that we’ll be attending The Joy of Six in Sheffield which is, as the name suggests, a 6mm-themed event.
Exactly as says in the title, this is the last day of our Christmas sale. It’ll be ending at midnight GMT tonight, December 23rd.
On a positive note, I went back to work yesterday and started ploughing through the order backlog. I started on the UK orders and have done quite a few, which will all go in the post as soon as I’ve finished writing this. Although it’s very late, hopefully one or two might be delivered tomorrow. Today I’ll be working my way through the rest of them, and Phil will be joining me tomorrow morning for a Christmas Eve final blitz to clear as much as we can. However, looking at the blizzard of orders that came through last night there’s clearly no chance of us getting to end of the pile.
Finally, Robin’s Imperial Skies Kickstarter ended yesterday with a number of pledges in the final couple of days to take it over £7k. This means that we’re committing to producing four new capital ships models, one each for the Britain, France, USA and Germany. We’ll keep you up to date with how the design of those is going over the next 3-4 months before our target ship date of April 2016.
First up – I’m still feeling pretty poorly, although nothing like as bad as yesterday, so I hope to get back to work tomorrow and start ploughing through the order backlog.
Secondly, and far more important, there are less than 24 hours remaining on RottenLead’s Imperial Skies Kickstarter. The project has already almost doubled its initial target, but we’re hoping that with a last day push it might reach £7k and the next stretch goal, the US Lexington battlecruiser – and Phil and I would really like to reach this goal, since we’ve come up with a cracking design for it !
Sickness has struck Brigade Towers, with extremely poor timing as we’re in the middle of the Christmas rush. The poor Brigadieress has had the worst of it, but this week it’s finally got to me and I’ve been completely out of action since Monday. This has inevitably affected our attempts to get on with the sale orders, and we’re a long way behind where we wanted to be. So we must apologise to several people who enquired after their orders last week and were told that they’d ship by the end of this week – I’m afraid they haven’t. And anyone who’s emailed with queries, again we apologise for not getting back to you sooner. This is one of the unfortunate side-effects of being for the most part a one-man band – when sickness strikes, there’s no-one to cover for you. We will do our best to get as many orders out of the door as we can next week, as things stand we should be able to clear everything with just about enough leeway to allow for any additional orders that arrive before the end of the sale (which is just five days away, in case you’d forgotten…).
Since we have obviously prioritised the clearing of orders, what we’ve unfortunately lost is a lot of time that we were planning to use to design some new models. I had this grand idea of having at least two or even three month’s worth of new releases stashed away for the new year, but that’s not to be. However, we do have some bits ready – a large box of 3D prints arrived on Tuesday, and when I finally get it open I should be able to share some of the new items we have lined up for the start of 2016.
Michael Ashford-Smith recently sent some photos of his project, repurposing some of our 15mm SF vehicles as German ‘Paper Panzers’ – a bit of speculation on the idea of German post-WW2 hovertanks. Sounds a bit odd, but please stick with us here…
We think the result is absolutely excellent, and with his permission we’ve posted some photos, using Michael’s own words to describe the project:
I ordered some of your great models some time ago, to be used as ‘Paper Panzers’ for various projects.
For the last few weeks I have been working on a project, which was just meant to be a practice diorama to try out water effects – seen on YouTube – using very cheap clear bathroom silicone and various plastic cutlery!
However it grew arms and legs and I was so please with it all I entered it at this year’s IMPS Scale Modelworld, Telford which I attended with my club IPMS Edinburgh. Have never entered anything there before, and was amazed and chuffed that it won a Bronze medal in the Misc Dioramas category.
It’s called Kreuzberg (Landwehrkanal) 1952, fictitious of course, and along with your Magnus and Wizard, it also features two boats from TheScene UK and Plastic Soldier Company vehicles and soldiers/ crews plus a Skytrex Kubelwagen.
Here’s the link to the YouTube videos for the water effects, there are 2 parts.
As the scale for mine was smaller, I just scaled down the type of tools – to smooth down the first layer I used one of those little ice-cream spoons (flat & square) but a bit of flat plastic would do. For the rough waves & wakes I used a rounded button stuck to a plastic tube as a handle. To get the finer edges or around the wooden posts I used a cocktail stick. I did a few test bits on cardboard to get the hang of it. Rather than use the silicone ‘gun’ nozzle I squirted it into a plastic container.
Thin coats only! The base surface was amazingly easy, I used kids poster paint from The Works, a scrubbed mix of greens, brown, blue & black bits for depth. White paint just below the boats’ bow waves or rough water. The silicone dries quite quickly so you can do the waves after a few mins. I thought the top surface was a bit matt, so gave it a coat of enamel yacht varnish (Vallejo gloss varnish or Johnstons Klear won’t stay on!) The varnish left a slight yellow/brown tinge which was fine.The project took a few weeks but was great fun.
All very cheap – a few quid for the silicone & ‘gun’, Slaters embossed plastic for the dockside road, and second hand bits of a railway farm building broken up for the building fronts. Concrete flood barrier/bunker thing was balsa wood & PVA/ sand mix for rough surface.
Some fantastic news today – Rottenlead’s Imperial Skies Kickstarter has passed the first hurdle and has funded, which means that the project goes ahead and the book will be printed. This is great news after just ten days – way to go, Robin!
So the next milestone is the first stretch goal at £4k – this is the first new model, the French Gaulois-class battleship. This is the point at which things get exciting for us as we get to start creating new items. Although we have a rough idea of the new models, there are no detailed designs yet, but given the successful funding of the game the perhaps we’d better start thinking a bit harder about them. The Gaulois will be an all-new model, along the lines of the Charlemagne battlecruiser but shorter and bulkier.
Any of the stretch goal models that get funded will be available to Kickstarter supporters at £7 each. Once the KS is over and all pledges have shipped, the new models will go on general sale – but the price will be higher than this, so during the KS is the time to get them.
In other news, the sale has started with a bang – the initial five days has seen a mini avalanche of orders. Normally we operate a first-come, first-served policy on orders, dealing with each one in sequence. During sales however, this policy goes out of the window and we deal with orders in whatever way works best – if we have two or three orders for the same items them we will do them all together, regardless of when they arrived. It means that some will be turned round immediately, while others could end up waiting a few days before we can get to them.
One last thing – when placing orders, please, please check the posting address. For some reason we’ve had a recent spate of orders that have gone to the wrong address because customers have moved house and not updated their PayPal account. So just take a second to make sure that your order is going to right place.
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