Preview Minis Arrived

Another really quick update.

I received my preview casts the day after I posted Gavin's pics (gotta love that mail). I won't post additional pics because Gavin's speak better than any I could take of raw lead. Let me just leave it at, "I'm very happy and they are nice casts."

I have been asked to try to demonstrate the uses for the fleet scale mecha and so far have the following ideas in mind -

• Fleet scale fighter stand-ins (their intended purpose)
• 6mm infantry
• 2-3mm ground mecha

The first is easy enough as I have spaceships to show them off along side, however, I really do not have any suitable 6mm or 2-3mm minis save for those based up for Land Ironclads which, honestly, are very much Victorian style organizations.

I am open to suggestions for possible other angles to go. I know Mik from Mik's minis wants to use them as some sort of micro-bot swarm. I can see them as pretty cool minions for a Toy Man type villain in a 28mm superheroes miniatures game.

These should be available through 15mm.co.uk soonish I hope, but we'll have to wait for the official announcement to know for sure.

Take care and thanks for reading!

-Eli

Operation Barbarossa Halted by 4 year old Girls

[Note: This is a repost from my blog, The Scattergun Gamer.]

   I know, it doesn't make sense. Just listen to the story.

   Today was my monthly games day in our local club. We refuse to give it a name, as it falls apart if you name it. Anyway, we play at a local university (UHCL). We arrived to find our usual room already occupied. Shouldn't have been, but rather than force a class to relocate to the room they were supposed to be in, we contact the school and get an alternate room. It's now about 1000 hours, we have the room until 1800.

   We get to the new room, get all set up, and start playing. I was trying a new set of rules (new to me, that is) called Spearhead. 6mm World War 2, stands as platoons. Eastern Front, Operation Barbarossa. I'm the Germans. Victory conditions are destroy two battalions. By the time the Soviet players (also new to the rules) and I are ready to go, it's 1200. Skip lunch, let's play.

   Turn 1 is a lot of maneuvering. Turn 2 sees two forward recon units run into each other (literally). I call in fire from the 150s and wipe a platoon of Stalin's untermenschen bikers from the face of the recently expanded Vaterland. Turn 3 and the Soviet tank hordes are getting close enough to my pitifully small armored contingent to make me sweaty, but I have a flank march getting ready to come in behind his infantry.

   About 1400 hours, just as we are finishing Turn 3, They arrive. "They" being 50 little girls (maybe 4 to 6 years old) and their mommas. With Head Momma coming in and demanding to know what we are doing in their room that they "paid for and have been using for the last three days." Seems the scheduling people forgot when they gave us this room. We had noticed when we came in that the room was trashed, but just picked up the worst of it and got started playing.

   Five minutes later, we're picking up. Ten minutes after that, we're gone - really quick for us, especially considering that They didn't wait for us to clear out before they started pouring in. Money talks, and you-know-what walks. Ah well. The game was pretty good to that point, fairly intuitive in how things operated. I'll try it agian one of these days. Maybe next time, the Fascist invaders will crush the godless hordes of the murderous Stalin!

   Oh, and if that weren't enough, when we first arrived my son and I saw an armadillo digging up the flower beds out in front of the building. You know you're in Texas when the armadillos tear up the college landscaping.

Doctor Who Project

In honor of both the passing of actress Elisabeth Sladen (aka Sarah Jane Smith) and the beginning of the new Doctor Who season on BBC America, I decided I needed a TARDIS. Well, two more TARDISes, actually, as I already have the not-TARDIS manufactured by Miniature Building Authority for 25mm.

Or would the plural be TARDII? Whatever.

I started with the 6mm one. Not quite done, but I am happy so far.

 Front of the TARDIS

Side elevation

So I am making a TARDIS for 6mm and 15mm, just to drop one on the table as scenery on occassion. This one is close to done. I based it on plans online to build your own police box, then scaled it down accordingly (roughly).

 

I am sourcing figures now. As far as the Doctor, I will probably go with either Tom Baker (and Sarah Jane) or David Tennant and Rose (Billie Piper is such a hottie!). I'm leaning towards Baker, because he was the one I started watching back when, and he has K9. I will probably have to scratchbuild the K9. I love K9.

6mm Trojan Allies

In assembling models for the the 6mm Trojan War project, I have given much consideration of how to interpret some of the more vague elements, but none has given me more to think about than the allies of Troy. Other than the Lucca and Anatolians there are the Amazons, Thracians and Ethiopians, all of which are psuedo-historical allies. The sketchy history of these allies allows much in the way of interpretation.

First of all, and easiest are the Thracians. The Thracians are described as savage warriors fighting with sword and spear led by a commander in a grand chariot. From what I have managed to leanr and pick up from various sources, there Thracians of this time would have been little different than their later brethren.

They would not likely have developed the Falx yet but would very likely have dressed in the same or a similar manner as they do in later centuries. In 6mm this is particularly easy to pull off and I think that I can pretty much use Baccuss or Irregular's Thracians directly. For their leader I was thinking that I could get by with maybe a Hitite leader on a chariot with a few clever minor modifications and paint.

Then there are the Amazons. For these ladies I was planning on using Scythians. At 6mm scale it's going ot be nearly impossible to tell male from female so it shouldn't matter much and their mode of dress and weapon mix would work well. I did consider throwing in some of Baccus' elven heroes from their fantasy line for some variety.

Ethiopians will be made from a combination of Kushite and Egyptian figures. Though it seems unlikely that the Ethiopians would have travelled so far, there were ties between some of the earlier Egyptian kingdoms and the region where Troy supposedly exsisted, so these soldiers make sense. They would have been chariot warriors, supported by troops armed with javelin and spear and an array of hand weapons.

The Lucca and Anatolians are already supported by miniatures appropriate for these peopless, so no adaptation or searching really needs to be done.

6mm Trojan War

The concept for my Trojan War project was a simple one - find a happy medium between the legendary and historical aspects of the conflict. Having decided this I had to decide which aspects I wanted to include. This too, was a simple choice as Homer's accounting provides a nice cross section of old and new making his accounting a nice "wargame-able" setting. The variety of Homer's "Iliad" is enhanced by the inclusion of elements from other stories such as the Amazon, African and Thracian ally contingents that comes to the aid of Troy.

So, I had figured out what I wanted to include -

1. Variety of tactics - old and new style units combining loose order spear and javelin warriors with long spear and tower shields.
2. Trojan allies.

A pretty simple list, but then again it was a pretty simple decission. The next thing to do was to figure out where to get all this stuff.

This was a challenge because Mycenaean Greece is notoriously under supported in the hobby. There are countless ranges for other Biblical era armies but you are lucky to find more than a hand full of Greek ranges for this era. Add to this the obscurity of 6mm and guess what...you've got like one line Irregular Miniatures.

Irregular is an oldy but a goody. Despite some issues with the way they base up their 6mm figs, they are nicely thought out and a HUGE range. There is also Baccus and, if you can find them, Heroics and Ross, but neither does anything dedicated to Mycenaean Greece. This does however lead me into the next step of the plan...