IS 15MM A BETTER SCALE FOR SUPERHERO MINIATURES GAMING?

Image from the Old Glory Miniatures website

One of the biggest hinderances to using 28mm miniatures in nearly any genre is the "tax" you pay in table space. To achieve a decent amount of room to maneuver and/or achieve realistic ranges, you have to play on a nearly impossibly huge table or risk the parking lot effect - where everything is so close that nothing can move and may and what movement you can achieve means nothing. Much like other genres of miniatures gaming, this can be mitigated in superhero games by switching to a smaller scale - 15mm. 

As a scale, 15mm provides you with an economy of scale that allows you to get more space out of a standard-sized gaming table while still providing detail enough for superheroes to really stand out as individual characters. Characters will movement powers (flight, teleport, super speed, etc.) will have plenty of room to use their powers and characters with ranged attacks will have meaningful lines of sight and fire. In addition, there are ample sources of vehicles and scenery for 15mm miniatures and building your own city building can be done quickly if you wanted to. 

Image from the Old Glory Miniatures website

The end result is a much more dynamic battlefield for your heroes to fight on than what we often see with two teams of 28mm miniatures going toe-to-toe on a 4' x 4' (or less) board.

This is Not a Test...

No, this is a real miniatures game. It's an insanely good one at that. A skirmish level game with tons of fan support, playtesting and a living community, "This is Not a Test" (TNT) combines elements of many classic iterations of the post-apocalyptic adventure setting. Heavily influence by Fallout it is much more than that and you can find nods to Road Warrior, horror movies, even classics like Gamma World.

While written with 28mm in mind, TNT works perfectly well for 15mm and other scales. You can successfully play it in 15mm without even adjusting ranges, the distances will just seem a bit more real scale. The game has its own growing range of 28mm miniatures but the rules showcase a range of miniatures from several manufacturers proving that this game will allow you to get started with many of the miniatures already in your collection.

This is Not a Test - A Kickstarter to bring a Real Book to a Real Game

I discovered "This is Not a Test" quite by accident and have very much become a real fan. The game is the brain child of Joseph McGuire who developed and play-tested the game all the way to professional layout and the start of his own miniatures line over several years. The game has gained traction and loyal followers and now he is trying to bring the game to print in a hardback volume.

Adding New Basing Materials to the Tool Kit

I picked up some of the KHG Gamer's Grass tufts from Harold over at ClearHorizon Miniatures and I am very glad I did.

I am not the sort to invest in a lot of special hobby products. I haven't even learned how to use static grass. These little gems, however, may get me to rethink my approach to hobby stuff.

These miniatures were painted and based without the Gamer's Grass but the simple addition of these little tufts to most of the bases lends so much more warmth and depth to the miniatures.

Sculpting Projects Image Dump - Sculpting Kwiell

Many of you may know of my Ikwen.- the freedom fighting, alien militia designed for scifi assymetric warfare. Well, part of the dream for this project has always been to flesh out the world of the Ikwen beyond their fighting forces. This means terrain and animals.

One way to really make a homeland fight feel real is to have local livestock. Farm animals always seem to get in the line of fire, whether as resource objectives, cannon fodder, or even obstacles for covert operations.

FARM ANIMALS

So far I have come up with a pig/sheep/goat analog I call a Silt Pig. For these I am working on a male, female, and litter of young. Because every farm needs a nuissance predator, I also created Kwiell's equivalent of a fox/coyote - the Pig Sucker.

   

PLANTS AND OTHER SCENERY

Scenery has been fun. Much of it I have taken from my existing library of sketches or from converted terrain. Using a combination of 100% sculpted and converted seed pods I have developed a host of features from the strange Shelter Tree, covered in fungus and secondary growth. Clusters of strange tube plants and geothermal vents form alien, open air reefs. Even an alien beast skull and insect hive have joined the group.

    

     

Sometimes Art Just Works

Every so often when I am sculpting, I mix up more putty than I need for what I am working on. Most of the time, I have another sculpt that I can put it to but every so often I am in a place where there is nothing that can be done on any of my existing projects or I do not have them around. Depending on how much putty I have left over I'll usually do little bits and what I call "doodle" sculpts. This time, however, I had a substantial amount of green stuff left. So, I decided to grab a stray wire frame and try my hand at making a truly alien alien.




The initial results were pretty satisfying and what I ended up with is something I like to think of as a land mollusk gone intelligent species. I made it tripodal so as to enforce the alien appearance. I also decided against any obvious limbs and a face, giving it a fourth appendage that is a sort of combination of sensory and feeding apparatus - a "head". The initial sculpt was simple but relatively undefined and the putty didn't go far enough to fill in all the gaps.

I had my start and what was a random push of putty with some leftovers now gave me the foundation to start to work on something fun and new.

Deciding that the shell lacked texture and that the silhouette was a bit soft, I mixed up some procreate and started shaping a couple of striated shells spires ad flared out the bottom edge of the shell. This was textured with some ridging to make it look more like the barnacles I have seen at the beaches. I also added a bit of shell around the neck hole.

Looking over the legs they seemed to need some bulking up and some more texture. So I fleshed them out with some wrinkly tissue, trying to avoid any hardly defined limbs. I was going for a sort of fluid musculature like we see with some invertebrate life.

Again I mixed too much putty and so I shaped it into the first of the two weapon systems (see above).

I started with the basics of some sort of heavy weapon and a missile pod. These were designed with a sort of biotech style. I didn't want to go with the whole weaponized organism style that are popular with many biological weapons, but more the idea that these were still machines but built with biological components. Of course, if they had weapons they now needed a way to weld them in battle.

While a single manipulating limb might allow them to work together to develop technology and of course that technology would lead to other technologies to aid in their existence, battle requires the ability to manipulate a weapon in a useful and effective manner. Enter manipulator harnesses.

These aliens would have developed artificial manipulators to help them with technical and military applications. I constructed the manipulator arm with a ball at the end and all the weapons have a universal cup to mate up with the ball. The base of the arm will also have a ball on it that will fit into a socket in the part of the harness system that will be sculpted on the body. This will allow the finished model to allow some variation in the configuration of the weapon.

I have to admit that this sculpt that started as a whimsical jaunt with some spare putty has captured my imagination and really inspired me to try new things and a complex design. It'll be fun to see where it goes.

-Eli

Marine Tactical Unit - 15mm Scale Miniatures

Painted pics from White Dragon Miniatures new Kickstarter 

Mark Stone of White Dragon Miniatures posted this pic of a painted version of one of his Marine Tactical Unit infantry alongside the massive, amazing Proteus Frontline Battle Mech. The render images of these were incredible enough, but this superbly painted example of the machine really shows it as the business.

This mecha, along with the MTU troops and their support Armadillo Support bot are part of a run away Kickstarter that promises some delightful stretch goals including an alternate Proteus with a railgun.

For more information or to join in on this awesome Kickstarter, head over - HERE.

Sculpting the Wasteland

Sculpting has become a real pastime for me and a way for me to share my creativity with others through the production of those things that I sculpt. Well before there was all the hype of Mad Max: Fury Road, ti had embarked on a project to sculpt a wasted future the likeso f which I used to play in back in my Gamma World days. 

Looking around the industry I found a lot of monsters, aliens, and some mutants but nothing that really formed a dedicated range of blasted futuristic figures. I started with two sets of mutants depicting several characters that could populate the post-apocalypse. 

Really weird mutants/cyborgs

More humanoid mutants, including a masked wasteland shaman

Once the mutants were done, I started on a set of scruffy, ultra-violence raiders/gangers. These are real Road Warrior sorts, with mohawks, masks, shoulder pads and improvised weapons. So far, this has produced 9 different ganger sculpts that are waiting their turn to go into production.

In addition to human and mutant denizens, I also decided that there was call for some mutated undead. So, I made rad zombies. These zombies are dripping, oozing, shambling bags of mutated yuck. They are unlike any sort of zombie miniatures I have seen to date in that they are all depicted extreme levels of decay with exposed bones, lots of hanging flesh and hollowed body cavities. 

The latest bits to reach completion are four heroes of the wasteland that I have called Road Wardens. This name was chosen as a not to the Road Warrior who inspired them but also to peg them in their roles as heroic types. I am sure players will use them for all manner of characters - heroes and villains alike, but the role of hero was used for creative direction when designing the miniatures.

Sculpting the Mutant Future

I have always been a big fan of fantastic apocalyptic futures. From Gamma World, to Aftermath, to Fallout I love the concepts of the wholly unrealistic blasted futures with their mutants and warlords and gangs. Be it Road Warrior or Metal Storm, you cannot go wrong with spikes, freaky critters and mohawks. It is in this spirit that I have started sculpting a new range of miniatures.

A recently got back some test casts of the first two sets I finished and put some paint to them ASAP. This is saying something as I am well known for hating to paint. 

The first pack is a collections of five relatively mundane mutants (is that a thing?). While they are twisted and deformed, they are not too out there. I painted one in my most hated of mutations to randomly roll for a character - Brightly Colored Skin! This pack depicts a sort of wasteland shamaness and several mutant fighters.

The second set is made up of more strange denizens of the mutant wastelands. Two freakish brutes equipped with cybernetics along with a poor fellow with crustacean or insectoid mutations and a big-headed, dwarfed, perhaps psionic fellow complete this set. 

These should be out later in 2015 through my partnership with 15mm.co.uk.. I'll make an announcement when the actual release happens for those who are interested in picking them up for their games.

-Eli

The Invasion Continues - Yan'drassi Invasion Kickstarter Update

Hey folks,

I wanted to post an update on my Kickstarter and all the amazing work being done by the sculptor, Sean Bullough and concept artist Todd Ulrich. These two guys have been doing a great job of bringing my vision to life and ultimately to gaming tables.

Sean's latest WIP of the Neeks, Tavshar, and Horgosi along with their weapons shows just how diverse and cool this project is. 

HORGOSI BUILD UPS

TAVSHAR BUILD UPS

NEEK BUILD UPS

Todd Ulrich, the pen behind the original concept art for the Yan'drassi as well as the coor art at the top of this post has always been faithful in bringing my rougher drawings, written descriptions and frantic emails into professional concepts that can be translated into miniatures. Below is the concept he came up with for the Tavshar Gun Skimmer, the second stretch goal for the Kickstarter.

Loud Ninja Games - Yan'drassi Invasion Kickstarter

I realize things have been a bit quiet on the ol' ISLP blog of late. One of the reasons is my budding miniatures company - Loud Ninja Games. We just launched our second 15mm science fiction Kickstarter project.

Click image to go to the Kickstarter

Miniatures I'd Like To See

Soooo...

My blog is slow these days, I know. I just haven't found enough to blog about and haven't been doing much in the way of gaming stuff that wasn't purely physical (painting, models, etc). That said, I figured a nice editorial piece wouldn't be without it's audience.

I'd like to talk about miniatures I would like to see.

I know, I know. I'm suppose to be a sculptor these days, but I'm only one man and there are still many limits to my abilities. So, in the interest of throwing ideas out into the cosmos, I present my own wish list of oddball miniatures ideas.

1) 15mm Space Opera. There is so much room for new additions here. As much as Space Opera themes are popular in movies, TV and comics, we really do seem to lack a proportionate abundance of such figures in 15mm miniatures. Sure, we have some of the oldies but goodies (Laserburn, Traveller) and  ranges expanding with new figures on the old but solid ranges (Ion Age), but we haven't seen a mighty push in that direction from anyone.

2) 15mm High Concept Scifi Troops. As much as I love them, I really would love to see something besides near future humans. Yes, there are some such as GZGs UNSC, but you would think that some of these sleeker designs that are growing in popularity in movies and video games would have filtered into 15mm scifi by now.

3) 15mm Anime. Darkest Star is the only company I know that has done a specific push in the direction of anime styled miniatures in 15mm. Why is that? I have heard that anime doesn't always translate so well to miniatures. I get that, but I think 15mm would be infinitely more forgiving than larger scales as you are really shooting for the sillouette of anime rather than the detail. Mecha, robots, cyborgs, and some of the above mentioned high concept troops fit into this category along with distinct vehicle styling.

4) 15mm Distopian Street Figs. Again, a theme that has only really seen so toe-dipping. Style gangs, corporate security, urban defense and law enforcement miniatures along side some strategic street personalities would make this work. Can we say Akira style bikers.

5) 15mm Superheroes. Why is it that everyone looks at me like I'm crazy when I mention this? I get it, superheroes are all about personality and character, but I think it has been well established that 15mm can delivery on that front. Think about how epic mixing 15mm and supers can be. Super System recognizes this in its scale conversion to 15mm and talks about how the battlefield really becomes super when you can fight for blocks.

One aspect of 15mm supers that I have not seen mentioned, however, is what you can do when you reduce your base scale size. Giant things can be giant. Factions like HYDRA or AIM can really make a showing on the tables with more than just  single super tank. Come on, who doesn't want to replay the landing at Normandy with Captain America leading the charge? Cosmic villains anyone?

6) 15mm Fantasy. This is an area that is seeing some growth, but mostly along the tried and true styles and themes that have been covered in 28mm. I wouldn't mind seeing some out of the box ideas here but like Really Alien Aliens in 15mm sci fi this is a tough call. I know I have thought  lot about fantasy elements to drop into historical armies.

"Enough with the 15mm, Eli!"

I hear you, but for the most part 28mm does a damned good job of addressing nearly every subject out there. Face it, nobody is hurting in that scale. 15mm has received a giant push in the last few years, but that push has really been concentrated in direction of science fiction. It's a scale that presents a lot of opportunities that are just too damned impractical for 28mm. Considering a single tank in 28mm can run you $40 to $50, the math is pretty damned easy to do.

So, universe, have at!

-Eli

15mm Anime Robot Build