A Celtic SAGA

Posted on October 2, 2019 by Tony

One of the wargaming phenomenons of recent years has been the SAGA range of rulebooks and supplements. SAGA is a skirmish game system, initially aimed at Dark Age warbands but more recently expanded to cover Vikings, Crusades and now fantasy games with the new Age of Magic sourcebook.

With the very kind permission of Studio Tomahawk and Gripping Beast, we’ve created a series of army packs suitable for use with the SAGA:Age of Magic ruleset. Under the rules these make up eight-point armies including a warlord and sorcerer. The packs have selectable options for the warlord and sorceror or champion, allowing you to customise your army. They represent great value, saving around 10% off the normal prices if bought separately.

SAGA-100 – Sidhe Army (Great Kingdoms) – £80.00
SAGA-300 – Gael Army (Lords of the Wild) – £80.00
SAGA-400 – Fomorian Army (The Horde) – £85.00
SAGA-500 – Fir Bolg Army (Undead Legions) – £75.00

Posted in Celtos, New Releases | 1 Comment

A Mixed Bag

Posted on September 27, 2019 by Tony

We have a new set of buildings in the Small Scale Scenery range today. We weren’t entirely sure what to call them – originally I had them down as ‘Commercial Buildings’, but not all of them are. So they’ve ended up with the rather unwieldy title of ‘Commercial and Utility Buildings’ – even that isn’t a perfect description, but anything longer won’t fit on the website!

What you get is a set of five buildings which are vital to any small town – a police station, fire station, small supermarket, petrol station and an electricity substation. There is also a separate larger supermarket model. All are post war buildings except for the electricity substation which is based on an old Victorian structure in London. Although you’ll find them under English Buildings (we had to put them somewhere) on the website, they would be suitable for use across Europe. I don’t know if continental fire stations have the drill towers that UK ones do, but it’s a separate part so you can always leave it off.

All are metal castings except the larger supermarket which is resin. This is based on a German prototype from Munich, but we found a number of near-identical supermarkets across Europe built to pretty much the same design, as far apart as Ireland and Corfu.

SSS-8144 – Commercial and Utility Buildings – £4.00
SSS-8145 – Supermarket – £2.50

Posted in New Releases, Small Scale Scenery | 1 Comment

SELWG 2019

Posted on September 24, 2019 by Tony

I’m rather grumpy this morning – in another (less rainy) world I would be sitting enjoying the September sunshine at the St Lawrence Ground in Canterbury, having a few drinks with my mates from my former cricket club, watching the last game of the county season. Instead, it’s pitch dark and hammering down with rain and I’m catching up with stuff in my windowless office (sigh). Oh well.

Our penultimate (possibly … see further down) show of the year is SELWG 2019, run by the South East London Wargames Group at the Crystal Palace National Sports Centre. We will be back in our usual spot in the main hall on October 20th, in the corner by the entrance/exit tunnel. As always, we’re more than happy to take orders for collection at either event – simply send us an email with what you require and pay on the day, or you can order and pay in advance via the website using the ‘Collect in Person’ shipping option. The sooner the better, but we should be able to take orders until the week before the show.

  • Celtos – Decent stock of all individual figures, small unit packs and medium and large army packs
  • Aeronef/Imperial Skies – All of the most popular fleet packs (the major powers) but not the smaller nations; a good selection of individual capital ships in blisters; rulebooks and accessories for Imperial Skies. Latest releases (German/French/British cruisers) also available individually.
  • Small Scale Scenery – the full range of all models
  • Spaceships – full range of fleet packs; no individual models except for new releases
  • Hammer’s Slammers – rulebooks and accessories; the full range of 15mm models; latest 6mm releases as individual models; a selection of 6mm and 15mm detachment packs.
  • 15mm SF – full range of 15mm vehicles, figure packs and accessories; small stock of buildings
  • 6mm SF – full range of army packs, company packs and building packs; no individual models except infantry
  • 10mm SF – full range of buildings
  • Great War Belgians – full range of figures
  • Magpie Miniatures – individual figures and packs
  • Squadron Commander – full range of blisters packs; no individual models or starter packs
  • Crom’s Anvil – full range of figures
  • We will not be able to bring any Iron Stars or Land Ironclads miniatures unless ordered in advance.

Now, onto what should be our last show of the year – Crisis in Antwerp. This is on November 9th this year, which is just over a week after the UK is supposed to be leaving the EU. This is not the place to discuss the rights and wrongs of Brexit, so we’re not going to, except where it affects Brigade. We’re booked into Crisis, and we really would like to go, it’s a great show and we enjoy meeting many of our European customers. If Brexit is delayed, or there’s a deal with a transition period during which everything is pretty much as it is now, we should be OK. But if the UK does indeed leave the EU on the 31st as planned (which is not certain), especially in the case of a ‘hard Brexit’ no-deal scenario, we’re probably not going to want to risk the disruption and chaos that is bound to occur at the Channel Tunnel crossing point. So we’re playing a watching brief at the moment.

If we don’t go, then we’ll probably try to run some sort of reduced or free postage offer for EU customers around the time of the show to compensate for our absence.

Posted in Shows, Updates and General Waffle | Comments Off on SELWG 2019

Utility Bird

Posted on September 20, 2019 by Tony

Back in April, when we released the Demeter Attack VTOL at Salute, it should have been accompanied by a second model, a utility VTOL (think UH-1 Huey in terms of its rôle). However, we had several issues with the other prototype, it would never cast reliably enough to be able to release so we’ve ended up having to redesign and reprint parts of it. We think we’re there now, we’ve run enough test casts to be happy that all the bits now work.

The HU.1 Perseus is, as previously mentioned, a utility type that has a rear cabin for four fully equipped infantry (six over short distances as long as they don’t mind being squeezed in). It has the same chin turret as the Demeter with a 2cm tri-barrel powergun and can also carry a variety of underwing stores so can serve as a passable gunship.

The Perseus is used by three Hammer’s Slammers units as a fast APC flying nap-of-the-earth when in the combat zone, staying down among the weeds to avoid being shot out of the sky. Both the Eaglewing and the Texian 101st base their forces around VTOL transports and gunships, while Guardforce O’Higgins’ veteran Fianóglach company are equipped with a number of Perseus and act as a rapid-reaction unit. In the detachment lists for these three forces, the Perseus replaces the Black Crow VTOL.

The model is a four-part resin kit (body, tail and two wings) with five metal parts (turret, two tail fins, two cabin doors). The separate cabin doors allow for a door gunner (which we don’t yet make but will do).

HS15-2601 – Perseus Utility VTOL – £12.00

Posted in 15mm SF, Hammer's Slammers, New Releases | 1 Comment

CDSU Update

Posted on September 18, 2019 by Tony

The new Chinese (CDSU) spaceships are coming along nicely, the master castings are all ready to go into production moulds as soon as Phil has finished with unpacking boxes. I’ve painted a set of each model (apart from the two dreadnoughts – I need to save something for the actual release!) for the website so in lieu of anything else to put on the blog, we thought you’d like to take a look. I’ve gone for a lighter green than I’ve previously used – this is Army Painter Army Green from a spray can, followed by GW drybrushes and washes with decals from Dom’s Decals.

I’m tentatively hoping that we’ll have these in production by the time SELWG comes along.

Posted in Previews, Spaceships | 1 Comment

Waifs and Strays

Posted on September 13, 2019 by Tony

Back in April, we upgraded the cruisers and escorts of the British Aeronef fleet when they were released at Salute. However, not all of our planned releases made the cut – two models, the replacement for the Agamemnon monitor and the brand new Orion class light cruiser, weren’t released at the time because of casting issues. It’s taken a while, but we’ve modified both and they’re finally available for release. It was the tails of both models which were causing the problem – an increase in thickness of just 0.25mm made all the difference, resulting in castings that are getting on for 100% reliable (or as close as we get) as opposed to around 10% previously.

The Orion is a light cruiser design which the British fleet has been sorely missing. It comes in two variants – the basic Orion gun cruiser, fitted with two single and two twin turrets, or the Sirius AA cruiser with four triple-AAA turrets. Both types also have two twin torpedo tubes.

The Agamemnon monitor has two inverted howitzer turrets on the bottom of the hull for surface bombardment, along with some conventional light armament for self defence.

VAN-106 – Agamemnon class monitor – £3.00
VAN-129 – Orion class Light Cruiser – £3.00
VAN-129a – Sirius class AA Cruiser – £3.00

At some point soon (probably after the end of the show season in November), we’ll update the contents of our British fleet packs to take account of the various new releases this year, and the Orion (and Medusa) will filter into these packs.

Posted in Aeronef, New Releases | 1 Comment

United in 6mm

Posted on September 11, 2019 by Tony

Our recent 6mm Hammer’s Slammers releases have opened up a number of new detachments. One of the units that uses the GS-1000 series of GEVs is the United Defence Batteries, an specialised outfit equipped mainly with 8-barrel 2cm Calliopes for air defence. They appear in the story Counting the Cost, which can be found in volume 2 of the Complete Hammer’s Slammers.

I painted some 15mm calliopes last year and I’ve followed up with their 6mm equivalents recently. As an elite unit, the UDB have eight TUs per detachment – five calliopes, two mortar carriers for fire support and a command APC. Like the 15mm versions, I painted them in dark grey (Plastic Soldier Company Panzer Grey from a spray can), drybrushed light grey with a black wash. The skirts were painted light green, again with an appropriate wash. There is an access door on each flank – I painted these white, with a blue triangle as an approximation of the UDB logo. Other than picking out the gun barrels in silver, that was it – this was a very quick unit to get on the table.

The UDB have been added to the ever-growing list of pre-packed detachments we have available –

HSD6-3301 – United Defence Batteries Calliope Detachment – £9.00

Posted in 6mm SF, Hammer's Slammers, New Releases, Painting and Modelling | 1 Comment

Teutonic Towers

Posted on September 6, 2019 by Tony

One of our more popular releases over the last year or so has been the Modular Castles in the Small Scale Scenery range – one of which is even going to appear in a TV show (of which more another day…).

Today sees an extension to the range with a new set of components for German/Polish Crusader castles, such as the magnificient Marienwerder (now Kwidzyn Castle) and Marienburg (Malbork castle). These were constructed primarily of brick rather than stone so have a distinctive red/orange hue.

As with our previous castle sets, we’ve provided a set of components (walls, keep, gatehouse, towers) that you can mix and match to create a historical prototype or make your own design. They’re compatible with any of our existing components so you can use those as well.

The five new parts are a large keep with corner tower, based on Lochstadt Castle, now in Russia; a barbican (a fortified structure used to protect the far end of a drawbridge or entrance bridge); a new gatehouse design (taken from Malbork Castle); and sets of walls with covered walkways, including ones with small integral defensive towers.

These parts are all available separately, or there is a set available with a keep, gatehouse, barbican, eight towers, three wall sections with tower and eight plain wall sections. You can select different tower types when you order.

I will have stocks of the castle sets at Colours tomorrow, although not the individual components – you’ll have to order those online.

SSS-8119c – Crusader Castle Set – £15.00
SSS-8121c – Crusader Keep – £5.00
SSS-8143 – Barbican – £2.50
SSS-8123d – Crusader Gatehouse – £1.50
SSS-8120c – Covered Walls (x4) – £1.50
SSS-8120d – Covered Walls w/Tower (x2) – £1.00

And finally … Waterloo is back. We had to briefly withdraw the Waterloo Buildings set for remoulding, but that’s done so it’s back on the website again.

Posted in New Releases, Small Scale Scenery | 1 Comment

First Look

Posted on September 3, 2019 by Tony

First business for today is a reminder about Colours on Saturday; I’m at the workshop restocking tomorrow, so you only have a brief window remaining for any orders for collection at the show. You can either pay by cash or card on the day (just send us an email), or order via the website (use the Collect in Person option to avoid postage).

As threatened earlier in the year, our ongoing spaceship upgrade programme has moved onto the Chinese (CDSU) fleet. Phil found time between packing boxes for his impending house move to make the master mould for the bulk of the new masters, and I cast up the first ones last week.

The two dreadnoughts, the Longzi and Jiangzi, both now have resin hulls with various metal parts, while the new cruisers and escorts are all metal. Unfortunately they won’t be ready for this weekend, these are still several weeks away from release, . When they do appear, the old designs will be withdrawn, so get in now if you want to top up any existing fleets. Today I’ve been cleaning up the master castings of the smaller vessels ready for production moulds, so I thought it was time for a sneak peek …

For the dreadnoughts you’ll have to make do with some CG images for now, until I get all of the parts together to actually assemble some!

Posted in Previews, Shows, Spaceships | 1 Comment

Grease Monkeys

Posted on August 30, 2019 by Tony

Our latest release is a set of 15mm civilian mechanics and repair crew – the first time in a while we haven’t released something festooned with powerguns or gatlings!

The set of twelve mechanics is split into three types of identical figures with different headgear – four with baseball caps, four with bare heads and four with ear defenders and goggles who would make ideal flight deck crew at a starport or airbase.

The three types of figure are also available separately in sets of four.

SF15-008d – Civilian Mechanics (x12) – £4.25
SF15-008e – Mechanics – bare-head (x4) – £1.50
SF15-008f – Mechanics – baseball cap (x4) – £1.50
SF15-008g – Flight Deck Crew (x4) – £1.50

Posted in 15mm SF, New Releases | 1 Comment