We have another addition today – it should have been on the website last week, but I left the painted model at the workshop so couldn’t take the photos !
Anyway, this is the previously-mentioned Antwerp dockside warehouse know as Hangar 29 Waagnatie, or more relevantly the venue for Crisis. It would make a very imposing and useful model for any dockyard layout, not just a Belgian one. It’s a whopping 240mm long with thirteen arched roof bays.
SSS-8118 – Hangar Waagnatie 29 – £10.00
The Neo-Soviet Ulyanovsk supercarrier made its debut at Crisis last weekend, and today makes it onto the website. At 115mm long, this is a huge model, the largest spaceship we’ve produced so far. The hull is resin, with four metal engines, three heavy gun turrets and a metal bridge to top it all off. It carries as many as fourteen fighter groups, along with the three battleship-class mass accelerator turrets and a myriad of secondary weapons. It has hefty shielding along with armour plating, so is a very tough nut to crack – you can find the Starmada-X playsheet here.
SFS-1211 – Ulyanovsk class Fleet Carrier – £12.00
In the nick of time for Crisis tomorrow, we’re very pleased to be able to release our new Castle models from the Small Scale Scenery range. In all there are eleven different sets of components to launch the range, plus a Starter Set. I’ll have stock at the show of the starter set and a few of the individual component packs too.
The Starter Set consists of a Keep, Gatehouse, eight towers, eight lengths of curtain wall and three lengths of walls with bastions. This should be enough to make several different designs, and you can of course add more components. The set will be available in different options so you can choose different keeps and tower types.
The castle below was assembled and painted by Stephen Tucker as an example of what can be made from the starter set; we very much look forward to seeing the designs that you’ll all be creating from it !
SSS-8119a – Castle Starter Kit #1 – £10.00
SSS-8119b – Castle Starter Kit #2 – £10.00
SSS-8120 – Curtain Walls – £1.50
SSS-8120a – Walls w/Round Bastion – £1.50
SSS-8120b – Walls w/Angled Bastion – £1.50
SSS-8121a – Keep-1 – £2.00
SSS-8121b – Keep-2 – £2.00
SSS-8122r – Round Towers – £1.50
SSS-8122o – Octagonal Towers – £1.50
SSS-8122s – Square Towers – £1.50
SSS-8123a – Gatehouse-1 – £1.00
SSS-8123b – Gatehouse-2 – £1.00
SSS-8123c – Gatehouse-3 – £1.00
Righty-ho, off to Antwerp…
As an added bonus for Crisis on Saturday, I should have some small stocks of this beast – the brand new Neo-Soviet Ulyanovsk class super carrier. It now has the distinction of being the largest spaceship model in our range at over 110 mm long. It’s due for website release next weekend but I have enough advance stocks to allow me to bring a few along to the show – but it’s strictly first-come, first-served.
SFS-1221 – Ulyanovsk class Carrier – £12.00
Every so often we think to throw in a little curve-ball novelty item to keep you on your toes…
We have another new and upcoming model for preview today – it’s number one a new series of ‘Great Wargames Venues of the UK and Europe’ (which may well end up being a series of one model…). This is Waagnatie – Hangar 29, the venue for The Tin Soldiers of Antwerps’ Crisis show since it moved from the previous venue a few years ago. The Hangar is a former warehouse on the Scheldt in Antwerp’s dock area which has been turned into an event venue.
It seemed like a great idea when I started, then I had a good look at satellite images and photos of the venue and realised that it’s a lot bigger than I first thought ! The building is 240m long give or take, with 13 curved roof segments. To make matters even more fun, the building has a distinct kink in the middle where it follows the curve of the river bank. However, having started I had to finish it, so here’s the final model. It’ll be available for sale at Crisis next weekend, although you might have to be quick to our stand – I won’t have enough stock for everyone!
And while I have your attention, this is the FINAL REMINDER for Crisis orders – I’ll be at the workshop putting final touches to our stock tomorrow so any orders need to be with me by first thing
SSS-8118 – Hangar Waagnatie 29 – £10.00
One of our more popular models from way back when was the Cronus mech, a 1/300th scale behemoth. It’s been out of production for a while, the mould for the massive metal feet and legs wore out and we spent a while debating how we could improve those before remoulding.
In line with our policy of gradually updating many of our older models, the Cronus has been revisited and refined by the original designer, Zac Braham, and expertly rendered in 3D by Kirk Alderfer – the pairing also responsible for the design of our 6mm and 15mm Mercenary vehicles.
The new model has a resin body and feet with metal legs, arms and weapons (the missile pods are two-piece hollow castings so they aren’t excessively heavy). The arms have ball-and-socket joints at both ends and the hips, ankle and heel joints also have a degree of movement to allow some flexibility in posing the model. A cast resin base is also included – this is hexagonal, 50mm across flats. The model in the picture stands 60mm high excluding the base, although the height will vary very slightly depending on the exact posing.
MECH-101 – Cronus – £15.00
The name of the show run by the erstwhile Tin Soldiers of Antwerp is perfect for all sorts of punning headlines; however, this year it’s a little nearer to the mark.
Crisis 2018 is on Saturday, November 3rd, and I will be there as usual in the second hall, in my regular spot by the west wall. As always for any show, we welcome advance orders – in fact they’ve already been coming in. You can either place an order and pay in advance using the collect in person option on the website, or just drop us an email with a list and pay on the day. And if you read on, you’ll see that it’s especially important this year if there’s anything specific you’d like to get from us.
Apart from a couple of the larger shows when we hire a van, I generally travel to shows in my trusty people carrier, complete with roofbox for extra storage space – this includes the drive to Antwerp for Crisis. This year however there seems to be a rush on cross-channel travel, and I’ve been unable to secure a place for a ‘high car’, which means no roof box. So why, dear reader, should you care ? Because it means I’ll have to leave behind a not-insignificant amount of stock because of the reduction in space. Exactly what that will be isn’t yet clear, and may not be until I try loading the car, but I’ve already determined that I won’t be able to bring any 10mm or 15mm SF buildings as they take up quite a bit of room; I’ll probably also have to drop a couple of boxes of starter packs and army packs. With this in mind, the stock list for Crisis is likely to be along the lines of:
So if there’s anything that I’m not bringing that you’d like to order, please get in touch and I can arrange to have it with me.
Following the belated delivery of our new casting kit, we’re finally able to put the Thunderbolt Division’s Dragoon half-tracks back into production. The Thunderbolts appears in the Hammer’s Slammers story The Warrior (and get a bit of a pasting from Slick des Grieux !) and use two different types of half-track – the Viking recce vehicle, which we released earlier in the year, and the much larger Dragoon, which takes on the functions of tank, APC and support vehicle.
The Dragoon has an unusual configuration of twin pairs of front wheels and two independant small track units either side for low ground pressure and maximum manoeuvrability. There are five turret variants with gun turrets, calliopes and missile launchers. We’ve remastered all of the turrets from the original 3D files, and remoulded the hull from the original master.
We’re also able to offer five different army packs from the Thunderbolt Division detachment list which can be found on the official Hammer’s Slammers website.
We’ll have stocks of the Dragoon and Viking at SELWG on Sunday – see you then !
HS15-1811 – Br59 Dragoon 2 T/ICV – £8.00
HS15-1812 – Br66 Tank Destroyer – £8.00
HS15-1813 – Br58SM Schlepper – £8.00
HS15-1814 – Br54/56 Dragoon 2 M/ICV – £8.00
HS15-1815 – Br57 Calliope – £8.00
HSD15-1801 – Thunderbolt Panzer Grenadier Detachment – £50.00
HSD15-1802 – Thunderbolt Panzer Detachment – £57.50
HSD15-1803 – Thunderbolt Support Detachment – £63.50
HSD15-1804 – Thunderbolt Infantry Detachment – £43.00
HSD15-1805 – Thunderbolt Recce Detachment – £44.50
HSDEC-181 – Thunderbolt Division Sheet 1 – £4.00
HSDEC-182 – Thunderbolt Division Sheet 2 – £4.00
For some time now we’ve wanted to produce some tiny castles for the Small Scale Scenery range. But it took a while to work out exactly what form they would take – a brief investigation showed that there was no such thing as a ‘generic’ castle, they’re all very different and generally built to suit the terrain around them. We could make one-piece models of specific historical castles, but there are so many to choose from and regardless of how many we made, we’d never be able to cover enough variations to please everyone.
So instead we’ve settled on making a series of castle components – we’ve designed a numbers of sets of walls, towers and gateways along with a couple of keeps. Hopefully that will give enough variations to produce a decent representation of most UK castles and some continental ones. The parts are all cast in our usual cream-coloured resin so should be easy to cut and modify (certainly easier than metal pieces !).
To give you an idea of what the pieces look like, I’ve put together a simple square castle with a keep; this was made on a 6″ square of acrylic, with the keep raised on a low motte made from foam card. It took no more than half an hour to assemble, and painting was a simple matter of spray (grey primer), wash (Citadel Nuln Oil) and drybrush (GW Longbeard Grey).
I’m still knocking the last gremlins out of the casting process (we’ve recently invested in some new pressure casting equipment which I’m still getting to grips with), but hopefully they will be available at Crisis in a couple of weeks.
Our growing range of 10mm SF buildings is expanded today with the addition of three new models. These are from our Research Base set of buildings that already feature in both 15mm and 6mm. They depict a style similar to an Antarctic station, hence the bright orange colour scheme on these !
We’ll have stock at SELWG next weekend – and this is as good a time as any to remind you that any preorders really need to be with us by the end of this weekend (the 14th) so that we have time to get them ready for the show.
B10-501 – Accomodation Block – £2.50
B10-503 – Small Garage Block – £2.50
B10-504 – Storage Hut – £1.25
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