Sale-ing on the Seven Seas

Posted on November 18, 2016 by Tony

2016 has flown by, and it’s the time of year again when the Brigade Elves dust off their little hats with the bells on, while Phil’s looking dapper in his red and green tights again. And the Brigadier puts on his red Santa hat and launches…

xmas-2016

So for the next four weeks, until December 16th, we’re running our usual festive offer. Sticking to our simple tried-and-trusted formula, all of our models are 15% off for the duration (see below for full details).

We’re running the sale slightly earlier this year – the first reason for this is to allow overseas customers to place orders and hopefully get them in time for Christmas (we’ll publish the recommended last posting dates in the next few days). The second reason is that, hopefully (and nasty flu bugs notwithstanding) I should be able to clear most, if not all of the sale orders before the Christmas holiday starts. In previous years I’ve had a break between Christmas and the New Year, and a huge mass of orders piles up so that when I return to work I’m faced with a week or two just clearing the backlog.

There are just a few exceptions and conditions, as you might expect … shipping will still be charged at the full rate, since we were unable to persuade the post office to match our offer. The discount covers all of our metal and resin models – but it doesn’t apply to rulebooks, dice, bases, Shapeways items or anything else that we don’t manufacture ourselves, simply because the margins on those items are much tighter. However, starter packs with rules, dice or bases in are covered by the offer.

Posted in Special Offers | 3 Comments

Casting and counting

Posted on November 15, 2016 by Phil

As well as normal orders we’re also steadily working our way through the large number of 6mm tanks needed for our part of the Polyversal Kickstarter.  We’re progressing nicely with them and the first parcel has just been dispatched.

Pictured below are the 150 Boyds needed.

The first 300 out of 750 Ratels.

And half of the 150 Curtiss heavy tanks.

After that there are 1,000 Catroux wheeled tanks and 2,500 assorted PacFeds.

And there is also the small matter of 6,000 infantry in power armour……

 

Posted in 6mm SF, Polyversal | 1 Comment

PayPal Problems

Posted on November 10, 2016 by Tony

UPDATE 11/11/2016 – we’ve been informed that this issue has now been fixed, so all should be working again.

paypal-ok

We’ve had a notification from PayPal this morning that there is an issue at their end with the shopping cart system – they’re apparently working on it. For some customers it’s fine (we’ve had several orders this morning) but for others it’s been playing up for a couple of days.

paypal-problems

In the meantime, if you’re unable to complete your transaction at the checkout stage, you can send us a list and we can send you a PayPal invoice in return – this part of their system is working fine and you can pay that way.

Posted in Updates and General Waffle | Comments Off on PayPal Problems

Return to the Skies

Posted on November 9, 2016 by Tony

Two big cardboard boxes appeared on the doorstep of Brigade Towers yesterday, each stuffed full of shiny new Imperial Skies rulebooks. Which means that the rulebook is available again from the website – woo-hoo!

rulesdicerulers

Unfortunately we’ve had to make a modest adjustment to the price, and as these things inevitably are, the adjustment is slightly upwards. So those of you who backed the Kickstarter campaign have even more reason to be glad you did…

ISK-001 – Imperial Skies Rulebook -£22.00

Posted in Imperial Skies | Comments Off on Return to the Skies

Small-Scale Slammers Action

Posted on November 7, 2016 by Tony

Hammer’s Slammers:The Crucible author (and newly-appointed Miniature Wargames editor) John Treadaway recently visited our club, Maidstone Wargames Society, again for another Slammers game – this time in 6mm.

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We utilised the club’s Pegasus Bridge WW2 terrain boards, but replaced all of the Normandy houses with ones from our resin SF ranges. The game saw the Slammers, supported by the 101st Texians in their VTOLs, racing to take a bridge held by a combined force of the Stewart regiment, Waldheim Dragoons and some Terran Authority Starmarines.

Below is a selection of photos from the day – John has more of his own on the HS website.

Posted in 6mm SF, Hammer's Slammers | Comments Off on Small-Scale Slammers Action

Death Spirit

Posted on November 4, 2016 by Tony

As this is published, I’m just stuffing the last few bits in the car ready to drive to the EuroTunnel for the journey to Crisis in Antwerp. I’m pretty well stocked, with plenty of Aeronef, spaceships, Celtos figures, 6mm and 15mm tanks, tiny 2mm buildings etc. There was also the added bonus of three stray copies of the Imperial Skies rulebook, found in the bottom of a box where they shouldn’t have been (we thought we were completely out of stock), so I’ll have these on sale along with the turn rulers and dice.

We’re closing in on our final new releases of the year now, and today we have a new vehicle for our 15mm Mercenary Brigade force, the Shinigami (‘Death Spirit’) Combat Car. This vehicle was the precursor to the Mantra Armoured Cavalry Vehicle, and is in effect an extended Wizard hover jeep with armoured sides and two tribarrel gatling gun positions, one on either flank. The basic vehicle comes in four parts – resin hull with metal hatch and two tribarrel guns. Our existing combat car crew figures fit perfectly in the back as gunners.

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I’ve had a bit of fun customising one with crew, stowage, a radio aerial made from a paperclip and a commander figure taken from our PacFed infantry command set, cut off at the waist and fitted to the open hatch.

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SF15-1510 – Shinigami Combat Car – £4.00

Posted in 15mm SF, New Releases | Comments Off on Death Spirit

Ironclad Action

Posted on October 31, 2016 by Tony

Day two of the recent Stoke Rochford Gaming meet was given over to a Land Ironclads game. Organised by the Italian Stallion, Silvio la Verde, the game used the same terrain mats as the previous day’s Imperial Skies game. The rules were simplified from the original Wessex Games set but still retained the flavour and fast-paced action. Time prevented us from reaching a conclusion to the game, but highlights were an Austrian cavalry charge against British tanks (that’s cavalry on horse, not mechanised !), a Russian front-style slaughtering of many Ottoman infantry by rocket-firing British contraptions and the appearance of a Belgian colonial Ironclad Brigade. Thanks to David Frampton and Silvio for providing most of the hardware on table.

Happy Halloween !

pumpkin-1

Posted in Land Ironclads, Stoke Rochford Gaming | Comments Off on Ironclad Action

Battleship Bits

Posted on October 28, 2016 by Tony

It’s been busy here at Brigade Towers lately, with a rash of shows, contributions to Kickstarter campaigns and trade orders (and I didn’t help the backlog by going away on holiday for a week !). However, we’re up to date on website orders again (Thomas Graves of Columbus, Ohio – please check your emails, we need to contact you about your order for 15mm buildings) and the pre-orders for Crisis are also ready (we’re still happy to take more – they need to be in by Wednesday, please).

Imperial Skies news first, with two stock updates. The good news is that laser-cut acrylic turn rulers are now back in stock again. The not-so-good is that we’ve sold out of the first printing of rulebooks, so we’re waiting on delivery of a new batch – I’m hoping we’ll have some for Crisis but there are no guarantees.

Our remaining new release schedule for the year has been thrown out a little bit with one or two items having to be pushed into the new year. But we still have some new bits this week – quite a few in fact. We’ve added all of the new turret types from the recent Aeronef battleship releases to the website as accessory packs, allowing you to convert or upgrade your models with extra firepower. There are other useful bits such as large battleship masts and funnels as well for further conversions or scratchbuilding. There are twelve packs in all at the same price of just £1.50 each.

The picture below shows as an example the various parts of the Vanguard that are now available:
vanguardbits

VAN-7006 – Battleship Masts (x8) – £1.50
VAN-7012 – British Medium Turrets (x12) – £1.50
VAN-7013 – British Large Barbettes (x10) – £1.50
VAN-7014 – British Battleship Funnels (x10) – £1.50
VAN-7034 – German Large Rounded Twin Turrets (x10) – £1.50
VAN-7035 – German Large Rounded Single Turrets (x10) – £1.50
VAN-7036 – German Small Rounded Twin Turrets (x16) – £1.50
VAN-7037 – German Small Rounded Single Turrets (x16) – £1.50
VAN-7038 – German Large Battleship Funnels (x6) – £1.50
VAN-7046 – French Secondary Turrets (x15) – £1.50
VAN-7055 – Russian Heavy Twin Battleship Turrets (x10) – £1.50
VAN-7056 – Russian Heavy Single Battleship Turrets (x10) – £1.50

Posted in Aeronef, Imperial Skies, New Releases | 1 Comment

The Battle of Latakia

Posted on October 25, 2016 by Tony

The weekend just past saw another gathering of the Stoke Rochford gamers. These take place (as the name suggests) at Stoke Rochford Hall in Lincolnshire, a hotel set in a Victorian mansion just south of Grantham.

Saturday’s gaming saw a large Imperial Skies action organised by the author, Robin Fitton. Three allied forces (Italian, British and the US Mediterranean fleets) took on the Central Powers of Germany, Austro-Hungary and the Ottoman Turks over the eastern coast of the Med.

I won’t go into a detailed AAR, but in a nutshell the Italians got caught in a vice between the Teutonic might of the Austrians and Germans and rapidly perished in a welter of gunfire and magazine explosions. On the northern flank the Turks were stuck in a similar position between the British and US fleets, but through judicious playing of command points to keep the initiative they fought on, destroying the might of the British and then turning on the US forces who were suddenly distracted by the arrival of the Germans from the South. By the time we called a halt, the result was in the balance, but Robin adjudicated that although the Central Powers had the edge in combat, the allies had stuck to their objectives better and thus awarded them a minor victory.

Action over, we retired to dinner and a fine bottle of Chocolate Rum (thanks, Robyn !).

Posted in Imperial Skies, Stoke Rochford Gaming | Comments Off on The Battle of Latakia

N-n-n-n-n-nineteen !

Posted on October 21, 2016 by Tony

I’m sure everyone remembers the Paul Hardcastle song from the 80s (youtube link below), but 19 also happens to be the number of houses in our new 2mm scale Vietnamese Village pack. The houses are all on stilts and raised platforms, and the set also includes a village longhouse and, just for good measure, a rather splendid Buddhist pagoda.

sss-8072

And just in case you love the smell of napalm in the morning, we also have a Vietnam firebase with a mix of bunkers, gun positions and admin buildings plus a wooden watchtower.

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SSS-8072 – Vietnamese Village – £5.50
SSS-8073 – Vietnam Firebase – £6.00

As a side note, we’re currently experiencing some odd issues with our website – on a small number of orders it’s failing to correctly calculate the postage costs (unfortunately I can’t recreate it, which is making it tricky to fix). So in these cases we’re having to send PayPal invoices to cover the additional shipping costs, which is a bit of a pain but will have to do until I can fix it. One common thread is that it seems to be occurring with people who are previous customers, so it could be a caching issue (ie an old file which has been saved by your browser is being used). So it might be worth refreshing our website before you place an order – that might help.

Posted in New Releases, Small Scale Scenery | 1 Comment