Warlords to distribute Wargames Factory

Warlords Games is now going to distribute Wargames Factory miniatures. 

Which is pretty interesting as Warlords continues to increase its dominance of the "casual" historical miniatures market, and this will also expand their reach into the sci-fi market with the various zombie kits and the shock troops produced by Wargames Factory.

I believe that Warlords also sells the plastic Perry miniatures, and the plastic Gripping Beast miniatures , which means that only Victrix is outside of their store.

So an interesting development.

On a more personal note, not too much time for hobby lately, although I have painted a few figures waiting to be photographed, and worked on my converted Sigmarine.  Summer is busy, and the kids were very sick which cut into "free" time significantly.

Eureka 28mm Chaos

Now that is Chaos

I am the egg man! 

Not just goat men. Coming out in the next few months from Eureka Miniatures, although they will have some stock at Salute.

Pretty good looking figures, and the one Eureka 28mm figure I have is a good size, so these should work pretty well with older GW Chaos figures.  Should also be good for inquisitors to hunt down.

Pro Gloria

As you might recall, Pro Gloria was running an Indiegogo campaign to get a plastic Landsknecht regiment box produced.  There was some sort of stall in the campaign, and rumors of a big announcement, and now it appears that Pro Gloria has been sold to Warlord Games.   Apparently Stephen Huber (the former owner of Pro Gloria) will remain connected to the project in some lesser way, which is good, since he seems to have a passion for the project.

This seems to guarantee that the figures will be produced, which is good, but probably at best annoying to those funding the Indiegogo.  This also means that Warlord is up to something like 15 different sculpting styles for their various lines, which is a bit odd.(although probably there is not that much interest in kit-bashing landsknecht bodies with roman legionary heads and soviet infantry arms, although now that I say it that way it does sound interesting)  

As another plus, this should make the existing metal figures cheaper for me to get here in the US...

Space Hulk 2014 Rerelease

So it seems that Games Workshop is rereleasing Space Hulk this weekend. This is the 25th anniversary year, so it sort of makes sense, but it feels like we just did this...  oh wait, that was five years ago.

$125 USD this time

Rumor has it that it is the same as the lauded 2009 edition, with a few additional tiles to represent the boarding torpedos and a few new missions.  Critically, the miniatures are the same.

I would love a copy, but I have plenty of other things to paint, a box of Dreadfleet to get to (and the Battle of Five Armies too), and so this is not going to work for me.  As I said last time... maybe for the 30th edition.

Star Wars Armada

This being Gencon time, game companies need to have new games, and Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) is no exception to this rule:

And they seem to have a humdinger here with Star Wars Armada, a new fleet level Star Wars game.  Expected to ring in at $100 MSRP, this will have prepainted ships (Victory class, a Nebulon B, and a Corvette) with a wealth of accessories, chits, and cards.

So... tentatively excited about this, since big ship battles are even more interesting to me than fighter skirmishes, and it seems to have some interesting mechanics to make the ships seem slow and lumbering (stacked orders, slow movements with the ruler).  The components should be high quality, and may help with the "paperwork" of fleet battles with all the integrated little dials and stats.

However, the cost, and obvious scale issues are things to keep aware of, so let us wait and see what happens and what is released.

Very compelling indeed...

Copplestone 10mm Dwarfs

Copplestone has some new 10mm Fantasy, which is certainly surprising, as there have not been any releases for 10mm for some time.  Three new packs at £5.75 a pack, which works out to about $9.70 with today's exchange rate.

Two handed axes

Spears are pretty unique

I like that some swords are mixed in

The information for these figures says they are 9mm, which looking at comparison pictures of the Copplestone 11mm humans probably means to the eyes.  At that size they are going to be larger than the plastic Bo5A figures (~7.5mm to the eyes), but in line with the sizes of Eureka 10mm dwarfs, and the metal dwarf archers from the very short lived Bo5A blister line. (Occasionally on ebay for ~$30 a blister)

Regardless of their size, they are lovely, I think I will have to get some. Pity there are no archers though...

023 Sells Army

ZeroTwentyThree is selling his WHFB Marienburg (Empire) army. While this is undoubtedly a great tragedy for him, it should be a great opportunity for someone else [or rather two chances, since he is selling humans in one lot, and weirdos in another].

Forgotten Glorious Sample Figure

Way back at the end of 2013, I saw a notice on Wargame News and Terrain, which indicated that a company I had never heard of was offering a sample figure.  Never one to pass up a free miniature, I hurried over to their website, and sent them a request for a French figure, with the idea that if it was not a range that appealed to me, I might be able to use the figure somewhere else, maybe as a pulp figure, or in 40k (with some additions).

As the company is located in France, I did not expect the package to come quickly, and yet I was still surprised to get the packet nearly a month later.  I guess not every company can be GZG (plus, again, it was free, so why complain?).

While it took me quite a while to get to it, here are some comparison pictures of the figure I got (a French infantry officer)

Left to right: Perry, Pulp, FG, Copplestone, Foundry

FG, Games Workshop, you can see how narrow the FG figure is

Narrow, and tall too

Painted picture of the figure from their blog

You can sort of tell from the pictures, but the figure has a separate head (here glued on), and is fairly tall and slender.  It does not really match up with any of the figures I compared it to, but that would not be a problem if you were to use only FG figures.  Unfortunately, FG only makes a few French figures currently, but more are in the works.



 The Great War references that I have are predominantly for the air war (although I did have a single plate of a French soldier in a uniform book), so as usual one must turn to the Internet. Fortunately for the French infantry painter there is Sidney Roundwood's very detailed Late War French painting guide.

Synas LED light box

Yesterday my wife sent me a link to this newish IKEA LED light box. Called "Synas" it is a 24cm cube with 5 clear sides, and one that is a LED panel.  A bit pricey at $30 US, but it could make a nice miniature display case for either that special unit, or for people with out the room for a big display case.  It would particularly interesting to make use of the LED light coming up from below for a miniature diorama, possibly with light filtering up through a chemical pond or similar...

X-Wing Wave 4

That would be an E-Wing, Z-95, TIE Defender, and TIE Phantom

Fantasy Flight has just announced their next wave of expansions for the X-wing game, which will include my favorite, the Z-95, as well as fan favorite TIE Defender. 

The Z-95 stats out at 2/2/2/2, and starts at 12 points, so with no upgrades you could have eight in a 100 point list, just like an Academy TIE list, but with the ability to take missiles.  (and with 16 ships on the table, those two lists would be great fun to fight each other with!)

The TIE defender is a 3/3/3/3 ship with the ability to get cannon and missile upgrades, which coupled with TIE manoeuvrability should be pretty interesting (although it does seem to lack a tractor beam upgrade)

The E-wing is 3/3/2/3 can take droid and system upgrades, which with elite pilot skills will make for a huge combinations of potential abilities.

The TIE phantom is 4/2/2/2 but has a cloaking system.. not sure how that is going to work.

Pretty excited about this release.. still need to play the darn game though!

Lead Painter League 8

As I mentioned last year, Lead Painter League is a contest put on by the excellent Lead Adventure forum.

Here are the rules for this year. Changes are that photography is further limited, and that the bonus themes are just one team, rather than having one or more of them with two opposing teams.

And the bonus themes this time around are "Fantasy", "Ancient World", and "Great War", the last of which is obviously quite topical.

Even if you do not particpate (although you should!) it is certainly worth browsing the contest entries as they are in the main, quite excellent.  The competition starts March 22nd, and there are only 50 spaces available, so get painting.

Brigade Models January Sale

I have mentioned my love for Brigade Models previously, when I missed their 25th anniversary sale, and I am going to do it again to mention their January New Year's sale, which is 15% off everything in the store that they make.  With the pound at $1.65 USD this is a great deal, particularly as Brigade Models is VAT listed.

I will not be able to take advantage of this sale, as I have other fish to fry so to speak, but you should.

Here are some of my painted Brigade castings (from long ago):

Hmm, I really should get back to 6mm sometime, and finish off these forces.

Dark Elves

In the Warhammer world, the Dark Elves have been a popular, but poorly supported army for a while now, where the basic troops never seemed to match up to the artwork.  The Dark Elves army book for 8th edition is coming out next month, so as sure as rain, "leaked" pictures are appearing on the Internet.  Pleasingly, the core troops have been reworked, but of course a WHFB army needs to have a few... unusual elements, such as this:

And since Witch elves were never easy to rank up, GW needed to make them more difficult.

You say witch elves, I say death cultists

 I would be more excited by the figures, were it not for the very costly rumored prices.  WHFB is a great game, but building up armies is getting to be pretty expensive, particularly when a basic regiment costs up to $120.  So I probably will not be building a new army (particularly since I already have several in various stages of completeness).

15mm Hammer's Slammers

Hammer's Slammers, the mercenary regiment of the future as detailed by David Drake, is what got me into the whole Dirtside/6mm thing.  Reading about columns of tanks advancing under fire, and artillery desperately trying to penetrate their defenses was inspiring enough that I sought out a rule set that would let me game it. [which is something I still hope to do sometime]

However, as you are probably aware, 15mm is where most of the excitement is in scifi games lately.  The ability to have a full company of infantry and support units interact in a meaningful and semi realistic way is certainly appealing to most gamers, and 15mm is a size that still allows for figure detail, while to taking too much table size.  StarGrunt is the classic rule set for this sort of gaming, but there are many others.

So 15mm Hammer's Slammers would appeal to a lot of gamers, and there have been a few attempts to build a proper Slammers' blower tank, both official models, and unofficial ones.  Anisty Castings is now the licence holder for the official 15mm models, taking it over from Old Crow.  With the new licence, they also updated the models to be correctly scaled at 1/100, and they are just gorgeous as you can see. [painted by John Treadaway]

£8, John's painting not included.

Anisty is also making new models of the combat car, which will also have photo etch details for the canopy and other parts.

£5.50 with crew

So, while I do not [yet] have any 15mm scifi forces, I certainly will be taking a look at these, and if you like the Slammers, or just great hover tanks, you probably should too.

New Perry Releases

As you may be aware, the Perry brothers have their own miniature company which produces historical miniatures.  I have a few that I am using for D&D figures, (and I need to finish painting them and show them off!) but they have over 13 ranges of metal and plastic figures covering everything from Agincourt to Choson Korean forces.

One of their new plastic releases is British Infantry for the American War of Independence (Revolutionary War).


38 plastic figures for £18?  Buy three boxes and get a free mounted Colonel? Sure!

Each box makes a battalion pretty nicely

These appear to be suitable for the majority of battles in the New England campaigns, and are easily supplemented by their extensive metal lines.  Unlike the Napoleonic wars, the AWI seems more suitable for skirmish and small battalion combat, as even the largest battles had fewer than 50,000 combatants on both sides, and the decisive parts of the battles were very small.  After visiting Valley Forge a few years back, I have a not very secret interest in reproducing this war... so maybe some day.

The Perrys are also releasing British infantry for World War Two, with a box of "Desert Rats" (again for £18, and again with a three box deal).


This campaign does not interest me as much as some, but with a couple of these boxes and some forthcoming Germans (and Italians) it seems like you could have some pretty satisfying large skirmish battles.  The box may also be useful for providing bits for use with Games Workshop figures, if one were interested in converting Imperial Guard figures for instance.  I also expect that they will come out with metal ANZAC and Indian heads too, to further expand this box.

Anyway, I am also looking forward to what comes next from them, as they typically have 3ups for next year's releases at Salute, which is next weekend.  Who knows what it could be?  WWII Italians? AWI American Continentals?  Plastic artillery for the ACW?  Dare I wish for Landsknecht?

Lead Painter League 7

One of my favorite forums is Lead Adventure, which while somewhat specialized in Pulp/Back of Beyond/Swashbuckling, has a level of project excellence amongst its membership which is unequaled, and for that reason alone is worth visiting.  One of the delightful aspects of the site, is that it runs a contest called "Lead Painter League" where the weekly regiment/team/squad entries of painters complete against one another for 10 rounds, and points are accrued to generate an overall winner (paint off in event of a score tie).  Rules for Season Seven have just been released here.  (Season 6 entries are here, for reference)

This year's round bonus points are for a Command Team (round one), Civil War (historical, round 5), and Sci Fi (round 10).

Here are some thoughts on how to win, or at least do well in the competition by Captain Blood, multiple winner of the LPL and clearly excellent painter (or is he just trying to throw readers off the game?).

While painting 50+ figures during the duration of the League would be pretty heroic for me (in stark comparison to my anemic output these last few years), it would also decrease the ol'lead/plastic pile a bit...  something to ponder.

So get painting!

Wargames Factory Surviors

By now you have probably seen the new Wargames Factory Survivors:Male, which are aimed mostly at a sort of "early zombie apocalypse", era if such a thing can be posited to exist.

Here is what they look like:

I particularly like the thickset dude with flip flops and AK

Sprue shots came out today, and the best news is that there is a separate weapons sprue in addition to the ones pictured above:

This includes 7 loose AK-47s, 7 M-16/ARs, shotguns, rifles, machine pistols, chain saws, and more.  Provided the scale works out to anything useful for Warhammer 40k/Inquisitor 28/Necromunda, I can foresee getting a few of these...  [this comparison shot of the vixens shows them to be slightly taller and slimmer than GW standard, which means that the guns should work just fine]

Even better news is that a female version of these sprues is expected to come out later this year, which if they look as good as the zombie vixens, should be quite excellent.

Brigade Models 25th anniversary

Brigade Models just celebrated their 25th anniversary in a proper way, by having a 25% off sale.  Unfortunately, I was not able to take advantage of the sale, which is a real pity since Brigade is also VAT listed, meaning that the discount on listed prices would have been substantial for overseas buyers.  And the British Pound is down to ~$1.52 as well, so I could have picked up some battalions on the cheap. (and space ships, and a Great War Belgium taster, and Celtos...)

In any case, the sale was missed, but they do have some great figures, which I highly recommend.  So go take a look, and throw a bit of money their way.

Here are some (old) pictures of an artillery battery made from Brigade castings.  More located here

For the traveling DM

If you are a DM on the go, like analogue vs. digital products, and have a problem with losing dice, this may be a kickstarter that you are interested in...

Dice rings.  The outer ring spins around the inner ring, and then the number "rolled" is indicated by the arrow marks. 

$15 for the kickstarter buys you one "die", $90 to get a full D&D set, which is obviously a bit pricy.  However, a d100 ring is useful for quite a number of games, and also for making up statistics...

Hawk Wargames Terrain

Hawk Wargames, makers of the hot new 10mm sci-fi game Dropzone Commander, is coming out with a lovely line of buildings made from cast resin tiles.  The tiles are made in either commercial or residential sizes, and have a sort of vague 1930's art deco sci-fi look to them that I really fancy.  By mixing and matching the various lobby, wall, and cornice tiles, you get a pretty unique look for each building that still looks coherent.  Tiles are 36mm wide by 17mm or 21mm depending if they are commercial or residential, and the ground floors are double height.

Here are a few pictures linked from their site.

Expensive at roughly 75p a tile, but they look great, and while filling up a town would be costly, they could probably be used to "sci-fi" a N scale cityscape pretty easily, and certainly a backdrop of just building facades could be done reasonably.

Wish someone made this sort of terrain in 6mm... although I am afraid I would have to buy quite a lot of it if they did!