Author Archives: Gavin Syme

One week until Salute 2012 – ‘chucking in pick up orders’

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It is now exactly one week until the biggest wargame show in the UK takes place.  I refer of course to Salute 2012 at Excel in London’s docklands.  Saturday 21st April is the day and I will be there on the Alternative Armies / 15mm.co.uk trade stand plus I will be doing the ‘Sharkes Gingerbread’ Flintloque scenario participation game across the day too.  You can read the scenario on Barking Irons Online.  But that is not what I am aiming at with this post…oh no…

Every year the company makes a Salute promotion and part of this is an option for customers to pick up their orders on that day from the trade stand.  This is dandy as it saves them the postage and ensures they get what they want (some codes, especially the sold out limited ones in the ‘swop drawer’, sell out at 9am when the doors open!) but…

Please for the sake of my sanity and worker relations with the rest of the crew get your pick up on the day orders in NOW, not just before the show.  London is four hundred plus miles from Girvan and to get to Salute I have to leave early on Friday morning.  The last packing and casting shift is that Thursday morning.  Every year, without fail, we get a few pick up orders placed late on Friday or even on the Saturday morning!

I live to please (ask my kids and my good lady) but I cannot do the impossible.  If you want to pick up on the day..please order before Thursday 19th!

Thank you for reading my annual one week to go to the show vent!

Details here for Salute during this week.

GBS

HOF Fire-Team is in from the printers!

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Lovely new stuff! Book and Tiles for HOF FT

While it is still one week to the release of HOF Fire-Team I just had to share this with you all.  A huge package from the printers has arrived! I ‘nicked’ some of it which you can see a small number of items from above.  ‘HOFFT’ (pronounced houft) as we call it in the office is up for pre-order just now (thank you to all who have taken us up on this offer and saved 15% too!) the book and the first three tile sets too.  There are twelve tiles in each set, nine battle boards and three scenics to be cut up and the book has fifty six pages.  It looks superb and the printers even too extra care in glossing the thick paper of the tiles for durability.  These codes are released just after Salute but will be for sale on the day at the show!

With Salute only a week or so away I will have no time to get some games in of HOFFT but I do plan an in-depth posting here on the making of the game and I hear rumours of a review on the mighty Dropship Horizon blog too.

In development for nearly two years its been a while coming but here is to you Mr Minadeo…well bloody done!

GBS

Sam Croes gets a blog!

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Skycar by Sam Croes

My mate Sam Croes now has his own blog!

There is not a lot on it as yet as it is very new but you should go along and check it out.

Sam has created some excellent floor tiles for use with 28mm scale miniatures which you will see more of on this blog soon along with some excellent paint work and invention on his ‘Castella’ Retained Knights for the Ion Age setting.  You can see the Castella on a previous posting.

Sam is a big fan of Firefight 2.o and has a plan for putting his own stamp on an alternate version of its appearance.  More on this at the time but a little teaser is above.

GBS.

SHM 15mm Sci-fi on Tiny Solitary Soldiers Blog

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One of my most favoured blogs to visit when looking for pure ‘eye candy’ is Tiny Solitary Soldiers blog.  Home to talent miniature painter and solo gamer SpaceJacker the blog proudly proclaims ‘all 15mm or smaller all of the time‘ and it does just what it says on its white metal tin.  I have been watching as SpaceJacker works his way around the SHM miniatures he bought from 15mm.co.uk and decided to wait until he had a few up before posting about them.  Well the time is here and man what a job he has done on Eli Arndt’s little aliens.

Below are some awesome pictures along with links to the posts they came from.  Enjoy!

SHM31 Baroka Crimelord  Posting is HERE.

 SHM28 Trandan Mercenary  Posting is HERE.

SHM30 Gizbin Mercenary  Posting is HERE.

SHM34 Prang Soldier  Posting is HERE.

SHM35 Kardul Bodyguard  Posting is HERE.

SHM32 Calamite Preacher  Posting is HERE.

As well as creating his own unique skin tones and uniform colours SpaceJacker also did some conversion work on a few of the miniatures which I think all looks great.  It’s really good to see how different wargamers make miniatures in their own vision for the gaming table.

So hop along and check out TSS blog, it is well worth your time.

GBS

Bob Minadeo interviewed on ‘Bring Your A-Game’ blog

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My good friend and fellow games designer Bob Minadeo has been interviewed over the creation of his latest and other titles for Two Hour Wargames.  These titles include Muskets & Mohawk’s and Six Gun Sound; but the interview concerns itself with the latest THW title too Rifles & Rebels.  The interview is over on a blog I have never seen before called Bring Your A-Game which specialises in discussion and interviews in the gaming industry.

Bob also quite kindly speaks a little about myself and Alternative Armies.  While you can expect to read more about the work that Bob and I do together soon on this blog his interview over on BYAG Blog gives you a really good read and insight too into how a games designer works and what inspires new titles.  We are all human and not the rules engine furnaces that some wargamers seem to think that we are!

Nice work Bob!

GBS

Crows and Ciggy Butts

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This morning, as I looked out of my window at 6am, I saw something rather odd that warrants a brief mention.  Most of the birds in Girvan where I live are common gulls, Seagulls the rats of the sky, some other small birds and a colony of Crows which live near the harbour.   What I saw was a Crow sitting across from the window on a nearby roof (no picture sorry, I did not have a camera to hand, the image above is just for illustration) and this Crow had in its mouth three cigarette butts, or the abandoned ends of the smoked cigarettes if you prefer.   It took me a moment to work out what the bird was holding it was so odd.  I then watched as in a matter of seconds it ate all three swiftly and without consideration of what they were or indeed how they must have tasted.

There is no shortage of discarded food in Girvan, much to my annoyance, as people tend to drop whatever they are holding zombie fashion once something else catches their eye.  But rather than any of this left about food the Crow visited the nearby beer garden of the Roxy pub and choose ciggies for breakfast!

What does this mean?  Some sage insight or portent of coming disaster…nah.  Means nothing, just thought I would share this.

GBS

It’s great to see an empty shelf!

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Run out of Stock button

Sometimes I get a good feeling when I go into work and today was one of those days.  I was told, and then checked for myself, that 15mm.co.uk had just about run out of three USE ME titles.  It was true!

The second print run of my own title UM001 USE ME 15mm Science Fiction is all but gone along with last of the first runs of UM004 USE ME Modern Warfare (by O.G.Joel) and UM006 USE ME Starship Battles (also by O.G.Joel).  I have ordered up a re-print on all three with a bigger run again.  This is the third time for UM001.

I honestly did not see USE ME becoming what it now is.  From one game book, UM001, to now twelve books with another five currently in various stages of development for 2012-13.  They are great little books that fit in your pocket and give a simple but elegant set of rules to suit a certain genre of wargaming.  Makes me proud.  Also the emails I have had passed on to me from gamers all over the world from the UK to the USA, Australia, New Zealand and even North Africa and the Russian Federation along with Hong Kong.  A dozen or more languages and more than that in terms of nations…those little books sure get about!

Maybe its down to the three new titles that have just come out but the number of gamers who come in and order up EVERY title in the range continues apace.  I certainly adore the lads over at Dropship Horizon blog as their readers are big fans of the series.

I do not see the company running out of stock (but if orders are heavy in the next week it is possible) before the new books arrive.  Hence there should not be an ‘Out of Stock’ update on 15mm.co.uk.  I just thought this warranted a post and a good feeling on my part that my ‘little fighter’ continues to grow in popularity.

GBS

Star Wars with USE ME Starship Battles?

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Can you feel the force?  I know I can.

I picked up a message from the Notables Yahoo Group today from a member who is a fan of UM006 USE ME Starship Battles and has made his own home brewed adaptation to the rules in order to play out scenarios from the Star Wars universe.  You can read all about his game and his feelings on how it went over on the Battle Tales blog.  I enjoyed his posting and his pictures too.

I have also seen Battlestar Galactica and Babylon 5 played out with USE ME.

Seems there is not much these rules cannot do when it comes to a punch up in the cold vastness of space.

GBS

In from the printers!

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in from the printers late march 2012

New Books!

The second of April sees the release of new products that I have been lucky enough to have been involved with.  I wrote a couple of them and edited another and laid out one more.  Busy, busy!

Above you can see the printed books and materials from these products.  From the left they are ION01 MOTH – Prydia Aflame, UM010 USE ME Support Pack, UM011 USE ME Cyberpunk, UM013 USE ME An Eldritch Horror and underneath them is the insert for the Flintloque boxed set 5109 Sharkes Chosen.  MOTH is a 28mm scale science fiction squad level wargame set of rules which you can learn more about on the MOTH pages of the Alternative Armies site.  It’s a print version of the good selling download edition which demand had us put into print.  The three new USE ME series titles are over on 15mm.co.uk and are released on 2nd April 2012.  Support Pack is a wargamers resource while Cyberpunk and Eldritch Horror are both rules sets for their respective genres.  The 5109 insert goes with the Flintloque boxed set and has stats, rules, scenario and more for the miniatures in the box.  All good!

Of course there is a load more to see and read about all of these over on the websites.  Just thought you might all like to see them laid on me window sill.

GBS

The Salute 2012 Demo Game coming soon to Barking Irons Online

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There will be a Flintloque 3rd edition special convention demo game at Salute 2012 which will be run by myself and a couple of others who have promised to lend a hand.  We aim for two games, one in the morning and one in the afternoon.  These games will be of a convention scenario that I have penned for just this occasion called…’Sharkes Gingerbread’.  Convention scenarios, I have been playing convention games since 1996, are simplified and amplified versions of the rules.  Quick paced and loads of fun.  There are slots for three to five players per game.

Those who follow what I do at ‘AA’ will know that I like to give a lot of free support and stuff for Flintloque, the world’s number one black powder fantasy game, so the scenario and its associated materials will be given out free on the day and online too sooner than that.

So look out for ‘Sharkes Gingerbread’ on Barking Irons Online where you will be able to read all about a magicke valley that has a Gingerbread House, Gingerbread Men, Trolkin with Bange & Oafson and of course everyone favourite Rifleorc’s led by Captain Sharke…it’s gonna be crazy fun!   Oh…and its odd how all the miniatures in the game are the new releases that will be on the trade stand..what a coincidence?!

If you fancy booking a game against me then go along to the Alternative Armies website and follow the guide there.

GBS