Category Archives: Gaming Concepts

I spend a lot of time writing, designing, testing and playing wargames of all kinds as part of my job. In these posts you can read about ideas and concepts that occur to me during these processes. Sometimes these ideas will become living breathing titles and miniatures and at other times they might well end up being nothing at all but a pleasant thought.

777th Croaked Line – Concept to Green (pt1)

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Since I began this blog I have been asked to give an account of a new set of Flintloque miniatures from their deepest origins through concept to greens to white metal and release.  This process often takes six months if not near a year in some cases so it is only now that a project has come along that I have been able to detail in such a manner.  Interested?  Well you should be for this is the stuff of miniature making magic!

Back when Flintloque 3rd Edition 5026 Death in the Snow was published in 2010 the realm of the Witchlands was greatly expanded and among those expansions were more troop types and unit profiles. In the months that followed the feedback from the new book was really good and one of the most talked about subjects was ‘Undead Todoroni’.  After all had the Todoroni of Nepolise not come a long way since the late 1990’s, from a unit of militia to a whole army in their own right with cavalry, artillery and more?  With that army in the Witchlands it stood to reason that there must be re-animated Zombie Toads!  I had come to this conclusion on my own and as a result I squeezed in a mention of the ‘777th Croaked Line’ in the army structure of the Dark Czar.  This mention caught players attention and led me to a conversation with miniature designer and Toad Mad man Rob Alderman in May this year.

As you can see above we came to an agreement over what a potential set of 28mm white metal Undead Todoroni would look like.  Rob’s sketches along with his own and my own input worked out a concept and then a design tender that would meet the needs of fan’s of the shambling dead.  Over the course of a week we batted it back and forth, consulted mortal Todoroni uniforms and other Undead formations and agreed on a total of nine greens to be created.  This took Rob about ten weeks among his other tasks as a designer and working man (he is a busy chap!) with a couple of checks of progress and some images to finalise creative direction.  Once carefully package Rob sent the greens to me at Alternative Armies where they arrived in late August.  You can see them below!

As you can see Rob followed the initial sketches and expanded on them too.  My own input kept his sanity hat screwed on tight and we worked out that in doing a full (and with nine greens it is a full unit) set we would need to provide not only troopers but also the command and the always found Witchlands requirements of a Vampyre and a Liche.  Since no Undead Todoroni exist in the Flintloque range they would also be ‘firsts’.  Details discussed included the style of dress and demenour of a Todoroni Vampyre (slick and slightly camp as it turned out), if a Zombie Todoroni cannot sing like normal Todoroni then what is the unit musician doing (playing an accordian of course!), the standard bearers flag pole topper (a homage to Mad Queen Maria’s glove puppet Mr Froggy).  As well as those we decided to vary the level of decay in the troopers (as in the rules of 5026) and to avoid bayonets as many gamers now prefer their muskets bare.  Late on in the process we decided to drop the fourth trooper and replace it with a unique and new miniature for the Undead…a Zombie Todoroni Chef!  Why..well humour of course, it is Flintloque’s goal.  The last addition was a dead Todoroni.  This figure has several purposes in that it could be a dead mortal Toad (battlefield marker) or a corpse ready for re-animation or such.

So that is it for the initial stages of this new set of miniatures.  Any questions just post below or email me direct.

This is the first of several postings on the ‘777th Croaked Line’ and in the next one I will be detailing the master molding stage and white metal ‘tins’ along with an account of each pose.

GBS

Musings on Aquafids…why so Strange?

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HOF80 Aquafid Infantry.  Strange…but Good?

On Friday 15mm.co.uk released another code in to the expanding and well loved HOF (Hordes of the Future) 15mm Science Fiction line.  Since I took over the design command of the range (back in the region of the mid thirties  of the code listing) I have tried to base expansions mainly on wargamers requests and also by reaction to releases.  Already emails have come in about HOF80 Aquafid Infantry ranging from ‘hurrah another new race‘ to ‘these are awful, why are you not making more Cultists or Retained Knights?‘.  These emails always intrigue me so I wanted to do a little posting here on the blog to tell you all why.

Designed by Elton Waters these latest miniatures added to the range were in response to r requests for a ‘fish man type of infantry’ and as normal I took the top three off the list of requests every few months and had them created.  I will not discuss the other two at this time but one was a Human pack for pulp and near future gaming and the other was a Human medical pack for primary use with HOF Fire Team and other systems.   The name Aquafid combines a word for water and one for fighter for a title that confers the right meaning.  So the system I used created the Aquafid like it did the Grey Aliens, Automatons, Cultists, Octopods, Triorbs and others.  But why the response by email?

I think that is comes as a shock (sadly) to a lot of wargamers now that a company will create miniatures by request and not just make more and more soldiers with spiky bits and big guns.  No civilians or support staff, only warriors.  I believe that codes such as the Aquafid are vital to the soul of the whole wargaming hobby.  We are a hobby of intense creativity and diversity and no where is this more clearly seen at the moment than in 15mm Science Fiction which is in the midst of a golden age of expansion.  New Races and Oddities are central to maintaining this just as they were in the 1990’s and 1980’s for 28mm and 25mm Science Fiction.  If makers only releases yet more human troops what would be the point?  Eventually we would all just be fighting ‘Ultra Modern’ without the sci-fi element using miniatures so similar to each other they all came out of the same cookie cutter (does this sound familar to you at all?).

There is a very good reason I listen to customers…they know what they want as individuals and if you list their feedback by hundreds you see a pattern.  Each time a new release is made in HOF (and in SHM for that matter) feedback comes in, orders come in and opinions are shared.  Sometimes new races and oddities fall on their faces and go no further and in other cases they sell so well that they warrent expansion.  Two good examples of this are the HOF Cultists and the HOF Octopods.  Both began with one pack of infantry poses and now have three or four (with more to come!) each for a fuller force.  Without the system I use neither of these would exist at all.

Will the Aquafid spawn a support pack, a command pack or others?  Are they too strange?  Only time will tell. But now you know my thoughts and perhaps now they are not as weird as they first appeared.

I welcome comments and feedback on miniature design ideas and I always will.

GBS

Ladies and Trolls!

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This week Alternative Armies will be making its late summer, early autumn releases.  I have been working on these for a few days on and off to get them ready and they are a lovely little lot indeed.   Several new Trolkin for use in Flintloque and in Slaughterloo along with the first female Elves in the whole range (aside from the Empress Morgana of course!) all of whom have been sculpted by the talented Rob Alderman.

Trolkin come from the frozen land of Copendaz and are the lesser cousins of the huge Trolka.  While smaller these Trollish soldiers share many of the same characteristics including stony skin and bulbous worty features plus a habit of wearing clothes too small for them and are more than a match for an Orc in a fist fight.  There is a great free booklet which I wrote that can be be downloaded from the company website (here is a link to get it from this posting) which gives the reader a mass of information on the Troll races plus great artwork by Edward Jackson.  The new miniatures include Colonel Skande Stoyne whose character was set in a Notables Yahoo Group competition last month (see this previous posting) and a character from the Troll booklet the owner of the Marske Company, Towern Marske.  Also a dead Trolkin in the uniform of the Lergo Line (a lot of wargamers like to put those who fall onto the wargames table).  These releases are another stage closer to the agreement that Rob and I had on bringing the Trolls to a full divisional force which would include cavalry, artillery, infantry and command.

The last of the releases is the Elf Ladies.  I have been looking forward to this pack for a while as I was the one who said ‘there is a real gap here, we need more woman!’ while playing Flintloque back in the spring.  Three lovely miniatures, a young strumpet, a wife of middling means and a more mature woman.  Really useful and top of my list for more Flintloque miniatures over on TTWG blog once I have the Elf Dragoons sorted out.

I have put images of the new miniatures in to this posting for you all to look at.   Both painted and raw metal alloy.  You will be able to find these white metal miniatures on Alternative Armies as of this Friday.

I have a Flintloque scenario for Barking Irons Online which features these new miniatures plus a full section of Dogmen Lancers and some Burrovians.  It has been playtested and I plan to do a concept posting on TTWG blog once time allows.

GBS

Tiny Mecha Designs by Eli Arndt

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Over the last month Eli Arndt, talented sculptor in the SHM Range, has been working on finishing his Fleet Scale Mecha.  You can see these above in an image I linked to from his own blog.  Normally I do not post about ‘greens’ or if you prefer miniatures which are not yet molded for white metal production but I am making an exception for these little fellows.  Once Eli has completed the designs he will be mailing them to 15mm.co.uk for inclusion in its ‘6mm scale’ range.  While these are not actually 6mm scale their naval scaling for comparison to starships puts them roughly into that category; certainly in terms of producing them for sale.

Eli and I are good friends who speak regularly and he has turned down offers from other companies to get ahold of these sculpts in favour of working with me on them.  Of course this makes me happy and it also pays me back for the faith I had in him when he was just starting out with his first Uhul designs a couple of years ago.  Thank you Eli.

I will be posting more on these tiny mecha when the time comes and looking at game systems they can be used with.

GBS

Can you ‘Kickstart’ miniature designs by appealing direct to Wargamers?

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I saw an interesting posting on the Dropship Horizon Blog a few days ago.  At the time I was too busy with other things to do anything on it so I just bookmarked the page and moved on.  But now, here I am back again.  What is it about you ask?  Well it is about a theory.  Can you get the wargaming public to finance your new miniature designs and through that your new company without those wargamers seeing miniatures upfront or the promise of any end result?

There are a huge number of miniature wargame companies across the world and this is a great thing as it brings diversity and great choice to thousands of customers each day.  Many of these companies I do not know the names of and a large number exist only for a few months or a year and then fold for one reason or another.  But in the last couple of years the way of beginning a company has changed.  While I will not go into the other ways of making the process easier with free e-commerce software, low cost hosting, print on demand books, electronic publishing and so on I do want to look at Indeigogo and Kickstarter for funding miniature design work by using this as an example.

You can see the posting here and read about it but the gist is as follows. A brand new (so new they do not have a website or any presence I would find beyond this and a few other blog postings) and shiny new company called ‘Grinning Skull Miniatures’ wish to release a range called the ‘Oggum’, 15mm scale white metal miniatures of science fiction war pigs.  You can see a screen grab below.

Taken on 5th August 2012

The aim of the Grinning Skull is to raise 2000USD for their range of 15mm miniatures.  They have given themselves until 4th September 2012 to raise the funds.

Will they do it?  I shall check back near the end of the time allotted to find out and will post a second time on this topic then.  But my gut feeling is no, they will not.  Will I be incorrect?

GBS

Win the Pin by Creating a Character this Weekend!

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This week I made a posting here about my Flintloque pin badge which I wore for years at demo games all over the world back in the 1990’s.  There has been a lot of interest from members of the Notables Yahoo Group in my offer to let someone win it and I would post it to them.  So after asking for suggestions how to go about choosing a winner the method suggested by Chris Pryme was chosen and that is for me to note down the email addresses of every Notable who makes a posting between Friday 3rd and Monday 6th August HERE.  I will then randomly select the winner and contact them to ship them the pin.

But what Flintloque related subject should be discussed by Notables to get their postings on the group for a chance to win.  While a message on ANY Flintloque or Slaugherloo subject will be entered I want to make it a little more interesting so I offer a second competition within the first!  I want the Notables to suggest a character profile for an as yet unreleased Flintloque miniature!

Who is this fellow?

Above you can see artwork of the miniature and below an image of an assembled master casting in white metal.  The miniature is a high ranking Trolkin Officer mounted on a Muskox.

The prize in this second competition is the miniature in question worth about 8.00GBP and not to be released for several weeks yet.  The terms are that you need to post a message on the Notables Yahoo Group between 3rd and 6th August telling me who this character is, his story, an idea of his Flintloque and or Slaughterloo profiles in play.

I will get you started with his name ‘Colonel Skand Stoyne‘.  About two hundred words will be fine.  It does not have to be super accurate or points based as I will choose a winner and assist in finalising the text and so on for release of the miniature.  You can read the Notables Message on this competition HERE.

So you have the chance not only to win an unreleased miniature but also to name it and in the process the chance to also win my personal pin badge!  Excellent!  Get over to the Notables and post your idea!

GBS

WIP – USE ME Cyberpunk rules as a download

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A page from the download edition of UM011

This has been a tough week for me a lot of work on and not a lot of free time to go with it.  Next week proves to be much the same but it also has my eldest’s tenth birthday to look forward to but more on that next week!

In the time I have had I took a project from the pile and decided to try and get it done in the twenty or so hours I had spare.  What is this project you say!  Well it is the conversion of UM011 USE ME Cyberpunk from a printed title into a dedicated PDF electronic title.  When it is released it will be added to the growing list of PDF titles which already includes most of the USE ME series and also MOTH as well.  Like the others it will have three parts, full colour separate cover, a full colour main body and an ‘ease print’ plain version of the main body.   All in a zipped file for just $5.00.  Bargain!

15mm.co.uk has done well with PDF versions of its USE ME Series with electronic sales being about twenty percent of the total compared to print.  So far UM001 USE ME Science Fiction is the best selling and most popular but this does not surprise me as it is also the bigger paper seller too and it into its third print run!

I take some time over the conversion to electronic from print as I for one do not like it when I purchase a download only to find it is just a scanned version of the print book.   The files I produce are designed from the outset to be read on screen and as such feature bookmarks, links and other live material for easy navigation and use.  On top of this the ‘ease print’ version is for those who want to go to a copy shop or home print their purchase; it has all of the artwork, colour, table graphics removed leaving plain text.  It takes some extra time but from the email we get wargamers appreciate it and I am all about customer satisfaction!

There are a few dedicated miniature packs for this title including my personal favourite of the year so far…the Corporate Ashigaru.

HOF76 Corporate Ashigaru

I cannot give you a release date for this yet but it will be in the next month or so I imagine.

GBS

Welcome the Wildthingians to 15mm.co.uk

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Wildthingian Group

There is a small number of new releases this week into the SHM range on 15mm.co.uk all of them under the same heading and racial type…the Wildthingians!

There are five new conversions made by Rob Alderman being added to the two original designs by Steve Hazuka (SHM08,SHM09) which Rob simply insisted on being allowed to do, so I said ‘sure thing’ and here we are.  These are exactly the kind of weird specialised miniatures that the range is known for and which otherwise would not exist.  They are fairly large creatures (16mm and 20mm by size groupings) and tower over Human 15mm miniatures making good mercenaries and adventurers in a 15mm sci-fi collection.

Here is a list of the new codes;

SHM36 Wilthingian Leader    Furry Alien Leader armed with a Heavy Energy Weapon.
SHM37 Wildthingian Veteran  Furry Alien armed with a Heavy Energy Rifle. 
SHM38 Wildthingian Soldier  Furry Alien aiming Heavy Energy Rifle.
SHM39 Young Wildthingian II Furry Alien, arms folded.
SHM40 Young Wildthingian III Furry Alien, running. 

I have arranged for all of the Wildthingians to have their own section of the SHM part of the 15mm.co.uk website which makes them the first race to have that honour!

Assuming you are reading this after the 13th of July 2012 then go along to the SHM range and look for them there!

GBS

New Blister Backer

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A ‘rough’ of the new Alternative Armies and 15mm.co.uk blister backer card

Some of you might have noticed I have been in a ‘hobbit hole’ for the last two days and have not answered my usual three dozen or more personal mails a day. Well I had been handed a new and urgent task; to replace the current now almost extinct blister backer used by Alternative Armies and 15mm.co.uk.  I had expected to be doing this but due to the placing of a large trade order into the USA last week it was moved up the job list to ‘do it right now!’ status.

Those who purchase their miniatures from stores or at conventions will know what a blister backer is.  A piece of card with all the needed information about the company and about the product which goes inside a blister of miniatures allowing the customer to know what he is looking it along with how much it costs.  These used to form the back of a blister but those were ‘heat sealed’ use once blisters which we have not used for a decade or more.  We use a ‘clam shell’ plastic blister which is more secure but also is reusable and many wargamers use them to transport finished figures too!  So they full fill the same purpose but are no longer the ‘back’ but the name remains much like ‘watching a video’ does despite it being a DVD!

If you click on the image above you can see a low rez rough of the new design. Size wise it is 105mm by 75mm in dimension. It is simple and effective and tells you all you need to know over an attractive mottled blue with the famous Alternative Armies ‘arrowhead’ embedded in it.  The blue is used as it is the best colour behind white metal miniatures to be able to see them properly and the blank white area on the front is for the placement of the ‘product label’ which tells the customer what code he is holding.  This is different for each pack of course.

I will be catching up with the backlog of email soon as I can but this is turning into one hectic week!

GBS

The SHM Range on 15mm.co.uk gets Packs!

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SHMP01 Cyborg Enslavers

My ‘metal baby’ is growing up!  As of Friday this week 15mm.co.uk will be selling the SHM range miniatures not only as singles but also as packs at 4.00GBP each.  Why does this matter you might say?  Well it shows the range has now become successful enough to enter the ‘trade’ ranges offered in packs to dealers and stores as well as to wargamers on the website.  This is a big thing to me.

The SHM range has currently got more than thirty miniatures in it and soon it will have more than forty from more than five different sculptors and I cannot say this enough…without my support of the SHM concept none of these miniatures would exist in white metal for gamers to get in their collections.  So miniatures by rookie and new talents have proven themselves able to support a blister pack range.  Round of applause indeed!

While the pack range will contain seven different codes (SHMP01 to SHMP07) all at the same price their contents will vary from ten down to five miniatures as the range is so eclectic that it was impossible to assign a level number of castings to each code.  Also they were not designed to be in packs.  I am confident though that these packs will prove popular just like the HOF and Laserburn ranges.   Several SHM are among the most popular codes we sell.

GBS