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
This is pretty cool! I personally love seeing greens and sculpts in progress, it is very inspiring for me, being the occasional mini sculptor myself.
I’m liking these mechas a lot, they would go well with the old plastic spaceship minis (Grenadier, I think, they used to be sold for use with “Silent Death: The Next Millennium”) that I still have lying around. Perhaps use these in games with the USE ME spaceship rules… Anyway, I wonder if Eli will be doing some spacecraft to go with them, that would be something to look forward to!
Hello Sam,
Thanks for your comment. Yes, I really like these little fellows too. They should go well with all spaceships in that scale such as ‘Silent Death’ or ‘Full Thrust’. Sure extra rules for USE ME Starship Combat are totally possible treating these mecha as a variant of fighter perhaps. As for Eli doing any spaceships…we will see, perhaps he will in the future. If he can sculpt tiny mecha he could do ships too.
GBS
Hey guys!
These were a riot to sculpt and very educational in terms of both technique and design. They really came down to picking and choosing what details were inportant and which had to go right out. Patience was also key as the only way to go from tiny detail to tiny detail was to let everything cure first at each step. This is one of the reasons that these little beasties took so long.
As for what system to use them in, well that pretty much comes down to which one you play. You wouldn’t need a dedicated set of mecha rules to use these as they could easily sub in for fighters for more anime-themed games. A lot of space fleet games already have rules that could be used to reflect any unique fighting characteristics for mecha.
I am not sure I’ll sculpt spaceships any time soon. That is an entirely different skill set that I have to master first, one that is more akin to model-making than sculpting. My main goal for making these was to fill a niche that I felt had gone woefully under-filled for too long.
-Eli
Hello Eli,
Thanks for your comment my friend. I posted on these as I was so impressed with your self discipline to complete them.
O.J.Goel and I were discussing a new project today for a USE ME title end of this year, we were thinking 6mm sci-fi…why…well these mecha would be awesome for that. Plus making some rules for the often ignored 6mm players.
I am sure you can make ships, give it a try when you feel the notion.
GBS