Giving in to the Pressure of Wargamers – Security Force Alpha

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Gavin Syme

Security Force Alpha sculpted by Elton Waters

Last week I released a whole miniature sub-range into the HOF 15mm Science Fiction miniatures line. This was the eight packs and about thirty poses in the ‘Security Force Alpha’ or SFA set. Due to technical problems caused by an internet war (of which the company was not a part but we did lose our websites for twelve hours or so) I did not post about this here at the time. I was going to let it pass, after all there is a lot going on, but the response to the release has been frankly huge.

Dropship Horizon Blog, the best place online for the latest and greatest in 15mm science fiction wargaming announced the release and this sparked off a lot of views and then comments. I added my own comments and then watched as email messages began to arrive at 15mm.co.uk congratulating us upon releasing, at last, a generic human force that is not another cookie cutter power armoured ‘not marines’ at a good price. Other emails asked, some even pleaded (steady on!) that we release SFA as single miniatures as well as packs. I had intended to do this, after all it has been getting done now for the majority of the range over the last year plus, but typically it would be a gap of several weeks or a month before it happened. The reason for this is simple. News is constant and the effort that went into the SFA frankly deserves a second bit at the news cherry.

After thinking it over, with Salute 2013 so near, I decided to give the wargamers what they wanted. As of Thursday this week the whole SFA range will be out as singles. Personally I think this is in the main for wargamers to get bundles of the two prone casualty poses in the SFA Command Pack as well as the kneeling Laser pose in the SFA Support Pack.

So pressure on 15mm.co.uk does pay off for wargamers. Makes me do more work, but it pays!

GBS

p.s. Big Thanks to Chris at Dropship for his assist on this release.

Another Flintloque print run sells out.

Posted on April 3, 2013 by Gavin Syme

Last week the print run of 5025 Flintloque 3rd Edition – War in Catalucia ran out for the third time! Yes, that means a forth print run. I have organised this and hopefully it will arrive within a week or so depending on the Easter long weekend holiday here in the UK. Over the last two years Alternative Armies and I have adapted to and taken to short run printing for wargame titles so getting a couple of hundred new books is now a matter of routine.

I could go into the benefits of such business techniques but there is a lot online about POD and Short Run printing which those who are keen can look up on their own. I have other things to be getting on with just now for next week and even for tomorrow in fact for 15mm.co.uk. So at this point I will just give myself another wee pat on the back. Every time a print run sells out on something I wrote it makes me smile. Validating what I do for a living and knowing that another couple of hundred people are enjoying it too.

GBS

Max Brooks – World War Z – Listen to it on YouTube

Posted on March 28, 2013 by Gavin Syme

Often I do not have time to read as much as I would like and indeed late March and April is the crux of this time for me with the build up to and the actual event of Salute in London. Salute is the only wargame show which I attend directly along with the company and its a big task all around. So I often listen to audio books.

I have done this for many years but over time the technology to allow this has changed dramatically. Back in the 1990’s it was a big box of cassette tapes which then gave way to a portable CD walkman and in turn a small MP3 player with ear buds. In the last couple of years it has become a smart phone (which can carry about 50,000 cassettes!) and the source of the audio has changed too. I used to use the local libraries and purchase the odd box set too. Then the same with CD’s. But once everything went digital this all changed too. MP3 files for audio books and now it seems YouTube has literally thousands of audio books on it which are essentially free to listen to. This can be done online by going to Youtube.

Anyhoo….

I own both of Max Brooks books on the Zombie Wars, the Survival Guide and World War Z. Both are excellent and both are unlike the vast majority of cookie cutter zombie fiction. Where the Zombie Survival Guide is a practical manual much in the same vein as infantry training guides and such (makes you shiver to think that it is actually real and has just been popped into our world from some other dimension) the other book, this one, is a diary account like tale of a war finished already. Its evocative, its brutal and while often deeply personal it is also detached from what it is telling you overall. Brooks does a great job in telling you of the end of the world without actually showing it to you in the ‘big picture’. You get it in little chunks from seemingly random people. It works very well.

The voice acting is great as well. If you are a fan of zombie books but are looking for something more than shuffle and bite check it out and do it in a way that allows you to work on like I did while enjoying it. Go to YouTube.

GBS

The 98 Campaign by M C Monkey-Dew

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Gavin Syme

I had meant to post on this subject a couple of weeks back..but..well you get the point. Being me is not always a linear experience, sometimes I feel like I am suffering something I like to call ‘timeslip’ as time passes like lightening and a day becomes a fortnight with no effort at all on my comprehension!

The Campaign Map

My good friend Bob Minadeo with whom I have worked on Firefight 2.0 and HOF Fire-Team is a skilled wargames rules writer and a long time wargamer too. He is also a big fan of Flintloque, Slaughterloo and the whole World of Valon. To that end he has brewed up and is currently playing out a whole campaign set in that world under the title of ‘The 98 Campaign’. Above you can see the campaign map.

The campaign concerns the Ferach Elf forces of the Tyrant Emperor Mordred and their Bog Orc allies in the ‘BGORA’ and their attempt to ‘liberate’ Guinalea from the yolk of King Gorge III of Greate Britorcn and make the nation part of the Empire and not the Grand Alliance. I am enjoying reading the postings on Bob’s blog and on top of the tale the images showing his terrain set up and the love that he puts into his armed forces on the table top. The vast majority of the excellent and colourful miniatures on the gaming table are pro-painted from Alternative Armies itself and as I often deal with Bob directly (perks of the job eh!) I have watch him amass this collection with interest over the last year while his mighty mind was musing on the campaign now underway.

Albion Dragoons advance!

As to which side will win the conflict…I do not know…perhaps Bob does not know either at this moment and the dice will decide. He is using a concoction of his own for the wargame rules and the campaign system too. Me, well I want the Emperor Mordred to lose as always!

Get on over to the Monkey-Dew blog and follow the campaign if you are a wargamer it is proving to be a riveting ride indeed!

GBS

SupaBases adds a String to the Bow

Posted on March 25, 2013 by Gavin Syme

This posting is a little late as it had been planned for last Friday but if you look at the post previous to this one you will see that South West Scotland, where I live, was battered by one of the worst blizzards in living memory and that I was also affected by it. Though the snows are currently gone, they may return, it has meant I am playing catch up now. So…on with the show eh!

The ‘SupaBases’ logo designed by Sam Croes

Last week Alternative Armies and 15mm.co.uk both released the ‘SupaBases’ range of MDF Wooden wargaming bases into the hobby market. This was the culmination of several months of effort on my own part and others as although there are a few other makers of these kinds of bases in 2mm and 3mm thickness’s none of them were suitable as suppliers to the company. So we decided to create our own and we were determined to source the wood and get the job done in Scotland. The bases are precision cut with a tool, not a laser, and this gives a lovely finish to what is currently fourteen different sizes of square, rectangular and circular. You can see them below in the picture.

I personally think that although the company offers white metal and plastic bases these wooden bases have a lovely feel and especially for 15mm scale miniatures as singles and elements in wargames they give an impressive finish. From this point on I will be using them for all of our own new releases and so on.

Its not always all about new miniatures and the excitement of new game systems sometimes its the tasks without the glamour which give a lot of satisfaction. Hundreds of customers had asked if we would make these bases, so we did. Not a lot more I can say except that if you want to you should give them a try especially the larger ones like the 75mm and 100mm circles as these are not practical in other materials and allow for some great set pieces or dioramas or vehicle mounts. Thanks for reading and if you want to see the SupaBases then click on your choice of link below:

15mm.co.uk Alternative Armies

GBS

Big Can, Little Can..Weather a Blizzard

Posted on March 24, 2013 by Gavin Syme

Its been a manic weekend here in Girvan. Not really for me as I remained snug at home all except for Friday but more on that in a minute. But for the rest of Girvan and indeed the whole of South West Scotland the weekend has seen some of the worst weather that the area has seen in many years and me personally since I have moved here some eight years ago. You can look at the news for the full story but essentially high winds from Thursday evening peaked across Friday into storm conditions and when that was combined with snowfall it led to gusting blizzards that caused no end of trouble.

Truck Park Girvan!

Across Friday afternoon one road after another was closed and the snow fell on and on. I decided to leave the office an hour or so early expecting I might have to deal with a bit of snow on the ten mile drive down into Girvan. I was wrong. It was actually the scariest drive of my life to date as a driver ( I have only been driving a year so that is not saying much but read on). As I drove the snow got deeper until I passed a delivery van that had broken down due to stalling. Following this the wind whipped the snow into drifts and a tundra like gale and my view of the road ahead was reduced to little more than ten feet. A mile of this saw a small convoy of vehicles form with me at its midst. I kid you not that about three miles out from Girvan the brakes in the car stopped working, they froze or were packed with snow. I had to use the gears to slow and the handbrake to arrest the increasing number of slips and skids that the car underwent. I picked up a passenger too, a driver whose vehicle had been left at the side of the road, I did not want to leave him out in that. By the time I reached Girvan the police had closed the road to traffic and there were cars parked on the roundabout that marks the edge of the town. I sat in the car for a while watching the weather and waiting for my hands to stop shaking before heading for my house.

I found out the next morning that virtually all of the region had been brought to a halt. In fact Girvan was home to several packed coaches and at least a hundred HVG’s which parked where they could (see the image above). I am pleased to report that the people of the town turned out somewhat in force with tea and hot soup for the stranded and every hotel room was filled. Several people it seemed suffered accidents on the main road down the coast too, but I don’t know more about that.

Snowy Weather

The weather is now much improved but still windy though the BBC says it might come back again…

Big Can, Little Can

Anyway with the nasty weather out of the way the post I was going to put up was an idle muse about smaller sized cans of fizzy drinks and if they were actually better than the larger more normal size but I can’t summon up the energy so I will keep it short for ‘ya all. The Food and Drink Agency here in the UK back in 2010 introduced legislation trying to make companies reduce the size of their sugary drinks cans to combat obesity. I noted this at the time and ignored it but I picked up a case of Pepsi in this size this week and it came back to mind. You can see the two sizes above, I like diet drinks as coffee makes me feel unwell, but did the smaller can make me drink less? The answer is a cynical no. Typically while working I will drink two cans a day, one in the morning, one in the evening but with the third smaller can I have found this number increase to five or six. This is not due to concious thought, just desire as I type ever onwards with email and such. They are just too small to satisfy. As a result, the equally expensive, but smaller, cans are consumed at three times the rate of the other ones. As I said cynical…combat obesity or just sell more under the old three choices adage…’Reduce Size, Reduce Quantity, Increase Price‘…seems to be the first one to me.

GBS

18.09.14 The Day Scotland Decides

Posted on March 22, 2013 by Gavin Syme

Well the date has been announced. The date which will see a vote here in Scotland over whither or not we remain part of the United Kingdom or become once again a separate sovereign nation. On the Eighteenth of September Twenty Fourteen so about a year and a half from today.

I am not political and I am not a great believer in politicians either but this is more than a policy choice or party spin this is likely to be the most important vote I will ever cast and so to that end I am going to keep a distant eye on the campaign as it moves on. The ‘Yes’ and the ‘No’ sides and as the date approaches I will focus more on it.

There are many questions to be asked and I have no fixed opinion myself as of today. Am I in favour of Independence? Time will tell.

GBS

Eli’s Vergan’s are my kinda Miniatures!

Posted on March 20, 2013 by Gavin Syme

SHM54-SHM57 Vergan Free Traders

SHM54-SHM55 Rear View

These are due to release this week but I wanted to give a little post about them here before that as I have to say that I just love the alien species of Vergan created by Eli Arndt for the SHM line on 15mm.co.uk. Eli has created and is creating a number of alien species and these are one of my favourites. Why do I like them so much?

Well its partly style and its partly ethos. You can use them in any game system and they are of Human height with greater bulk so they match in with ease. Their style is pure space opera of the kind that Star Wars promotes where alien races are welcomed and not automatically targeted as ‘Xenos’ to be exterminated just for the sin of existing like in some other settings. They remind me of aliens produced in 25mm scale in the 1980’s back when larger scales were as open to experimentation as the smaller 15mm scale is now. Its a shame that the seeming increased ‘need for polish for its own sake’ in the wargaming industry, sometimes without any visible increase in quality or value for money, has meant that only 15mm scale now see’s such bold and different designs in the 21st century. Ethos wise its just that. Fun and good value combined with not taking themselves too seriously. Perfect for me and for 15mm.co.uk.

Why call them ‘Free Traders’ and not ‘Soldiers’? Eli said to me when he sent me the designs that he thought of the Vergans as merchants not mercenaries. After a bit of thought I came to agree with him. Some of the other races in SHM like the Prang are blatantly militaristic but the Vergans seem to carry weapons mainly for self defence. Part of a starship crew or in a spaceport these blob shaped and many tentacled fellows might just heft an energy rifle only when the traitorous Human they are dealing with tries to double cross them. The aliens are not always the bad guys…humm…I can feel a USEME scenario brewing now.

The Vergans join the first of their kind (SHM20) as single miniatures but also as a value pack. I do hope that Eli makes more of them in the future (perhaps a Vergan child or female) but he is a busy guy with LNG and other projects so time will tell.

GBS

Nearing Three Score…well a Score and three Quarters!

Posted on March 17, 2013 by Gavin Syme

The Swag of the Day!

Its me birthday today…Huzzah! Its also been a long week of many things the future will show, hence the lack of blog postings and updates.

Thanks to all who gave me a gift. Not only a physical object but also their time, for the emails, phone calls and also visits in person. Above you can see some of what I received including several graphic art books and DVD’s too. I may do a posting or two on some of these but they are all smashing great objects which will keep me ‘nerding’ for many hours over the coming weeks. You will also see a polo shirt behind everything else. This is a staff shirt from my local hostelry the ‘Roxy’. They adore me so much they gave me a uniform so that I might work for them…but the 15mm.co.uk shirt I currently wear would have to be prised off with a white metal crowbar first!

Special mention to my best buddy Jim Brittain who took several days off his work to come and stay here with me in Girvan for my birthday weekend. Also Eve Hallow who amused all with the scratching of his long nails on every chalkboard he could find. Also my Good Lady who organised not only a rousing cheer or two but also a cake and other surprises.

Normal service resumed soon!

GBS

p.s. I am 34 today in case the title is somewhat confusing in this posting.

Wedding Bells!

Posted on March 9, 2013 by Gavin Syme

Rumour has it that today a certain Emma is making an honest man of Craig Andrews (editor of Barking Irons Online and Orcs in the Webbe) by marrying him. Being ten years long, long service myself I offer my congratulations to the happy couple and wish them all the best for the future. Craig is a top bloke, I have known him for a number of years now and he deserves all the love that life can offer a man.

GBS

‘You can take the cudgel away from my head now my Good Lady…see I said nothing negative about ten long, long years service…. :-)’