Baroness Julanna at the head of her Knights
My good friend Sam Croes has just posted up a piece of art by the talented Emel-de-Syrs. The art shows Julanne a baroness of the League of Canlaster at the head of her Retained Knights. A scene from the Ion Age universe taken from the MOTH game book. I really like this image, its got pace and drive and scale too. Makes a fella want to go AWOL from the Prydian Army and join the rebel Canlastrian ranks.
Well done Emel!
GBS
Since August I have been watching the progress of Eli Arndt’s tiny Fleet Scale Mecha designs and I am pleased to be able to say that Eli giving me the chance to get them into production has turned out brilliantly. This month will see them released in their own part of the 15mm.co.uk website along with a special Barking Irons Online article for them all about their presence in USEME and how to make best use of them overall in gaming.
FS01 Fleet Scale Mecha or 6mm Power Armour
FS06 Fleet Scale Mecha or 6mm Power Armour
These are some of the smallest wargaming pieces I have ever dealt with and on average each of them is 6mm or less in size. That said some clever mold making and production sees them in white metal which was then painted by Eve Hallow. They will be released as single miniatures and as value sprues which are a little cheaper. There are nine different, and they are different, mecha and from the paint schemes I asked Eli for Eve has done a super job (I heard him gibber when he handed them over that never again…too small!).
O.G.Joel has a draft of a 6mm rules set for USEME and these will fit in lovely.
Well done Eli!
GBS
It has been a big, big year for 15mm science fiction miniatures on 15mm.co.uk and that means its been a big year for it for me too. I have commissioned and accepted more than fifteen packs for the HOF range (and accepted two dozen SHM miniatures too) and while most of these have now been released some are still to come. Of those still to come the next ones on the release schedule have been spoken of before on this blog the Rim Mercenaries. So it really is a mercenary dream realised.
These are coming out this Friday and were designed by Elton Waters. I plan an article on Barking Irons Online about them and the theory of the expansion and a little discussion about WHY more Rim Mercenaries and how it ties into the USEME series and O.G.Joel.
GBS
No books left…..
This morning I gave the nod for 15mm.co.uk to include an update for the Alien Squad Leader 2.0 game system. This update was to mark the book for the game system as out of stock. Essentially the last couple of dozen copies were polished off in the free postage offer that has just ended. So where now for ASQL2.0? Well the market has changed in the three years since the book was released and even in the last year since a new run was printed. ASQL has been a success for the company and for Alex Self its creator and it is still a very powerful and unique rules system but more and more wargamers are asking for it as a PDF download paid for title and not in print.
I am speaking to Alex over the next week and a choice will be made. Print or PDF or both? We will see. If you have an opinion then email me on the address to the right or post a comment below.
GBS
The Game Begins!
Recently I have been speaking to ‘Maff’ one of the excellent gaming combo behind Winter of ’79 and also the awesome Dropship Horizon blog too. He is a big fan of the Laserburn range of 15mm miniatures and sci-fi gaming in general. To that end he sent me a link to a brand new blog where he will be extolling his adventures. The name of this blog is….The Zone. They also included an ‘in joke’ in the domain name of the blog, see if you can spot it.
At the moment of typing there are two posts on the new blog both of them crackers. Intense urban skirmish…ain’t it the best kinda gaming for 15mm. That is what I had in mind when I thought up the idea for HOF Fire-Team.
Good luck with the new blog lads. I will be watching.
GBS
Maj. Diz Aster over on Firebase Aries 15 blog is getting set to unveil a new adventure in miniature wargaming. I was intrigued by the image above and the cryptic clue and asked him for more details…to my delighted surprise I have been offered and have accepted a senior position in the new adventure which will feature USE ME heavily. More on this when the time is right…but I can feel the burn!
GBS
See how little we at Odeon care…not even a single poster to take a picture of!
On Sunday I went to Kilmarnock to see Dredd 3D. Unlike many others out there I am a fan of the original 1995 Judge Dredd movie which adapted the famous law man from the pages of seminal British comic 2000AD to the big screen. So I was keen to see how the new movie starring Karl Urban as old stony face matched up to it and also to expectations. Now that I have seen it…how did it match up…was it still…THE LAW!
I had mixed expectations of the new movie. I had seen two different trailers and a couple of feature clips as well. These did not make me think Mega City One more Korea and last years movie The Raid Redemption about a team of police who try to clear an entire tower block of criminals one room at a time. While I enjoyed The Raid (I have not reviewed it due to time constraints, if anyone wants me to please comment) it was thin on plot but super heavy on action. Since the parts of Dredd I had seen made me think the same I was not sure I would enjoy it.
Well as it turned out I did not really enjoy the movie though the two people I was with did greatly enjoy it. Why? I think due to me being very switched on to the comics and the sheer depth of Mega City lore which could have been mined for the movie. Basically the city was missing from the movie. Sure you saw Johannesburg with some CGI generated skyscrapers (blocks) and some Judges but nothing of the Mega City I know. No robots, no Fatties, no Aliens, No Judge Death, no H-Wagons floating on the wind and so on. This was very much grim and gritty and near future bound. I felt that Karl Urban nailed the character of Judge Dredd and his facial expressions were spot on. I was not overly keen on Olivia Thirlby as Judge Anderson but that was more due to her not being a tall blond bombshell who cracks minds with her telepathy, her acting was really good and she humanised the film more than any other character. That was basically it for characters aside from Lena Headly as Ma-Ma. Ma-Ma was a villain more filled with promise than results who threatened and acted up without ever really feeling like she was a challenge to Dredd and went out without a whimper.
The film well deserved its 18 certificate as it was very violent with super slow motion gun, explosion and knife wounds on full display. There was nothing in it that I found shocking though as some reviews have claimed and compared to scenes in most American horror films it did not top or rival them. Dredd delivered some excellent deadpan one liners that were the highlight of the film for me. I know it was made a lower budget and for that it is really well executed my hat is off to the director for this.
In conclusion then I would say that 2000AD has now shaken off the curse of the 1995 film but in doing so has lost the core identity of the Mega City. Aside from the helmets this could have been any other near future action film set in a depressing drab and grey urban hell hole. Robust, worth watching but without the sparkle that will make it remembered.
GBS
The cover of this book is a nightmare to take pictures of. Even Amazon had trouble! This is the best I could do.
This last week I managed to finish a book I had bought a while back. It failed to grab me from the off but by the time I reached the middle I kept trying to find spare moments to read on. The book is Pax Omega by Al Ewing.
I knew of Al Ewing from his work in the fantastic British Comic 2000AD where he has written many scripts including Zombo. After this I bought his novel El Sombra on the back of the comic and also other Pax Brittanica novels set in that universe. I really enjoyed El Sombra with its pulp trashy literature take on the motif of the western and also steampunk. So with that in mind when I saw Pax Omega on the shelf of my local bookshop I decided to buy it. I will admit the blurb left me a little confused. Was this a novel or a collection of short stories? The answer is a clever..both!
Doc Thunder’s last stand against a deadly foe whose true identity will shock you to your core! El Sombra’s final battle against the forces of the Ultimate Reich! The Locomotive Man in a showdown with cosmic science on the prairies of the Old West! Jackson Steele defends the 25th Century against the massed armies of the Space Satan! A duel of minds in the mystery palaces of One Million AD! Blazing steam-pulp sci-fi the way you crave it! From the Big Bang to the End Of Time – eleven tales from Pax Britannia’s past, present and distant future combine into one starspanning saga set to shake the universe to its foundations or destroy it! (from the book blurb)
Pax Omega is a series of stories that are linked together in ways that become clearer as the book progresses. From the ancient past to the vastly distant future there are conflicts fused with vision and humour. As I said it took me a while to get into the book and that turned out to be a shame because when the tale reached the point of bringing in El Sombra and Doc Thunder it was moving at a fine pace. Reminding me of Flash Gordon of Dick Tracey as well as many other pulp heroes the book also made good use of ‘soundbites’ from other famous science fiction tales such as the ‘Robot Detective Decker’ and so on. It also projected in places a flash into our own world with its troubles such as the Summer 2011 London Riots. The language was florid and varied and I enjoyed that a lot. It was bigger than life in places. In fact there are so many settings in this book that you don’t know what is coming next at all! This is pulp at its best..square jawed fighting and big speech making heroes and villains.
I recommend this book but I do also think that if you like the idea of Pax Brittanica you should seek out Al’s other books (El Sombra and The Gods of Manhattan). I have not read Gods of Manhattan and it showed, I did not know who Doc Thunder was!
Mad..Inspired..Great Pulp Fun!
GBS
Is it Good or is it Me?
Last night I went to the cinema. Myself, my good lady and Eve Hallow. Now I know what regular readers of this blog are wondering ‘he said he did not like the new Total Recall, so why did he go and see it?’. Two reasons, firstly I was being paid for (which greases the wheels) and secondly I decided to be fair and after seeing extended trailers from the movie I took the chance. Have a read of my previous posting about Total Recall 2012 for my opinions there. But anyhoo how was the film?
Well it was actually pretty good. Leaving aside the plot and characters the biggest impression I got from the movie was the superb and beautiful cinematography of the landscapes and an imagined future. Hammering in the gritty dank darkness of Bladerunner and the vertical living of The 5th Element the world of Total Recall was astonishing. Well worth fans of sci-fi seeing the film just for this. Moving onto the plot. It was aright, same core as the last incarnation, with bits of the original short story by Dick too. But it did lack something..sanity. I followed the movie closely and ended up a bit confused as to where it literally was placed. Instead of Mars and a corrupt Earth it was sad to see it come down to yet another ‘nasty imperialistic Great Britain’ attempting to enslave the ‘Colony’ (I mean really it was two and a half centuries ago, let it drop!). The colony was accessed by a tunnel through the centre of the Earth called ‘The Drop’. I kid you not, a ruddy tunnel through the earth from London to…where? Australia! This was hard to swallow, flying cars, robot soldiers, light guns, palm phones, multi-layered cities all cool. But really, anything is easier than drilling through the core of a planet!
The story moved along at a cracking pace and it was nice to see several nods to the previous version including the larger lady with ‘two weeks’ stay and the triple breasted hooker (yes, she was there Edward!). Aside from some glaring holes and so on (I do not want to nit pick) I enjoyed the plot. What about the cast?
I just can’t take to Jessica Biel (who played Melina) but I thought Kate Beckinsale was really top notch as the wife Lori Quaid. Little was made of other characters with the plot really being Doug Quaid and his not really wife Lori trying to kil each other. The resistance movement and its leader were a backdrop to this as was Cohaagan, the baddest guy in the older film. I know though that you all really want me to push on and talk about Colin Farrell as Doug Quaid / Hauser. What can I say. He was and still is weak as a leading man. He played the part very well but he does not shine like say Daniel Craig does as James Bond. The film would have been better with a different leading man. But Farrell has buried the ghost of Alexander I will give him that.
So overall its a really good science fiction B-Movie, in that it will not be remembered as a classic, but it is well worth the ticket price and I will be buying a DVD copy in the future. Plenty of wargaming fodder in there!
Lastly a special mention to Eve Hallow who also did not want to see the film but was convinced and lured by the promise of beer and company. He is a splendid fellow and while he did break the cinema (I kid you not, all the lights went out and the screen cut out too, that is a first for me!) I enjoyed the evening with him. I think he plans a blog posting of his own on the movie, I will be keen on reading it once he does.
GBS
What’s this? An appeal to donate money to a new charity for man machines that do grotesque things? No, its just a catchy title for this posting which concerns what I have been up to over the stretch of yet another Bank Holiday in the UK. Aside from talking Flintloque with Eve Hallow and a few other things I have been putting to bed three new paid for PDF downloads to be added to the growing list of such that 15mm.co.uk sells.
Released back in time for Salute 2012 this year there have been a number of wargamers eagerly awaiting the time when UM010 Support Pack, UM011 Cyberpunk and UM013 Eldritch Horror would be put out for use on computer screens, portable devices and the infamous ‘ease print’ for a cheap hard copy too; all for the princely sum of just five dollars. Each of them involves little in the way of real work (well as I would count it) but it needs a dozen or more hours of digital layouts for the purpose designed files for screen viewing and searching. I have had close to a hundred emails saying how much this is appreciated as few company’s seem to take this time and simply issue a PDF of the print file which often does not display properly and is not tagged for searching.
Each time a new release is made for USE ME I sit back and think of how great it is to see the series grow. I have said before that I did not expect thousands of copies sold, magazine and blog coverage, a frankly awesome day of sales at Salute 2012 or the constant ping of download versions flying off to far off lands. All from my own home brewed rules set. It will soon be time to set up an account and then make these and the rest of the digital titles available through specialised online sellers of such versions. Not to mention the next new print titles too.
Release is going to be end of this week with an email campaign too courtesy of Mail Chimp. If you are reading this later than that then refer to the below.
If you want to learn about USE ME then go along to 15mm.co.uk to see the series.
GBS