Tag Archives: 15mm.co.uk

15mm.co.uk is Moving to a New Website

Posted on by

New Logo, New Website!

15mm.co.uk is moving! We are about to move our website and email accounts to a new service provider and system. This will greatly improve what we can show you (we have a LOT of new products ready for release in the run up to Salute 2014) and make us more effective for offering deals, viewing on mobile devices and blogging too. While the process of moving should be painless we do need to tell you all some information. So please read on.

The process will begin on Wednesday 19th February 2014 at 8pm GMT and we estimate it will all be complete within fourty eight hours. However it may take up to a week. We will let you all know once the shiny new site is up and running.

We will be deactivating our payment gateway and current website and email system from that time. Please DO NOT email us on our normal email address during this period as we may lose your email in transit. All orders placed with us will be filled and dispatched as normal and all email already in progress with us will be answered by our proxy. Our sister brand www.theionage.com is going to help us out during the transfer with our email as a proxy. If you want or need to contact 15mm.co.uk during this period please email us on info@theionage.com and they will pass it directly onto us and in turn we will respond by that email address.

Lastly once the new website is up and you can see it please delete all your page links to parts of the current website as they will no longer work and check your computers cache too.

Its an exciting time and you want to ask me something please do it in the comments below as well.

GBS

Dropship Horizon Blog holds a 15mm Painting Contest

Posted on by

Its painting competition time over on the great Dropship Horizon blog, focal point of all 15mm science fiction wargamers. Open to all comers there is a list of suggested entries and there will be prizes too for the winners. This is an excellent idea to keep away the blues of the deep freeze period of the year.  Check it Out!  The painting competition runs from 15th January 2014 to 15th February 2014. You can enter a squad or a single vehicle or a piece of terrain or structure. Full details on the post.

I have put two posting on the relevant blogs which you can read.  15mm.co.uk and The Ion Age are supporting this competition with prizes.  Also as a wee bit of additional incentive I have mentioned that if any of the products I am involved with win the event then I will reward the winner with a little something extra.  Read about it on the blogs.

Dropship Horizon blog is trying hard to maintain its premier position of world’s best 15mm Science Fiction wargaming news, reviews and resources site and events like this do help.  Its only a shame that I have nether the time or the talent to enter anything that might stand a chance of winning.  They are carrying on as a group the excellent resource that my friend Mark Hannam kicked off many years ago.

GBS

Orcs in the Webbe 2013 Advent Interview

Posted on by

Another year has passed in my life as a wargame writer and general all around fine fellow and over the previous few years a marker of this passing has been the annual Orcs in the Webbe interview.  Now that the chaos of Christmas is behind me (and a Merry Mithras Day to one and all) I wanted to put up a short posting here on the blog about this year’s interview.  You can read it here and it makes for interesting reading.  Firstly thanks to Craig Andrews for the interview and for carrying on all his efforts into Black Powder Fantasy for wargamers everywhere not least Flintloque fans.   Secondly I often don’t realise just how many tasks I take on during a year and the interview gives me a chance to reflect upon this both for the past and the future.  I seldom take a day off and I think it shows in the loyalty of our customers to Alternative Armies, 15mm.co.uk and The Ion Age too.

I think the biggest thing for me to come out of the interview was that, as I expected, The Ion Age has taken up a lot of my year but also that my role in the company has changed.  We have a larger team on all projects now and where once I was sole creative input there are now several voices in this area.  I hope that this means I will have time for more side projects perhaps even some creative writing.

Lastly an apology to Craig to whom I had promised a piece of lengthy Dracci related fiction for the Calendar this year but due to a combination of atrocious weather which shut us down for several days, personal illness and sheer workload I was unable, the first time ever, to meet the deadline.   Sorry!  Looking at it, its not often I drop the ball but I am only Human.

Have a read at the Interview if you have the time.  Its fun stuff indeed!

GBS

15mm.co.uk gets a Blog

Posted on by

I have just made live and announced that 15mm.co.uk now has its own blogger blog.  Out of the digital cold and into the hot light of cyber augmented reality the birth of the blog leads with a posting about the latest re-mastering and re-release of a classic Laserburn vehicle.  From white metal to resin and back to life.  Appropriate really for this new forum as well.

The blog is small just now but it will grow fast.  You can visit it on www.15mmcouk.blogspot.co.uk.  Its going to be a great read.  Plus you can see our new vision logo.

GBS

15mm Limited Edition Miniatures?

Posted on by

15mmlimited_strap

The concept of limited edition miniatures is nothing new.  In fact Alternative Armies has had them for twenty years now in 28mm scale and other brands longer than this (remember those awesome 1980’s Citadel limited runs including Space Marine Santa’s and the like?) but they are seemingly always of the 25mm and 28mm scale of miniatures.  I have had a dig around and found literally nothing limited in 15mm scale.  Why is this?  Is it because there is no interest?  Is it because until recently 15mm did not have the same glamour as a scale as 28mm?  Is it a cost issue with money making not being possible with having a sculptor make a 15mm that sells at a relatively low price only for a few hundred castings or so?  Or is it simply something that no one has thought of yet as the wargaming hobby endlessly repeats itself with the same cookie cutter ideas?

Well in response to these self set questions I can offer some self decided evidence answers.  I think there is interest as many wargamers play 15mm scale, more now than ever before especially in the genres of Science Fiction and Fantasy and some of those wargamers will want limited’s as they do in the larger scale; stands to reason.  Certainly 15mm had nothing like the presence it has now only seven years ago when I founded 15mm.co.uk and brought Laserburn back to the wargames table so maybe its not come up before.   As for cost and money making this is different for every company but I think, having bashed the calculator keys, that as long as the run was of the five hundred or so mark it would be profitable so no get out clause there.  Has no one thought of it yet?  Well I admire companies like Critical Mass Games, Ground Zero Games and Khurasan Miniatures but they have no limited codes in their 15mm that I could see so perhaps like the rise in popularity of the scale it has not yet evolved as something companies do who produce that scale of miniatures will do.

This is something I have been thinking about for over two years.  In fact it was near the top of my brief while I was musing on what would become the new Ion Age.  Much like my idea to create the SHM Range on 15mm.co.uk which gave aspiring sculptors their chance to get something release when no one would take them seriously (which has been rather successful with more than seventy designs and a dozen designers to its ranks) I decided that I would give it a try.  After all without some fun and a sense of adventure what is the point of this hobby?   The Ion Age would be the perfect testing ground.

What would such a limited miniature probably be and how many would be produced?  Well I knew it would be produced in a run of 500 numbered packs that much was based on the hard numbers.  It would have to be TWO miniatures not one, to make the bulk up for packaging; that was a change over 28mm scale.  As for what it would depict I followed the same outline of rules that I have for Flintloque.  That being interesting characters but nothing unique or vital to a wargame system.  Purchase would be from interest and a sense of collecting NOT out of a resignation to needing the figures to play a certain mission or personality…that is cruel and something other much larger companies do.  So it would be a character officer to lead a lance or more of Retained Knights.  A perfect jumping off point to see if the concept had legs and would run!

IAFL01

IAFL01

The Ion Age will be releasing its first limited edition packs of 15mm characters towards the end of this month.  The pricing will be slightly more than the normal but not much and this is really only to cover the extra packaging and manpower this type of code needs as with all limited codes.  You can see IAFL01 above.  I will tell you no more about these two fine fellows just now though…you will just have to wait!

If you have any thoughts on this idea please do email me or comment against this post.

GBS

Beighton’s Shipyard’s short USEME Starship Battles review

Posted on by

In the inky stellar darkness….

Mark over at Beighton’s Shipyard blog has posted a short review of a wargaming title I partially authored a couple of years ago along with Omer Golan Joel.  Its the sixth in the USEME series and its a set of rules for simple and fast fleet scale starship battles in miniature.

u006cover_ws

I have to say he did a grand job.  Its not a simulation set of complex rules, it was never meant to be.  Its fast and fun and with enough variety and bolt on mechanics to be adaptable to most settings.  I have used it myself several times for everything from dogfights with five a side fighters to a whole fleet of dreadnoughts in the dark and also with Eli Ardnt’s fleet scale mecha for a special robotech style struggle.

Check it out!

Also if you are wondering what ‘The Big Mac’ is…well I know, I wrote it, but you will have to read it to find out!

GBS

Fjodin adds some cracking miniatures to the SHM Range

Posted on by

Creatures and Nightmares!

Today I added four more new 15mm scale miniatures to the SHM Range on 15mm.co.uk.  All of them created by the talented Fjodin who resides in Australia.  Its true that Fjodin has other miniatures in the range but these ones, as you can see above, are excellent and to me his best yet.  Three sort of ancient creatures and a nightmare horror to go with them.  Useful for all sorts of things I am sure.

Only a Pistol? You are in trouble my friend!

I have included another image of the new miniatures above, a scaling shot with a standard sized Human for comparison.  The point of this posting aside from virtually patting Fjodin on the back is to once more make the point that I am justly proud of the whole concept of SHM.  While I do not know if these miniatures will sell well enough to cover the costs of molding and so on that is not the point with SHM.  Yes, money is not the point.  The point is that above you can see four miniatures (five if you include the Human Commander) which most likely would NOT EXIST without SHM.   The talent that Fjodin has developed and the exposure he has had to gain more work would have been MUCH more difficult for him to achieve.  So the wargamer benefits and the designer benefits too.  To my knowledge I am the only person offering the chance for novice designers to get virtually any concept into production if they have the talent.

SHM gives the wargamer awesome and odd miniatures and the designer the confidence to grow.  Sometimes all you need is a chance.

Well done Fjodin!

GBS

“The Jaws that Bite, the Claws that Catch”….

Posted on by

hot94preview

A snapshot taken moments before a bloody and savage death for an intrepid explorer of the wild ways and places.   Rumour has it that this fearsome beast is no myth and poetic imagining but is instead a white metal reality coming this week for pre-order at 15mm.co.uk.  I could not possibly say at this time but perhaps in a few days time….a more in depth look maybe.

For now gaze and long for it…I know I do.

Now I must go a galumphing back to work.

GBS

USEME Prohibition Gangsters – WIP

Posted on by

um015cover

Top of the World Ma!

There are some more USEME Titles in the planning stage over at 15mm.co.uk and while I have posted about my own title in the next three (Alien Safari , delayed I know!) I have said nothing about the others; so here it goes!  Provisionally titled UM015 USEME Prohibition Gangsters this booklet presents rules for two scales (15mm and 28mm) in wargaming the period in American history when booze was illegal and tommy guns the norm.  That is the 1920’s and 1930’s.

This is not a period I know much about really so I was delighted when Bob McAlister over in the USA told me he was keen to write just such a title.  With some assistance from his good lady and playtesters UM015 has shaped up as a solid and themed set of rules.  Its the first set of wargame rules Bob has written that has made it to published stage and he is rightly proud of this achievement.

Skirmishing is the name of the game and the idea is that small groups of Cops, G-Men, Molls, Gangsters, Hooch Runners and others fight it out over objectives such as hidden stashes, nightclubs and speak easies, warehouses, the open street, flop houses and more.  As with most USEME titles its ten or so characters a side but you can use more plus the solo rules engine is attached.  In fact Bob handed in a manuscript that was too long when his two scenarios were included so these will be given away free on the website and also included in the paid for PDF version.

As USEME’s are budget titles for gaming fun I opted for public domain photographs and so on for the internal pages of the book and the cover is a clever bit of dress up fun on a sunny day from the creative commons licence on Flickr.

I feel that in terms of the way it plays this vision of USEME is most like UM003 USEME WW2  written by Omer Golan but without the armoured vehicles and aircraft of course and a lot more car chases.  This title will be published later this summer.

GBS

Long time no Blog, Long time no Break

Posted on by
sportssummer2013_first

The Thinker ran the fastest that day!

Its been two weeks since I last made a post on this site.  Have I been away, been abroad, been missing in action?  No.  Not really.  I was here all the while but I was trying out a ‘working break’ that is an effort to cut my workload down while still being at work.  How to do this you ask…well its not complex.

Essentially I wanted time to spend with my children and my wife as the weather here in Scotland finally and I do mean finally began to heat up and it meant time down the beach in Girvan and trips out and about.  I work long hours and answer many hundreds of emails a week along with organising several projects and a dozen other tasks a day.  On top of the wargaming company workload I have this website and a blog and the Notables Yahoo Group too along with other online profiles to update and interact with.  To have a ‘working break’ I organised two weeks where I continued to do the office work but not the additional tasks such as this website.  Call it working to rule instead of working on rules if you like.

In the last two weeks I have attended two large outdoor events, the Mauchline Holy Fair and the Girvan Lowland Gathering.  I have had guests to stay, helped a long term and dear friend and her friend move house, written about ten thousand words of fiction, read four novels, watched half a dozen anime movies and listened to several new and older albums.  I have spent quality time with the greatest lady in the world (my wife!) where she reminded me why she is still my number one after sixteen years together and I had the pleasure of learning that my middle son came third in his sports day at school and my eldest son came first at his (hence the image above).

What has been most interesting though is the concern from several wargamers and others for me.  Why have I been so quiet, am I all right and so on.  Let me say I am fine and what I have been working on will be happening later this summer.  Thank you for your concern one and all!

Lastly I have decided that I can no longer keep up efforts to maintain my tabletop wargamer blog.  So instead of putting it on hiatus I am going to end it totally.  This will be in another post shortly.

GBS