Tag Archives: HOF 15mm Sci-fi

Giving in to the Pressure of Wargamers – Security Force Alpha

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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.

Terra Burning burns out…

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Sadly the joint post-apocalypse wargaming blog begun between myself and Maj Diz Aster called Terra Burning is no more.  In effect it was a still birth of a project for no sooner had the details been agreed and the blog begun the poor Maj had a series of incidents that led to him telling me he was quitting wargaming.  While I am happy to say that Maj has returned to wargaming now fired with new enthusiasm for different scales and genres other than 15mm science fiction the TB blog was doomed.  Without his assistance I was unwilling to take it on alone.  Indeed I seldom agree to joint projects like this one as my time is limited and I get rather a large number of offers each year.  I had hoped Terra Burning would be a hit but alas…twas’ not to be.  The blog has been removed from the sphere.

I may post some of the article I had spent hours drafting for Terra Burning over on my own TTWG blog if the mood takes me but for now it seems the rad ruins and the wasteland scarred precincts have fallen silent.  Sorry.

GBS

A Day of Photography…painful on the eyes!

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Its not often that I spend an entire day on one central task but today was such a day.  Today, with the assistance of my good lady, I photographed all of the professionally painted releases for the next three months for 15mm.co.uk.  This came to more than three hundred images of roughly seventy unreleased miniatures from the HOF, HOT, SHM ranges crafted by six different designers.  We take photographs very seriously with the aim of showing the actual miniature in the best light and with no software trickery involved.  So many hours of thousands of watts of light and positioning figures resulted in some great shots but left me with eyes like a Blood Hound!

The vast majority of the new miniatures are in the HOF 15mm Science Fiction range and all but a handful were painted over several weeks by Eve Hallow.  He is an excellent miniature painter with an eye for colour.  Its also his birthday this weekend so I will be standing him a Lady Juniper or two at the local hostelry and giving him a wee gift but for the moment I will tell you of his first gift.  He is not only a miniature painter but an aspiring sculptor too and his first miniature will be hitting the SHM range this week… coincidence or what…on his birthday weekend.

I am not allowed to show you all the images I took (don’t even ask…you would burst with the thrill of it!) but I will sneak out a few in the coming weeks and for now I give you what is coming out this week.  The Jelly Cube by Eve Hallow, the Criat Mercenary by Will Grundy (another first!) and the icky Biomorph by the excellent Eli Arndt.  Enjoy!

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The Jelly Cube

Jellies Cubed!

Jellies Cubed!

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For Scale. He’s Jellified!

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Criat Mercenary…gurr!

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For Scale with Human Cultist

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Eli’s Biomorph from the front

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And the Rear…urgh!

GBS

Robo Basho – My Article in Irregular Magazine 13

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Last summer I wrote a short article for Irregular Magazine for their thirteenth issue.  I was happy to be asked by a customer of 15mm.co.uk who is also on the staff of the magazine as they were looking for professional writers to create material for a ‘Mysteries of the East’ focused set of content.  My love of all things Japanese combined with giant robots (more on this next month…it will be worth the wait) gave me an idea for a piece all about a sport that replaced war in a ravaged future Japan.  Wrestling in the form of two hundred foot tall, two thousand ton machines, which shake a stadium and make a crowd of tens of thousands roar in approval.  Robo Basho 2115!

You can view and download the issue on Irregular Magazine website.

The article is part one of two with the first part focusing on the history and background of Japan in 2115 which then leads to the sport of Robo Basho and the customs of the giant machines themselves the ‘Roborikishi’ in their stables.  An account of that occurs inside the ring and the weapons allowed along with the Gyoiji or Referee too.  The Kuroboshi III type giant mecha is looked over and its super thick armour and massive muscle servo bunches compared to western war machines of similar size.  Ending with the roleplaying possibilities for Robo Basho the article explains what would be featured in part two.  A good read if I say so myself!

Irregular Magazine 13 was due out last summer and the delay is regrettable.  Here is a statement from the editor on this from their website:

First of all, we’d like to start with an apology to all of our readers and contributors. We were not able to publish Irregular Magazine in Summer 2012, which we deeply regret. We believe we’ve got through the problems that made this impossible and are now back on track with regular publications!

I do not want to get into this here but I think that the problems Irregular had are similar to those other online wargame magazines and indeed other printed monthly titles have had too.  Finding and obtaining content that interests an ever diverging readership is tough and adding to that the sheer speed of the online community and news feeds means that traditional formats are failing.  No point in putting news in a magazine these days.  Focusing on deep article content is the way forward, a more journal like approach.  This of course is hard to come by from writers and artists as it takes longer to create.  For those interested it took me eight hours to pen the article plus an hours proof reading.

Lastly I must give praise to Sam Croes my good friend who created the superb Robo Basho artwork for the article which also features as the cover of the magazine too.  His talent always makes me smile and he was very kind in agreeing to craft this piece of art in his limited free time for me.  He has also produced a blog post on how he created the superb image for Sumo Basho, check it out.

GBS

‘The Zone’ blog entertains!

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From ‘The Trojan Hovercar’ adventure

Back in October I posted about a brand new blog called ‘The Zone’ run my Math one of the fellows behind Dropship Horizon blog.  Since then I have reading its postings with excitement and a good laugh too.  Each posting is an adventure with a lot of back story and characters.  I have also spoken to Math by email and assisted him with an order to 15mm.co.uk to get some pro-painted Law Officers from the Laserburn range.  To that end he has sent me images of conversions of some Laserburn miniatures for The Zone.  Pictures below.

Col and Rayy – Laserburn 15mm conversions

Converted Laserburn flt car with crew

These images in this posting are from the most recent piece on The Zone, an adventure known as The Trojan Hovercar.  Check it out.

I recommend this blog to any wargamer who loves the 2000AD comic, classic or retro 1970’s sci-fi and a spun yarn to read too.  Keep up the good work Math!

GBS

Terra Burning blog goes live today!

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A while back I posted that I was going to get involved with the setting up of a new 15mm scale wargaming blog.  This blog would be about a post apocalypse setting called ‘Terra Burning’ and I would be contributing posts and news and so forth from the point of view of USEME (the blog’s preferred rules system for play) and miniatures from 15mm.co.uk.  Well the blog went live today and I have just put my first posting on it talking about wargaming on Terra Burning.

So what you waiting for…can’t you feel the burn!

GBS

A Mercenary Dream Realised for HOF

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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

Alien Squad Leader 2.0 – Out of Print

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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 Zone’ – A new blog from the Winter ’79 Team

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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

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