My Brigade Models order - a small review of small stuff

I made a small Brigade Models order for some sets of 3mm scale appartment buildings, 2 (more) Wizard Hoverjeeps and a spaceship on the 10th of July. A few days later I got cold feet (cause really , how hard can it be to read) and decided to cancel all of the appartment buildings except 1, just to test the water, and exchanged the ordered flats for 15mm containers. Cause you now, scenery.

Lucky me, Tony Francis emails me back on the 14th, no problem, nothing shipped yet, he just got back from holiday, and he wasn't feeling to well so things were a bit backlogged. No problem, no rush. Tony reported on the net that he really wasn't well so things could be delayed, a few days later.

With only a couple of days delay, Paypal sent me a message that my order had shipped on the 23rd and today, the 28th, my order arrived. Well packed, the whole lot nicely in the box, wrapped in bubblewrap, hoverjeeps nicely in ziplockbags and everything copiously covered in foam filler chips...we call them wokkels :)

In no particular order....

SFS-5013 The Astral Pioneer cargo spaceship at 3.50 Pounds

Here compared to a BFG cruiser hull and a custom made large BFG transport. There is a very small slit on the front of the model that I assume is the steering house, it has a big turret on top and a tiny, slighly offisde aiming chin turret. The underside has 4 big plates, which, in my imagination anyway, would make nice points for 4 landing legs if you would make a starport, or you could paint them black to give the impression of opening so it can function as a small escort carrier. Or just keep it as a cargo transport, of course :) To try something new, I glued one of my larger magnets to the hull as this is a heavy ship and I want it to stay in place. I will need to make some heavy duty flying bases as well :) Hardly a mould line to find, just many spikes from the casting vents to be removed, but nothing that you can't fix in a good 1 minute cleaning.

SF15-915 Small Cargo Container at 1.75 Pounds each

1x1 cm pattern, so you get an idea of the scale.Doors on the front, closed up on the back. Nice and simple, will be a breeze to paint up, some simple weeathering, a few decals, great table filler. Some airbubbles, but not more then a few and easly filled in or dug out to recreate damage. I must get more of these.

SF15-1507 Wizard Hover Jeep at 3.00 Pounds each

The Wizard as compared to the containers, so you can see how large the containers are and how small the hoverjeep is. You could almost park one inside those containers.....but you will void the warranty I reckon. It is in the Mercenary list, one of the newer ranges, and if you want my opinion, this vehicle is a must for any self respecting frontier world or colony or plain civillain vehicle. Tony really should show pictures on his listing showing that the back is actually a seperate metal piece that you can leave off to make a pick up truck...albeit a tiny one. Leave the weapon off the roof, put a guy with a pintle mounted support gun on the back and Bob, your uncle, has just made a Technical for your insurrection. If you dont like the top weapon or the hatch, the holes are pretty shallow and easy to fill with some plasticcard or riller. Every selfrespecting frontier Redneck should have one. Or two. Now to figure out what the little nub on the left side is.....a antenna mount or a exhaust (though the latter would not make sense for a air cushion vehicle?)

And then the reason for the order, the appartment buildings. Truth be told, it does say on the webpage these are 2mm models, as is the rest of their scenery range. They will work fine with their range, and other peoples 2mm ranges should be no problem either (not that you would be spoilt for choice).
But for some stupid reason my head didn't get the message and I had assumed they would be bigger. Only after reading the page again, but now with a clear head, I grasped the scale difference and canelled everything except one tester. Anyhow....

SSS-8067 Appartment Blocks (pack of 5) at 2.50 Pounds each

Well cast, well made, look at those details! And yet bloody tiny.

2mm Appartment Blocks compared to Fighting 15's Middle East Village. In case your head worked like mine, this is the difference. Which makes the 2mm buildings perfect for people who like their buildings to have a smaller footprint, so a 3mm or 6mm gamer could use these and the other buildings for their layout. Or you could have them on the table for airgames, as they make nice Governmental buildings (aka target). That is what they will become for me. At 2.50 Pounds per set of five this is a bargain for well made resin terrain.

There you have it, the usual small order from me. Tony is a gent to communicate with, quick replies, even for a man just back from his holiday and sick at the same time. Well packed, well made, what is not to like.

And in case you are wondering, no freebies in this one, the entire order was paid in full by me :)

Edit: I made a promise to myself not to order or trade anything new till these are finished (except the appartment buildings) so I spent this evening priming and basecoating everything with the airbrush, and gave everything a nice gloss varnishcoat as I noticed the containers have a bit of a rough texture as I assume they are cast off 3D prints? The space ship too btw, there are fine lines to be seen. When the coat has hardend it is time to add in other colours and decals, varnish them again and then weather and wash and rust them.

The 2 Wizard Hoverjeeps before being primered, holes filled in and one now has some sidewalls for his truck bed.

3mm takes flight

As I sat here waiting for a reply to my order at Fighting 15's I grabbed some boxes from the cabinet to find my other few packs of 3mm vehicles and found a bag of 3mm aircraft instead. A big bag. I also found all of my Thud Ridge items that I used to demo at shows. In the corner of my eye, at the top of the cabinet, is a collection of Check Your Six! rule and scenario books that I collected a couple of years ago. I want to get back into that, and what better way to push myself is to plan a demo at the next Poldercon? Gives me plenty of time to get things done, find a good convention scenario, paint up the nescessary planes and laminate everything needed. I might even be able to build some scenery, or be able to afford some. Check out this >> Brigade Models
Just 1 slight problem. The bases I have are just for Thud Ridge. Big square ones with a perspex rod coming out of it at various heights, which made it very impractical to pack and store properly. CY6! uses hexes (though the aircraft stand does not neccesarely be that, round is ok too). Back in the day I played a few games using Lego stands, with a die next to it for speed.

Now, I have this thing, I don't know if anyone else has it too, but I don't like dice on the table. Their place is in a dice rolling box that I have, with big walls so that they don't jump out. Dice on the table inevitably get stuck somewhere, hit scenery or miniatures or roll off the table. Seeing aircraft flying around lugging a dice behind them is also not great to look at. But if you want to do this as a demo you will need some kind of marker that is instantly visible to all players. So....in comes Lego.

This is what some people use, as did I:

As found on this Blogpost: flight-stands-for-1600-aircraft

You can use as is, and add 1 altitude die and 1 speed die. Or just a speed die and add cylinders for each level of height (which is what I am going to do). I'm going to leave out the dice all together as I have come up with a cunning (and cheap-ish) plan.

I have a account over at Bricklink, where you can buy every bit of Lego ever made (for a price). This is because I helped out a creditcard less friend back in 2010 who wanted some Lego and I used it late 2013 when I needed Lego parts to make boxes for moulding Oyumaru. If you select the sellers from your country only AND focus on used items you cut back on the (shipping) costs, so I did just that. And then I went searching for transparant cylinders. These sell for 11-15 eurocents per pop. While this looks nice, it does make it harder to see the altitude, so why not use black - transparant - black etc? Used black ones go for 4 cents each. I then thought to myself, in CY6! you have 4 levels of pilot skill (green, trained, experienced and ace), why not give these a colour and use that colout for the first (and third, and fifth etc) cylinder so players instantly see what level pilot what plane is. As it turns out, red (ace), yellow(green) and blue(experienced) set me back 40-60 cents each for sets of 20. I picked up enough white and black ones to make 20 stands of just those, plus 20 neon green discs at 3 cents a piece. (why neon green? Because they were the cheapest) I plan to glue them down onto Warbases.co.uk 30mm casualty markers and cover them with filler and then either flock for Europe or paint them sand for Iran-Iraq and Israel vs Everybody else. 30mm round base fits nicely inside the hex mats that I have. The casualty marker then becomes my speed indicator, it goes from 1-12 which is way more then I need so that will suffice.

So, I now have a easy to work with flight base, relatively inexpensive, made from easily available materials. In the future I can always swap out the multi colour flight levels for transparant ones if people know the rules better, but for the purpose of teaching they are brilliant.

As soon as the casualty markers arrive, I will prep and paint them so you can see what I mean. I also added 20 pcs 1x1 round studs to my order that I can sink a magnet into so it is easy to mount and dismount the aircraft, like in the old system. I'll do 10 of them European woody style and the other 10 with a sandy desert base. If I need/want more, Warbases will be at Crisis and they have a show order pick up discount, so I can wait till then....it is not like I will be attacking maases of B-17's over Europe anytime soon. 10 aircraft in a game with 2 players is more than enough to keep us busy I think and for a demo 2 aircraft per player sounds about right. The vehicles I'm working on now can become juicy targets for jet age and by then I think I will have found something for WW2 as well.

Now, 3mm scenery. Brigade sells it, some very nice stuff too, but just a few villages add up quickly so that is unfeasible for now. That leaves hills, forrests, lakes and swamps etc. Dead easy to make, I once made 2 green hills for Thud Ridge and that was just some flock covered foam. I will enjoy scratchbuilding that. Of course, the senics for 3mm landwar need to be bigger than the 3mm air war targets, but that is no problem.

But all of this can wait. I'm on my last week at work and starting next week I will spend a lot of time cleaning out my storage space at my old flat, I'll most likely bin a lot but save as many miniatures as I can, and cancel the lease asap. That will be 60 euros a month better spent somewhere else. After that I will get cracking on switching the hobby and kids room. I made a head start by cleaning out the 2 cabinets of Kim and I shifted all of her books to the attic....must have been 250 kilos of books alone! (and she never reads hem!). I'll try to move the cabinets to the attic later this week but my knee might not agree with that. Speaking of which, X-rays showed nothing, next up is a MRI at the end of March and the results will be in early April, and then I'll know what the prognosis is. The company doctor today signed me a paper that I'll be leaving work sick. That means the company gets a fine, but that's not my problem. I've got other things to worry about.

More news in a few days time :)