Q13: Ikwen Kickstarter

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I’m quite a fan of Kickstarter. I’ve backed about six projects to date, and in all but one have received exactly what I wanted…and the exception was very much down to me not communicating properly with the company involved.

So here’s a quick plug for the Loud Ninja Games Ikwen Kickstarter project expanding their Ikwen project with some great new sculpts. Here are a few examples:

I currently use the Ikwen as tech support for my Chuhuac mercenaries. The above will add enough for them to be a force in their own right. Recommended.

Q13: DRS Models

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Another update to the list of 15mm Sci-Fi Figure Manufacturers that you can find listed in the Q13 section of this website.

Latest addition, long overdue, is DRS Models: a range of 3D printed models covering seven different factions. No infantry or other units, but the vehicles do look very good and, pleasingly, cover all the different sorts of model that you need i.e. each faction has main battle tanks, APCs, anti-air vehicles, SP guns etc.

Here’s an example from the Cetian range:

I haven’t ordered or got any of these yet, but they certainly look very good. Some of the ranges are quite unusual as well: giving a suitably alien feel to a battlefield.

Click on the picture above to go to their home page.

Q13: New Manufacturer Added: Trilaterum

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I’ve added a new company to the list of 15mm sci-fi figure manufacturers: Trilaterum.

Trilaterum produce a set of rules (not that you’ll need them obviously, as Q13 will fulfil your every need!) and several ranges of figures. So far they have:

  • The Agarascale: fungus-looking lifeforms that would go well with Ravenstar’s Horrids

  • The Dominion: humans in battlesuits

  • The Kaevur: they look like space dwarves to me…so I’ve ordered a load and will report back once they arrive

  • Quite a few larger mecha, space beasts and vehicles

Overall they look very nice. As I said above, I’ve already ordered some Kaevur, and if they prove worthwhile, I’ll probably get some Agarascale basic toadstool infantry too.

A couple of negatives, though. Firstly, the website shop doesn’t, as far as I can see, give a clear listing of pack contents. It has plenty of photos, but it’s not clear if the group shots are meant to be photographic catalogue entries or just examples. If the former, then my second negative is that it looks to be quite difficult to amass enough infantry for a platoon without buying loads of (perhaps unwanted) support material.

For example, Kaevur pack one is listed as containing:

The Photo of Pack 1

Kaevur Pack 1 contains enough miniatures to make the following units

Hoolda Infantry x 2
Juht Infantry
Kaevamine Heavy Mecha Vehicle

If I only get six basic infantry figures, I’m going to have to get a lot of drilly-things (at the back on the left) to get a decent platoon’s worth of PBI.

I suppose I could just e-mail them and ask, but where’s the fun in that?

Review to be continued when my Kaevur arrive…

More Praesentia

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Almost finished the Praesentia now: just a few Trinaries and the drones to go.

Here are the rest of the Sentinel and Guardian drones:

Here’s hoping that Ral Partha, the current owners of the range, get around to producing the resin as well as the metal elements of the Praesentia. The infantry are lovely, but are going to be easy meat without some drones to back them up.

More Praesentia

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I’m still working my way through painting my Praesentia army: high tech chaps originally from Critical Mass Games and now available through Ral Partha.

First up are another two platoons of RAL robot infantry led by their Enlightened ‘Trinaries’ or collection of three Big Men. Painting them was easy: the robots got an undercoat and then one coat of one of the new Citadel Contrast paints. Add in a red dot for the eye, a tiny bit of green as detail on the weapons, and done! The Trinaries’ robes are painted in the same way, with their bodies a dark blue highlighted by a sky blue.

I’ve also started on the drones that the Praesentia use instead of manned vehicles. Here are three Sentinel drones:

Just a few more Trinaries and drones to do now…

First of the Praesentia

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One of the armies that has been sitting in my lead mountain for some time is the Praesentia: mysterious, super-high tech beings originally designed and produced as part of the Critical Mass Games universe and now available, with the demise of CMG, from Ral Partha.

I like the way that although the figures themselves are fairly humanoid, there is an impressive back story which explains, amongst other things, that the Praesentia equivalent of Big Men always operate as a Trinary i.e. always in a three.

Mind you, in Q13 terms, who wouldn’t want a Tech 5 army that includes teleporting killer robots (excellent for dealing with those hidden away mortars); and Specialists who can alter dice rolls, prevent units from moving, and other fun stuff!

Here are the first two units off the painting table, each painted with one coat of the new Citadel Contrast paints. First up are the Phase Shifters and their RAL Phase-Shifting robots:

Second up are a Trinary of Enlightened with their RAL robots with ranged weapons:

I like these, as I can see them being used for a variety of different robot-types.

Q13: List of 15mm Sci Fi Figure Manufacturers

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I like to keep this site as updated and useful as possible, so spent a little time yesterday updating the list of manufacturers of 15mm sci-fi figures.

Sad that so many now seem to be moribund or out of business, which just goes to prove my maxim that if you see some figures that you like, you should buy them, as you never know how long they will be available for.

For example, I still regret not buying some of the Combat Wombat range as dropships for my Aphids…but you live and learn and it’s a mistake I won’t make again. Food? Who needs food when there are figures to buy!

What is also interesting is how many of the cottage-industry manufacturers’ are no longer available from the individuals who started them, but have been absorbed into being part of a larger manufacturer or distributor’s offering. Ral Partha Europe, for example, are now the only place you can get what was the Critical Mass range, and the Spriggan range, and more. Is this a good thing or a bad thing? Well at least the figures are still available and not just KIA.

To end on a high note, however, I was pleased to add Nuclear Shrimp as a new manufacturer to the list. They are based in Greece and produce a range of 15mm sci-fi figures under the Black Earth banner: a post-apocalyptic range of human defenders (the United Earth Federation) and Brute attackers (huge mutant humans looking like Mr Hyde from the dreadfully disappointing League of Extraordinary Gentlemen movie.

I’m loving the Brutes and have already sacrificed next week’s lunches to buy them!

I was initially a bit worried about their 15mm credentials (scale creep!) but the very nice chaps at the Shrimp and the 15mm SciFi Facebook group provided some comparison shots that convinced me that my fears were groundless. Check them out here.

Q13: Salute Bargain Finally Finished

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Some of you may recall that at Salute I splashed out on a laser cut mdf industrial set up on special offer from Troll Trader. This was a huge layout for the bargain price of only £100 including p&p. I’ve been gradually building it over the last six weeks and have finally finished it.

This is a legendary set up, meant for 28mm troops, but absolutely ideal for sci-fi “15mm” figures which, as we all know, tend to be more 18-20mm.

I’ve always wanted to play an industrial hive battle kind of game, and now I can. In total, I now have the sixteen base boards (that alone used up about a can and a half of spray paint); a couple of small platforms connected by a walkway; the huge platform that looks like the outside of an oil well; a powerplant piece; a couple of big, cylindrical tanks connected by a top walkway; a landing pad; two staircases; two sets of corridor connectors; twenty-four individual bits that join together to form the “iron labyrinth”; and a pile of spare ladders.

The build was arduous: not just because of the sheer volume of things to be built, but also because some of the components were, simply, difficult to build. I’m not really a terrain-building person, so often don’t take the proper time and trouble to prepare and get everything just right: so checking and sanding every slot to make sure its component slides in smoothly just isn’t my cup of tea. Smash the two bits together and use a bit of strength to pop the slots into place doesn’t work with every bit of this complex, especially not the industrial labyrinth sections that caused me more grief than anything else.

Having built the thing, I was going to leave it as plain mdf, but a simple spray of grey paint does make it look more, well, industrial, and will make a beautiful backdrop to my brightly coloured sci-fi figures. I suppose I should take the trouble to dry-brush it all now, to give it some variety and depth but, tbh, that seems like a lot of hard work for something that already looks very acceptable. I might have a game, take some piccies, see how they turn out, and then decide on the dry-brushing then. Or wash then dry-brush if I really want to go to town.

Here’s a gallery of the entire thing: very good value for £100, so Troll Trader (from whom I’ve always had good, if not incredible, bargains at Salute) go straight to the top of my Christmas card list.

Next step is to dress the table with the rest of my sci-fi terrain, buildings etc

Q13: Hauk Re-inforcements

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Regular visitors to this site will know that one of my regular complaints is sci-fi figure manufacturers who produce a lovely range of basic infantry but then never get around to providing all the support teams that you need to make up a proper fighting force.

Okay, so some of these infantry squads are so loaded with their own weaponry that it could be said that they don’t need any support, but this doesn’t really gel with me. As the Marine Corps saying goes: always hit a nut with the biggest hammer possible…the nut gets cracked and the hammer is untouched!

It was therefore great to see that Khurasan Miniatures, that wonderful if somewhat erratic source of the esoteric, have released a couple of support weapons for their 15mm Hauk range.

The Hauk, for those of you who don’t know, are avians: birdmen to the non-Latin speakers. The existing range had some nice infantry and a couple of officers, but nothing more. Now, however, they can field mortars and their equivalent to a medium/heavy machine gun.

Mortars

Each weapon comes with the same stand, and the option of either a mortar, shown above, or a machine gun, shown below. There’s also a sniper figure, two new types of officer (one pointing, one with clipboard) and a casualty figure. I have ignored the casualty figure, and couldn’t be bothered to see if I could make the stands multi-purpose, so bought enough packs to give me four three-man mortar teams, with officer, and six three-man MMG teams, with officer. Add two snipers, and I still have lots of casualties and snipers left over, but I’m sure they’ll come in useful some time in the future.

Machine Guns

As you can see, I paint my Hauk with a simple but very colourful “parrot” pattern. Undercoat in white, immediate heavy wash with Agrax Earthshade; paint talons and beak yellow; paint wings, tail feather and head crest dark green then highlight with bright green; highlight all the armour in white; weapons are painted black highlighted in grey.

Well done Khurasan!

Q13: Quar Tanks?

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Regular visitors will recall that I took part in the original All Quiet on the Martian Front kickstarter. I was very happy with what I received: I only really wanted the tripods anyway, all of which have now been painted and are prepped for action.

The trouble was that I also received a whole bunch of quasi-WW1 tanks and infantry as well: the Earthlings that are fighting the aforementioned Martians.

I’m still not sure what to do with the infantry, but mention the words “quasi-WW1” and immediately one thinks of Zombiesmith’s excellent Quar range. I have small 15mm forces for all three factions, but not really enough to play the sort of large games of Q13 that I enjoy.

Here then was the perfect use for the AQOTMF tanks: Quar tanks. Here’s the first batch painted up:

I actually can’t wait to get these onto the tabletop, so will move the Quar up the priority list for forthcoming games of Q13!

Q13: Vornid Infantry Re-Based

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Although I like my Vornid infantry (15mm sci-fi: homicidal plants with thorn guns from Khurasan), I haven’t used them very much because, up to now, they have been based a singles and the way that the figures are made means that the bases don’t fit into any of my sabots. That means that using them involves moving lots of single figures round the table individually: a right pain!

I therefore decided to re-base them: each squad of ten Vornid based individually converting to six bases of five Vornid each. That gives me the same three squads, but the capacity to field ten fireteams if needed for another system.

I had two four-squad platoons (i.e. eight squads) but they proved a bit unwieldy. I therefore painted another squad up and now have three platoons of three squads each, all efficiently based for moving round the table.

Here’s my revised Vornid company, plus one of the individual platoons. You can see the detail of the entire force in the Vornid gallery.

A Bit of Fun

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One of my more unusual scifi armies are the Vornid. These comprise a base of Khurasan’s plant infantry supported by a variety of Ravenstar’s Horrid bio-vehicles. You can see the gallery by clicking here (opens in a new window).

As you’ll see, I’ve been using Slishians (from Hydra Miniatures) as Big Men, but have now found a rather amusing alternative:

The enemy sure looks like plant food to me!

Not sure who the manufacturer is (I bought these on impulse some time ago and have only just got around to their layer of the lead mountain) but these are, of course, models loosely based on Audrey II, the “villain” of the musical comedy A Little Shop of Horrors.

Great fun, and have encouraged me to expand and re-base my Vornid army: but more on that later…

More Brigade Models SciFi

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The last time my Hura (four-armed aliens from Clear Horizons) took the field, they were soundly beaten, with their defeat due, in art, to a lack of AA protection and no electronic warfare capacity.

As Clear Horizons don’t produce any AA or EW figures for the Hura (I mean, why would you!) I have decided to use Brigade Models’ sci-fi Polish range to fill in the gaps. I’ve already posted the AA half-tracks, now here’s the EW vehicle:

Officially this is the Suwalska ‘Hetman’ command vehicle, but it does very nicely as an Electronic Warfare specialist for the Hura.

Now all I have to do is save up for a few Suwalska APCs…

Last of the Squats!

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Finally finished the last of the Boontown Space Dwarves: a platoon of Clansmen.

Now if you remember, when I started painting the Boontown figures, I was quite disparaging about the quality of the sculpting. I felt the Shaker cannon was, quite frankly, not a very good model, and the crew figures very average if not poor.

I changed my mind a bit about the range with their T-26 walkers, and a bit more with their Hearthguard, but the Clansmen have definitely reversed my opinion.

These are great fun figures with nice, clear definition, especially on the faces/beards and their Schwarzenegger-like arms. Okay, so the guns are still a bit crap, but overall I like them. Not “recommended”, but still a worthwhile addition to any Space Dwarf force.

And that, for the Space Dwarves, should be that. As far as I know, I now have every 15mm Space Dwarf/Squat/Grudd etc figure out there in the marketplace. If I haven’t, please let me know, and I will remedy the situation asap!

Right: onto the Yom Kippur war figures forming a significant layer of the lead mountain…

Hura Reinforced

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Regular visitors to this blog will know that my poor Hura (four-armed aliens from Clear Horizon) got resoundingly hammered by the Space Dwarves in our last battle, with most of the damage done by a Dwarf scoutship which kept flying down from the skies and blowing Hura hovertanks away! My Hura had no response, as the range is one of those tiresome infantry-only ranges, with no support elements.

I’d already given the Hura some Xarledi hovertanks from Brigade Model’s Yenpalo range, now it was time to see what Brigade had to offer in the way of something I could use for AA protection.

Brigade has a huge range of figures and vehicles, but the ones that caught my eye this time were from their sci-fi Polish range. These were sufficiently odd-looking to go with the Hura and Xarledi, so I quickly ordered a couple of AA half-tracks and another mounting a Multiple Rocket launcher System (MRLS).

I’ve now painted them up (they leapfrogged the last of the space dwarves) in the same colours as the hovertanks, and think they have come out very well.

Wilk AA Half-Tracks

Wilk MRLS Half-Tracks

As always, excellent service and models from Brigade. Recommended.

Methinks the Hura need some more…

More Grudd Infantry from Onslaught

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I’ve almost cleared all the 15mm sci-fi dwarves from my lead mountain! Just one more contingent to go, and I’m half way through them.

Meanwhile, here’s the last of the Grudd infantry from Onslaught Miniatures. They are the chaps who produce some really lovely (and complete) sci-fi ranges in 6mm, and a couple of lines of 15mm figures too.

One of those 15mm lines is the Grudd: effectively sci-fi dwarves. Regular readers will know that the basic infantry types (Clansmen, Demolishers, Siege Breakers) have already been finished and logged…so here are the Iron Lords in their superheavy armour and the Drudgers (militia types):

Iron Lords (left) and Drudgers (above)

I honestly can’t recommend these enough. Beautifully cast cubist space dwarves with a variety of very cool weaponry. Painting them as shown is easy: a metallic undercoat that becomes the top coat for the armour, then faces, beards and weapons in different colours. Highlight with some bright unit markings and you’re away.

More Boontown Dwarves

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And the production line of sci-fi dwarves continues as I am determined to clear all of them from my lead mountain.

Today we have the Hearthguard from Boontown Metals:

These are slightly better cast than the Shaker Cannon teams I was complaining about a few days ago, but still of the rough-and-ready variety instead of the clean-crisp variety I prefer.

No matter: must collect all sci-fi dwarves, no matter what!

Warbases SciFi Terrain

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Things are all a bit scifi at the moment: mainly because that’s what tends to accumulate in the lead mountain. Figures for all the other periods leapfrog to the front of the painting queue, with poor old scifi left lingering behind.

But, as we all know, I’m trying to clear some of the lead mountain at the moment, and look what I’ve found and painted today: it’s the landing pad from Warbases 15mm scifi terrain range.

The pad is a laser-cut kit consisting of the ramp and the pad itself. It comes with no instructions, as Warbases assure their customers that the build is “intuitive”.

Well that may be so…but it still didn’t stop me putting the legs together incorrectly first time around. Note that the leg pillars have a top and a bottom (wider gap at the bottom) and that the feet go at the end of the legs not built back up to create a little moat around them. Confused? Look at the picture as you build the pad, and things should become clear.

Painting the pad was fairly easy: a grungy brown for the supports that was then scuffed with black paint, washed and then drybrushed. The pad itself was dyed black-ish with black ink, then highlighted with a grey colour. The red edges are because I couldn’t be bothered to paint every edge with black and yellow warning stripes. I’m sure you can buy thin hazard tape somewhere, but a quick Search gave me 25mm as the thinnest I could find.

Recommended.

First of the Boontown Dwarves

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As you can see from my last few posts, I’m on a bit of a painting jag at the moment.

I’d like to say that this is gradually clearing my lead mountain but, of course, every time I complete a unit, I check the range it comes from and usually end up buying more figures to either fill in the gaps of what I’ve got or to cover new releases.

This is certainly true of this last week. I painted the Onslaught Miniatures engineers and promptly ordered the new Iron Lords. I painted the figures below, and promptly ordered the previously-out-of-stock battlebikes. And don’t even get me started on the boxes arriving from Battlefront as a result of their 25% off Arab-Israeli sale! I think I’ve just go to come to terms with the fact that for every figure I paint I add a few more to the lead mountain…but at least it means that I’ll live for ever!

So on to today’s offering.

As I’m trying to collect every type of 15mm sci-fi dwarf out there (I know: not a good way to reduce the lead mountain), I duly ordered a couple of units of the Boontown Miniatures range as soon as it launched.

Good service, but not the sort of figures I usually buy: I like my figures very crisp and clean (but hard to paint well, especially with my rudimentary skills!) rather than the more normal Boontown range. Leaving that aside, however, I eased myself into the range by painting the artillery (Shaker cannons) and the walkers (T-26 walkers).

Very shaky!

The Shaker Cannons are typical of what I mean. I didn’t like these at all. You’ve got a hi-tech rear end (looks a bit like the front of a VW Beetle complete with headlights and bumper) then an awful wooden chassis, awful crude-iron wheels, and a screen that looks like it’s been knocked together by orcs!

I quite like the idea of a hedgehog-like piece of artillery, but none of the four barrels are the same. Add in a couple of crew members that are not of the crisp and clean variety, and you have…yuk!

Anyhow, I’ve done my best and decided that these are knocked-together mining tools (presumably for lobbing explosives somewhere when strip mining or something) hence the reason for the crude construction and very bright white and red warning stripes.

In my humble opinion, these would do better as part of a low-tech sci-fi range, and don’t mix very well with the walkers:

These I like much more than the Shakers. Not quite sure why half the firepower points backwards, and why the gunner is unprotected in any way, but I do like the basic shape and stance, and the decided “chicken” look about them.

As I’ve decided that the Boontown dwarf base colour is brown, these are sprayed Mournfang Brown, then washed and highlighted, and with certain bits of equipment painted separately. I then added some decals I found in the bits box and off we go.

These are much more the thing, and have inspired me to have a go at the Hearthguard platoon, now drying after it’s undercoat.