Since these posts have proven to be extremely helpful to our readers, I thought I'd take a look at some of the options we have to field rogues, pirates, adventurers, and civilians in our 15mm games. 15mm Sci Fi is extremely popular in army-vs-army games right now, especially with this year seeing the release of Gruntz, 5150:Star Army, and Tomorrow's War. But 15mm also gives us a good variety of minis to use in narrative skirmish games. Rules like Salvage Crew, Mutants and Death Ray Guns, AE Bounty, and In The Emperor's Name favor a handful of characters instead of a uniformed army. These can be used to create bustling star ports, research and mining colonies, or any other setting that doesn't call for an attack by a platoon of mechanised infantry.
The largest variety can probably be found at 15mm.Co.Uk:
Kremlin Minis has a few great character minis, especially Commander Vortan and Commissar Kang.
- Laserburn has dozens of them under the Adventurers and Star Soldiers, Starship Crews, Mercenaries headings. And since these are available as single castings, you can inexpensively collect a wide variety of these minis. They even have some nice civilian vehicles available.
- The HOF Humanity range offers Cultists, Rim Mercenaries, Post-Apoc Warriors, Starfighter Crews, Trators, and Refugees.
Ground Zero Games has a pretty sizeable catalog as well:
- There are nine different packs available under the Civilians and Colonists range. Several more packs available if you're looking for humans in zero-gee suits.
- Under the Human Characters category we find the extremely popular "Free Trader" crew packs A and B, as well as the excellent Ravager packs.
- Space Vixens
- Space Pirates
- Guerillas
- Crewmen
- The Support Staff pack might also be worth a look for character minis, but these are mostly aliens and droids.
Rebel Minis has an eclectic mix of non-uniformed humans:
- Titan Scouts
- Gun Clerics
- Black Widow Mercs
- Under the Gangs, Gunmen, and More range you'll find Post-Apoc Riders, Motorcycle Gangs, Post-Apoc Gangers, Post Apoc Survivalists, and many more. While these aren't typical sci-fi minis, many will still work with the right paint job.
- While you're at Rebel's website, check out the modern lines too. Again, the right paint scheme can make almost any mini work for 15mm sci fi.
Khurasan Minis normally has quite a few options in their post-apoc and Arkham Horror ranges, but those aren't available this summer. But we can still get:
- DPLS Space Crew
- Heroes of Sepulvedan Resistance and Villains of the Sepulvedan Control Forces. If you've never seen these minis in person, you won't believe they are 15mm!
Kremlin Minis has a few great character minis, especially Commander Vortan and Commissar Kang.
Splintered Light Minis has their own version of a 15mm freighter crew. And don't forget... just because these minis are sculpted to resemble a certain popular sci-fi show and movie, a different paint scheme could yield entirely different characters.
Stan Johansen Miniatures offers an Adventurers pack.
I hope this catalog helps to inspire your games. Even if you are fighting platoon-vs-platoon, a handful of these minis would be great hostages, bystanders, or objectives. But if you're playing narrative games, you'll want to paint up as many of these as you can. There are quite a few unique alien minis out there too, and we may cover them in a follow up article. I've set a personal goal to do between 3 and 5 of these every week to support my 15mm In The Emperor's Name campaigns!
Cheers,
Chris
