Is 20mm Sci Fi Viable?

The question was asked in response to a previous post, whether there could be a viable range of 20mm Sci Fi.

The immediate answer is that there is already a viable and attractive range of 20mm Sci Fi in the form of Rolf Hedges' Little Green Men Miniatures. The lack of a professional webstore alone prevents this from being a credible mass market option just now.

Whilst planning next week's game, Masterchef and I were discussing the state of play regarding 15mm Sci Fi and where the tipping point came that brought it out of a 30 year dark age.

That point was when Jon at GZG began releasing the first of his Sci Fi vehicles and AFVs, followed by a sustained onslaught of vehicles and support weapons. This was the quake that began the tsunami we are currently riding.

20mm has a lot to offer Sci Fi - loads of 'modern' kits to kit-bash, plenty of good Ultra-modern forces from a range of companies many of whom can be used as is - Britannia's SAS etc - others just need a visor or a closed helmet.

Camouflage and fancy Sci Fi paint jobs show up better in 20mm, you can use the terrain you've already built for Afghanistan or wherever and don't knock kitbashing either. When I started this blog back in early 2009 I was still kitbashing in 15mm. And some 15mm weapons, accessories and aliens (eg Khurasan's Ti Mohnid) will even bridge the 20mm divide as 15mm edges closer to 17/18mm anyway.

Rolf has told me that he is prepared to extend the Little Green Miniatures line and I encourage you to in turn encourage him if you want to see it happen. Send him your ideas and suggestions for extending the figure lines currently available and for creating new ones.

I think there is opportunity now, just as their was in 2008/9 for a manufacturer to establish a 20mm Sci Fi footprint and capture the 20mm Modern gamers who may want to expand their 20mm modern gaming, using the adobe or jungle huts etc they have rather than starting in a whole new scale.

Will this compete with the 15mm Sci Fi market? Yes, but only in a small way. The range of manufacturers and what they have to offer in 15mm will be hard to beat and will still tempt gamers to duplicate 20s in 15mm for many years to come. But for 20mm gamers who just want a taste of Sci Fi action on the ground between patrols or raiding forces 20mm Sci Fi will be ideal.

Cheers

Mark

The Postman Cometh

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You can blame Matt at Wartime Miniatures (and I guess Channel 4's post apocalypse shorts with Paddy Considine). Matt's 20mm Contractors in baseball caps (SF01) speak to me of Post Apocalypse shennanigans out Eli's way in a Post Comet America.

Wartimes Miniatures 20mm SF01

Special Forces/Contractors

I say Post Comet - it can be 'Post' anything. A Twilight 2013 world where groups of survivors battle for resources, control and just survival. I'm spurred on by the Pound Shop in Aberdeen which has near as damn it 1/72 Humvees and a range of civilian vehicles including articulated lorries for - you guessed it, £1.

The setting means that I can also mix and match packs of the best looking miniatures on the market without having to worry about TOEs or having the correctload out of weapons and equipment.

Elhiem Figures 20mm SF3

Special Forces Team Advancing at Ready

Stepping back from the Post Apocalypse scenario. For gamers on a budget or who simply maximise bang for the buck - these miniatures provide it. So let's look at some of the options:

1) Spec Forces/Contractors for Afghulistan, naturally
2) Ghost Recon/Call of Duty
3) 'Resistance' against The Scene's 15mm Terminatoresque Heavy Battle Robots
4) ALIEN/ALIENS Xeno Fodder vs Khurasan Miniatures 15mm Space Demon King/Queen
5) Drug Wars Cartel/Military personnel
6) Post Apocalypse/Holocaust survivors/militia
7) Red Dawn/Home Front resistance/militia
8) Fighting a Khurasan Miniatures Ti Mohnid invasion of Earth
9) Sci Fi planetary militia / armed civilians

Chatting with MC this week about the potential for playing a mini campaign inspired in part by the world created in the Kevin Costner vehicle THE POSTMAN. Maff has more of a RED DAWN leaning but there's room for both (and more). Mix and match everything we like or can pick up cheaply, including some Cold War and ex-WW2 kit thrown into service.

It's these Wartime Miniatures Modern Australians in caps (MA05) above that make me think more of a survivalist army with a unique character as per THE POSTMAN. An idea propagated within Ambush Alley Games post apocalypse campaign pack that was part of the Special Operators Group subscription a year or so back.

You only need a couple of packs to begin and can steadily build or even combine with other gamers to make bigger forces as required without needing to saddle the hackneyed Mad Max/Road Wars one trick pony.

This takes us away from the Last Centurion concept set in Afghanistan/Iraq, which whilst still a good idea, is a conflict arena that has less potential for us as we don't game Afghanistan. Plus, when you come across the remains of shelters like this one above in the local woods it colours your direction of thinking.

20mm is all well and good, but what about 15mm? Rebel Minis have several very good packs, there's Khurasan's Resistance Fighters and The Scene's US Special Forces, who have bag of character. Plus Modern US soldiers are available from various manufacturers.

Plenty in both scales to run with this idea.

Cheers

Mark

 

20mm Neo Sovz

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RH Models 20mm Neo Sovz

These painted 20mm Neo-Sovz from Rolf Hedges were picked up on eBay to start off my Neo Sovs for Tomorrows War. They have a certain Rogue Trooper Norts vibe about them which appeals to me.

I will also use them as Near Future Spetnaz in more earthbound Ghost Recon/Call of Duty: Modern Warfare inspired games. 

Cheers

Mark

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After The Comet

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I've returned to APOCALYPSE Z this week.  It's taunting me. Now I can't stomach everything but there's enough of a germ here to create a TW2000esque post comet world order.

And the best thing about it, I can collect a disparate range of rag tag bunch of odds and sods from my favourite 20mm figures on the market without feeling guilty.

Now, part of me wants to fight out a series of loosely related games between survivor factions somewhere in Nevada/New Mexico using  background and ideas from the American scenarios of the original Twilight 2000. I want to add-in not just the average joes, ex-cops and remnants of military units that survived, but bona fide American cultural elements such as Survivalists and Militias.

The other part of me, frustrated in my London Burning post apocalypse ideas through the spare heads I need no longer being available,  now wants to marry Twilight 2000 with Xenophon's Anabasis in modern day Afghanistan. With a nod to John Ringo and David Weber's Last Centurion.

I previously mentioned Elheim Miniatures' 20mm Special Forces/Contractors suitability as survivalists and now want to point you to some very nice figures from Wartime Miniatures in Australia.

Wartime Miniatures 20mm Moderns

Special Forces/Contractors in Baseball Caps
Is it me, or can you also see John Connor's resistance fighters?

Elheim, Liberation (RH Models), Wartime between them have enough SpecForces and armed 'contractor'  miniatures to ensure we never have to duplicate any figure before we even start looking at regular army options. Add to that a wide range of modern AFVs we can use without being a slave to paper TOEs and it starts looking like wargaming manna.

Move the scene to Iraq and suddenly you have a scenario very similar to Last Centurion. Not only that but Ambush Alley's new scenario book ROAD TO BAGHDAD, soon to be published by Osprey, is perfect scenario fodder!

Your American/coalition forces or SpecForces personnel are no longer trying to overthrow Saddam, but simply get home past resurgent Iraqi nationalists, military outlaws and criminal gangs. All this before the first Zombies shows up.....

Of course, our heroes, whether in Afghanistan or Iraq, may just decide to hole up in Fort Jessica Simpson and become Successor warlords, fighting off 'local' armed gangs or similar Russian, Pakistani, Iranian, coalition, displaced contractor warlords.

So much potential!

Cheers

Mark

All Gone A Bit Hadley's Hope

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We were in town on Saturday where I picked up a very reasonably priced copy of Aliens vs Predator for the XBOX 360.

I started the 'Marine' campaign set on Hadley's Hope and have to say, had a real blast! Dark corridors, bleeping motion trackers, Xenomorphs by the interstellar bus load and a very nice female Latino Marine called Tequila guiding my half arsed, half panicked attempts to survive. The game really got the blood pumping and inspired me to recreate the action on the tabletop!

I want to make an important point here. Computer and console games don't replace the miniatures game for me and the same is true of Master Chef. They inspire us to recapture the console action once again on the tabletop with miniatures.

My Googlefu failed to find a decent pic of Tequila on the net, to captivate budding 15mm Colonial Marine sculptors out there - but Natassia Malthe makes a gratuitous but very attractive proxy for this foxy Marine.

By way of  'research' just had to watch Aliens (1986) this afternoon, which left me all fired up for a Bug Hunt! The day job is going to be tough up till Christmas, so this will be a nice lightweight and fun diversion, switching between media and back as I like.


Unfortunately, to my mind, there are no decent Colonial Marine proxies in 15mm that appeal to me. RAFM's classic ex-Traveller Mid-Tech troopers are the nearest to my tastes but lack poses, weapon variation and character for any kind of  'heroic' movie'esque skirmish game. GZG's 15mm NAC? Yes, but they are still NAC. Denizen's 25mm Mid-Tech troopers are really tempting but I already own some of RH Model's excellent 20mm Colonial Marines!

RH Models 20mm Sci Fi

Colonial Marines

"State of the bad-ass art"

I will have a go at sculpting a female head onto the slimmest of the marines and share with you my success or failure. Khurasan's Space Demons will be perfect for the 'aliens', especially the big daddy Space Demon King. And, I'll start painting the Marines this week. So there we have it, on the ready line! Lock n load and wake up Hicks - because they're gonna need everything they've got to survive the colony on a terra-formed planet that swarms with bad-ass xenomorphs.

Cheers

Mark

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20mm Sci Fi

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"Stay frosty!"...... Some of my all time favourite Sci Fi miniatures, RH Models' 20mm Colonial Marines.

Winter of '79 has created a mini 20mm renaissance at chez Dropship, providing Maff and myself with heaps of fun, plus a chance to reconnect with 20mm figures and 1/76 scale plastic kits.

Tomorrow's War has also played a part in this. Throughout the development of the future history to accompany the rules, Rolf's minis just kept coming to mind. If I tell the truth, Force on Force almost made me crack, but Tom. War's Neo-Soviet regimes just demanded Rolf's minis, and these brand new Neo-Sovs just released by Rolf this week made 20mm a go-er!

RH Models 20m Sci Fi: 
NSSQU; 10 FIGURES WITH AK774 £4.80

Cheers

Mark

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Thanks MajorMike!

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Just want to say thanks to Mike McEwan (aka MajorMike) for stopping by at the crack of crow this morning to drop off some of his original Hotspur 20mm Falklands era minis, making up for my disappointment (read: sheer bloody anger) with Stonewall and allowing me to push on with the The Winter of '79. These Hotspur minis provide me with a good range of SAS types plus shabby soldiery in British kit to act as rebels, revolutionaries, Union militia etc.

Now, I've assauged my early 80's retro for Hotspur minis, I'm turning to Rolf Hedges and his incredible range of 20mm miniatures to fulfill the open civil war side of the project.

If anyone is going to Devizes on 17th/18th July and is prepared to pick up two packs of URBN7 British Army Internal Security 1970's (with SLRs intact) on my behalf, please leave a message below.

Cheers

Mark

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FuUK Stonewallfigures.co.uk

Followers of this blog will know that I don't have a bad word to say about figures or manufacturers. If I don't like a product it generally doesn't appear on Dropship Horizon.

My order from Stonewallfigures.co.uk arrived today. I am less impressed than if I'd never received them at all. The order was incomplete - no word why, no apologies for the delay, no response to my communication.

Taking the individual packs out, I wouldn't have been surprised if they had old Hotspur labels - they looked so scummy and beaten about. Certainly not new castings. Stonewall had used a flimsy padded envelope so a good number of the minis were bent at crazy angles to their base. Did they buy them at a Bring and Buy to fulfil my order?

Both the British Infantry Moving and MAWC packs show 6 figs on the website but only had 5 miniatures in each. Most annoying of all, was that half the SLR's, the defining feature of these figures, had their barrels missing - not even rolling at the bottom of the packets (still no excuse in my book).

Master Chef had a similar experience and had to pester them by phone to get his order.


Compared with the service provided by David at Britannia Miniatures plus the quality of the casting and packaging - Stonewallfigures.bastard.uk suck!

It is a real shame that Dave Allsops legacy lies with these people.

Mark

20mm Modernistas

Master Chef and I have decided to pull the plug on 15mm Moderns. Looking at the quality of poses and sculpting in the latest 28mm Empress and Eureka Moderns, plus the sheer range and character of minis available in 20mm - after much discussion, we both feel that what we as gamers are being offered in 15mm just doesn't compare.

For years I've held off buying RH Models Russians waiting for comparable (not just any) figs in 15mm. Oh, and 1970's is not Modern in my book. I'm still waiting.......

Add to that, our gaming is changing from 5x8ft 'company' level games to smaller and more discrete Force on Force, Ambush Alley and Flying Lead affairs between a couple of squads max with perhaps games over several linked missions or 'acts'.

Starting in 20mm, Britannia and Platoon 20 have come up trumps but we've both been let down by the service from Stonewallfigures.co.uk. 5 weeks and not answering my emails is not acceptable in my book. Simply not prepared to order from them by mail order in the future.

If any UK followers of this blog are going to Bovington this weekend or Devizes on the 17/18th July and is prepared to pick up some figs for me from Stonewall and/or RH Models (no online ordering), please let me know.

Cheers

Mark