Rebel Transport and Steampunk Infantry, More Laserburn Vehicles, and Micropanzer Building Bits

by Chris

Rebel Minis has unveiled a new conversion kit for the Earthforce Dropship.

Sculpted by Chris at Ravenstar Studios (who also made the Warthog conversion for the Titan Dropship), this brilliant bit of work add a dorsal intake hood and an open passenger bay to the original JBR-designed dropship. The result is quite impressive - it has a place in everything from near-future to space opera settings. I expect Lightning Division players in Hammer's Slammers: The Crucible will get some mileage out of these!

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On the other side of the sci-fi spectrum, Rebel has also released a pack of Steampunk British Infantry.

These gasmasked soldiers are perfect for those late-19th century expeditions to Mars, Venus, or those undiscovered creature-infested islands. Rebel's own Chupacabras might be a good opponent for this infantry pack. 

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15mm.Co.Uk has released two more vehicles in the remastered Laserburn range.

The Support Wagon (pictured left) is a nice military-grade speeder. The sleek shape and open top imply speed and utility rather than a front-line combat role. That makes it ideal for occupation and police patrols (especially since there's a seated Law Officer figure available) or general counter-insurgent operations. Very useful in small skirmish games.

The Partizan Scout Car (pictured right) is a fully-enclosed vehicle with lots of potential. The sculpted details give you lots of room for judgment - it could be a thin-skinned cargo van, a slab-sided armored courier car, or a small, fast military vehicle. The raised section on top offers conversion potential - it would be easy to add a small sensor, radar, communication array, or remote-operated weapon. I've always thought it was a nice looking vehicle, but the old pewter casting in my collection just isn't clean enough to use. It definitely looks like the new resin castings will bring the Laserburn range up to today's standards.

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A couple weeks ago, Jason at Micropanzer Studios posted about a restock of his resin terrain items. But somehow I completely missed all the new bits he added to the range (sorry, Jason!). 

The range offers a ton of parts to convert your own buildings - Jason has been using them very successfully with plastic electrical boxes. It's a great mix of items - some are hand sculpted, and others are cleverly cast from obsolete toys and models. 

What really caught my eye is bit #28. I've been looking for something to use as futuristic street lamps with my Mad Mecha Guy, Proxie Models, and GameCraft cityscapes. This part might just do the trick - effectively and inexpensively. And it's a great excuse to get some of his Crate Sets, and some of his Mass Extractors to pull fossil fuels from the depths of my snow-world table.

Cataloging Sci-Fi Buildings in 15mm

Today we have a guest post from Hans over at Trojan Points. Based on the Catalog posts that we did last year (and need to update!), he compiled a definitive list of 15mm Science Fiction Buildings available today. Let us know if anything was overlooked in the comments, and then we'll copy this article over to a permanent sub-page like the others.

As both a complement and an homage to Dropship Horizon's very useful miniatures catalogs (Extraterrestrial Lifeforms, Non-Biological Lifeforms, Human Power Armour and Non-Military Humans), and generally awesome blog, the Architecture Department of the Trojan Institute of Technology has been busy reporting architectural trends in the 15mm future! Excluding unique scratch-built designs, our specialists have classified most buildings in the galaxy under five categories: Prefabs, Industrial Buildings, Third Wave Buildings, Shanties and Alien Buildings. Furthermore, they've identified a new trend: buildings scratch-built from local materials but upgraded with standardized Parts and Fittings...

While the concept of ready-to-live dropped-from-orbit buildings has often been discussed, most colonies start with some sort of Prefabs.

Prefab Military Base from GZG's store

• round Zero Games Military Prefab and Base Modules is available as a Basic Module, a Command Module fitted for extra aerials, a Communication Module with a large satellite dish, a Module with Air-Defense Canon and a double-length Barracks Module. Don't let the “military” appellation fool you: they're often available in surplus and bought by the no frill budget conscious colonist!
• The options with Gamecraft Miniatures Tommorow's War Structures seem endless. Several sizes of habitation modules you order by the floor (and thus buildings you make as high as you want), several landing pads (large, small, rooftop, elevated), a garage, a mech hangar, cargo pods, radio mast, security walls and walkways... And I won't even go into their modern but so easily re-purposable buildings or into their spaceship interior modules: this post is already becoming much longer than I expected.
• Antenociti's Workshop currently offers a single MDF Colony Habitat, but their large offer of Made for Infinity buildings hints to more in the future. They also have some concrete barriers and some rather “scale virgin” 28mm terrain that can easily be re-purposed for 15mm: air filters and movers, holo ads, info hub, missile silos, generator, alien artefact and various crates and containers.
• Constantly pushing the envelope of laser cutting, CorSec Enginering mixes the flexibility of styrene and the ease of assembly of MDF to promise shapes unseen so far... Starting with a Quonset Hut

Most colonies (although not all of them) are created to take advantage of some local resources. So once basic lodgement has been taken care of, the next order of business for more colonists is Industrial Buildings.

CMG incredible Kyushu Bay refinery at Salute 2012

• With 16 different resin models (all with simply detailed interiors), Critical Mass Games produced Arc Fleet Buildings are ready to seriously boost your colony industrial base! I especially love the Otilium Refinery and its 3 sorts of assorted storage tanks! Don't forget their Comms Towers and Satellite Dish accessories.
• In need of a command center for your base or of a control tower for your spaceport? Combat Wombat Miniatures makes a resin “pile up the levels as high as you want/can” modular building!
• Blue Moon Manufacturing makes 4 different industrial looking resin buildings (one of them with a clear plastic dome).

Third Wave Buildings are so called because after prefab and industrial buildings, they constitute the third wave of building on most colonies, usually as a replacement/upgrade to the first wave prefabs.

Old Crow Apartments Blocks on ClearHorizon

• Old Crow Models might be on temporary hiatus but their resin 2 and 3-stories matching apartments blocks are, in my opinion, (among) the finest 15mm sci-fi buildings ever produced!
• Designed by Krazy Ivan's War Games Emporium and manufactured by GameCraft Miniatures, the Wired West range brings Space Western (boardwalks and false fronts, Firefly style): 3 small, 3 medium, 3 large and 3 corner buildings, each with 2 accessible stacked floors (ground and first), covered boardwalk and false fronts.
• They walk the line between early Third Wave and Alien: Brigade Models produces a dozen desert buildings (various houses, a landing pad, a workshop, a research lab and a bunker).
• Again early Third Wave or Alien, 5 original Desert Dwellings made by The Scene .
• Mad Mecha Guys produces a rapidly growing range of MDF condos, shops, bunkers, garage, containers, barriers, roads and signage... Relatively simple blocky design, but with plenty of variations in size and shapes,don't they just beg for some Parts & Fittings?

Shanties are improvised dwellings made from scrap materials and build to compensate the lack or scarcity of other types of building. Unsurprisingly they're usually inhabited by the poorer fraction of a colony (which on certain planets might be most people).

A GZG Shanty Town, complete with bars and containers

• Made of walls (5 front, 5 back, 3 left and 3 right) and roofs (5) that can be assembled in any combination, Ground Zero Games makes just over 1000 (more if you count the chimneys) different Colonial Settlement Buildings. They are often encountered amid discarded shipping containers, some of them re-purposed as the colony watering hole (sometimes with the addition of a lean-to side extension  for the kitchen or store).
• I was lucky enough to grab 8 out of the 9 unique resin shanties produced by Battle Works Studios before they went off the grid. With removable roofs and a unique system of telescopic masts they look even more improvised than GZG's. Rumor has it that these will go back into production someday...

Alien Civilisations bring with their culture unique takeson architecture. One can indeed lear a great deal about their way of thinking and living by studying the way they build their dwellings.

CMG Tokaan IV board at Caronade 2011, 

picture from Iron Mammoth's Studio

• Critical Mass Games does it again: 2 sets of 2 buildings (one medium, one small), a large command center and 2 different 3-storys high Great Pyramids; enough variety for a full table pyramids-obsessed-alien colony! Matching power nodes and converter in the accessories section.
• Officaly Licenced for Tomorrow's War (who cares frankly?), Gamecraft Miniatures Marshborn Crusties Structures are available as 3 different MDF building and matching elevated walkways, ramps and docks.
• Although listed under 28mm Scenic, Scotia Grendel Productions offers a nice range of domes (command, landing pad, quad bunker, hospital, power plant, observation tower and various turreted ones) and corridors to link them that are much better scaled for 15mm than for 28mm. They also have some standalone missile silos and weapons emplacement.

You want to upgrade that local materials (read scratch-built) or traditionally constructed (read building originally designed for historic games) dwelling with the comfort of whichever century you live in? You need parts and fittings!

A foam core box with various GZG Parts and Fittings, from GZG store

• Doors, windows, hatches, air conditioners, vents, exhausts, comms dishes, aerial bases, solar arrays, circuit panels, junction boxes, power units, drums, palets, containers: Ground Zero Games has them in all manners of shapes and sizes. They might well have invented the concept too...
• Antenociti's Workshop also offers a whole range of doors, windows, hatches, vents, grates, fans, air conditioners, solar panels and crates.
• Khurasan makes Street Lights, Dumpsters and a single set of Air Conditioners but also furniture and civilian Street Cars to fill your streets.
• The Scene has a range with plenty of doors, windows, vents, hatches, and roof fittings.
• CorSec Engineering also offers you a strudy fence system, complete with gatehouse and watchtowers, which posts can be used with metal, wooden or laser beams to keep those nasties in. Or out... Not to mention their mention their flat styrene doors, windows and vents.

I voluntary restricted myself to production models (not custom builds), sci-fi (not anything else usable for sci-fi) and buildings (not natural terrain). Even so, I probably forgot a few items: I stand ready to be corrected and to discover new gems!

Hans from Trojan Points

Taxi For Mr Horizon! Taxi Office WIP

I'm revamping Mudd Eisley. There's a distinct lack of domes and I mean to fix that. So I've been collecting interesting packaging - helps working next to the IT department - to replace my current stock of buildings before I put them in for a Sarah Beeney.

Mudd Eisley Taxi Office WIP

L: Star Wars Action Fleet 'Echo Base Trooper'

(makes a decent desert trooper too)

R: CMG Light Recon, Mudd Eisley style

The 'domes'  are mini plastic footballs used for Easter egg hunts (apparently)  - pack of 6 which could be split into 12 halves was £1 from Poundland in Aberdeen. Since seen similar in Hobbycraft.

The underneath of the 'roof' is reinforced by a sheet of card glued into place. I then ran big globs of PVA glue around the inside lip of the dome halves, before repeating on the outside. Once the dome was laid on the roof, I ran the glue for about a centimeter around the base of the dome to ensure that it had a good footprint. It was only at this point I remembered that I had a hotglue gun - DOH!

Once dry - well, once the PVA had turned transparent at least, I mixed sand, PVA and 'quick dry' exterior Polyfilla (1 PVA : 3 Polyfilla) and brushed, yes brushed on with an old Size 2 brush. Took minutes.

Dome Closeup

The garage door is from GZG's Building Fittings. Mike at TheScene has similar, equally good, but I already had the GZG door spare. It would be easy to go mad with windows and door on these scratchbuilt models - but you have to bear in mind this is Mudd Eisley - fierce heat and even fiercer sandstorms.

What does make a difference though is 'industrialising' the building - just one or two accessories such as vents, exhausts, aircon units or pipes. And here can I say that I wish someone would produce 90 degree pipes in a couple of sizes, in pairs and triples, that can be rested against a building.

The 'taxi' is a really nice GEV APC from Scotty at Combat Wombat. It seemed just right to fulfill the role of a rugged desert taxi-bus in addition to it's intended purpose.

Still very much a work in progress but I'll keep you updated.

Cheers

Mark

 

GZG June Teasers - New 15mm Building Fittings

You will remember, back in March, GZG released their V15-BLD RANGE of Sci Fi Building Fittings at SALUTE. Jon will shortly be expanding the range with packs that include a mesh hatch (ventilation shaft etc), mesh grill panel (not illustrated), and assorted wall fittings (hydraulic or electrical locks/junction boxes).

"Fight for Ventilation Shaft 47"
New GZG 15mm Sci Fi Building Fittings

I chose to illustrate the new Sci Fi fittings as space corridor furniture, simply because they are great for making 'instant', cost effective corridors.

The mesh hatch and mesh grill panels would also look good decorating space corridor floor sections, whilst the hydraulic or electrical locks/junction boxes could be used on industrial buildings, tanks and silos.

More details from WWW.GZG.COM soon.

Cheers
Mark

GZG's New 15mm Sci-Fi Building fittings PREVIEW

ALL-NEW!
V15-BLD RANGE from GZG:
Sci-Fi Building fittings in 15mm scale

A completely NEW range of metal add-on parts for making and detailing your own buildings for your SF battlefields. These parts are designed to "dress-up" structures made from anything you like - foam blocks, packaging materials, card or whatever. The example building (rather over-detailed to show the whole range!) was knocked together in 10 minutes with a scrap of black foamcore board and some UHU, just to show how easily you can make a basic structure.

The following packs are OUT NOW, with more to come:

V15-BLD 1 Armoured Bunker/Blast Doors (6 - 3 each of 2 types) £5.00
V15-BLD 2 Large Doors - loading areas, garage bays (4 - 2 each of 2 types) £6.00
V15-BLD 3 Civilian Building Doors (6 - 4 single (2 types) and 2 double) £2.50
V15-BLD 4 Small Pressure Hatches (10 - 5 each round and square) £2.50
V15-BLD 5 Large Pressure Hatches (8 - 4 each round and rectangular) £2.50
V15-BLD 6 Roof Fittings A (2 large and 3 small Comms dishes, 4 enviro/power units) £5.00
V15-BLD 7 Roof Fittings B (vents, exhausts, aircon units, aerial bases - 8 pieces) £4.00
V15-BLD 8 Vent Grilles, square and round (3 each of 3 types) £2.50


Bloody Marvellous Jon! A great step forward for 15mm Sci Fi gamers. Well Done!

Cheers
Mark

NOTE: All new codes are in production and will be available at SALUTE on the 28th March - shortly after that they will be up on the webstore for mail ordering.