The Ion Age - Limited Edition Character Packs

by Chris

The Ion Age is trying something a little different for their weekly release - two packs of limited edition characters for the Prydian Army. Both of these packs are going to be limited to just 500 castings.

The first pack brings us Knight Commander Hackett, armed with an Octa sword. He is bundled with Sarj Tasker - a unique Knight sculpt armed with a Moth rifle. These are both nice additions to the Retained Knight line - Hackett's armor is beautifully detailed, and Tasker has a nice command pose.

The second pack is Knight Commander Grimwood, armed with an Iago Mace and a Carnwennan Pistol. He is paired with Jupon Wyrme - another unique Knight figure armed with a Moth Grenade Launcher. I suspect this pack will quickly catch the eye of 40K-in-15mm gamers, as Grimwood's weapons would make for a skullz-free Space Marine Chaplain.

These character packs are a damn clever idea. Anybody who has been unsure whether or not they want to check out the new-and-improved Retained Knight figures can use these packs as a sample taste... and purchase a few packs of Knights later on after painting the characters. These small packs are also quite useful for small, character- and story-driven skirmish games like In The Emperor's Name and Blasters And Bulkheads. 

Another option still is to use these as commanders in a completely different 15mm army. At our scale, it doesn't take much more than a coordinating paint job to bring together figures from different ranges.

Cataloging Non-Military Humans in 15mm

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:

• 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.

RAFM has a few interesting packs on the ex-Citadel Traveller page:

• 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!

Highlander Studios has some entertaining options in their Gideon's Dust range.

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

Commander Cameron Shepherd Reporting

  
MASS EFFECT from BioWare is an action based role-playing game for the Xbox. It's a cracking game and essentially Traveller for the C21st. Being a digital product it not only allows you to build the background and principal traits and skills of your player character in the very best RPG traditions, but also let's you customise their physical appearance within the game.

Now, when I began MASS EFFECT 2, Heather told me that if I was going to give up 40 hours of my life on a Sci Fi adventure, I might as well spend it looking at someone pretty!

Not one to argue with such sage advice, here we have Commander 'Cameron' Shepherd, based on a blonde Cameron Diaz. which I thought would be a good contrast to the major in-game's brunette squad member Miranda Lawson.

A practical use of the tool in 15mm tabletop Sci Fi, is to create the individual physical appearance of characters for your game - particularly thing like squad rosters, in order to breath more identity and life into your figures.

Cheers

Mark
      

Blackadder in Space!

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The one redeeming feature of Rebel Minis latest Earth Force Armoured Troops is the bareheaded leader figure.

I've not quite fully captured his profile in the photo, but believe me, he makes a great Edmund Blackadder character - 

"A man may fight for many things. His country, his friends, his principles, the glistening ear on the cheek of a golden child. But personally, I'd mud-wrestle my own mother for a ton of cash, an amusing clock and a sack of French porn."

- interstellar renegade, mercenary, hero, pirate, bounty hunter and coward, all rolled into one!

Hoorah!

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Sorry, I had to revisit this entry. What about the rest of the Earth Force Armoured Troopers? In one word, disppointing. I'd been quite encouraged by these minis when I saw the photo on the webstore. OK the poses were cheesy, but they had a certain 1970's Traveller'esque appeal to them.

How right I was - The minis are only 14mm foot to eye, which makes them half a head shorter than the Earth Force Marines - they match RAFM's ex-Citadel classic Traveller miniatures designed in the 1970's, which themselves are smaller 15's.

The detailing is soft and not as crisp as the Earth Force Marines, though to be fair there's plenty of it. The helmet on the firing figures, doesn't look right and overall they are simply amateur when compared with other leading figures on the market, even by the same sculptor.

Cheers

Mark

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INCOMING...... New Jellina and Lily 6 15mm characters from Khurasan

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A year ago I said to Jon, "Look mate, I would like to see your 28mm Angelina Jolie'esque Genocidal Overlord figure in 15mm as you simply can't have enough leather clad heroines".

Back in March of this year, whilst snow and floods lay siege at our door and my lungs looked like they were going to give their last puff, Jon the Punxsutawney Phil of 15mm Sci Fi, brought an early end to this "winter"" when he emailed me with the greens of this superb new 15mm Jellina Jo-eli I character figure.

The sculpting is simply breathtaking in it's understated simplicity and more in keeping with a 75mm miniature than one in 15mm. I think Jellina will make a great starship commander in the mould of Helena Cain, rogue Peacekeeper a la Aeryn Sun or Soviet WWW2 heroine.

Khurasan Miniatures 15mm Sci Fi: Jellina Jo-eli I

TTC-1901: Villains of the Sepulvedan Control Forces

(Jellina and Lily6) Jellina pictured above.

Accompanying Angelina, sorry, Jellina, is female super assassin for hire Lily6, a dynamic and energetic miniature that easily equals similar Sci Fi martial arts figures in the outstanding 28mm Infinity range.

Khurasan Miniatures 15mm Sci Fi: Lily6

TTC-1901: Villains of the Sepulvedan Control Forces

(Jellina and Lily6) $3.99 the pair.

painted by Jen Haley

What I like about Lily6, is that she also carries small arms which makes her a very versatile gaming miniature, especially for old goats like me who prefer figures of the wysiwyg school.

A real treat coming home to find these miniatures available from Khurasan. Look out for further characters in the pipeline.

TTC-1901 Villains of the Sepulvedan Control Forces

(Jellina and Lily6) 

just $3.99 from:

Khurasan Miniatures

Cheers

Mark

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