New Releases from Critical Mass Games, Oddzial Osmy, and Khurasan Miniatures

Critical Mass Games has added the Star Marines their Mercenaries range.

I like the chunky look of these new figures - they're almost a cross between GZG NAC Power Armor and those cool armored robots on the Fox network during football games. Critical Mass also expanded the Mercenaries armored vehicles, adding the Warmonger tank, Vanquisher self-propelled artillery, and Hellfire AA tanks. 

All three vehicles are available in Tracked (very useful for near-future games or low-tech factions) and Grav (advanced races/settings) variants.

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The Oddzial Osmy New Vistula Legion, one of 15mm SF's most popular human factions, has been augmented by Long Range Recon Patrol pack. The LRRP team carries a good assortment of weapons and equipment, including a recon drone and large rucksacks for long-haul missions.

The LRRP pack is now available in the UK from Fighting 15s and in the US from Picoarmor.

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Khurasan Miniatures has released the XM-6 Heavy Grav Tank for the Federal Army. Jon wrote up some nicely detailed background fluff for the XM-6 on his blog - definitely worth a read if you're a fan of his Federation Forward universe. 

It's a big tank - 125mm long. This would make for a worthy opponent to the Topgun Marketing tanks (it even shares the orbital-deployment concept), and definitely has uses in settings like Traveller and Hammer's Slammers. It's also big enough to fit comfortably in a 20mm Sci Fi army, and could even be a light tank in 25mm/28mm games.

New Aliens on the Horizon From Ambush Alley/GZG (UPDATED)

Attention Dropship Horizon passengers. If you would be so kind as to look to the pictures below, you will see a strange and new alien race on its way out from the partnership between Ambush Alley Games and Ground Zero Games. 

Appearing the forthcoming Tomorrow's War supplement from AAG titled, "Dagger and Claw" these creatures are the Darghaur and one of many races planned. These minis look like they will be another fine addition to the growing number of aliens available for 15mm science fiction.

Here is what Jon had to say about them..

"WHO LET THE DARGS OUT.....?"

An exclusive first look at the 15mm Darghaur for Tomorrow's War! This alien race will feature heavily in the forthcoming TW supplement, Dagger and Claw. I won't pre-empt the book by going into great detail, suffice to say that these guys are going to give the human forces on Glory a lot of hassle. They are tough critters with their turtle-like carapaces, favouring large-calibre projectile weaponry.

We'll be selling them in packs of ten figures (including separate heads, with a few spares for customising!) which makes up the basic "squad" organisation of the Darg forces. The Dargs have no visible sensory organs, communicating with each other telepathically - their horned "antler" racks denote their rank, with the lowest troopers having their horns cut down to stumps while team, squad and higher leaders sport progressively larger displays.

The first of the Darg figures are now ready for production, and will be up on our (GZG) webstore very soon - www.gzg.com - please also keep an eye on ambushalleygames.com for information about the rules supplement!

................

Jon

While they are not released yet, I'll make sure to post again when they hit dirtside.

Nevis and Averum - Blue Moon's Recent Aliens

So, it seems a few new aliens in 15mm snuck past us here at the ol' Dropship Horizon. Back around June-ish, Blue Moon Manufacturing released two new ten-packs of aliens - the Nevis and Averum.

Both packs present to the gamer with five poses of light infantry, equipped with rifles and little armor. Neither pack seems to offer an obvious leader or special weapon type, though the latter shouldn't be hard to convert from any one of the poses.

Nevis painted by Rich McGee

Averum painted by Rich McGee

Thanks to Rich for the use of his pics of his expertly painted examples of the figures.

-Eli

Danger on Outpost 32 - Custom Terrain Features

Once I had finished painting all the figures from the USE ME Danger on Outpost 32 box set, the time had come to take a close look at the scenarios. The first game in the campaign is a plan shoot-'em-up, with teams of Zeta Reticulans entering the Outpost's domes through airlocks. The scenario page includes this suggested setup map, designed for a 2' x 4' table:

My tables are mostly 2' x 2', and I chose my badlands-style table for this campaign. I figured the smaller size would be fine with the low figure count, as long as the terrain density increased just a bit. Finding terrain to represent the two airlocks on the Zeta Reticulan table edge were simple enough - I knocked together some IMEX Cyberclicks bits leftover from my 40K days to build two of these:

The doorway is obviously designed for 28mm figures, but works fine as part of a larger (invisible) structure. So that took care of the airlocks. I already had plenty of hills, but the water features posed a bit of a problem for me. The only decent water feature in my terrain collection is a swamp for my Red Planet board... not really useful for this scenario. So why not take the opportunity to build a quick water feature for my badlands board, and use it for the Outpost 32 campaign?

The scenario fluff describes the two water features as tourist beaches. My version of Outpost 32 feels more like a refugee colony, so I decided to make them simple lakefronts instead. Then I had the idea... if I made two lakefronts that were identical in width, they could combine to be a single small lake in other games. 

So I found a good-size scrap of MDF out in my garage and traced a basic lake shape. Then I drew a straight line right through the middle, cut out the two pieces with a jigsaw, and cleaned the rough-cut edges with a sanding sponge. Once they were clean, I borrowed one of my wife's spray paint cans... a blue pastel to give me an easy basecoat for the water.

Once the spray paint had dried, I found an appropriate-size scrap of packing styrofoam to form the "shoreline." To get the right shape, I flipped the lake pieces upside-down and clamped them to the styrofoam. Then I just used a hot-wire cutter to trace the lake piece, removed the lake piece, cut the inside,  and then shaped the ground texture. A few cheap craft paints, a bit of white glue, and the water features were ready for the tabletop. And since the foam and MDF were already in my garage, I was able to add to my terrain collection without spending a penny on extra materials.

Here's my final interpretation of the Scenario One setup map:

Up next: Scenario One AAR. 

Cheers,

Chris

Free Worldwide Postage From 15mm.co.uk

Free postage on all Orders till November 2nd, 2012

From Gavin at 15mm.co.uk:

"The title says it all really. Order anything to be sent anywhere and choose free shipping. This can be used in conjunction with any other offer and can be used on any of our products, except PDF Downloads (well you would expect that eh!)"

Follow the link below and read the header of the home page-

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Check it out folks,

-Eli

Brog Infantry, Grav Armor, and Exoplanets

Rebel Minis has released another of PF's alien races - the Brog Empire. Just the basic infantry pack is available so far, but it has a great variety of poses and weapons (including a casualty figure). Command and Heavy Weapon packs will follow in the near future. 

The Brog are carrying the same weapons as the Pangalactic Legion. Lots of force development opportunity with that... you could use the Pangalactics as a "foreign legion" to augment a Brog force... use the Brog as a separate subject race, or even develop a campaign based around a double-dealing weapons merchant. These are definitely worth a look!

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And if you're looking to add some high-tech support vehicles to a new alien army, Ravenstar Studios has added a handful of items to the Land Core 15mm range. First we have the Mazer/Archer family of combat vehicles. The Mazer Tank has a cool split-design turret - reminds me of what we see on some spaceship miniatures. For that matter, wouldn't be hard to imagine that it is the same gun found on that faction's warships. The same hull is utilized on the Archer - available with missile or artillery cannon turrets. 

The Passser grav APC is a good complement to the new tanks. It definitely screams "we're not from around here!" to me. The steps leading down from the troop hatch makes it a pretty convincing assault vehicle.

And finally we have the Stinger flier - which looks like a very heavily armed and armored gunship.

If you want to pick these up (or any of Chris' other great vehicles and mecha), Ravenstar Studios is having a 10% off sale through Friday. 

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Our universe looks bigger and bigger every day.

There have been more than more than 800 exoplanets discovered since 1995. Since they are generally detected by measuring the "wobble" of a star and extrapolating mass, most of these planets have been lifeless gas giants. Ultimately, it seemed like we wouldn't find any Earth-sized planets with our current technology.

That all changed this week, with the confirmed discovery of a planet just slightly larger than our own world. And was it found halfway across the galaxy like many of these discoveries? Nope, it's in orbit of Alpha Centauri B - our closest neighbor has an Earth-like planet. 

Okay, so there are a few differences. The planet is Mercury-close to the star and has an orbit of only 3.2 days. So unless it's inhabited by Balrogs with 5-point seat harnesses, we probably won't find any signs of intelligent life. Or maybe that extreme environment is why nobody ever checks out the local Galactic Planning Office to view hyperspace bypass routes... 

Either way, it's very inspiring to learn more about other star systems, and how many planets our galaxy really holds. I fully expect to read confirmed discoveries of Earth-size planets or moons in the "Goldilocks zone" within the next decade. 

So here's the real question. How long will it be until we find out what is on those planets?

Cheers,

Chris