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

In Space No-one Can Hear You........

.......buy GZG SG15-V14 Armed crew figures in heavy EVA suits. These miniatures are perfect for any number of scenarios inspired by Alien, Outland, 2001, UFO, or yesteryear Sci Fi classic. Whether set on a lunar surface, an abandoned spaceship or the deep vacuum of space.

SG15-V14 contains 6 BIG figures, with two each of 3 different poses for £2.50. The figures themselves are 16-17mm to eye level, approximately 10mm across the body and 19mm tall overall. They also carry huge life-support systems on their backs, looking not unlike that beer fridge you have in the garage!


Don't be put off by the size of these figures when compared to more conventionally sized Sci Fi miniatures. A quick Google will show them to be correct in size and bulk, and I think they look great for shambling down starship corridors or into those alien caverns. Rather than try to describe the detail on the figures, I'll let the photo above do the talking. They will repay a colourful paint job that makes the best of the sculpting and are perfect for a wash of GW (Citadel) Devlan Mudd or similar over a light base colour and then picking out the detail.

I chose to use these figs to give the Master Chef's 'wash' technique a go. In the photo below you will see the successive stages as each wash is applied over the BARE METAL. I'm delighted with the results. I painted the gold visor after the second wash, then added another careful thin blue wash over it during the third coat, before a final quick gold highlight.


I love the 'electric blue' metallic fabric effect of the wash. Whilst the original plan was to paint the boots, gloves, and equipment in white or yellow, and maybe even paint the helmet white, yellow, orange or red - for that utilitarian starship crew effect - I may well just leave them as is and pick out the weapons and other minor details.

I thoroughly recommend this technique if you need to paint a number of figures quickly for a game, especially miniatures like these with full faced helmet visors. It's not just speed painting but warp-speed painting! By the time you finish applying a coat of wash to the third miniature, you can return to the first to apply the next coat. 24 figs given 3 coats in an hour. To block paint visors, weapons and bases takes just one more hour. Though the paint job is still to be finished as you can see in the photo here, that gold visor really lifts the figure above the ordinary.

TIP: Don't be tempted to add black or brown ink for more depth to the shadows. It just looks muddy. I've tried.

TIP: Make sure you don't allow the wash to pool or create tidemarks on flat surfaces. Further coats of wash won't hide them!

There's even less excuse now for that pile of Sci Fi lead to get any larger. They probably won't win any prizes but it does get a platoon or more of 'painted' figures on the table with just one evening's work.

Cheers
Mark