Brigade Models

Previews, new releases, interesting stuff … and cakes !

Brigade Models - Previews, new releases, interesting stuff … and cakes !

In the Cage

If you watch the news and see anything of the western forces in Afghanistan, you’ve probably noticed that a number of the military vehicles are driving around looking like they’ve been enclosed in a metal cage.

ridgback

This type of protection, variously know as bar armour, slat armour, grid armour, cage armour and probably a few other terms as well, is the modern development of the wire mesh skirts sported by Wehrmacht tanks during WW2. It’s designed to detonate shaped-charged warheads at a distance from the main hull and prevent the armour being penetrated.

Schurzen

We were approached by a customer (David Buckle, let’s give him full credit for the idea) who wondered if it would be possible to create 15mm scale bar armour using 3D printing techniques which could be fitted to his SF vehicles. We had a tinker and, although it’s not quite possible to make something that’s absolutely in-scale (the bars are too thin at 1/100th scale), we’ve managed to come up with something that we think is pretty convincing.

Initially we’ve made a set that comprises two long and two short pieces in Shapeway’s White, Strong, Flexible material. This is easy enough to cut and can be adapted to fit most vehicle types, and can be attached with superglue.

Shapeways – Bar Armour Single Set
Shapeways – Bar Armour Four Sets

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I also had a play-around and created a cage specifically designed to fit one of our vehicles – a Lynx APC. This fits snugly round the model and fits the shape precisely, with a gap at the back for the infantry access doors. If anyone is interested in specific cages for any of our other vehicles, let me know and I’ll see what I can come up with.

Shapeways – Lynx Bar Armour Cage

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I haven’t put the prices above because they are set in dollars and can fluctuate based on the exchange rate, and also the exact choice of material (it comes unpolished in black or white, or polished in white only). As I write this post a single set of armour is around £4.75, four sets together is roughly £16.00 and the Lynx cage is £4.00 in WSF polished.

You can order directly from Shapeways; however their shipping costs can be steep for small orders (US$9.50 fixed cost for any order). You can order these or anything else from our Shapeways shop directly from us – we’ll place one big order and spread the shipping costs. That’ll way will be cheaper, but you’ll have to wait a bit longer for your items.

Mediterranean Houses

Firstly … don’t forget Broadside on Sunday ! This is an excellent little show with an impressive list of traders (Wargames Foundry, Warlord Games, Ainsty … oh, and us !).

We have a long awaited release in our 2mm scenery range today. We’re moving into sunnier climes with the arrival of our Mediterranean village pack of 20 assorted buildings.

The design of these models is based on houses in the French region of Provence (because I have some very good reference photos for the area), but they would serve equally well for Italy, Greece and other European Mediterranean countries. We will of course have stock of these on Sunday – although not all that many, so if you want some make sure you find us early !

VLI-8019

VLI-8019 – Mediterranean Village – £5.00

We’re moving on apace with the development of many more sets in the 2mm range. This week I completed a late C.19th power station. It’s based on the design of the Lots Road station in Chelsea, London, but the dimensions have been scaled down to make it more manageable. It comes with a collection of small sheds and, since most of the older power stations in London are located right next to the Thames, I also added some coal barges, a tug boat and cranes.

Power Station

Out there in the real world …

Several people have sent us links to photos or blog posts featuring our 2mm buildings range, and we thought we’d round a few up and link to them from here. Some show comparisons between our models and other ranges, others show methods of basing/painting.

Steel on Sand

Nano-Tanks

Down Among the Lead Men

Thomo’s Hole

Fen Edge Wargaming

Houston Gamers

Quick previews

Not one, but two parcels have arrived at Brigade Towers lately, bearing more prints of new models – lots of them. 2mm buildings, 15mm SF vehicles, spaceships and a few odds and ends as well.

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It’s going to take me a little while to work through all of them, clean them up and make them ready for moulding (including a dip in the infamous gunk tank), but we thought we’d tempt you with a few previews.

Firstly a 2mm model of St Mawes Castle in Cornwall, a 16th C. castle built by Henry VIII. I made it only because I spotted it in the background of a photo taken by the Brigadieress’ father and decided I wanted to investigate a bit further. It was used in some capacity in just about every war fought by Britain up to and including WW2, so it’s usable in many eras of wargame.

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This is a slightly unusual new item – bar armour, as seen fitted to various vehicles in Afghanistan. I’ve build two models, one set with four flat sheets of armour which can be cut and adapted to fit whatever vehicle you like, and another specifically designed to fit our new German Lynx APC. I have to give credit for suggesting the idea to customer David Buckle. We won’t be casting this in metal, instead it’ll be available as a print-on-demand item in our Shapeways store.

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Spaceships next – reprints of the British capital ships, plus the impressive looking Dreadnought (which makes the Pommerania look small !) and enough prints of the British fighters to immediately make production moulds.

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Lastly, some 15mm previews. The package contained quite a few models – three new hulls and around a dozen turrets. Here you can see a comparison between the new Garibaldi heavy tank hull and the Montsabert (the Garibaldi is a big beast), followed by the British Artemis APC and, probably my favourite from this set, the all new Gallieni tank destroyer.

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Moments in time…..part one

The inspiration for our Belgian refugees came from original images from 1914. This made it rather easy when it came to giving Aaron details of what we were after, I simply mailed him a selection of photos and asked him to copy them!

I think that he has captured the look and feel of the people very well (even down to the clogs worn by one of the men). If only the subjects of the photos could have imagined that 99 years after the pictures were taken they would be immortalised as 28mm pewter figures!

refugees-1

 

refugees-2

refugees-3It would be fascinating to know who they were and what happened to them during and after the war.

Broadside 2013

Our next show of the year is fast approaching – our local show, Broadside 2013 on June 9th in Sittingbourne, Kent, run by the Milton Hundred Wargames Society. It’s so close that I can walk to the venue from home in 10 minutes !

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Last year’s show was excellent – just Google for Broadside 2012 and you’ll find a number of blog posts from visitors.

MHWC’s website has unfortunately been hacked, so we’ve lent them a bit of webspace on our site on which you can find lists of traders (39) and games (19). In the meantime, I’m sure that they would appreciate as many people as possible spreading the word, so please link to them from your own blog or Facebook page.

15mm EuroFed

The natural enemies in the Iron Cow universe to the Germans are the European Federation. Encompassing the southern states of the old European Union, the Federation is effectively controlled from Paris and seemingly perpetually in conflict with the North European states of the ONESS.
MontTass
Today we’re releasing the first batch of resculpted EuroFed vehicles, which were some of our most popular models in their previous form. The initial release consists of two variants of the Montsabert MBT and two of the Tassigny APC.

SF15-401 – Montsabert MBT – £8.00
SF15-401a – Montsabert MBT (support turret) – £8.00
SF15-403 – Tassigny APC – £8.00
SF15-403b – Tassigny with Missile turret – £8.00

We previewed a number of upcoming variants of both of these vehicles a while back, but can we tempt you with a preview of the larger Garibaldi heavy tank … ?

Garibaldi

Or how about the Galieni Tank Destroyer ?

Galieni

All of the older versions of the Montsabert and Tassigny have now gone from the website, but the newer variants will be arriving soon to take their place.

15mm Previews

With the recent release of the new German 15mm vehicles (and the impending re-release of the EuroFed models) I’ve been working hard lately at redesigning more of our 15mm range (and coming up with new stuff too).

First up, and just about finished is the South-African Rhino wheeled MBT. There are a few details still to be done, but mostly dull stuff like the attachment points for the main gun and wheels. It looks particularly intimidating in the low-down, front-on view. My next project is a 15mm version of the Wildebeest APC, which has not previously been available in this scale.

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At Salute we were fortunate to be situated next to Keith Armstrong of Armies Army, and I recently participated in his successful Kickstarter project and picked up a number of his very nice 15mm near-future British infantry figures. This has inspired me to go off and update our British vehicles to give Keith’s figures some transport and armoured support. The Apollo is much more like its 6mm counterpart – I was never really happy with the turret of the old Apollo model, it was too tall and not wide enough, so this version corrects that.

Apollo

The Artemis has had a much more thorough overhaul, making it bulkier and looking more like something that could carry a full squad of infantry. The turret has also been enlarged, with the same guns as the German Lynx APC showing their origin as fellow members of the ONESS.

Artemis

Release date ? Don’t know yet. Our first task is to get the British spaceships reprinted and remoulded, and I should be ordering the new prints for those in the next few days. I’ll probably take the opportunity to order some 15mm vehicles at the same time. But the nature of things with our part-time business is that I can make 3D models much faster than we’re able to get them moulded and released, so there will always be a queue.

15mm SF Germans Re-released

We’ve released the first batch of resculpted German vehicles in our 15mm range today. The initial offering is four models – standard MBT and heavy support versions of the Thor tank, and MG and autocannon armed versions of the Lynx APC.

ThorLynx

SF15-301 – Thor MBT – £8.00
SF15-301c – Thor Heavy Support- £8.00
SF15-303 – Lynx APC – £8.00
SF15-303a – Lynx APC with autocannon – £8.00

We’ve now removed all of the old versions of the Thor and Lynx; we’ll be adding replacements for the other variants (AA, command, rocket launchers etc) in the fullness of time.

Houston Gamers

Andy Bouffard of Houston Beer and Pretzel Gamers recently sent us a big bunch of photos of a recent combined arms Aeronef/Land Ironclads game.

What’s really impressive is the terrain setup – Andy bought a large batch of our 2mm buildings and fortifications to create a number of villages and towns. Although he ran out of time to completely finish off the painting, they still look pretty impressive – his approach of creating a series of tiles makes for a very flexible layout.

The group also have their own wargaming weekend coming up – Texas Broadside, which is run in the wardroom of the dreadnought-era battleship USS Texas !

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