Action figures

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Yeah, Epic was a little smaller than 15mm, I think. I'm not sure why - it was 4-5 dudes to a base, which is the same as 15mm FoW. Heh, MicroMachines.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

A 15mm sci-fi game would be pretty sweet. If GW had any sense, I think they could be pretty successful with a re-imagining of 40K Epic, using FoW-style rules. 40K targets the 12-year-old boy demographic nowadays; a FoW-style re-imagined Epic could recapture the more mature gamers that originally made 40K so successful back in the 80s, but that would require GW to un-fuck themselves.

I'm surprised no one has done this yet. And Games Workshop seems to have no idea why anyone buys their products in the first place anymore.

PS: What kind of terrain or vehicles would you want to see in 15mm that might go well with a Wierd War 2/Dust kind of setting?

[Bob the Gunslinger]

The larger 'wargame' scale stuff for GW is super small, right, like 5mm tall dudes?

I guess 15mm is like, 1/120?

Anyway a 'Ground War' set I bought ages ago had a pair of 144 tanks in it. I painted and weathered them (well, spent 5m on them and gave them to Zak) and obviously things like the commander's machinegun have a big chunk of plastic under the barrel for strength, but they seem pretty sweet. Probably too small for FoW, though.

What is the name of the range? Is Ground War sold by Bandai? I would totally buy those just to play with while I'm on the phone. I mean, to enjoy their intricate details.

They might work as light tanks or drone tanks with some slight modifications, too. But you'd have to make sure your opponent is cool with that kind of thing.

[Bob the Gunslinger]

Talking about KS with regard to startup costs is pretty interesting - that small manufacturers that get capital behind them can quickly bash out lots of cheap, high quality product. Obviously this is an area where Bandai has a big strength, since 90% of all plastic models sold in Japan are Gundam kits. Even then, what gets more complex kits is driven by what is popular at the time. It's interesting that the lines between different materials and qualities are shaped by relatively narrow bands of capital.

It's a shame 28mm isn't quite 144, because in 144 you can get some pretty sweet tanks from Gundam stuff. I'll take a picture.

Well, it's not just the capital. FFG could afford to make plastic kits as well as GW, and they sell more boardgames with miniatures than GW could dream, but they still use a different plastic for Dust. Boardgames sales would not benefit from all the options and modelling capabilities, and may even suffer from the need for assembly before playing, so they don'toften use plastic sprues. Since more wargames are not selling themselves as boardgames, there will probably be a large overlap in the bands where a company might be able to produce plastic kits cheaper for the needed numbers but still choose to use restic or other non-plastic-gluable plastics to ease entry into their games.

[Stark]

What is the name of the range? Is Ground War sold by Bandai? I would totally buy those just to play with while I'm on the phone. I mean, to enjoy their intricate details.

They might work as light tanks or drone tanks with some slight modifications, too. But you'd have to make sure your opponent is cool with that kind of thing.

Man this is one of those cultural things. :v Bandai did two 'ground war' sets (ie a robit and some other assorted vehicles) in 1/144 (which the internet assures me is like 11mm and way too small for anything), but they're not for a game. I'm not sure if its just robots, but the Japanese guys don't really seem to be into wargaming like that. I think it was one of the many ranges Bandai tries regularly to see what works; the Zaku I got in the set is really quite terrible and apparently the version from the 90s where standards were quite different. Bandai have also tried their hand at 1/35 'proper' models, but I'm not sure how successful they were. They have a range of spaceships in I think 1700, etc.

Having a look, it's curious how this scale business works. Obviously things like miniatures have scale around having armies and battles and stuff, but Bandai seems to have kinda chosen scales at random. I mean their subjects are about 20m tall, and 1/100 is an 'easy' scale, but it's not very ... 'compatible'. It's about 16mm apparently, which is pretty terrifying considering how big this Nu foot is.

I checked the Nu kit, and it looks like it's 'ABS PP' for most of the parts, 'PE' for the softer parts, and 'ABS PS' for the hard outer panels. I guess the last type is polystyrene, but you guys are saying that within a term like 'polystyrene' there's a lot of scope for different properties, right?

Talking about those huge boardgames is interesting, because you're right in that they have different needs - nobody wants to spend an hour putting together their barbarian or whatever. That said, lots of boardgames seem to be criticised for being too ambitious with miniatures (either having too many, too low quality, etc etc). I remember that old Hero Quest boardgame being way cheaper than getting cool orcs than the actual GW games.

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

PS: What kind of terrain or vehicles would you want to see in 15mm that might go well with a Wierd War 2/Dust kind of setting?

I've only glanced at Dust a couple of times. If I was playing a 15mm version thereof, I'd probably use a blend of the existing Battlefield in a Box range and spice it up with "retro-punk" bunkers (complete with space dishes and laser arrays and whatnot), laser-minefields, moon-rocket launchpads (there's actually a great V1 launch rail in the new FoW intro kit that could probably be re-purposed into exactly that), and the like.

[Aaron MkII]

FW/GW stuff is 28mm right? Or nominally, turns out to be a bit bigger IIRC.

But yeah, if they were bigger, then they could "count as" a Baneblade/Macharius.

[Phantasee]

FYI I use the iPhone app picup to upload to imgur.

[Vejut]

FoW models are15mm,which is about 1/100-zveda tanks in that scale work well. The only issue with the plastic soldier stuff in that scale is that its really boringly posed, with alot of very static " slow march" poses mixed with a few shooting ones. GW uses "heroic" or oversized 28mm. Its technically 1/56, more like 1/48 now.

[madd0ct0r]

Yeah, Epic was a little smaller than 15mm, I think. I'm not sure why - it was 4-5 dudes to a base, which is the same as 15mm FoW. Heh, MicroMachines.

Epic is 6mm scale so you can field titans and tank companies in a normal battle. Latest list and rule set available here: http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/ ... 69&t=23686
Also check out: exodus wars, plasmablast games and angle barracks and microworld as manufacturers.
strike legion, seeds of war, future war commander,


15mm - current big sci-fi player I know of is drop zone commander (or is that 10mm?)
Timeline 300 is more steampunk then sci-fi (Weird World War One), but it's also 15mm

Dystopian Wars is 2mm scale! but a lot of their pieces find good uses at 6mm scale. Maybe not 15mm though.

A lot of small games companies have sprung up with 3d printing.

[Stark]

So considering the sort of 'hobby' kits as distinct from boardgame and prepainted stuff, what are the expectations in different markets? Obviously Gundam guys expect the HG/MG/PG kits to have articulation and not require painting, but you guys have talked aronud how in miniatures space, people have expectations around what glues will work, what level of assembly is required, how easy/plausible it is to craft shit up and change them, etc. If the different materials affect these kind of things, are these concerns important to manufacturers?

[sgt67]

Stark, are you primarily concerned with the perspectives of gaming miniature modelers and manufacturers or in general? If you are I'll bow out of the discussion at this point since I have no experience with either.

[Stark]

There's a lot of topics I want to talk about, I guess. The 'holistic' understanding I'm curious about definitely includes the end-user perspective and how it shapes what manufactures do in the market, but the technical and chemical side is really interesting to me as well.

For instance, the current MG I'm building seems to be almost entirely 'PS', which I guess is polystyrene. The runners have different compositions, it seems, as they're more or less sharp/soft/etc. The softer parts are a different plastic, and I'm not sure what some of the clear runners are made from.

Actually, the cheaper/smaller kits I made recently had clear parts, and they were just clear plastic. However the larger kits generally have the clear parts moulded in the correct colour. What's involved in the production of clear plastic compared to regular plastic? The only clear bits on Gundams are generally different - clear hull sections which are hard, and 'effects parts' for things like beam sabres and rocket thrust etc which are soft.

[sgt67]

I'm not sure what the makeup of the beam saber parts and the like is, but normal clear parts are polystyrene, just a slightly different formula. That's why they are considerably more brittle.

[Stark]

When you guys talk about the 'mould release' stuff, is that a part of the casting process? I've heard different sorts of kits require different preparation before painting (cleaning, base coating, etc).

EDIT - Did you mean that making PS clear makes it more brittle?

[sgt67]

Yeah, to my understanding both plastic and resin kits are normally treated in mold release agent after casting. It's a simple matter to remove it though, wiping it down with dish soap and rising is enough.

Bandai actually some material about their manufacturing process but it's all in Japanese naturally so I don't understand it.

Edit: yes I did.

http://www.bandai.co.jp/hobbycenter/making/index.html

[Stark]

Okay, I have to know how this is possible.



This is two fully articulated hands moulded on a runner. You just pull them out, rotate the first knuckles so they can form a fist, and that's it. Three joints per finger and no assembly. How does this work from an injection moulding perspective?

[madd0ct0r]

mold release is something put down in a very thin layer to stop the plastic 'sticking' in the mold.

for home casting work I've used flour, wd40 and ky jelly for different projects.

[Havok]

Fucking christ. Post figures of action already.

[Stark]

Look pal I want to know how it's possible to injection mould multi-part, non-contiguous shit in one go. Maybe it's not one go? Maybe the Japanese are insane?

[madd0ct0r]

one sprue should be one type of plastic.

BUT, plastic is a funny thing, cool it down at different rates you'll get different properties (hell, same goes for steel).
Specifically, since it's basically a tangled mesh of hydrocarbon chains, cooling slower gives you a softer plastic I think.

[Stark]

That's interesting but doesn't answer my question (and I've got a picture of a four-colour-on-one-sprue situation if you want to lol at how insane the Japanese are).

[Brother-Captain Gaius]

Action figures for Hav.

[Stark]

ACTION




No robit pictured more than $20 lol

[Rogue 9]

Here's the aftermath of the time some dumbass Grey Knights player decided to deep strike his Stormraven full of Terminators at me, scattered onto terrain, and crashed directly in front of my gun line.

(All the pictures of my minis I have uploaded are full resolution and way too big, sorry. )