If you haven’t checked out the shop lately, there are many new items. Even if you haven’t been there since last week, several items have been added this past weekend or have been restocked. It was a busy weekend bagging up and counting new stock. I believe everything is now updated except for the WWII infantry and cavalry (my task for this week).
I want to quickly highlight the newest items. First is the Starguard Amazon Stormbird combat flyer. It is a very versatile piece that can easily be added to most any rules/faction. It comes with 2 loose piece gun options and a Fembot pilot for easy swapping or modification. The shorter weapon is a Vulcan Cannon (a Gatling gun looking piece) and the longer one is a Power Gun. The gun parts are painted black for emphasis in the photos below. The Stormbird comes w/o a flight stand. I have shown my preferred method below. I add a 1/2″ x 1/2″ sheet metal square to the bottom of the craft. That then attaches to my telescopic magnetic riser for easy battlefield fun. We do not sell those risers yet, but we do sell a more traditional fixed height flight stand which incorporates a 1.25″ diameter metal washer, washer toper, and short riser column. Currently, the Stormbirds are priced and $5 and the fixed height flight stands are $1. At that price, don’t leave your grunts without a little air support and recon. Especially when it looks this stylish.
Next are some multi-scale vehicles. In 25mm games, they are armored ground drones (air drones will coming later). In 15mm, they are light tanks. In 6mm (which will be release later this year), they are monster tanks. You get a lot of bang for your buck with these very useful pieces. They come as a small/med./large hull and an assortment of turret/hatch options. I have included photos of several common versions below along with a 25mm Death Raider for scale. Stan never marketed these to be used with either the 6mm or 25mm as far as I know, but he did market the standard 25mm tanks to be used with the 15mm figures so I don’t feel like we are too out of line here. Honestly, if drone tech existed in the 70s/80s like it does now, I bet he would have listed these this way also. Because the majority of the cost of metal miniatures is based on the weight of the metal, and these are hefty little chucks of the stuff, they currently range in price from $8-14. You likely don’t want to buy 100s of them but your ground crew would love to have a handful send in to those particularly hot areas.
Next is the 25mm Hover Jeep. This comes with an assortment of accessories. Note: Not all accessories are intended to be mounted at one time. A selection is provided to allow for customization. The Merc League driver that is provided blends in fairly well with other terran factions allowing for use by others, or provide your own seated driver. Drivers for other factions are in the works but they are a lower priority than the making the standard poses available. The Jeep has a number of holes for mounting various items or you can carefully add some more as needed. Below are just a few common configurations.
The last new group of things added are metal washers for figure bases. I know that is not exciting but I hope you will find our price appealing compared to hardware stores. We buy them in bulk to get the best price possible, and we sell them at near cost as a service to our customers. We have 4 different sizes at the moment. The 3/4″ diameter works the best for 25mm infantry as shown below. They are currently priced at $0.05 each (in packs of 20 for $1). Yes, it is cheaper to mount your minis on pennies however, these interact with magnets to hold the figure better in storage boxes, on movement trays, or on telescoping flight stands (just sayin’). I’ve seen people almost drop a tray full of minis on the floor only to be saved by the holding power of magnets. Preserving even my barely adequate paint job is well worth a few extra pennies per mini in my mind but ymmv as they say. Note that washers are stamped during production giving one side a burr. I tried to get a close-up photo showing this but it is pretty slight (see below). We like to have the burr facing up so it does not scratch a tabletop. It is counter-intuitive since that would normally be considered upside down. A second benefit of having the burr face up is it helps hold the glue/flocking on the top of the base, leaving the sides clean for a nice crisp looking finished product.
Speaking for flocking and whatnot, my preferred method for mounting & painting is attach the unprimed mini to the washer first using E6000, Shoe Goo, or similar rubber-like cement. They are thick so they fill gaps/spaces well and have a high tack value to hold the mini in place during curing. Watch that you don’t put too much (or any) glue on the center of the bottom of the mini’s base that might drip through the washer center hole. Best to set the minis on baking/wax paper just to be safe. If the mini has a long weapon/tail/etc. sticking out, I push the mini to the opposite side of the washer as much as possible w/o the hole becoming exposed. See the Death Raider with the Power Axe above as an example. Overall it is not obviously off center but it does help protect those protruding items a little bit. Next, I like to use PVA glue on the washer top only (not the washer sides, and not the mini’s integral base top) and cover the glue with sand. I do this even if I am going to be covering that later with grass flocking. The PVA/sand is a cheap, fast, and easy way to make up for the height difference from the washer top to the top of the mini’s base. You can use other items as well to accomplish the same thing: Spackling, Wood Filler, Modeling Paste. Once the PVA or whatever you used is dry, then the mini & base is ready for priming, followed by painting, and finally base flocking. For my Planet Sitan terrain, I don’t cover the sand on the base with anything except for paint as seen above.
Sorry that went on longer than I expected. I still want to do a few proper tutorials but figured I should post a summary for now so new folks can get started.
RRB Minis & More 