Must agree with jimmy here on all points, exposure and playing to the scales strengths are the way towards growth. Mega battles with mega sized forces is the reason I love the scale and also why I thought E40k was a work of geneous as it played to the scales potential for huge battles with a mass of forces on the table.

I collect small scale armies so I can play large scale battles.

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Vanguard Miniatures

Link, http://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/

Stockist of:

Vanguard Miniatures
BattleGroup Helios
Onslaught Miniatures
Pyrkol Gaming Markers
Gregster's Lab
Microworld Games
Troublemaker Games

6mm is a daunting scale for many. "Like the look but I could not paint anything that small". My main drive for doing the 6mm painting clinics at shows is to promote 6mm in general. Once you demystify the scale and how to paint it you remove some of the barriers people have towards it. My first 27 figure historical unit I painted (some Great Northern War Swedish) took me 7 hours because I tried to paint it like I would 28mm. Now I would do the same unit in 60-90 minutes and it would have more presence on the table. When people see you at a shows and see you paint a playable unit of ACW or Romans in 45 min they are challenged. Get them to sit down and paint the same unit in a similar amount of time and you have a convert.

I usually keep a bit of space to put on a display of usually around 2'x2' so people can also see a snapshot of 6mm gaming in action - lots of figures looking like a battle.

For the younger players who often have exposure to GW getting them to paint an Epic Marine squad and Rhino has a massive impact. Tempered then by the 'you can't get these any more, unless from e-bay etc'. To be able to paint something sci-if which I can then follow up with 'these are readily available from....' 'and if you are interested out check these out'.

GW also recognise developing a young loyal hobby base is one of the things that sustains them. Getting young blood and new players is what will sustain 6mm sci-fi long term. They will like the familiarity of what they know already. Offering them alternative universe settings might be too big a leap initially.

How many people on the forum and straight up new players to 6mm sci-fi compared to those who previously played epic or have shifted from 40k to a smaller scale.

Some good things said here.



I've been in a couple of different discussions recently, about Starship Troopers in general and the defunct Mongoose/Andy Chambers game in particular. For a while I've thought that the best way to represent spread-out, long-jumping cap troopers from the book, and hordes upon hordes of bugs, was in 6mm. The problem was that few 6mm powered armour minis appealed to me (too crude, or oddly designed) and while GZG have their not-bugs... well, all they have is that one not-bug, multiplied.
'Course, that's even more limited than Epic, 'cus all you have is the Mobile Infantry and the pseudo-arachnids. But anyway. Bit of a digression, but as I say, it's another possibility I've been thinking about.



I wonder if part of the problem is relatability? Cranium's already mentioned some points about it, and I might turn this into a ramble myself, but...

I'm sure we've all heard about the greater possibility of 'character' in 28mm sculpts? I agree with Jimmy that the strength of 6mm is big armies, but I also think sci-fi wargaming might hinge on the presence of characters more than historic or even fantasy wargaming; being largely based on stories about just a few protagonists, with big battles only going in the background, whereas historic gaming has more of a focus on those battles in themselves, reading about the events, researching the armies, watching documentaries and even movies. (Even if those M47 Pattons are nothing like Tigers)
40K has some of this with the sheer amount of background that's been built up over decades, Index Astartes articles, Forgeworld campaign books, etc. etc. All of which is good for Epic, IMO, but the 'main' game still follows that sci-fi trend: against the background of titanic, centuries-long, planet-shattering wars and battles, 40K - from the chunky, heroic 28-35mm minis down to the rules and mechanics - is about a few superpowered characters and a couple of handfuls of mundane backup. (Heck, I've even heard of units in LotR - lauded as a better, more tactical ruleset - described as a 'hero delivery system') I think it can be difficult for 40K players, even Apoc players, to draw their focus back a bit from mathammering their badazz MurderClaw Wolf Lords (on Santa sleighs), to more tactical concerns.* I know when I first looked at the E:A book, I was aghast that space marine captains didn't have about 1-2 dozen different bits of wargear to customise and optimise!

*Among other reasons. 'I've already bought hundreds of marines in 28mm!' for one. The tragedy then is that they have big armies, but without a more appropriate scale or rule system, and an unwillingness to try either! I mean, I've been following some of the discussion about Mantic's latest Warpath kickstarter - opinions I've seen on the big-battle Warpath rules themselves, presenting the possibilities of unit 'hubs' (like those old SST rules or the current Victory Decision rules) or multibased squads/fire teams, have mostly been of the 'wailing and gnashing of teeth' variety.

Sci-fi has another disadvantage compared to historicals, that hits twice, IMO: most of those popular stories about handfuls of protagonists are owned properties, often with specifically designed imagery for film or TV. Again, Epic and it's official minis have the advantage of reams of 40K imagery, in prose, art, and 28mm minis, to back it up, and still has a veneer of... how would you put it... authenticity? Officiality? What have other 6mm sci-fi ranges got?

On one hand of that situation... I mentioned SST. If I want 6mm SST minis with official, defined imagery, from the movies or the animated series (or even an official book-based range), nobody makes those without concessions to the Heinlein estate or Sony. Would that be worth it? In my experience sci-fi wargaming licenses - including that for 28mm SST - don't go well.
There may be 'almost' and 'not' proxies, and I don't need to elaborate on this forum, but I wonder if that's still a barrier to many people. Personally, it took me a while to get over that for Epic, despite the excellent minis available, and that's partly because I was hooked by Epic before GW fly-tipped it. What about 40K players coming to it now? It's another step removed. Not an insurmountable step, but there it is.
And we know what can happen when 'not' minis skate too close. I don't think it'd be much different for other sci-fi properties - can you imagine how hard The Mouse would come at you for making not-AT-ATs in 6mm?

Cranium brought up the other side of the double-whammy: original 6mm sci-fi. Ranges like Onslaught and Troublemaker, without belittling them (especially when I want to buy a bunch of their stuff) still owe something to a certain gothic, grimdark milieu. What if you move away from that?
Here I'd use the example of Baccus' old 6mm sci-fi range. I still look at it from time to time (when I remember who owns it now) but I can't get engaged by it. There's no 28mm or otherwise larger minis to offer a 'close up' look, no art or written background as far as I can see. Certainly no movies or TV shows. Not much beyond funny cheese-wedge tanks and generic infantry to make me buy it, and that doesn't grab me. I could say the same of other ranges, to some degree. (And to be honest, with a few exceptions, without any good idea what 6mm infantry looks like in other scales or media, at times I feel like I could be looking at or playing with multicoloured grains of rice.) It might extend to rulesets too - how many play Exodus Wars or Seeds of War compared to Epic?

I hope all that makes some kind of sense.



Pff. Despite all of that guff I just posted, I've had a few rants on Dakka about that kind of attitude. I can understand the concern about a 'dead' game, but I can also understand how that breaks down into a bunch of little concerns that can be gotten over, especially with Epic. Which is why I dislike the dismissive term 'dead game', but anyways.



!

Hm... I seem to recall a topic. Now where could it have gone?

_________________
Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)

So will TMG stuff be available through other vendor?

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Shapeways store: https://www.shapeways.com/shops/tinywares

Blogging about 6-15mm wargaming: http://www.lead-space.net

It buggered off because it was starved of communication and clarity, and had to be replaced with one on how to save 6mm from itself.

To answer your question just myself at present.

Please read the message in red text on my front page for what's happening with TMG stock.

Cheers

_________________
Vanguard Miniatures

Link, http://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/

Stockist of:

Vanguard Miniatures
BattleGroup Helios
Onslaught Miniatures
Pyrkol Gaming Markers
Gregster's Lab
Microworld Games
Troublemaker Games

This is part of why I had hoped that Polyversal would have a huge launch and properly entrench itself in the gaming scene.

I would love to help contribute to building the 6mm scene, but the thing is that even with a great community like the Epic one, it is very hard to get people to join a 'dead' game.

I'd love to see a new rule set coupled with a combination of these two miniatures lines. Heck, I have been doing work on a game for just such a thing. The problem is that a company that is making the models and the rules(or a couple of companies working together) is so much better than a fanbase from the perspective of store owners, and a lot of players I know too.

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Check out my youtube channel for Tutorials, Battle reports and other stuff in both 6mm and 28mm

www.youtube.com/user/ManticMoments

One thing I can't get is why companies making minis don't publish lists for their stuff in as many of the different systems out there? No one can stop you publishing a list that happens to conform to another rule system afaik. I get that people want to write their own rules (heck I've done a few) but if you want to sell minis and you have a range of space wombats write rules for EA, net epic gold, laserstorm, exodus wars, dirt side, fwc (you get the idea.) You're not selling rules (usually you are giving them away) you're selling lead. Ok, maybe you can only really balance them between your own ranges, but at least you give the option for friends with different ranges to get together and at the end of the day make it as easy as possible for consumers to use your products as widely as possible.

Then spend 10 years write your own perfect system from the ground up ;-)

Well, in a TL;DR version of my last wall o' text: I think the quality and playability of rules usually comes behind the setting and the miniatures used in a game.

On the topic of setting: good rule sets are all well and good: I have a few 'indie' favourites myself. Thing is, I first looked at some of those when I already had interesting settings I wanted to game in. The rules quality was important, but they were a means to that end rather than an end itself.

That's arguably a big part of why 40K became and remains so popular. It's also why I'm not so sure that retrofitting unrelated ranges onto Epic, at least, is a great idea. I remember the efforts to come up with an E:A list for the Andrayada from Dark Realm, years ago. Additional floating pyramid WEs and all sorts. It petered out pretty fast, at the time. I'd say Epic is pretty well ringfenced for the GW-established 41st millenium setting and forces, in the minds of most.

And vice-versa: the 40K universe is already well-served with a couple of good 6mm rulesets. Is it reasonable to expect a lot of the remaining players of those Epic rules to shift their armies over to other rules, for more than a quick try? I'm not entirely sure.

So... Epic has reams of 40K fluff, art, 28mm depictions, and a fiction publishing arm to get people interested.

Historical 6mm gaming has reams of, y'know, history, looking at the ebb and flow of big battles, along with art, photos, documentaries and films to get people interested.

What does other 6mm sci-fi gaming have?

What other suitable sci-fi settings are there? To use Bertnernie's example of Polyversal, the Introduction page of the website says:



That's cool. That's just the ticket. So... er... where is it?

Similar situation with Dirtside. The background is part of one page in the 55-page rulebook pdfs at the GZG site. Is there more in the other GZG rules pdfs? What about the other 6mm rulesets listed?

On the topic of miniatures: in the vein of Rex's and Cranium's thoughts, the '6mm' board here seems crammed full of Epic armies made up of Epic minis, Epic proxies, and secret-handshake stuff. The first two types, at least, are great for showcasing and promoting Epic. I know they get my juices going more than an odd batrep or AAR does. But how many non-Epic minis and armies are shown off? And are any of these ostensibly Epic armies actually used with other rulesets?

Sean's Bug Swarms topic may be 'only' plastic ants, but it's the only obviously non-Epic topic in at least the first three pages of the 6mm board here. It's also one of the three 6mm sci-fi topics I can remember from recent days at the LAF (the other a review of Laserstorm, and one Epic topic) and I appreciate his effort. Maybe 6mm is more prevalent at places like TMP, I dunno. How much 6mm sci-fi, Epic or otherwise, is posted and promoted outside TacComms? (Genuinely asking and casting no aspersions; as said I could've stood to do a bit more meself in recent years)

That went on longer than I intended, again; but I hope I've chopped it into more digestible chunks and articulated some of the possible problems that general 6mm sci-fi gaming faces, on top of those that we all know Epic faces. Maybe not so well, or insightfully, but it's something that might be hammered out.
Sorry if it goes off the topic of TMG miniatures, but I think it's understandable to start to worry about 6mm when one of the biggest boons to 6mm takes a wobble (the 'news' has broken on Dakka with wails that TMG has died outright! Can't help the scene, can it?) and such are internet discussion forums. Should we take it to another topic?

You're going to get threads like that on dakka and even here whilst nobody from TMG explains the situation.

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www.epic-uk.co.uk
NetEA NetERC Human Lists Chair
NetEA Chaos + Black Legion Champion

If I may jump in here guys I feel that I should tell you what I know, i'm not speaking for Ben or TMG but giving you the situation as it stands at the moment as it's known to me.

After many years running TMG and the funder campaigns and with all the continuous problems with the plastics and cost overruns on the latest funder Ben wishes to move on and pursue other options/career paths, basically he feels he's had enough and wanted to sell up. If a suitable buyer could not be found then it would have been the end for TMG and the whole range. I was approached by Ben as i've had dealings with the company behind the scenes in the past as to if i'd be interested in buying the company outright which is still an option i'm considering and negotiating with Ben about at present.

Until that decision has been concluded I persuaded Ben to allow me to put the TMG model range up for sale on my new webstore to at least keep the range available for the immediate future and hopefully beyond. So at the moment we have a standard trade agreement in hand to facilitate this.

Personally I wish Ben all the best in whatever endeavour he chooses to pursue in the future. TMG as a company has given us all a great range of models over the years and I feel many thanks are in order from all who have enjoyed these models.

That's the situation as it stands at this time, I will be continuing to order stock in via the casting company at regular intervals and may well end up with this range as an in house vanguard minis collection in the near future.

Can't say anymore at this time and Ben may well have something to add but now you know what I know.

So this range will remain on the market for the forseeable future on my site.

Hope this helps clear up the situation for everyone.

Cheers

This being said TMG are still committed to fufilling their commitments in delivering on all outstanding orders and the plastics project which is still ongoing will be resolved eventually.

_________________
Vanguard Miniatures

Link, http://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/

Stockist of:

Vanguard Miniatures
BattleGroup Helios
Onslaught Miniatures
Pyrkol Gaming Markers
Gregster's Lab
Microworld Games
Troublemaker Games

Thank you for sorting that out. I understand fully that Ben feels the need to move on. I hope that you will strike a deal and that he can get rid of the plastics that has come to plague TMG so.

_________________
Nitpicks Knapsack (Scratchbuilding and 3D designing and printing and painting)

Nitpick sir thanks for your support and understanding of Bens position, negotiations are at an early stage at this time but I hope we can come to a mutually satisfactory deal soon.

The plastics project has been a nightmare really and the latest production batch from the new factory of which 5k of sprues were cast and shipped has seen flaws in the majority of the vehicles on the sprues thus rendering the whole batch as rejects. Not a satisfactory situation at all i'm sure you'll agree, you would think somebody at the factory was on quality control duties or at least checked for flaws before shipping. Ben has requested a replacement batch free of charge and is waiting on a reply from the agent about this.

I hope to be adding new models to the DiD range over time it will all depend on how the store does really, who nows I may even do a funder one day.

_________________
Vanguard Miniatures

Link, http://vanguardminiatures.co.uk/

Stockist of:

Vanguard Miniatures
BattleGroup Helios
Onslaught Miniatures
Pyrkol Gaming Markers
Gregster's Lab
Microworld Games
Troublemaker Games

Thank you for your clarity on how things stand.

If there is any way in which you think I can help then PM me. I plan to at least to put out a display force of Affray v Skinners at my painting demo at Hammerhead in the New Year (probably my next show).

Already got an order in with you too ;-)