| Brood Brother |
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Joined: Sun Feb 16, 2003 4:43 pm
Posts: 7258
Location: Sacramento, California, USA
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Hi RB and Gang,
First off, I have links to nearly every manufacturer of 6mm sci-fi minis at the 6mm_minis E-group I help to run. I bleive that there is a link to this E-group in my signature.
| Quote (Reaversbane @ 10 Jan. 2006 (09:17)) |
Irregular Miniatures are best described as 'cheap and cheerful' (they can be very rough...), and their Inf are normally 20p for a strip of 5, and around 60p for the tanks. As I recall the sci fi infantry aint bad, ?but the tanks are a bit crap frankly (no offence to anyone who likes them, I can be fussy...). |
The trick with Irregular is to know the difference between the old and new Irregular sculpts.
The old sculpts have an SF code and a pretty crude crude sculpts. I always modify any I acquire (usually in trade) by rebasing infantry and adding bitz to larger equipment like missile launchers. BFG antennas are an excellent modification to many Irregular pieces as the original barrels are often miscast. I also add beads to selected weapon barrels to improve them.
The new sculpts (odd that they are called new since they were mastered in the early 1980s if I recall correctly) have an NSF code and are markedly better sculpts.
I really like the newer NSF Irregular infantry and the "posh pack" comes with a cool assortment of "Star Wars like" 6mm figures. I would have done Star Wars in 6mm had Irregular made infantry with a better likeness to Star Wars Stormtroopers and the like. I instead went with 10mm.
The SF (old) vehicle sculpts are very crude.
The NSF (new) vehicle sculpts are very competitive and I like many of them including their "attack aircraft."
As a side note, Scotia infantry sculpts are on par with Irregulars while their vehciles are slightly better. I want to point out that the great majority of Scotia sci-fi sculpts are simply remastered modern vehicles.
| Quote (Reaversbane @ 10 Jan. 2006 (09:17)) | GZG
GZG aren't as cheap, at around ?1 for a tank, and 24 infantry for ?2.50. The ones I have aren't bad, the tanks are quite clean and neat, but Im not terribly keen on the designs, and I can't actually remember what the infantry are like off the top of me 'ead  |
Onje of the first things to note about GZG is that they have two lines of 6mm sci-fi:
- Remastered Copelands sculpts
- And a Dirtside II line.
The Copelands sculpts are very old and were designed to the 5mm 1/300 standard instead of the 6mm 1/285 standard, which due to scale creep is really closer to 8mm or around 1/250 or so. The Copelands infantry models (mostly out of print) were not great.
The newer Dirtside II sculpts are simply downsized versions of the company's larger 25mm resin sci-fi vehicles although in a few cases, the 6mm vehicles preceded the 25mm ones! For the most part, the DS-II vehicles were also deisgned to the 5mm standard rather than the larger 6mm (8mm) standard.
Many GZG vehicles are smaller than many others on the market.
The infantry are very nice, but expensive and every pack comes with odd-shaped bases for two to four figures, which I'm not overly fond of.
| Quote (Reaversbane @ 10 Jan. 2006 (09:17)) | Brigade Miniatures
Brigade do a load of tanks, which arent bad at around 60p-80p each. |
Brigade vehicles are larger than most others as a result of scale creep. They are very nice though and the owners of Brigade are top rate folks much like Jon Tuffley of GZG.
I find that the detail level of Brigade pieces is less than many others and gun barrels on some of their pieces are not terribly attractive. I modify Brigade pieces as often as not. GZG turret packs often improve Brigade vehciles greatly. C&C Pfc also makes external MGs, whicha re very nice.
| Quote (Reaversbane @ 10 Jan. 2006 (09:17)) | | Please dont bring up GHQ Chris, it takes considerable willpower daily to not invest in more of their 1/2400 modern naval vessels, and the micro armour they do looks very appealing too... |
GHQ has a big drawback: they are VERY EXPENSIVE!
Some of the detailing is anomalous too. GHQ pieces are often sculpted for looks rather than accuracy true to real vehicles the minis are based on.
The new Russian Aerosans are amazing though... GHQ infantry are also superb.
Having said that, I prefer C&C Pfc vehicle sculpts to many GHQ ones although GHQ infantry is markedly better than C&C Pfc infantry. C&C Pfc tends to better priced than GHQ as well.
Additionally, C&C Pfc makes a line of not only generic 6mm sci-fi, but also Renegade LEgion / Centurion starfighters and grav tanks.
As a side note, C&C Pfc has plans to expand their generic 6mm sci-fi line in the near future. The sculptor of the original generic 6mm sci-fi line is stilla round and enjoys sculpting 6mm sci-fi.
| Quote (Reaversbane @ 10 Jan. 2006 (09:17)) | | Even at SG's current prices, the infantry arent bad (32 bases @ ?12 = ?0.38/base, the wonders of plastic), but the tanks are a bit of a nightmare at ?2+ each. Meh. |
Specialist Games is also expensive although the infantry aren't too bad price-wise.
The newer metal infantry sculpts are very good too!
However, the vehicles are very high-priced and while they are ofr the most part beautiful sculpts, the price seems very high for what you get. A few of the newer vehicle sculpts are not that great.
| Quote (Reaversbane @ 10 Jan. 2006 (09:17)) | Bring on DRM!  |
And, of course, Doug the Dark One's new line should be fabulous. I'm rooting for DRM to be a great hit and plan to buy some in good numbers!
There are a number of other manufacturers although Gladiator Games stands out with a very cool line of Space Worms (aliens), Space Centaurs (aliens) and a human force.
One other manufacturer to mention is H&R which ahas a small line of 6mm sci-fi, which is very cool although it resembles old pulp sci-fi imagery (Buck Rogers and Flash Gordon) rather than many concepts of hard sci-fi of later times.
Shalom,
Maksim-Smelchak.
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?I recognise most of what you said from past discussions with people, although I aint got anywhere near the selection you have I suspect