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Not looking at epic.

Just wondering what to look out for in terms of large scale sci-fi miniature systems.

Also just looking for cool minis.

(ok, I want a collection of sekksy grav tanks but I refuse to paint Falcons!)

Classic Battletech? Heavy Gear? Cav?

Kinda familiar with Battletech, not familiar with Heavy Gear or Cav.

I liked heavy gear. Nobody else did tho.

I saw CAV played once, and it looked like a decent, fast-paced game, but definitely focused on the stonky robots.

Heavy gear I haven't played but people tend to like it.

Dirtside II: does that have a 6mm version?

Posted By syr8766 on 04/22/2007 8:31 PM

Dirtside II: does that have a 6mm version?

I'm pretty sure Dirtside II is based on 6mm and if it isn't, that's the scale a handful of us at the old LFGS used to use to play it using a mix of converted MicroArmor, Epic, Ground Zero Games and Steve Jackson OGRE figs. Lots of fun too, though open to abuse if not regulated.

https://www.commandhorizon.com/
From Baccus 6mm, who are well regarded for their historical figures.

http://home.clara.net/adlermin/scipages/ScienceFictionRangeb.htm
Adler too make good historicals. Their site is let down by a lack of pictures.

http://www.irregularminiatures.co.uk/
More pictures here but the quality looks a bit variable.

I don't own any of these SF ranges (I've got a load of Adler Napoleonics) however 6mm are so cheap you could buy a few from each range just for comparison.

From the website, are these strictly British entities? (as in, largely
unavailable at my local shop..)

They are all British, you can probably get them from US suppliers by mail order but you'll never find them in your local shop.

Baccus and Adler are one-man-band kind of companies and cast a lot of their stuff to order. They couldn't afford the overhead to supply large stocks in shops.

US supplier of Baccus

http://www.heritage-studios.com/

These guys also do them but only the historical ranges.

http://www.militesminimus.ca/

You could also try Dark Realm Miniatures

http://www.darkrealmminiatures.co.uk/

Once you start down the dark path of different scales, forever shall it dominate your destiny. Consume you, it will...

Dirtside 2 is 6mm-based. It is a VERY good system, suitable for small skirmishes up to really huge battles. Rules are available for free from GZG's website:

It's also completely generic so nearly any 6mm vehicle/tank/unit/etc. can be customized as you'd like. There's also rules for Mechs (much more realistic than BT), boats/ships/landing craft, VTOLs, aerospace fighters, and more.

As far as manufacturers go, I have a large collection of GZG Dirtside and Future Wars ranges. Very cheap (keep in mind that prices on their site include VAT, so if you're ordering from the US, they take off about 20-25% of your total) but nice quality, ordering thru the website is easy even if you're in the states, and in summer and mid-winter they usually have sales.

Old Crow is also very nice. Their 6mm naval selection is unbeatable, however they can be pricey and it takes awhile for them to fill orders (since I'm fairly sure that they cast your order, rather than having it pre-made)

Irregular's quality is horrendous. They're cheap but you usually have to spend inordinate amounts of time trying to get the minis to look nice. Baccus is okay, I believe they're re-tooling some of their old stuff, so that could be very nice. I haven't ordered from Dark Realm but they're kind of interesting, there's also a size comparison on their forums.

If you're interested, I also run a tiny little Yahoo group for DS2 and I have some more advanced rules up for naval units, Mechs, and alien race creation.

Oh, and CAV is ~10mm scale and Heavy Gear is ~12mm.

As a follow up to the excellent post from ancientsociety, DSII is a great game, and very flexiable as mentioned.

You may also want to consider Iron Cows, made by wessex games, a near future game set on earth, which I hear is fairly good.  It does not handle infantry quite as well as some games.

Also in the way of miniature suppliers, please do not forget brigade models, which makes excellent 1/300 scale tanks and (no infantry).  Their stuff is quite cheap, and looks really good.  They make figures aimed at the Iron Cow universe, but nothing prevents you from mixing and matching types.

1/285 modern or historical miniatures is another realm you may wish to explore, as a micro armor tank with a box of missiles on the turret might as well be sci-fi.  DSII also allows for low tech units, so having a bunch of t-85s fighting grav tanks from Alpha Centarui is certainly possible, and would even make for a fun game.  Turret swaps and adding guns or converting to hover from tracked makes anything useful.  And a truck is a truck no matter what the year is.  C&C and GHQ are the gold standard of miniature vehicle casting, the ammount of detail they can get in their molds is beyond anything else in the industry.  C&C also benefits from being extremely cheap.  GHQ makes some simply stupendeous modern infantry models, which could easily be made "sci-fi" by cutting off gun barrels or similar.

As you can see, there are plenty of options out there.

as a follow up to my own post, here is a picture with two models from Brigade, and one from C&C. 

C&C micro tank, American penny, two tanks from Brigade. Bases are 25mm square.

All sexy stuff.

Going to check at the shop first and see what they have, and
then branch out from there.

What scale was OGRE, by the way?

Id be suprised if OGRE was as big as 6 mm.

The infantry were always too big for the tanks, so the infantry might be close to 6mm.

But the tanks.... 1/285th scale. Or  slightly smaller than "Z" scale.

Hrm...maybe I'll dump the 6mm in favor of the Heavy Gear stuff.

Guns!

You could just play Flames of War, Malf. 

I want to get my sci-fi on, though!

Warmachine is more fantasy than sci-fi. And 40k...well...

OGRE was 6mm and DS2 does have rules for "Modular Cybertanks" as well.

The infantry and smaller tanks were a bit out of scale but all the Cybertanks are nice.

I got this linked from tabletopgamingnews: scale comparisons for DRM.

Intrigued.

I like what he did there at DRM. Too bad he doesn't have any of the newer EA minis in those shots.

Ancientsociety, where do you play? Just interested if the store that you go
to carries the DRM rules (I forgot to check at Games Plus today. Picked up
the CAV starter box instead since it had rules + minis).