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As usual, I'm a paid shill for Dream Pod 9.

it's been a quiet month or two, as a lot of stuff is 'behind the scenes' as the new Heavy Gear Arena game is the focus, but some new minis for Heavy Gear Blitz are being release, specifically the Barnaby Riders and Sandrider Infantry Platoon. all are 1/144 scale, roughly 12mm.



Sand Riders are mysterious nomadic traders living in the harsh badlands of Terra Nova. They don't have access to the walking Gears of the other Terra Novan factions, but they do have special ammunition made from highly-corrosive 'white sand' deserts that can eat away at the armor of vehicles.



The Sand Riders, or Koreshi as they call themselves, often use the massive Barnabus iguana or 'Barnaby' as a riding beast.

(Something neat is that the Barnaby and Riders are modeled with the torsos separate so people can, if they want, cut infantry from other factions to fit. I've incldued the parts picture below.)



These should be available from retailers (including The war Store) or Dream Pod 9's Online Store soon!

For little tiny figs, those carry much detail.

Nice.

They're resin, by the way... The picture above is what should be in the blister.

DP9 will be running demos and events at The Warstore Weekend next month, by the way. Probably the same demo setups that nearly killed my voice at GenCon. I wish I could be there, but I'll be doing home repair.

MeanGreenStompa wrote:For little tiny figs, those carry much detail.

Nice.

I will personally say that Dream Pod 9 has some pretty nicely detailed small figures.

Only thing that turned me off to it was the line(at the time) was all metal.

Kanluwen wrote:Only thing that turned me off to it was the line(at the time) was all metal.

A lot of the bigger stuff is being redone as resin. Still no cheap plastics, :( but you can't have everything.



The Badger, for example, was redone to be a bit bigger, more 'true' to the origional design, and also got some cool stuff like doors that can be modeled open and a 'Medevac' hull piece (basically, a roof piece that covers the turret the medic version doesn't have).



The old model has fixed wheels and is noticeably smaller. Also, the old model is metal, so it's probably heavier...

Balance wrote:

Kanluwen wrote:Only thing that turned me off to it was the line(at the time) was all metal.

A lot of the bigger stuff is being redone as resin. Still no cheap plastics, :( but you can't have everything.



The Badger, for example, was redone to be a bit bigger, more 'true' to the original design, and also got some cool stuff like doors that can be modeled open and a 'Medevac' hull piece (basically, a roof piece that covers the turret the medic version doesn't have).



The old model has fixed wheels and is noticeably smaller. Also, the old model is metal, so it's probably heavier...

Oh I know, I've been keeping tabs on the line

I do wish that you guys(being Dream Pod 9, of course) would do a 28mm line of infantry. Could be quite nice.

OOhh... tiny Tallarns!

too bad it's in a poor choice of scales.

Athera wrote:too bad it's in a poor choice of scales.

I agree. It's an odd scale. Most games seem to go for 15mm or 6mm. I always thought Heavy Gear Blitz was 15mm.

HG isn't 15mm?

It's 1/144, which works out to about 12mm.

Absolutionis wrote:

Athera wrote:too bad it's in a poor choice of scales.

I agree. It's an odd scale. Most games seem to go for 15mm or 6mm. I always thought Heavy Gear Blitz was 15mm.

I was meaning more "it's no compatible with Warhammer", but whatever works for you.

Just because it's not compatible with Warhammer doesn't mean it's a bad scale!

These minis are really nice, small size and all.

Balance wrote:It's 1/144, which works out to about 12mm.

Otoh, it's a great scale if you like gundam models.

Or scale armor...

In general, people have had good luck using n-scale railroad scenery or 15mm buildings.

The scenery sometimes looks slightly small, but that's generally OK. Also, even with import prices, there's sources for relatively cheap packs of n-scale Japanese buildings that look very appropriate. I say the Japanese stuff as Japan's railroad community is much more modern than much of the US and European communities, and the available buildings tend to follow.

The FoW stuff sometimes looks large, but the Terra Novans do often build big, anyway. The difference between pre-WWII buildigns and modern buildings... Using FoW-sized terrain means you have clearance for the tanks and sci-fi vehicles that are a standard sci-fi trope.

(I'm also looking at picking up a set of S6 Engineering's small-scale roads when fundage allows.)

I was all ready to get into blitz till I learned they'd shrunk the figs since I'd purchased some in the 90s.

Gargskull wrote:

Balance wrote:It's 1/144, which works out to about 12mm.

Otoh, it's a great scale if you like gundam models.

True!

Foda_Bett wrote:I was all ready to get into blitz till I learned they'd shrunk the figs since I'd purchased some in the 90s.

The big old school 1/72 RAFM ones, eh ?

That's funny how things go, I remember when I played Babylon 5 Wars by AoG, back in the days, there were 2 scales. The first one "full scale" was for B5W, with big minis that made excellent paper-wei... er center pieces. Then, when AoG released a larger scale game called Fleet Action with whole squadrons duking it out instead of a couple of ships per side, they decided full scale minis were too big, and released another line, much smaller, the FA scale. Interestingly, since both games were played on hex maps, people soon realized the FA minis were much cheaper (being much smaller), perfect to build big fleets, and more often than not, pretty good minis on their own too. If anything full scale minis were actually too big for hex maps, with sometimes casting issues. You can bet Full scale mini sales took a nose dive pretty quickly, and after a while the new releases were only for the FS line. And pretty much everyone was happy about it.

Now, I don't mind kicking people when they're down, if anything, that's the best moment to kick people, but, honestly, I think people are being a bit unfair with DP9's dropping the RAFM line in the late 90s. Better, much better sculpts, and you can actually afford whole squads this time ? I'll call that a good deal.

There's a lot of 'Arena' stuff o the release schedule... Some Gears that have never had minis like the Boa, for example.

Point of Note: the old RAFM sculpts were HO-scale, not 1/72.

Otherwise, I agree completely. The 1/144 are actually playable, affordable and better detailed (without strange warping that happened with RAFM due to their putty not shrinking evenly).

Balance wrote:There's a lot of 'Arena' stuff o the release schedule... Some Gears that have never had minis like the Boa, for example.

Any word on riding beasts for the polar factions ?

No, but these were made so that other infantry can be sliced and attached easily.

Balance wrote:No, but these were made so that other infantry can be sliced and attached easily.

Ah, that's a pity.
What about vehicles ? The new APCs are seriously nice, but the other vehicles look their age next to them.