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Hi. After about 13+ years of non tabletop gaming i recently had my inner warmonger rekindled by looking online at the rather cool and evocative dust tactics models. I had an idea that putting a couple of units of infantry backed up with a few walkers would be a good project but i ran into a few problems. Firstly i dont like the 28mm scale anymore. Ive painted literally thousands of gw minis, marines, orks, orcs, elves, imperials of both stripes etc, ive painted them all. Gw make some excellent figs but i came to find that the time taken to paint a single unit was far to long. Even single figures, it took me 14 days to paint my bloodthirster putting in about 3-6 hours per day. I simply cannot spend my time like that anymore, too many commitments you see. Secondly im pretty well skinted out. By the time the bills are paid and i've bought a few beers im left with a paltry sum and cannot justify the spend. So i looked around at other non gw games and decided that i liked the look of the gruntz game. Not that im knocking gw, i've had a lot of fun playing their games and hope they continue to do well, i just cant go down that road again.

So, gruntz. I've yet to buy the rulebook but plan on doing so soon. I really like the idea of using any available 15mm range and making my own force up for very little monetary outlay. Im thinking that i may try getting my nephew into it too and i was wondering how easy the rules are to pick up. I like the sound of them from the reviews i've read online and the idea of creating your army from scratch kind of harks back to the old 40k 1st/2nd editions and its something i really liked about the early 40k.

I had a few ideas. What about converting a marine dreadnought into a 15mm heavy walker? Maybe using flames of war germans for troops, or some other miniature range, the dust figures are inspiring me here. Really, what im rambling about is how good are the gruntz rules, how easy are they to pick up and how different are they from 40k. Any help or suggestions? Thanks for reading

Can't say about Gruntz but Two Hour Wargames 5150/ Chain Reaction and Unified Game Theory Vortex both offer great customizable force skirmish games.

Gruntz has its own 15mm line, lots of infantry and even it's own mecha
http://shop.groundzerogames.net/

never played the rules mind. Critical Mass Games has some good 15mm stuff too, Halo style spartan marines and whatnot.

Also check out Rebel minis. Their stuff looks awesome for the scale, and is priced quite low.

Khurashan do some good stuff too, and their 28mm power armour makes for good 15mm mechs

I bought the rules a while back and read them over. Haven't played them, but they seem very well done. Really high production values for an indie product. As others have noted, there are "official" models available, but the system is generic and you can stat-up most units for it easily. I have friends who have described it as warmachine-type mechanics adapted for sci-fi.

A 28mm dread or FOW germans could be used just fine, but there is a very wide variety of models avaialble quite cheaply in this scale. There's also many opportunities to convert toys or model kits.
You'll fine a wealth of info about 15mm sci-fi here:
http://theminiaturespage.com/boards/topics.mv?id=271
As well as the miniatures listed above, some other 15mm sci-fi companies to check out include:
15mm.uk
Ground Zero games
Old Crow
DLD (about to make a comeback)
Eureka minis
Critical Mass Games
MicroPanzer
Mad Robot
Hydra miniatures
and many others...