Hydra Sale, Clearance, and New Stuff

 Unfortunately Hydra Miniatures hasn't been doing well for us over the last year and we need to free up some cash for sculpting projects, so we're offering 30% off on our remaining stock. We love Matt's figures though and we'll be looking into carrying his stuff again when he releases his next rule book.

In related news I've put up a new Clearance section to house all the oddments we're wanting to sell off. Stuff that we could only sell at conventions, old lines we still have bits and pieces of, and so on. Right now we have the last bits of Ramshackle, and coming soon will be Rebel Minis moderns and Romans, as well as Splintered Light Ancients, Bronze Age, Cannon Fodder, and some 28mm naval guns and accessories.

Speaking of which new Tiger Miniatures naval equipment and mounties are up along with most of the remaining painted terrain I hadn't put up yet. Also new is our buying back into Wargames Factory with it's new management, expect individual frames and Dreamforge Games to be put up in the near future.

Thanks for your interest and hope to see you at CincyCon.

Final Hydra Preview

Robot Queen Mechanika 

Space Pirate Class Three

Just a little longer now, have a good weekend.

Hydra Preview: War Rocket Space Pirate Class 4

I wanted to get both of these new Pirate classes done by today, but it wasn't to be. However this one is pretty neat, and at about 95mm I think it might be longest ship in the game so far.

The rules for pirate fleets have magically appeared on Hydra's website when I wasn't looking. They look good and even allow pirate fleets to be entirely composed of models from other factions!

Oh, and the projected release date for all this stuff seems to be early next week if everything goes well.

Hydra Valkeeri and War Rockets Pirates

...are available in the webstore.

Valkeeri

Pirates

War Rocket Imperials Filled Out

New War Rocket models are up and on the website after the debut at Cold Wars. Some of my favorite models in the range and highly anticipated.

I've also fixed a bug that kept Killer B's Geezers from being put into our webstore's Paypal cart. Trent Miniature's first set of blisters should be up early next week.

War Rocket Demo Fleets

Wednesday night of last week I threw these fleets together for display and demoing Hydra Miniature's War Rocket game at Rock-Con and Fall-In. I don't know how much they helped, but it was a really pleasant surprise how much War Rocket stuff we sold at Rock-Con.

The demos we run at the tables use this size of fleet: A class two and three class ones. Not a big game by any stretch of the imagination, but it gives people a feel for movement and the game's combat and initiative mechanics.

I'm showing the engines in most of these pics to show you an idea I had during the painting. Namely that painting the engine glow a color the opposite or near opposite on the color wheel of the main hull color helps the rear of the ship really pop.

I decided to leave the engines of the Zenithians a pure black though, the orange working much nicer on the bridges of the ships.

After Fall-In I'll come back and give final touch ups to the demo fleets. For the Zenithians this will include a gloss varnish over the cockpits and dirtying up the hulls some more. I like the idea of the aliens having dirty/crusty hulls and gleaming weapons and propeller rings.

The Valkeeri designs I didn't really like when I first saw them. However, now that I've painted some though they're really starting to grow on me. I like the way they maneuver in the game as well; while they can forget about complicated turns they can do fun things the Imperials and Galacteers can't.

Again you can see that using opposing colors for engine glow really make the back of this Class 3 pop.

The painting of the Galacteers and Imperials basically involved a couple watered down coats of Games Workshop's Foundation paints followed by a Vallejo wash. For the Imperials it was mostly a glaze to get the metallic gold areas working, (even with a couple of coats the gold I use tends to be pale) and painted the red hull areas over again to even out the color. However I left much of the surface area of the Galacteer ships with the raw results of the wash to leave them feeling a bit grimy and used, especially the Class 3.

The ships (and my paint jobs :) ) have gotten pretty universal compliments as I think they should. It is a very nice range and works pretty well even with a simple two tone paint job.