6mm off brand non specific grimdark sci fi fun time.Vanguard 6mm plastics review

[nic-e]

I've got some off brand 6mm orks and imperil guard on order and so decided to paint up a handful of the pic stuff i had in my bitz box. I have some scenery to complete and a random assortment of infantry, So i figured this was a good was to get myself back into painting 6mm.





And a little scale comparison....



The plan is to get some games of one hour wargames in ,so I've chosen this scale as a purely gaming project, no fine detail no fancy painting, just focus.
Hopefully....

[von Lucky]

Looking good.

[Stroezie]

Cool!
Single based 6mm for the win!

That 6mm space marine is looking very spiffy, I look forward to seeing more of your stuff.

Cheers,
Stroezie.

[nic-e]

I got my delivery from vanguard games today.
Opening it up I have 2 of their plastic orkz and human sprues and a bag of 40 strip bases.
Looking around the internet i couldn't find a review of these sprues that actually had any pictures of the figures off the sprue, so I shall take up the challenge.
The sprues each contain 16 orks and 16 humans, plus a vehicle for each with a seperate turret/weapon.


Here's a closer look at the figures. The orks are chunkier than the humans, who have very fine features. I quite like them, they lack the dumpy look of alot of 6mm stuff that puts me off some ranges.


Now here's a comparison with some GW epic. We have an epic landraider and wave serpent , plus an epic marine, next to the vangurd plastic human and ork tanks and infantry.



To my eye they scale very well. details are minimal but solid, nothing overly fancy that will get lost in speed painting.
At £2.50 a sprue these seem like the perfect way to build quick armies, you could even use the humans for other time periods since their details are very small.I'm looking forward to getting some paint on these!

[Daeothar]

Thanks for those pics; very helpful.

I've always fancied an old school Imperial Guard Epic army, but the prices asked for even a single Chimera have put me off. I'm still too attached to my kidneys to afford an entire army's worth of models...

But these would make a nice start to a (mostly) infantry IG army.

Orks I have plenty of, as I have both versions of Space Marine and Titan Legions, but these are still looking nice enough too.

I'm looking forward to the painted pics!

[nic-e]

Thanks for those pics; very helpful.

I've always fancied an old school Imperial Guard Epic army, but the prices asked for even a single Chimera have put me off. I'm still too attached to my kidneys to afford an entire army's worth of models...

Like most things I now wish I still had, I once had a complete Space marine game with all the original figures and vehicles. I sold it to pay for college materials.
I've been wanting to start a 6mm 40k collection ever since I worked in store during a big epic tournament last year but you are correct, The prices of these things! A single sprue of marines for £15! A land raider for £10! A warlord titan pushing £60!!! For that price I'll but a 40k knight and convert it into a bloody Imperator titan! I don't normally get at people for charging a little more for harder to find models, But these are plastics made less than 10 years ago, There's probably a warehouse somewhere full of dead stock.
Imperial guard are the worst, I saw a box of troops going for something ridiculous like £120.


EDIT: I just ran the numbers. A knight model works out EXACTLY the right height for a 40k scale imperator titan.(smallest given height for imperator is 55 metres, some novels say 140 so I have alot of wiggle room.)  (55 metres at 1:285 scale = 19.2cm. Imperial knight is 20 cm hight.)
This would be AWESOME. I have wanted to work on a knight for a while...All the weathering and flat panels....But I can't justify it to myself as a display piece.(I say that, everything is a display piece for me, the games are a complex web of lies...)
Now I'm thinking a knight with an extended back, sweeping into a large weapons platform and a cathedral built around one of the garden of moor buildings....
God damn it.

[Daeothar]

Oh, oh, Pandora's opened her box again...

Not to rile you up even further, but I still have the Imperator Titan plastic mini. It's not actually the right scale, as it measures in at about 14cm if I recall correctly, but it still towers over everything.

I got it back when everything from this era was still cheap as chips on Ebay, as nobody wanted those stiff and boring RT and 2nd ed 40K minis. And the same went for Epic/Space Marine.

in hindsight, I think I was just lucky I bought most of these when I did, because when the Horus heresy novels hit the stores, prices went ballistic...

But your idea of converting a Knight Titan certainly has merit! Don't forget the gates/doors in the feet though...

[Samsonov]

A knight model works out EXACTLY the right height for a 40k scale imperator titan.(smallest given height for imperator is 55 metres, some novels say 140 so I have alot of wiggle room.)  (55 metres at 1:285 scale = 19.2cm. Imperial knight is 20 cm hight.)

Moredakka has been building one of these on tactical command
http://www.taccmd.tacticalwargames.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23204&hilit=Imperator&start=1485

[fred]

Epic prices seem to vary a lot on eBay. Space marines seem to be generally ok price wise, probably because so many people had them.

But there are a lot of other manufacturers making 6mm Sci fi now - especially if you want to go for an IG army. Vanguard and Brigade would be my starting points. As well as the plastics shown vanguard have lots of metal figures.

Do you think the plastic humans will stand up to playing - I got a sample sprue, but several of the humans had broken in transit, and I was worried more would break just getting them off the sprues. The orcs look much more robust, but perhaps a little 2d.

[Daeothar]

Moredakka has been building one of these on tactical command
http://www.taccmd.tacticalwargames.net/viewtopic.php?f=7&t=23204&hilit=Imperator&start=1485

Wow, now that's... epic! 

[Ultravanillasmurf]

I missed these.

Very useful (I probably have a box or two of the old epic in the loft).

Looking forward to seeing them painted.

[frenchfever]

well done ! i like painting 10/15 mm   minis

but 6 mm whoaaa killing eyes