Jumping head first into 6mm sci fi

[TripleSideflip]

Hello,

I used to be known as Triplebackflip, I lost access to my account and now I am back for more.
I had become intrigued by 6mm scale models because of the idea of being able to play massive tank battles, I got a set from Brigade models to try it out:


At first, I was quite amazed by just how small this stuff actually is.


Once I had finished them, I decided to get a lot more and give them all a backstory and galaxy to kill eachother in.


Here's the last overview of everything I have so far.




Here's a battle I had using rules that I invented whilst bored out of my mind at work, it went on so long that after the 3rd gaming session I gave it evening lighting

Once I've finished writing the backstory for each faction, I'll post proper pictures of each one.

Can anyone recommend any 6mm ranges though? I currently know of :
1)Brigade Models
2)Wargames Emporium
3)Irregular Miniatures
4)Scotia Grendel
5)Lazy forger (Brought from a shop near Blackpool)
6) Ground Zero Games
7) Alternative armies
8 ) Vanguard miniatures

[fred]

Cool - 6mm armies do tend to grow and grow!

Onslaught miniatures would be another to add.
Then there is the GW stuff - older Epic is very much 6mm, the newer Legions Imperialis is bigger - nominally 8mm - but can be used as super heavy tanks with the more traditional 6mm stuff.


And 3d printing needs to be considered these days as there are huge amounts of smaller scale sci-fi stuff out there

[Logain77]

Brigade is probably my first recommendation. Vanguard is excellent as well if you want grimdark. Khurasan and Microworld both have some lines I like. Onslaught is also pretty good for grim dark. Those would be where I’d start.

[elliesdad]

Grumbler Miniatures did some lovely stuff, but their webstore recently closed and, I understand, the business is now up for sale ☹️
That’s a real shame, especially as I only need a single pack of their 6mm Extreme Weather Troopers to complete the footsloggers for my Scandinavian Union cold weather forces.

[Commander Roj]

Alternative have some nice vehicles under the Bradley heading:

https://www.alternative-armies.com/collections/6mm-and-fleet-scale-ranges

I also like to use a smattering of Rap Partha Battletech tanks as very heavy vehicles/cybertanks.

[fred]

Does anyone know if the Dark Realm ranges are available any where? They had some great figures and vehicles but disappeared a few years ago.

I do think the Grimdark vs Hard Sci-Fi is a good way to categorise the different ranges out there

[boywundyrx]

CinC's Solar Empire Marines range is now at Legions IV Hire, it sort of looks like it might have grown since it left CinC too, I don't recognize some of the packs deeper in the catalogue - https://www.legionsivhire.ca/index.php?id_category=138&controller=category

The Angel Barracks line ended up at CP Models (CheckPoint Models).

[Sangennaru]

Cheers there! Lazy Forger here!

Aside from the miniatures I make (that are for 3D printing, so maybe not optimal for your use) I would recommen to try my own Full Spectrum Dominance rules. They play on a small table and allow lots of strategic depht - and there are a bunch of factions that should cover different armies that you have!

https://fsd-wargame.com/
https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-262512

Cheers
Jack

[TripleSideflip]

Cheers there! Lazy Forger here!

Aside from the miniatures I make (that are for 3D printing, so maybe not optimal for your use) I would recommen to try my own Full Spectrum Dominance rules. They play on a small table and allow lots of strategic depht - and there are a bunch of factions that should cover different armies that you have!

https://fsd-wargame.com/
https://www.myminifactory.com/object/3d-print-262512

Cheers
Jack

Thanks, I'm already using an army of your Tech guys and I'm planning to get some Conglomerate troops to use as Weyland Yutani and those upcoming Corsair mechs look amazing too.

Alternative have some nice vehicles under the Bradley heading:

https://www.alternative-armies.com/collections/6mm-and-fleet-scale-ranges

I also like to use a smattering of Rap Partha Battletech tanks as very heavy vehicles/cybertanks.

I've seen the Bradley miniatures ones, they look quite nice

Grumbler Miniatures did some lovely stuff, but their webstore recently closed and, I understand, the business is now up for sale ☹️
That’s a real shame, especially as I only need a single pack of their 6mm Extreme Weather Troopers to complete the footsloggers for my Scandinavian Union cold weather forces.

I really wanted a couple packs of those too 

Brigade is probably my first recommendation. Vanguard is excellent as well if you want grimdark. Khurasan and Microworld both have some lines I like. Onslaught is also pretty good for grim dark. Those would be where I’d start.

Khurasan stuff does look great but I'm not in America, they do ship to England but I don't see what it means when they withhold VAT or something along those lines

Cool - 6mm armies do tend to grow and grow!

Onslaught miniatures would be another to add.
Then there is the GW stuff - older Epic is very much 6mm, the newer Legions Imperialis is bigger - nominally 8mm - but can be used as super heavy tanks with the more traditional 6mm stuff.


And 3d printing needs to be considered these days as there are huge amounts of smaller scale sci-fi stuff out there

Well, wouldn't a real life space marine be much taller than a normal human anyway? 8mm might fit right in with 6mm in that case.
There are some really nice 3d printed models out there, luckily some of them can be bought as printed models.

[TripleSideflip]

I realised that all the original pictures stopped working, don't use Discord as an image hosting platform, back to imgur with me.

Here is the history of the universe where this is all set, I think it's a fairly generic cold war paranoia space universe, not that I was alive back then, I just saw the Terminator movies too often when I was young.

the dawn of organic life

In the beginning of known time, the universe was completely devoid of intelligent life aside from System; a single supremely powerful computer the size of a large planet. All the planets that supported life had only vegetation on them.

In one of its laboratories,  System began combining many elements found across the universe and, almost by accident, tiny single-celled organisms came into existence

The Precursors

In an enormous spherical space station, System created a whole new planet and made it a perfect breeding ground for the strongest forms of life to grow
Over the years,  two main races began to rise, humanoid group hunters and deadly insectoid monsters that used them as hosts known as Xenomorphs. System used quadruped drones to watch, capture and examine the various lifeforms, the one problem was that it had very little understanding of emotions and pain. Having lived for generations of being kidnapped, tortured and murdered by both the drones and Xenomorphs,  the humanoids began to draw plans to escape.

the outbreak

Of the several thousand humanoids living on the artificial planet, 68 snuck onboard one of the sample collection ships and lived out the remainder of their lives in the walls of the laboratory itself,  several generations later,  their descendants had gained a good understanding of the technology surrounding them,  now numbering in the thousands themselves,  they eventually explored to the outer shell of their cage and gazed out at the endless blackness of space,  their new home.
Gathering their entire population into a fleet of hijacked ships, they spread out over the galaxy, then over the course of a million  years, the whole universe. They found System outposts wherever they went, destroyed them and stole the technology they found.

The first war

Eventually, System began to gain some understanding of the violence being inflicted upon its outposts across the universe as a deliberate threat to its survival and began to convert the various machines it had created into weapons of war.

All throughout the universe,  deeply buried pockets of System drones upgraded themselves with new weapons and ascended to the surface to wage war against the escaped organics, they were given the designation: Organics Outbreak Protocol System; OOPS.

The war between the two forces raged back and forth across the universe, the humanoids had created a vast interconnected society that OOPS crippled by targeting food production worlds first and then began to bombard the more inhabited planets from space with nuclear bombs. This technique caused innumerable galaxies to fall into chaos before being exterminated.
The galaxies with less System systems within them fared far better and gathered their armies to fight back. As Humanoid and OOPS war machines and infantry fought back and forth across the universe,  the humanoids eventually began to wear System down and returned to the laboratory world from whence they came.


The great filter

The laboratory was mostly unguarded aside from a small fleet of ships which were eventually overcome by the numerically superior Humanoid fleet,  they expected to find a lost group of their own race, those who remained behind on the planet they had left behind,  perhaps over the millennia,  they had evolved differently?
As the first scouts made planetfall however,  they discovered with horror that the Xenomorphs they used to fight against had won.
A large hive covered the entire planet,  with long strands stretching far into the metal sky, inside the hive, large xenomorph queens laid eggs by the million and Aliens laid dormant in the depths of the planet until they were called on by the controller: the queen mother.

Many of the scouts became infected by facehuggers,  instead of leaving them to their fate,  their comrades took the infected back with them, the Humanoids had one fatal weakness that made them such good prey,  they could never bring themselves to sacrifice the lives of their own people , they viewed life as a gift to be protected and were incapable to act accordingly to stop a xenomorphic outbreak, even worse was that the mind of the queen mother had evolved to be so powerful that regular queens were sometimes intelligent enough to pilot ships as a greater way to spread their kind.

The end of the war

As the xenomorphs spread, the humanoid military focused on defeating System,  given that the outbreak was now too widespread to contain. Having beaten it back to the final central computer itself,  the last remnants of the army resorted to burying it in sand, lacking the manpower to take it by force.
The sand clogged all of the equipment that made System run and at long last, it shut down.
The last few pockets of life without any confirmed cases of xenomorph infection banded together and fled into pocket realities; the most advanced technology ever devised.
Throughout the now mostly empty universe,  on any planet that could support it, life began to grow and evolve from the trillions of radioactive corpses.

The Ancients

Throughout the mists of time,  countless civilisations rose to interstellar travel,  became exposed to the xenomorphs and were eventually destroyed by them, in our galaxy,  the latest "generation " of life was made up of several space empires.
The main galactic power being an alliance of three worlds and their numerous colonies: Mars,  Terra and Mondas, their varied species maintained good relations with eachother and the other races of the galaxy until war inevitably broke out with the forces of Redwall,  led by maniacal warlord Martin the cleanser.
The mice in their million hordes were the perfect breeding ground for a new wave of Xenomorphs, as outbreaks sprang up on both sides and the militaries were overrun by the sheer volume of enemies, the war was eventually called off; most of the smaller factions collapsed,  abandoning their colonies to their own fates 
The governments agreed to outlaw all forms of space travel in hope of containing the threat, as a direct result, the colonies mostly died out, leaving only small, isolated communities that eventually regressed into tribalism.
Of the other powers, The Yautja, some of the most savage warriors of the galaxy, returned to their home-world and simply murdered the infected and captured any live xenomorphs for analysis.
The Mondasians left too, using great engines to haul their planet away from the infected zones and deep into unknown space. The Terran Silurians and the Martians both went into  underground hibernation as a small planetoid, believed to be infected, entered their solar system,, it became trapped by the gravity of Terra and became its’ new and only moon.
The planet Terra was abandoned, ready for a new era of life to rise up, and so, primitive apes did indeed rise to the occasion…

The Human era

The Earth was in turmoil.
As the human race entered a new age of space exploration, new technologies sprang up all around, evolving just as fast were their methods of self destruction; all the major powers were beginning to equip themselves with nuclear weapons at a rate not seen since the height of the cold war.
Seeing space as a way to escape the coming man-made catastrophe, many vast colony ships were sent out wherever habitable planets could be found, the haste with which these expeditions were undertaken proved to be the undoing of many, the majority of ships simply vanished before reaching their destination or never managed to send messages back to Earth of their arrival as though they had been simply swallowed by some unknown force.
Two colony ships did in fact make it though, one settling on the planet Helghan and the other on a desert planet called Hesukar.
Any jubilation felt by the inhabitants of Earth was short lived as time quickly ran out for them, the first bombs were launched in the “final war” at dawn on a mild Autumn morning, and, by tea time, most of the Earths surface had been hit with a high amount of fallout.
The survivors began to flee Earth at an even greater rate, basing their ships on the Helghan or Hesukar models, leased to them by the most powerful corporations: Weyland-Yutani, The HartenHoufd families and the Drug Cartels. All rich and smart enough to hide their main staff in underground bunkers.
Over the following centuries, the survivors of the exodus set up their new worlds and began to expand into new space based civilisations, the organisations who had funded the entire endeavour became rich beyond comprehension as they supplied a growing galaxy with everything they might need from ships to water, to battle tanks to pencil sharpeners.
The humans conquered the various Alien tribes they found on their expansion, some enslaving them, others exterminating them and yet others, welcoming them with open arms.

The Hesukar war

On the planet Hesukar, a team of miners dug deep into the crust and found some ancient electronic instruments, seemingly billions of years old but amazingly still in pristine condition. The best local archaeologists were sent down to investigate and, rather foolishly, they decided to try to turn it on.
As System reawakened, a large pulse of energy vaporised the archaeologists, spread throughout the galaxy and, unbeknownst to the human race, the entire universe. The many different human civilisations in the galaxy detected this surge of unimaginable strength and began to draw plans to take whatever it was for themselves.
In secret, dozens of armies made their way to the home-world of the Hesukari.

The Hesukar colonial empire was currently locked in a period of civil war as separatist groups in their outer territories banded together, hoping to secure a better life under their own leadership rather than that of a far off sandy hell-scape, since the majority of the military was away, trying to regain control, Their capital planet was wide open for an unexpected invasion.
Since the exodus from Earth, there had been relatively few wars amongst the human race in the galaxy, or at least, nothing on the scale that was yet to be seen, nothing that involved almost every faction in existence.
As each army landed on the planet, they fought with each other over access to the mines where the mysterious energy had emanated from. The civilian population of Hesukar paying the ultimate price for standing in their way.

Meanwhile, in a pocket universe, the nearest group of the original humanoids of the universe noticed their old enemy reawakening and emerged back into our universe to stop it again.
As tanks duelled in the dunes, mysterious Alien ships appeared in the sky, deploying large robotic battle machines that effortlessly blasted apart any threat which tried to stop them. The humanoids hereby referred to themselves as Precursors and instructed all that remained of the human armies to join them in fighting the blue robots that had begun to pour onto the surface of Hesukar.
Even as Hesukari reinforcements arrived on the scene to discover what had happened to their home, the Precursor ground forces were overrun with the sheer amount of OOPS drones, their navy resorted to orbital bombardment to deal with the threat; ending all life on the planet and finally deactivating the main System computer.

Eve of the war

The Precursors recognised the hostility of the human race as a great weapon to deal with the Xenomorph threat which has already began to pop up on many planets. They recommended that each of the human factions join forces with them, to join them on an endless crusade across the universe, in return, they would receive technology billions of years in the making and be set up alongside the gods.
While some groups hurried to join their side, others were not so easily swayed by promises of power, certainly not from unknown alien armies. Another group began to form, led by Britain and the united nations of Earth, a faction based on Earth and mostly active in the nearby systems, they believed that humanity should be its’ own master, not led astray by any group of aliens.

As each side grew, most factions within them displayed outright hostility towards those on the other side, based on animosity born in the fire of the Hesukar war. All of a sudden, the Precursors and BUNE found themselves as the heads of a new cold war, neither group wanted to be in charge of a dead galaxy and so, they dispatched envoys to a remote space station to discuss a peaceful solution...

Let's start with the factions I have started to build up.


The Galactic Empire

Life on their first colony was rather brutal, local Alien tribes had a nasty tendency to view them as a new source of food, after a seemingly endless slew of attacks,  the colonists decided that their initial aim to welcome new lifeforms with open hearts needed some adjustments.
It turned out that hostile space monsters are much more open to negotiations when you're driving a tank.
Their new colonisation teams comprising hundreds of stormtroopers were very successful and their territory expanded quickly until they met the Helghast.
Brigade models 6mm Indonesian vehicles and Pacfed infantry


The Helghast

As one of the first human space civilisations, they got their initial expansion phase over with before most others were ready to leave their new homeworlds and focused on building up their territory and military into an immensely powerful force.

Their decision to settle a new planet was in order to mine it for precious minerals, once they noticed the mysterious white armoured soldiers marching around on the surface, a military escalation ensued between the two armies. As more ships entered orbit and deployed troops onto the planet,  the commanders of both sides agreed to meet and discuss the situation peacefully. 
Upon meeting, both men were surprised to find they were the spitting image of each other, after a bit of searching through their family records, they discovered that they were the descendants of two brothers on separate colony ships.
The two cousins endeavoured to bring their space empires together in peace, the planet eventually became host to a yearly party
Brigade models 6mm Polish


Sontarans

A threat from beyond the galaxy, Sontarans are short, brutal Aliens who live only to fight, already engaged in countless wars throughout the universe, their spies noticed the likelihood of a coming large scale war and a force made their way through the immense void of intergalactic space to join in.
Brigade models 6mm South African vehicles, Yenpalo infantry and 15mm Pacfed drones


The Date Shogunate

Most colony ships leaving Japan survived intact and created a large territory far away from Earth and the other human groups, each planet operated mostly individually from each other, the first to set up their colony, lead by descendants of the ancient Date clan decided to rule over everyone they could, building a fleet of ships to blockade and orbitally bombard any planet who tried to resist their leadership. Once they rose to power, they separated themselves completely from the other space powers beginning to rise up around them.
Brigade models Mercenary vehicles and Polish infantry(soon to be replaced with Fassolini infantry)


OOPS

The end of organic life
Lazy Forger Tech


Hesukari Colonial empire

One of the first colonies, very quick to join the BUNE alliance due to the nuclear extermination of their homeworld by the Precursor space friends.
Brigade models Neo soviets vehicles and infantry.

[Rick]

CinC also used to do the Renegade Legion line in metal - they were pretty good gravtanks. I still have a lot of the plastics which I think are too small to be 1/285th that they were advertised as.

[6mmfan]

I'm a bit late to the party but I can suggest a couple more 6mm manufacturers

Microworld games https://www.microworldgames.com/
Iliada game studio https://www.iliadagamestudio.com/ and they sell 3d files through wargames vault https://www.wargamevault.com/browse/pub/12750/IliadaGameStudio

Fantastic looking armies BTW

[TripleSideflip]

I need Dalek infantry for 6mm scale, there is only 1 type on the market at all, it is a bit wonky (Just like most Dalek miniatures tbh). Would it be best to build an army of these?


Or make a far larger amount of my own out of these ingredients? (Nut bases, keyring midsections and ball bearing domes with cut up paperclips for the arms and eye stalks)




(BTW, I have also got some other models on the way, I'm very happy with how they're turning out.

[Cat]

The Ogre plastic miniatures are very nice.  Steve Jackson Games tends to do them in a single production run, and when they're sold out that's it (they can't afford second big production runs just to keep stuff in inventory). EBay and other sources can of course still provide older ones.
 
The most recent set is still in-stock:
https://warehouse23.com/collections/ogre-miniatures/products/ogre-miniatures-set-4

[TripleSideflip]

Turns out that Dalek question is pointless now, Irregular miniatures apparently don't sell their version anymore.

Here's a new faction, or at least the start of one:

The Martians

As the Earth was being evacuated, those who remained assumed that for the time being, they could simply focus on rebuilding their ruined home in peace. Yet across the gulf of space, minds that are to our minds as ours are to those of the beasts that perish, intellects vast and cool and unsympathetic, regarded this earth with envious eyes, and slowly and surely drew their plans against us.

The uninhabited rock known as Mars, home to only a small colony was suddenly awash with activity as the ancient race which once resided there awoke, slaughtering the colonists and, noticing that their old neighbour, Earth, was now also taken over by the same hyper-evolved Apes; launched a massive invasion and conquered the planet in a matter of days. Exterminating all human life on the once green and pleasant planet. Many other worlds nearby, once thought to be merely slightly toxic wastelands had their slumbering inhabitants reawaken and a new space power arose once again.




I'm using the Olympians from the Brigade models Land Ironclads range for these, I think they are meant to be 2mm scale but they seem to work well alongside  6mm models


It's slow progress with these as the legs are very unstable untiil they are all on and attached to the washers I'm using as bases. I just hope I get round to finishing them before my GZG order gets here.