One of the benefit of running this blog is I get to chat with like-minded gamers from around the world. One regular visitor is Shawn, who’s been kind enough to show us several draft versions of his own moderns rule set ‘Ambush Alley‘.

He’s shortly going to launch the game and has started the Ambush Alley blog as well as recently posting a ‘Quick Start’ PDF that gives you a completely playable sub-set of the full rules along with an interesting scenario to try them out with. The rules are designed for both 15mm and 28mm scale Moderns figures and vehicles.

I have to say it looks like a promising system that treats regular forces like the US Army very differently from irregular militia and ‘insurgents’. Regular forces naturally have the training and support from the rest of their command structure and battlefield technologies, while the irregulars have the numbers and charismatic leaders to drive them forward as well as friends in vocal parts of the local populace.

The full rules include all sorts of interesting things like UAVs and vehicles (from soft skinned Humvees to an M1 Abrams if you’re lucky) while the insurgents get the ability to cajole and recruit from the local populace while moving quickly through the dusty streets to surround the regular forces. The ‘Fog of War’ can also help or hinder either side during the game with the same sort of dramatic events unfolding that you periodically see on the evening news…

I’m looking forward to getting a few games under my belt to see how the system plays, it might be time to paint up those Flashpoint Moderns I nabbed a while back!

I’ve long admired Osprey Publishing military history books from afar. Recently I took the plunge and ordered a bunch from Amazon.com, mainly to help me paint my Corvus Belli Ancients.

Ironically the first that arrived yesterday is one of the other titles I ordered: Vietnam Firebases 1965–73.

I haven’t had a chance to read the whole soft cover book yet, but it what I have so far has been quite interesting. In 2007 I intend to sculpt some Vietnam era firebase terrain for use with Flashpoint Miniatures 15mm figures and this book will be an excellent reference resource.

Last night Flashpoint Miniatures made the BETA version of their Middle East Moderns ruleset available for download from their forum.

Beware that it’s a Microsoft Word document at the moment, I imagine the final version will be in PDF form.

I’ve also been looking at playing the free moderns Company Commander ruleset with Flashpoint’s excellent 17mm Modern miniatures.

Flashpoint Miniatures are a New Zealand company that’s recently started selling 15mm scale Vietnam era figures and 17mm Middle Eastern Moderns at the very reasonable price of $20nz for a bag of 9-10 figures. Improved packaging does mean they’re shortly going up to $25nz though so get in there before Monday the 11th of September if you’re interested!

I’m always keen to support a local gaming company so late August I pre-ordered a squad of the US Infantry and a bag of rag-tag Insurgents which arrived last week. I’ll review the US Infantry squad here simply because they look better in the bare metal.

My figures came in the old packaging and here’s a shot of them straight out of their baggie. The US squad consists of a squad leader with M16A1, two team leaders with M16A1s, two automatic riflemen with SAWs, two riflemen with M16A1s and stowed LAW (those are the kneeling gentlemen top right, the LAW is across their back) and two riflemen with M16A1 and underslung M203 grenade launchers. You also get a metal ring base for each figure.

The figures are well sculpted, with obvious equipment and detailing in the form of pockets, pouches, knee pads and packs. Their faces and hands also look good which is no mean feat at this scale. As I’m a big fan of ‘what you see is what you get’ it’s nice to see how easily you can distinguish which weapon each man is carrying.

There’s a fair amount of flash to be cleaned up, mainly between the legs and a little on the guns, but that’s not unexpected at this scale. The mold lines are generally well placed with only one pair of figures having a distinct line across their face which will require some careful knife work to tidy up.

They’re cast in what feels like a lead/pewter alloy as they have that greyish tinge to them and cut and file easily with none of the brittleness associated with ‘lead free’ pewters. The casting is good although there was one issue with the squad leader figure. His raised arm seems to be partially detached from his body (look closely at underarm of the bottom left figure in the photo). Although it’s hard to say if that’s a casting problem or the figure has been knocked about by the NZ Post service. At any rate the arm is still firmly attached, so it’s simply a matter of applying a little green stuff before priming.

The base rings are an interesting idea. There’s one style of ring and the figures rest on top of each ring, rather than inside it. See the first photo (from FPM’s site) for an example. You could make them fit inside each ring but it would take a fair amount of filing and patching. They add a little extra detail to the figure base in the form of rocks and give each figure an extra 1-2mm of height. I imagine they look quite good once painted so I’ll probably end up using them, although I do wonder if a solid coin would have worked better than a ring.

As 17mm is an unusual scale I was interested to see how these new Moderns would work with my growing collection of 15mm North African Flames of War terrain. Here they are scattered amoungst my painted Crescent Root Studios buildings.

Fortunately they fit in fairly well. Certainly they’d have trouble getting through the doors but other than that they don’t look out of scale to me. In particular the roof height of the buildings still seems reasonable for them which is a relief because it means I can simply reuse all my existing FOW terrain.

Speaking of Flames of War, here’s a final shot of an unpainted 17mm Flashpoint Miniatures US Modern next to a painted base of 15mm Battlefront British WWII command figures. I’ve placed the FPM figure on a Battlefront base just to make the comparison fair. Looking at them like this you can see why FPM went with the 17mm scale, because those extra 2-3mm of height allow you to sculpt a higher level of detail onto each figure.

In conclusion I’m more than happy with my Flashpoint Miniatures moderns, keep them coming I say! I’ll definitely be picking up more figures from Flashpoint as their new releases come out. I’m also curious to see how their in-house modern skirmish rules play once they’re available. Failing that can any visitors suggest a good, cheap modern skirmish rule set?