6mm: Irregular vs Heroics & Ros

Introduction

I have a fair-sized collection of 6mm Napoleonic figures.  However, there are never quite enough to form the truly grand armies I'd like for a large game.  In particular, I don't have too many French.

Virtually all of my 6mm forces are made up of models from Heroics & Ros.  However, I don't believe that H&R Napoleonics are currently available, though hopefully they will be re-issued sometime soon.

So if I wish to extend my army, what are the options?  There are other "6mm" manufacturers such as Bacchus and Adler, but I've always understood that these were rather larger (perhaps more like 8mm tall?) and stylistically rather different.  Please note that this last opinion is based on hearsay and rumour rather than personal experience; if it is in any way incorrect then I apologise profusely!

The other maker of "true" 6mm figures of which I am aware is Irregular Miniatures.  They've been around forever and have a reputation for cheap, but possibly less well-detailed models.  But at least their 6mm Napoleonics are still in production!

I thought it worth buying a battalion of infantry from Irregular to find out whether or not they are compatible with my H&R.  Here we go...

Irregular Miniatures

My standard Napoleonic line infantry "battalions" are 4 bases, each with 3 ranks of 10 figures.  Models from Irregular Miniatures are available in a number of different form factors - including blocks of 3 ranks of infantry.  However, I went for the standard 6-man strips for my unit.

This battalion is therefore composed of 19 x French Line infantry strips, plus 1 x French Line infantry command.  Because I only wanted 10 figures per rank on each base, I needed to cut apart some of the 6-figure strips into 2-man and 4-man parts.  This wasn't too hard, though it was a minor nuisance.

 

From the rear, it is clear that these French are not wearing backpacks.  That's slightly odd, but probably not too important.

Painting the Irregular figures was a little more difficult than I remember being the case for H&R.  Maybe I'm just older, more tired or have less good eyesight than before? Or maybe these models haven't got the fairly-obvious detail of the H&R ones.  Still, I think they turned out all right.

Heroics & Ros

As this is a comparison article, here are some of my existing Heroics & Ros figures.  The only real differences I can spot are that the H&R have shouldered their muskets on the left, whereas the Irregular are using their right shoulders for this and that the Irregular command figures have a moulded, semi-furled standard; the H&R just have a small square of flat metal.  Also, as mentioned above, the H&R are wearing backpacks; the Irregular are not.

From the back, you can also see that I've changed the style of the unit's nameplate for my newest models.  The 93rd Line have my older, all-white nameplates, without any specific battalion identifier.

Conclusion

OK, can you guess which unit is Irregular and which is H&R in this picture?  At first glance, without peering too closely at the image?

If you thought that the Irregular were on the right and the H&R on the left then you were correct.  But my view is that there isn't a lot of difference between them and I'll be very happy to mix units from these two manufacturers together in the same army.  In the end it comes down to which models are easier to obtain.

Of course, I've only tested infantry here.  The cavalry models might well vary rather more between the two producers.

"Not-Star Trek" Kzinti Fleet (Irregular miniatures)

Introduction

My previous articles on my "not-Star Trek" Federation, Orion and Klingon fleets have been very popular, so I plan to keep documenting further parts of my collection.  Eventually I'll run out of models, of course, but that won't be for a little while yet.

I played a lot of Star Fleet Battles a long time ago and remember it with a lot of fondness, tempered with frustration at the overwhelming complexity of the later versions and supplements.  I also didn't like the "official" min-max tactics that were encouraged by articles in Nexus magazine and elsewhere.  Still, my memories are positive enough for me to base my "not Trek" model fleets loosely on SFB rather than the images and factions from the later series of the TV show.

This time, it's the turn of the Kzinti, the fierce, clannish and honourable cat-people with a penchant for missiles and starfighters.  Their ships are somewhat unusual in the Star Fleet universe because they are heavily dependent on expendable ordnance.  The key to victory against Kzinti is to survive the initial storm of firepower; once they're out of missiles then your chances are greatly improved!

Design Philosophy

As before, I've looked for an existing Full Thrust fleet on which to base my Kzintis, rather than designing all of them from scratch.  In this case, the FSE seemed to fit the bill, with their preference for missile salvoes and hybrid battleship-carriers.  That's close enough for a starting point, though I'm quite happy to swap out a few systems here and there to make a ship more "Kzinti-like", if needed.

The Ships

My Kzinti fleet is built entirely out of models from Irregular Miniatures "Confederation" fleet.  Now, these miniatures are not too close in appearance to the canon Kzinti ships, but they're good enough for me.  The Irregular "Confederation" fleet is fairly generic in appearance; it could also be used to represent SFB Hydrans if desired.

Irregular Designation	Picture	Full Thrust SSD
Not sure.  Probably: DYC2: Destroyer, Hussar Class
DYC3 - Light Cruiser, Ryder Class
DYC4 - Heavy Cruiser, Harrasser [sic] Class
DYC5 - Battlecruiser/ Dreadnought, Percheron Class
DYC6 - Heavy Carrier, Camelot Class.  Note that I've discarded the original angled flight deck from this model and have added landing pads of my own!

"Not-Star Trek" Klingon Fleet

Introduction

I've written posts about my "not-Federation" and "not-Orion" Star Trek fleets.  Well, today it's the turn of the Klingons.  These are quite unusual amongst my fleets, as not all the ships come from the same manufacturer.  I've used Studio Bergstrom for the largest and the smallest models, while the medium-sized ones come from Irregular Miniatures.

Design Philosophy

Rather than basing the Full Thrust designs on one of the existing Fleet Books, I started from scratch for this fleet.  My Klingon ships are fast, but have only moderate protection.  They have a varied array of medium and light beam weapons with wide arcs of fire (they'll almost always be able to fire something at you, if in range).  The signature heavy weapon is the disruptor; this is not a standard Full Thrust weapon so I've used the stats described by Star Ranger on Starship Combat News.

The Models

Manufacturer's description	Picture	Full Thrust SSD
Studio Bergstrom Sing-On D8 Battlecruiser
Studio Bergstrom Sing-On D4 Cruiser
Irregular Miniatures DYO2 Gull Wing Raider		(I don't have a separate SSD for this pair of heavy cruisers.  For now they just use the Valhalla class, below)
Irregular Miniatures DYO3 Kumerian Raider
Studio Bergstrom Sing-On Starship (miniature version)

Conclusion

This is a relatively small fleet, for now.  I painted the models at widely different times; it was very difficult to do the colour matching between the older Irregular vessels and the newer Studio Bergstrom ones.  Having said that, the pictures seem to show much more variation in colour than is present on the actual models.

I'm completely missing any destroyer-sized ships from this collection.  To fill this gap, I might even have to buy some of the official Star Fleet models, either from Mongoose or Amarillo Design Bureau!

"Not-Star Trek" Orion Fleet (Irregular miniatures)

Introduction

Not long ago, I showed you my "not-Federation" starships.  This time, it's the turn of my second-oldest fleet: their "not Orion" opponents, also from Irregular Miniatures.  These are not canon Orions; they don't quite match the official ship classes from Amarillo Design Bureau (owners of the Star Fleet Battles copyright).  However, they're a great deal cheaper (especially since Irregular is on the near side of the Atlantic for me, so postage costs are also less) and that's good enough!

Irregular's Catalogue

For my Orion fleet, I'm using the "Dysonian" ships from Irregular Miniatures.  These can be found (with some difficulty) by going to the main site an choosing "6mm" from the bottom bar.  Then click on "Science Fiction and Spaceships"; the DYD codes are about 75% of the way down that page.  As before, it's probably helpful to republish the relevant extract of the catalogue here:

DYSONIAN FLEET

DYD1	Corvette, Blitzspear Class
DYD2	Frigate, Jarl Class
DYD3	Destroyer, Thor Class
DYD4	Heavy Destroyer, Wraith Class
DYD5	Light Cruiser, Javelin Class
DYD6	Heavy Cruiser, Loki Class
DYD7	Battlecruiser, Chieftain Class
DYD8	Dreadnought (Battlecruiser with 4 engines), Odin Class
DYD9	Light Carrier (Battlecruiser with 2 hanger bay modules), Raven Class
DYD10	Light Tug (Light cruiser with cargo pallet), Heimdahl Class
DYD11	Revised Blitzspear Class Corvette
DYD12	Rapier Class Gunboat

Orions in Full Thrust

As with my Federation fleet, I decided to base my Orions on an existing set of Full Thrust designs.  This was mainly to avoid the effort of creating an entire fleet of ships from scratch!

In this case, I chose to base the Orions on the ESU fleet.  Their design philosophy (from Full Thrust's Fleet Book 1) can be paraphrased thus "mostly beam armed, varied means of protection, optimised for long-term independent operations".  That fits my idea of the pirate fleet quite well and I'm not averse to swapping a few systems here and there to customise ships.  In particular, I've given many of the larger ships a needle beam; this should allow them to target the engines of a fleeing merchantman and thus be able to capture it without destroying the cargo.

The Fleet

2 things should be noted before we rush into the pictures:

1. These Orions use my own "Fireball XL5" colour scheme: large amounts of silver offset by red and yellow stripes.  That's not Star Fleet Battles canon at all!  However, I reckon that a pirate chief can paint his ships any way he likes; indeed he may even want to make his fleet very distinctive.
2. I started this collection with a "Fleet Pack" from Irregular Miniatures.  This came with no instructions and all the parts were in a single bag (note that I bought this many, many years ago; the way Irregular package and label items may have changed since).  While I'm reasonably confident in my identification of the smaller, 1-piece ship models, the larger ones may not resemble anything actually in the catalogue.  Basically, I took the collection of bigger hulls & separate engines and assembled them in ways that seemed good to me!

I've given the manufacturer's designation for each model where I'm reasonably confident that I have the right number.  However, please accept that I may have made some errors.  Update: I've filled in the missing codes, many thanks to Rich McGee and Irregular!

Irregular Designation	Picture	Full Thrust SSD
Update: DYD2 - Frigate, Jarl Class
DYD3 - Destroyer, Thor Class
DYD4 - Heavy Destroyer, Wraith Class
DYD5 - Light Cruiser, Javelin Class
Update: DYD6 - Heavy Cruiser, Loki Class
Update: DYD7 - Battlecruiser, Chieftain Class
Update: DYD10 - Light Tug (Light cruiser with cargo pallet), Heimdahl Class

So there you have it: my "not Orion" Star Trek fleet for Full Thrust.  These are all Irregular ships and they are all from their DYD range.  However, I'm not at all sure of many of the product codes; if any reader can help me to fill these in then I'll be very grateful!

"Not-Star Trek" Federation Fleet (Irregular miniatures)

Introduction

As many of my loyal readers will already know from my Full Thrust battle reports, I have a moderate collection of "not-Star Trek" spaceships.  My "not-Federation" fleet comes mostly from the old but still useful Irregular Miniatures "Imperials" range.  Since the Irregular website doesn't provide many details about their spaceship models, I thought it would be worthwhile to document my collection here!

The Catalogue

Irregular Miniatures' "New Spaceship Range" contains a number of useful fleets for Star Trek gamers.  They produce the "not-Federation" (Imperial), "not-Orion" (Dysonian) and "not-Hydran?" (Confederation) fleets and also make a couple of quite similar Raiders that can stand in for Klingons.  However, the listings are buried and hard to find in their online catalogue.  From the main website, you need to choose the "6mm" on the bottom bar (cunningly drawn in red on a purple background to make it difficult to see).  The spaceships are about 80% of the way down the "Science Fiction and Space Ships" page, almost added as an afterthought.  Note that you can go straight to the "Science Fiction &c" page, but this is an inner frame and you won't have any of the site's navigation links.

For my purposes today, here's a short extract from the Irregular Miniatures catalogue:

IMPERIAL FLEET

DYE1	Corvette (Police Ship), Sheriff Class
DYE2	Frigate, Perry Class
DYE3	Destroyer, Oberon Class
DYE4	Light Cruiser, Natori Class
DYE5	Heavy Cruiser (uses drive units from Carrier Model), County Class
DYE6	Battlecruiser, Gorshkov Class
DYE7	Dreadnought (Battlecruiser model with 3rd engine), Mushashi Class
DYE8	Light Carrier (Light Cruiser with 2 hanger bay modules), Hosho Class
DYE9	Heavy Carrier, Nimitz Class
DYE10	Tug, Kitakami Class
DYE11	Revised Perry Class Frigate

Full Thrust Adaptations

When collecting my Federation and other ships, I didn't want to design a whole fleet from first principles, possibly with house rules for invented technology.  Instead, I felt that the existing Full Thrust rules pretty much covered everything I would need (OK, I'm still looking for ideas for the Tholian Web, but that's another matter...).
So, I looked through the various existing collections of ships for something on which to base the Federation fleet.  I chose the NAC designs because of the doctrine given in Fleet Book 1.  Roughly speaking, NAC ships are "multi-role, decently protected with screens and reasonably fast".  Sounds pretty much like the Star Trek Federation to me!  However, rather than make a straight copy of the NAC designs, I've swapped a few systems here and there.  Primarily this was needed to replace missiles with torpedos.

Irregular's Ships

In the table below are pictures of almost all of Irregular's "Imperial" fleet, along with the Ship System Display that I use for that class. My apologies for the quality of some of the photographs; there are 2 reasons why they aren't as clear as I would like:

1. I painted most of this fleet a long time ago, before I'd evolved any more elaborate detailing techniques.  Consequently, many of the ships are a fairly plain flat white in colour.
2. My camera (or maybe it's me?) has difficulty in getting the contrast right when photographing while models against a black background.  So many of the images lack definition that is present in the real-life models.

Irregular Designation	Picture	Full Thrust SSD
DYE1 - Police Corvette
DYE2 - Frigate, Perry Class
DYE3 - Destroyer, Oberon Class
DYE4 - Light Cruiser, Natori Class
DYE5 - Heavy Cruiser (uses drive units from Carrier Model), County Class
DYE6 - Battlecruiser, Gorshkov Class
DYE7 - Dreadnought (Battlecruiser model with 3rd engine), Mushashi Class
DYE10 - Tug, Kitakami Class	Note: I'm not certain that this is indeed the DYE10 model, but it's definitely from Irregular's Imperial range [update: this is confirmed as the correct model for DYE10 by trynda1701, see comments below]
DYE11 - Revised Perry Class Frigate

Other Ships

Those of you who've been paying attention will notice that I haven't any models with the DYE8 or DYE9 codes.  This is because DYE8 is almost the same as DYE4 and because I didn't much like the DYE9 heavy carrier's large angled flight deck.  The fleet pack I bought (many years ago) did contain 1 of each ship.  However, I dropped the hangar bays from the light carrier to end up with my second light cruiser and I rebuilt the heavy carrier completely.  So, here are some extra ships in my Federation fleet; these are not simple Irregular models:

Description	Picture	Full Thrust SSD
DYE9 - Heavy Carrier, Nimitz Class heavily converted and rebuilt
Shapeways "Bellerophon"-class cruiser (a very recent addition to the fleet)