Sneak Peek at Maalintii Rangers (Day of the Rangers)

ABOVE:
These are the final masters for the first Rangers for Mog, now I realise this is not the best photograph ever taken but this comes straight from the caster in the USA this morning. However I do think it shows what great figures these are going to be. The gentlemen with one arm is not a casualty but part of the engineering of the master moulds. He will be a one piece figure once completed.

BELOW:
Also here now is the final cover for Maalintii Rangers (Day of the Rangers). Mog as its now been called by the team has some seriously good art in it and is only now waiting for its final photo shoot.

Here are a few a double page teasers for you to drool over.

State of the Nation - laying out 2015

State of the Nation

Presidents and prime ministers around the globe give state of the nation speeches at the beginning of the year. Here at Skirmish Sangin we thought we would borrow the concept and look back briefly over the last 12 months and to let all our loyal players know what’s happening in the next 12 months.

So the last 12 months have seen a great deal of growth in the Skirmish Sangin market. The year was book marked by the release of Sangin Despatches 2 and 3 and one of the key highlights was our trip to SALUTE which was a great deal of fun. Our Insurgents/Taliban figures were released.

Phalanx Consortium came on board as our US distributor  and that is a relationship that's gone from strength to strength.

Unfortunately we lost a great good person along the way. Stuart Griffin of Griffin Moulds (Sangin's Figure Manufacturer) and we would like to take this opportunity to pass on our deepest condolences to his family and colleagues.

So what will 2015 have to offer? 

Now we can’t reveal all as we have signed a number of non-disclosure agreements with companies but there is a core of projects that we can reveal, some of what is going on.

Now before I go in to detail can we just say a little about timelines. All of the team have full time, high-pressure jobs and while we indicate deadlines and do our best to work towards them, we are always deliberately vague simply to avoid disappointment.

Our projects tend to take a while to create and sometimes can be held up by even the most innocuous of things. 2014 had a few among them the birth of beautiful baby James to Chris and Rachel. Pneumonia and a serious knee operations for Colin and a PHD for Craig, all of these thing vied for our time.

We hope there are less this year but you never know. Anyway enough waffle what's happening.

First quarter 2015

The first of our Battle Books will be Maalintii Rangers (Day of the Rangers (Mog) - to those of us that don’t speak Somali). This book will concentrate on the battle made famous by the book and film Black Hawk Down. It will have additional rules, background info and ORBATS for everything from Street mobs and Somali gun man to the D-Boys and Rangers. A set of entertaining scenarios that focuses on various stages of the battle and ideas of how to model and paint the participants.

 IMAGE ABOVE - Rough Scamp of the cover

To support this we will also be releasing our first set of 28mm Americans, initially an 8 man Rangers squad, that’s ideal for Mog and more than usable for Iraq 1 and 2 and early Afghanistan as well as some more goodies we have in the pipeline. See the Ranger renders below.

We are also planning a running a Kickstarter to help us expand this figure line but we’ll let you know more about that nearer the time.

Also in this quarter you will see the release of the final 28mm Insurgent/Taliban so there will be more than enough to build a sizeable force.

ABOVE:  Some of the new Insurgent/Taliban figures

Second/third quarter 2015

This will see the release of our first fantasy game, currently called Outbreak – This is a zombie horror skirmish game. This will be launched at GENCON and a number of us are making the trip to Indianapolis to be part of the fun. So do come along and see us.

ABOVE: The almost final cover for Outbreak

We will also be at Historicon with plenty of Skirmish Sangin goodness (as part of our month long trip to the USA) so that will be another opportunity to chat if any of you are heading that way. We hope to have more than a few new goodies available at both events.

Third/fourth quarter 2015

Sangin Despatches no.3, yes number 3, we have so much useful stuff left over from SD2 that we plan to bring you another book to conclude Afghanistan.

Now anybody that has played Skirmish Sangin know the system can work for any conflict from ww2 onwards and this year we plan to use the system to venture further a field and expand both globally conflict wise and back through the ages to help our players use the system to play there favourite genres.

So that’s all the big picture stuff we can talk about and as you can see we haven't been lazing a round but also we are going to do our best to use this blog to bring you some great Skirmish Sangin Goodness.

It’s our plan that each month we will release you a free scenario for the remaining 11 months of 2015. We will also increase the number of articles and After Action Reports (AARs) to as many as possible. This will allow players to see the flexibility of the system and get some great new ideas for their gaming. We are kicking off our first free scenario in February with a look at the Australians and what they got up to in Afghanistan.

Obviously this is not all but its all for now. Do let us know what you would like to see in terms of ORBATS etc. and any game ideas and we’ll do our absolute best to bring them to you.

cheers

Colin

Post 100+ A Look Forward

We had planned to have this post marks the 100th put up here on the Skirmish Sangin Blog, but we got so distracted by Call to Arms and sharing pictures of the weekend that we forgot about the milestone!

So although this may not be post #100, we would just like to take the opportunity to say that we have really enjoyed talking with the commenters, sharing our ideas for gaming and showing off some of the great work people are doing out there in the Sangin Community. While we three writers might think we have a great game, which we personally enjoy playing, it still surprises us, how it has been received by the wider community of gamers, your feedback, comments and images provide us even more encouragement to keep making books and writing rules.

In light of it being our 100th post (ish), we thought we would share some of our upcoming releases....

DESPATCHES II

Despatches II follows the same style as our first Despatches book, made up of articles, scenarios, ORBATs and other really useful stuff for Skirmish Sangin gaming.
Inside Despatches II you can find....

- Additional vehicle rules, including how to field on-table helicopters in your ISAF list.
- Scenarios, ranging from vehicle checkpoints to helicopter assaults and everything in between.
- ORBATs for the Dutch and the long awaited Taliban ORBAT

We hope to have this out before the end of of October. Its currently at the editors, so we are on track. Th final running order of articles may change as once again we have more articles than space but whatever ones make the cut you can believe it will more despatches gold :-)


MAALINTII RANGERS (DAY OF THE RANGERS)

Day of the Rangers is out first Battle Book, focused on the actions in September 1993 in Somalia. Battle Books are different to a Despatches book, firstly because they are no longer set in Afghanistan, but secondly because they are setting out to represent a specific series of combat actions.

In the case of the Maalintii Rangers, it means some special Somalia specific rules, things which will add to the main rules to give the right "feel" for the battles in Mogadishu. The release of Maalintii Rangers will be supported by a range of 28mm US soldiers amongst others, which you have already seen a preview image for here....

Inside Maalintii Rangers you will find....

- A Somalia ORBAT, with rules for mobs of civilians
- US ORBAT for Rangers, D-Boys and 10th Mountain
- ORBATS for the UNOSOM II forces, such as the Pakistanis
- Additional helicopter rules- Because it isn't the Maalintii Rangers without Blackhawks and Little Birds!

When will this be out you cry? The team are working on it now, but we are not sure just yet but lets just say as soon as we can after Sangin Despatches No.2!

Is that all we are working on? Well, no actually, no it is not. But we have to keep some secrets!

So thank you for reading our blog. Let us know what you want to see more of - scenarios, AAR's, painting guides, book reviews, ORBATs, miniatures reviews or something completely different? Get in touch either in the comments, or by email. We look forward to hearing from you!

Colin, Craig and Chris

COLIN - Eureka Somalis

Eureka miniatures are now producing Somali's, they are absolutely fantastic and I am fortunate enough to have been sent a full set for review by the Eureka team. Great figures, very crisp as is always the case with Eureka and they paint up lovely. I am also using them to convert up for Afghans and a lot of them could definitely be used for most insurgent types.

Check out more images on Kostas blog http://flyinggorilla.blogspot.co.nz/2013/04/painted-28mm-eureka-miniatures-somalis.html.


Now the this is probably worth letting you know that the team are currently working on our first Battlebook for Skirmish Sangin called... drum roll please.. Maalintii Rangers that means Day of the Rangers in Somali. 

So what do we mean by Battlebook, well a battle book will be an occasional series where we take  a selected modern battle and give you all the forces in terms of ORBATS, rules etc to play the game. 

We all know Sangin as a set of rules is more than Afghanistan and we aim to bring out these books to show people what you can do with the rules and to enable us to play some really cool battles in other exotic locales. 

So we'll keep you informed as we move closer to the final deadline and if you have any ideas for different battles you would like to see let us know in the comments