1:600 English East Indiaman flags

We've just made available a new set of Age of Sail flags, this time devoted to the English East India Company and the ensigns its ships flew until the 1707 Union Act.

Our Age of Sail flags collection currently consists of 23 sheets covering 8 maritime nations, for a period extending from early 17th to late 18th centuries (besides of two ruthless pirates too!). It stands as an ideal complement not only to our own 1/600 scale ships range, but also to similar products from brands such as Skytrex, Peter Pig, Warlord's Black Seas or the upcoming Firelock's Oak & Iron boxed game.

New Kugelpanzer

I'm proud to present you a new range of weird, futuristic and/or unusual WWII vehicle model kits, born as a collaboration project between Minairons miniatures and ResinLab models. By this agreement, our brands are going to develop jointly that new range - keeping ResinLab for itself the original 1/35^th scale version, while Minairons is to commercialize as own its 1/72^nd version.

As a first result of such collaboration (ideally involving soon a third brand and a couple of scales else), I'm happy to show you our first joint release: the quite mysterious Kugelpanzer, a small spheric German AFV - only one sample of which is known, captured by the Red Army in Manchuria and currently kept at Kubinka Museum. Here below you have one such 1/72 Kugelpanzers masterly assembled and painted by HeresyBrush:

Both ResinLab's 1/35 and Minairons' 1/72 versions can be found at Minairons' website.

New! WSS Valencia City IR flags

I'm happy to present a new set of War of Spanish Succession infantry flags, just released at 1:100, 1:72 and 1:56 scales altogether. This time it's Valencia City Infantry Regiment, raised in 1706 by that municipality in support of Charles Habsburg's claims to the throne of Spain. This regiment was merged into Ahumada in 1709, after the heavy losses suffered in the defence of Valencia after Almansa battle.

Here below you can see a 1:100 scale sample on 18mm figures kindly supplied by Eureka Miniatures.

This new flag set is on sale in Minairons website as a DIN A7 sized PDF file, as customary.

A third WSS flags sample

Austro-Catalan Sant Narcís Infantry Regiment, 1713-1714.
1/100^th scale Minairons miniatures flags sample on matching 18mm figures kindly supplied by Eureka miniatures.

This and other flag sets are on sale in Minairons website as DIN A7 sized PDF files - at 1/144, 1/100, 1/72 or 1/56 scales.

Another WSS flags sample

Austro-Catalan Nª Sª de la Concepció Infantry Regiment, 1713-1714.
1/100^th scale sample on appropriate 18mm figures kindly supplied by Eureka Miniatures.

This and other flag sets are on sale in Minairons website as DIN A7 sized PDF files - at 1/144, 1/100, 1/72 or 1/56 scales.

War of Spanish Succession flags sample

Austro-Catalan Santa Eulàlia Infantry Regiment, 1713-1714.
1/100^th scale sample on appropriate 18mm figures kindly supplied by Eureka Miniatures.

This and other flag sets are on sale in Minairons website as DIN A7 sized PDF files - at 1/144, 1/100, 1/72 or 1/56 scales.

Brand new website and SCW figures

Finally, works to update and improve our www.minairons.eu website are over. It has been some of a pain and a lot of money, but I believe it has been worth the effort. SSL protocols, cellular friendly software, non-registered visitor carts and, above all, the open chance to easily improve it furthermore - all this in!

Any software change uses to leave some path behind though, like a slug: user profiles of newly registered customers (from the last 3-4 weeks) might have got lost, for instance. Also, orders history of old customers having ordered recently might not show the orders processed over that 3-4 weeks period (despite all them have been actually processed). But that's all; website is running fine and smooth now - like an Hispano-Suiza. Please feel free to visit it and check how it works now.

So as to celebrate the event, we've made available a new SCW figure set right today. It consists of a pair of 20mm Republican dispatch riders on Harley Davidson motorcycles - all in white metal. They can be found right now at our website, naturally.

Website redesign

Minairons miniatures is going to close temporarily its website for a thoroughful redesign, software update and security improvement. Works on it are scheduled to start next Monday 23^rd and should last some 2-3 weeks depending on eventual incidences. Due to it, it is possible that the website can remain unavailable for hopefully short lapses of time, while backup copies are performed or some key pieces of software are introduced.

Our activity isn't going to stop for this, however. We'll be keeping you acknowledged from our blog, from which it can be now downloaded an updated listing of our products.

If our website happened to go offline for some days and you eventually wished to place an order, you can e-mail it to us, or you can use our eBay store.

A smaller set of WSS flags

Just as promised some time ago, here you have a smaller version of the War of Spanish Succession infantry flag sets we had been releasing at 1/100, 1/72 and 1/56 scales so far. This new range of infantry flags is scaled to 1/144, so suitable directly for 10 to 12mm figures --but it can be used for 6 to 8mm too, if conveniently rescaled.

The new range flags are 12mm high, so that a single DIN A7 sized PDF sheet allows room enough for 6 flags belonging to 3 different regiments of foot (King's and Colonel's colours), that we're selling for just €2.00.

Another WSS flag set

I'm pleased to announce the release of a new War of Spanish Succession infantry flag set, at 1/100, 1/72 and 1/56 scales simultaneously. This time it's been the turn for the flags of another late WSS catalan regiment, that come as DIN A7 sized PDF sheets, for users to download and print at will for just €2.00. Regardless of scale, each sheet comprises two flags preformatted for the intended scale: King's and Regiment's colours.

Also, we have made available a painting guide and data card for the new regiment, that can be downloaded for free.

New 1:100 Trubia-Naval tank

I'm happy to announce the release of a new 1:100 scale tank model for Spanish Civil War 15mm gaming --the Trubia-Naval Basque tank, already released in 1:72 time ago. It's an easy build model consisting of just two parts: one for hull and running gear, and another one for turret. Kit is complemented by two different optional weapon sprues --the one for hull, the other for turret.

Here you can see how does the new tank compare to our plastic Panzers.

Walloon Guards flags sample

Let me show you a printed 15mm sample of our recently released WSS Walloon Guards flags, as fitted on a regiment belonging to my own collection:

The unit only shows the regiment's own colours, due to a customary practice I adopted years ago, when my units were smaller than currently. Then I chose to use the king's colours to decorate generals' stands and special vignettes, so here you can see what this latter flag looks like, once put in place:

Free booklets & painting guides

Long time before creating the Minairons miniatures brand, I had been running a blog called "Desperta ferro!", from which I shared some of my hobby experiences under form of PDF files for free download; often as a result of a wargaming campaign with my local mates, other times as a product of my personal research after a project in horizon. Perhaps someone here still remembers the first one, a booklet named "Catalonia Stands Alone" devoted to the solitary, hopeless war waged by the principality in the last stages of the War of Spanish Succession. Encouraged by the positive feedbacks earned, I still published a few documents else before having to resign and shutting the blog doors down --mainly due to the difficulties and troubles inherent to creating a miniatures brand.

Now that some of such troubles are seemingly fading away slowly, I have regained much of the hobby time I had been denying to myself for such a long while, so being able to play games again with some regularity, and even to run some new campaigning. This circumstance has allowed me to reconsider making available again some of those titles, either in their past format or under a new concept.

And this is precisely what I've started doing right now from Minairons miniatures website. So I have created there a new Free Downloads section at root level, currently comprising just a handful of free SCW painting guides as well as a PDF product catalogue; and I shall expand it quickly to contain all the free stuff mentioned above. Some of such materials are likely to be uploaded as they were, under form of a PDF booklet; but others will be shared as data cards, following the previous positive experience with the mentioned SCW painting guides.

Some of such WSS data cards have already been uploaded and are available; I would thank sincerely your feedbacks on them. I shall publish and upload more of these on a regular basis --probably with some simultaneity with the 15/20/28mm flag sheets I'm currently releasing.

About the booklets themselves, as said I will be revising them the one after the other, to get ensured about which ones to salvage or to discard (with disregard of the data cards above expansion), and see what must be translated still. For you to get an idea on what I've got ahead, there is an all-in-one booklet, a related WSS campaign, a WWII campaign (that has probably become outdated due to Battlefront's expansion of their Firestorm system) and an 18th c. Caribbean Sea campaign (so some amount of work ahead!).

WSS Walloon Guards flags

This is our latest addition to the War of Spanish Succession military flags ranges at 1/100, 1/72 and 1/56 scales. As usual, they've been released as DIN A7 sized PDF sheets, for users to download and print at will. Regardless of scale, each sheet comprises two flags preformatted for the intended scale: King's and Regiment's colours.

Painting commission completed

Today I've completed a painting job I was commissioned some months ago, consisting of 17 Peter Pig ships to be painted as either Spanish merchantmen or pirates. Only the two largest ones out of the commission were left, and these are what I'm going to show you now, along with a couple others that I've built for my own collection.

This time I've performed very few modifications on the ships --just replacing their original bowsprits. Both have been dressed as Spanish indiamen, so proudly flying large Burgundy Cross ensigns and mast flags.

One of them has been given a different flag on foremast (a light blue one with the Spanish coat of arms), that was historically used by one admiral in WSS times. I thought it might be useful to the user --for identifying the Treasury Fleet admiral for instance, or a ship commanded by an able Reserve captain perhaps, or for whatever other reason he might need.

As you can see, decks are crowded with Peter Pig crewmen and guns, Minairons lifeboats and some unmanned guns from my spares box.

I've enjoyed this commission intensely, and would like to thank the commissioner for his patience and trust. Hope he likes the result not less than I do.

1/600 Ship of the Line, almost ready

I'm proud to show you what our upcoming 1/600 Ship of the Line looks like, now that all the 3D printing and prototyping work is over. We intended to make a medium ship of the line, rather than any of those huge 1^st or 2^nd rates. So we took as a loose model an early 1700s Russian 58-gun warship good for building a 4^th rate model from it --or even a small 3^rd rate one if imagining it plentiful of bow and stern chaser guns!

The hull you can see in the following pictures is the ultimate production resin one, while masts and rigging are 3D printed prototypes that are to be taken to foundry --so the ultimate ones will be white metal.

Here below you can see the fine detail achieved on hull sides, showing the gun ports open.

We have also designed rigging versions for fully unfurled sails, that we shall most probably sell apart, as optional accessories for ship customization.

Here below, our warship can bee seen together with a race-built galleon from Skytrex, so as to help having a notion about their respective sizes.

We would like to have it released before the start of Summer; however, as is it likely unexpected issues to eventually occur, let's be less optimistics just for cause, and let's say we'll have it ready by late Summer.