"2300AD Kafers" Topic

Any suggestions for Kafers (25mm or, if need be, 28mm).

What about GZG Kra'Vak true 25mm and I think they would make good stand in's.

They were pretty big beasties – I'd suggest Copplestone's Hunter Aliens with Guns, but nobody's really done anything close. Complex mouthparts, hairy lower arms and legs, three-fingered hands (well, three-thumbed, really), and a big carapace.

roaches and superglue?

I'm going to paint up my 15mm Kravak as Kafers…and use 'em as such..GZG has so much stuff that can double for 2300.

I read once that Jon admits to 2300 being a major source of inspiration. Also check out Denizens SciFi humans, the guns they carry have come straight out of the 2300 rulebook.

Robert

I use the GZG 15mm Kra'Vak as Kafers. Coming up with suitable rules for their psychology & morale has been a long-term project!

I forgot the name, but a US company did make 2300AD minis in the early 90's.

Yeah I remember seeing them in a hobby shop magazine a long time ago. I remember seeing a pair French Foreign Legionares, one with the traditional cap and one with the huge helmet (seen on the box art cover). I keep wanting to say Dark Horse, but I don't think that's right. I know it wasn't Grenadier, who had the Traveller and Twilight 2000 licenses.

Never saw these models first hand.

I use the Irregular spicelice for my kafers.
Very effective.

I figure that a clever modeler could use a little green stuff to sufficiently modify Kra'Vak (either 15mm or 25mm) to fit the bill.

But "official" Kafer minis? Indeed, "official" 2300 AD figures in general? Yeah, I'd like to see those.

[Embittered-Sci-Fi-Gamer-Rant-Mode: ON]

I'd also like to sleep with Katie Holmes, but that that's never happening either.

Once again, the gamer's perpetual hard-on for dwarves, dragons, and other medieval Tolkien-esque crap crushes the sci-fi gaming market.

AND NO, &*#@ing WH40K AND IT'S INNUMERABLE RIP-OFFS DON'T COUNT AS "SCI-FI!!!"

Since the gaming market would cater to my needs, I'm beginning to think I'm in the wrong hobby.

[Embittered-Sci-Fi-Gamer-Rant-Mode: OFF]

EDIT: Since the gaming market won't cater…

So much anger. So much violence. Darn that rap music.

It has always bothered me that few miniature companies have catered to "grown up" sci fi gamers (although I am not sure I would have ever bought into the GW universe after age 12…having said that I love their Tau and their more recent Imperial Guard figs).

The closest producer of figs that seems to match my vision of hard sci-fi is GZG (and I will admit Jon seems to have liberally taken inspiration and designs from the GDW 2300 universe…God bless him).

Despite owning hordes of GZG figures (and a number of Denizen figs) it is hard to match them against the tsunami of 28-31 MM figs now being produced. The Mongoose Starship Trooper figs are fairly realistic but their scale is all over the place and even the smallest don't come close to fitting the GZG true 25MM scale.

What is a "hard sci-fi" gamer to do????

Find a hard sci-fi woman!

Find me a woman that's not "hard" after being married for 20 years….so much for marrying the college cheerleader.

Yea, the scale crisis is driving me nuts as well. I mean can you tell me that line of miniature Mobsters of the 1920s and cowboy figures would outsell a good generic sci-fi figure line useable for Traveller. I mean a real miniature line, not 4 or 5 figures, right now GZG has 4 starship crew miniatures, but a real line like the old days of 25 or more figures. What really ed me off is RAFM did a Traveller line, ships and RPG figs, but the selection of RPG figures which where released was the most moronic selection you could do. Sure they did Aslan and power armored marines, but why do merchants and techies. It was almost that they wanted to kill the line; they did, I believe, five blisters, but no adventuring figures or classes. The other extreme was the WEG Star Wars line; I mean they had lots of figures, but no generic adventures. How many Han Solo figures can you have on the gaming tale at once? At a con RPG event, I saw 4 different Solo figs being used at once. The Star Trek, Next Gen, RPG by LUG, did one boxed set of figs, one, can you really run a game with five figures, I guess you could if you let the fig determine you character.

Right now I know there some folks, wanting to flame me, with you can use 2 miniatures here and 5 there, and one here, and I do, believe me, I do. I have dremeled off the ears of Shadowrun elves, Green stuffed hair and ear on limited edition Minbari figures, and swapped lasguns for pulse rifles, but the scale and style disparity is always there. So, why no Generic Sci-Fi adventure figures, I guess because the iconic images are all copy protected, I don't know, I have email sculptors and companies and they all say they "see a big gap in the lines" so to speak, but no one fill it in a comprehensive fashion. Yes, I'm a miniature snob, and proud of it.

One other manufacturer I neglected to mention is Denizen. They produce a very broad and very nice line of true "25s" including a range of somewhere between 5-10 crew figures. Again, same problem regarding matching up with the scale of all the newer figs.

One other thing I have tried to find are pilots (primarily for "mecha" games like Jovian Chronicles). Other than Star Wars figs of Speeder pilots (which are, I believe, all the same pose) no one makes them.

"So, why no Generic Sci-Fi adventure figures…"

Because "Generic Sci-Fi" gaming doesn't sell anywhere near as "Generic Fantasy," gaming. A couple of GenCon's ago, I remember speaking to a sculptor from one of the big-name miniature companies who told me outright that there was NO MARKET for generic sci-fi figures. Fantasy is by far the most popular RPG genre with science fiction actually down near the dead bottom of the heap. While most RPGers tend not to use minis, there are still enough of them out there to make fantasy character figures profitable. The only sci-fi franchises that tend to stay afloat are connected to major media franchises (e.g. Star Wars, Star Trek, etc) with "original" sci-fi settings barely making a blip on the gaming scene. Generic sci-fi figs would be a niche market within a niche market, and no company is going to risk the time and money on a few dozen hard sci-fi gamers when they can make a profit on a sure thing by catering to the Tolkien-wannabes.