Friday 4 April 2014

Nihon Vehicles WIP



A tray of miniatures that I stripped back to bare metal.  They were originally painted yellow, and used as stand-ins for my Combine force, before I became an MIB and started demonstrating Ogre officially.  I've split the models that use to be my Combine force into those that are going to be used with my Nihon Mark 4, while the rest will form the core of a Chinese force at some point in the future.

Most of the models I have are the old Ral-Partha BattleTech vehicles, including the long out of production original Pegasus scout GEV, which is a lovely miniature.  The light tanks, as I have said before are Heroic & Ros miniatures; the turret from their Merkava, and the body from the Bradley.  The modified SRN4 is if I remember correctly from Stan Johanson's range he used to market for BattleTech, long gone I'm afraid.

I held back on sorting out these models under the mistaken impression that SJG were interested in developing their Ogre miniatures line, which clearly they are not, because they can't make money selling them.  Every cloud has a silver lining, in my case it means I can expand my forces using stand ins with a clear conscience.  Finally, I also want to shout out to Super Galactic Dreadnought's blog, where he posted these two images that I'm re-posting for the record.


If you look at the list above one can see Combine Set 8 with the tantalising title of Divisional Assets, which may have been a tracked mobile command post of some sort.


The list with the Paneuropean Set 12 Archangel GEV-MCP and escorts would have introduced another new unit to the game, and the escorts were most likely to have been some GEVs.  However, none of this ever happend, and most likely never will.

In my opinion, without a targeted marketing strategy to generate sales interest, and new additions to the miniatures line to maintain it, Ogre miniatures was never going to make enough money for SJG, and arguably even if it was making money it wouldn't make enough to satisfy the bottom line.
  

9 comments:

  1. One has to wonder what was going to be in PE sets 8, 10, and 11...

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. If only we would ever be told, but if you ask my guess the answer will be don't ask.

      Delete
    2. Followed by a snippy remark or two about how the Ogre Miniatures fans just don't get it.

      You know, though, you may have inspired me to paint up my C-in-C hover company as Nova Brasilians.

      Delete
    3. I imagine the PE sets 8, 10 and 11 would have been analogous to their NAC counterparts (divisional assets, hovertrucks, and cybertanks).

      Delete
  2. Thanks for the shout-out, Ashley. Are you going to use those Demolishers as superheavies? I have four of them in my collection, and some other BT and CAV minis that might proxy as Mark I and II Ogres, which are missing from my collection. I'm too cheap to buy those models at the current prices of $20 and $25 respectively. Then again, I already have a large collection I need to finish painting.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. I am going to use the Demolishers as super heavies. Haven't yet decided on what I'm going to use as the main heavy tank. I'm planning on buying some of the new IWM WIGEs to use as Nihon GEVs, because they have a distinctive look that will differentiate them both the Pan Euro and Combine official GEVs.

      Delete
  3. Having perused the images of the two lists bit more closely, after Desert Scribes comment, my guess is that if SJG had continued with issuing models this way, we would have seen Combine Set 13, 14 & 15 issued to cover the Mark 4, Mark 6 and the Ninja. Paneuropean Set 8 might have been Divisional Assets to match the Combine set. Paneuropean Set 10 probably would have been the Doppelsoldner, and Set 11 the laser tower and turrets. Also further sets would have been issued for the jammer and radar models for each force.

    As for the contents of the Divisional Assets I would think a command post and cruise missile launchers for each side would be a reasonable guess.

    ReplyDelete
    Replies
    1. You're dead-on regarding Set 13 being the Mark IV: Go to this old SJG minis news page and scroll down to the April 2, 2002 entry.

      About Divisional Assets, the first entry in these search results shows it was four buildings. I think they included a hardened CP, a jamscreen, a radar, and one other structure.

      Delete
    2. Well that pretty much solves jfleisher's question, which is good.

      Of course, with 20:20 hindsight it is easy to see that marketing the Ogre miniatures this way has advantages. it also has disadvantages; in this case investment in stock that sit around waiting to be sold.

      Delete