Vanguard Miniatures – Defeat in Detail 6mm

Vanguard Miniatures is a British online shop that covers your miniature needs in small or epic scale warfare. But they do not only carry their own range(s), but are the distributor for other brands like Troublemaker Games, of whom I covered the multi-part plastic terrain kits.

As the Adeptus Titanicus bug bit me, I was looking for fitting miniatures to place on the bases or walkways among my titans, and I came across their Defeat in Detail range, in 6mm. The range is also available in 3mm or 15mm, but 6mm is the strongest / broadest among them. And today we're going to take a deep dive into this very same 6mm range, as John sent me a couple of samples, incl. some pre-releases / yet to come novelties, you can see below.

Why am I so excited to do so? Well, 6mm is obviously more niche than 28mm and if you're looking to find something matching Epic 40k, Adeptus Titanicus or Aeronautica, the available sources for third party miniatures are somewhat scarce. And not just that, the out-of-production Epic miniatures are hard or at least expensive to come by, and the Epicast / Forumware "products" that are sold for partially ridiculous prices (I put products in quotation marks, as these are often recasts of old Epic / 6mm Forge World or some black market home brew casts...) are deep in the legal grey area. Therefore, proper manufacturers, with reliable supply and reasonable prices are a delight.

The range is strongly influenced by the Grim Dark. You find the humans of the far future at Vanguard under the Tusculum Nova entry, split into Novan Elites and Regulars. The Tusculum Novan Elite Troops are tall soldiers, wearing closed power armor and a broad variety of heavy weapons. They do look a bit like Space Marines in MK IV Power Armour.

From this range I have a few stripes of the Elites Affray Squads and a few from the Missile Launcher Teams. As 6-8mm miniatures are quite tiny, they don't come as individuals but are casted in stripes of 3 to 5 miniatures each. Makes them easier to handle. Each of them comes with a small base, around 5mm diameter. The casting quality is quite proper, a fine mould line and here and there along a small strip from the mould to release air. Nothing to worry about and well done.

The miniatures' bases fit the old and new style epic bases (20x20mm and 40x12mm), and in case you want to go for round bases (which are available by Vanguard Miniatures as well) those too. A brief comparison with the old 90s Space Marines and vehicles from the early 90s shows the clear compatibility of Vanguard with that range. The Novan Elite are a bit taller, roughly 1,5-2mm, but that is fine, especially with the vehicles.

And one of the great uses of these miniatures, is to build scenic bases for Adeptus Titanicus. Remember, as Titanicus plays during the Horus Heresy, that's a great excuse to paint some pre-heresy paint jobs on your legion.

Either if you're playing Epic with it or using the miniatures as a scenic addition to your Titanicus / Imperialis, they work great with the 6-8mm scale terrain, as you can see here with the Civitas Imperialis and Troublemaker Games ruins.

In addition to the Novan Elites, the range covers Tusculum Novan Regulars. These are the regular grunts of the human armies, available in the different styles of their regiments. You have Novan Desert (Tallarn), Nuclear Wastes (Steel Legion), Siege (Death Korps) and Urban (Cadian Shock Troopers), and if you take a look at the tainted range, even add Renegade Militias. Most recently they added Airborne troops (Elysians), which are a perfect match for the Taros Air War.

What is really great, that the range does not only cover infantry, but a lot of vehicles and equipment as well. For example the Scout Strider, which is available as a Light Walker variant and Airborne variant. It comes with a full-armoured cab and has several weapon options, you can add to the cab. I really like the power lifter option they included, as this expands the use beside a regular unit to a scenic piece as well.

The Scout striders have different leg options and the cabin is added on the waist, with the option to tilt it. You can see the scale fits quite well with the old miniatures. They are a bit larger I think than the old ones, but you have to scale them down and overdraw a bit to keep them castable, I think that still works quite well. If you give them the according paint job I can see them even be used as AT-ST in maybe a Star Wars micro-armour game (as the more recent Sentinels are basically 40k AT-STs).

Beside those, I have a few strips of the Novan Regular Troops, covering Urban Specialists and Urban Troops incl. Command. Once again, these come on strips, with different poses. The command strip covers a banner bearer, a commissar and a few captains / commanders. The regular troops are led by a Sgt. with chainsword, and the several specialists cover rocket launchers with loaders, as well as weapon teams with something that looks like a thudd gun. They capture the design the of the Cadians pretty well.

The Scout Strider with power lifter along with the loading crew makes for a great scene along, for example re-arming aircrafts of the Imperial Navy.

The second batch of Novan regulars was Siege themed, similar to the Urban, I received Siege Infantry and Siege Infantry Specialists. The command of the Siege Infantry is cut in a different style strip, as you get 8 command models, incl. a banner bearer and a couple of captains. Same with the regular Infantry, which is not per 5 on a strip but with 6, even the specialist. The Siege range covers not only regular troops, but engineers and weapon platforms like seismic mortars. Even an Option for Rough Riders, which is pretty well done.

It is amazing to see, how they look in bulk on bases. Really makes me want to build an infantry army with these, as that really brings the "horde" and mass combat feeling along, you expect from micro armour.

And of course, they do a great job next to aircrafts for scenic terrain pieces or to add to the bases of the god-machines.

One of the largest factions within Defeat in Detail are the Cybershadows. Those are especially interesting, as they are stand-in Adeptus Mechanicus, which wasn't available in original Epic and with their broad variety are such a great addition especially for Adeptus Titanicus.

John was very kind with the samples, and covered a very broad collection on this one. There are Command Nodes (Techpriests), Combat Automatons (Kastellan Robots or Thanata Automatons), Precursors (Skitarii Vanguard), Sentinels (Secutarii Hoplites), Protector (Skitarii Rangers), Labour Drones (Servitors), Combat Drones (Servitors), and Vanguard Combat Drones (Kataphron Destroyers).

This feels like the most complete range, and is by Vanguard even covered with an extended range of vehicles and battle engines (Knights and Titans). Casting is again very well done, only a minor miscast on one of the arms (barely noticeable, add a drop of super glue or dab of putty and you're good to go).

Look at the variety of these troops and the amount of detail on them. This really motivates you, to go beyond the Titan skirmishes and dogfights and enter the 6-8mm mass combat.

One example of the vast variety of vehicles is the Skitter Main Battle tank (Onager Dunecrawler). Poseable spider legs, different weapons and a turnable "head". Casting on the larger models is well done again, and even covers the option for an open hatch to add a crew member.

And of course, these make for a great addition to the scenic bases of the large titans. Maybe not as crowded as I went in the mock-up, but you get the idea.

A pre-release teaser provided by Vanguard to me were these strips of Titan Princeps and Enginseers, partially without the bases, so you can add them directly onto the bases, models and such. I highly recommend painting these on the strip and later add them to the models; otherwise you have no proper way of holding them.

And to give you an idea on how to use them, the princeps and titan crews added to the walkways and platforms of the Warlord Titan and Nemesis Warbringer. This small addition just adds so much to these kits. I don't have a price on these yet, but I assume that they won't be expensive, for example the artillery crews are 2,50 GBP for 15 miniatures. I always wondered why GW didn't added small models, or at least a techpriest with two servitors onto the sprue of the larger titans (there was still space for that on the sprue) - but that's a problem of the past.

Of course, the scale comparison must not be missed. As you can see, they are 6-8mm scale, with the regular humans being around 6mm and the Novan Elite at around 8mm. This makes the Novan Elite a bit larger than the original Space Marines of Epic. The terminator is a 3d printed stl file, from when I did as a test run of print services. Look at the amount of detail on pewter casts, quite impressive.

And to put this scale in perspective, a comparison of the Defeat in Detail 6-8mm miniatures next to comparable models in 28mm.

Conclusion
I painted a few Orks from the late 90s Epic 40k starter set, and since then only had a few Rhinos on my hand. But the quality and amount of details covered in these small scale infantry models is impressive. Casting quality is of exalted quality, where the biggest part of the clean-up is to smoothly shave / file the underside of the round bases.

The Novan Elites cover different varieties of troops as well, stand-ins for Terminators, command units and specialists. Even a proper range of vehicles. Similar with the regular Novan range, where you have different style regiments, including supporting units (like Rough Riders or Bikes/Quads) and vast variety of aircrafts and tanks. With 40 miniatures at around 8 GBP (~20 Pence per miniature or about a pound per base - a bit less if you stretch it, a bit more for the specialists, so it evens out) at a very reasonable price. That makes even Imperial Guard armies based upon NetEpic rules quite affordable, around 20 GBP for a Tactical Infantry Company (excl. Rhino/Chimera) of 600 Points.

Where the infantry is due to its scale pretty close to their 28mm counterparts, the design of the tanks is stronger modified to not get into trouble with the IP. Still very interesting sculpts and fitting for the purpose. The overall range is very fair and reasonable priced. Ordering a few sets to improve the scenic bases of your titans or build more interesting mission objectives (terrain is good, but manned strongpoints and such are even more impressive) will set you back maybe 10 or 15 pound and give you enough miniatures to cover even larger projects. But beyond that it makes entering Epic/NetEpic much more affordable and plannable, especially if don't have a stock from back in the day to begin with. And to make it clear, these newer sculpts are much more appealing than the old plastics.

Defeat in Detail is available through Vanguard Miniatures.

The reviewed product item was provided by the manufacturer.