Badger Games? Drantakhs?

[Rhoderic]

Does anyone have experience with Badger Games? They seem to be a new-ish manufacturer and if I’m not mistaken, they now have the moulds/masters and rights for the excellent 28mm Drantakh aliens (sculpted by Bob Olley over a decade ago, originally for the now-defunct Regiment Games). They also seem to have some stuff from other companies that have become defunct, such as Obelisk Miniatures (the German company that made some interesting Darkest Africa fantasy figures).

I’m very, very interested in getting hold of some Drantakhs (even though I only want a very small number of them for small-scope Traveller-esque skirmish gaming) and I had been despairing for the past couple of years that they were OOP for good.

However, Badger Games don’t seem to have a website, just a Facebook page which is far from ideal. Their latest update is from August 2017 saying they were meaning to launch their webstore in mere weeks. Obviously that hasn’t materialised in the projected timeframe.

So, does anyone happen to know if they’re actually trading? And if the Drantakhs are available from them now already?

[Gone Fishing]

Hi Rhoderic,

I just placed an order from them a few weeks ago and was very pleased with their service. The fellow who helped me, Ben, couldn’t have been nicer, replying to several questions in a timely manner, and my order arrived well packaged in a matter of days. Payment was through PayPal. I understand your frustration with the lack of website – he told me they have it all finished and are ready to have it running – and this several weeks ago. *Shrugs* At any rate, I think you can order with confidence.

Contact [email protected]

By the way, my order in some ways reflects yours: I had been mourning the loss of the truly excellent Obelisk Great Apes for several years, thinking they were gone for good, and then came across Badger Games. Very, very pleased.

[Rhoderic]

Thanks, I honestly didn’t expect such a quick and positive reply!

I may hold off on ordering until after the holidays but I was impatient to bring up the topic of Badger Games out of my sheer fixation with Drantakhs right now. They’re absolutely perfect for my quasi-retro “70s-80s sci-fi book cover artwork” vision of a Traveller-style universe.

I remember the Obelisk apes now. This may turn out to be a costly order… I’d already been thinking about getting the hyenas (which I remember coveting while Obelisk was still in business) while I was at it, assuming they’ve made it into the Badger Games range. And now the apes too. What else have they stashed that I can’t resist?

Three cheers for companies that revive OOP ranges!

[Gone Fishing]

Yes, I think I heard the whole Obelisk African range is over at Badger now. So a fourth cheer for such companies!

(If you end out getting the apes, be warned they don’t come with the bases – not exactly earth-shaking, but worth knowing). I’ve been following your Traveller thread with interest; do have a photo of the Drantakh figures you’re looking for? Just curious!

[Rhoderic]

Gone Fishing wrote:

I’ve been following your Traveller thread with interest; do have a photo of the Drantakh figures you’re looking for? Just curious!

http://www.collecting-miniatures.com/olley/index.php/Regiment_Games

http://www.displacedminiatures.com/chambersofminiatures/gallery/1982/

They’re not Traveller canon or anything like that – they just look to me like they would be right at home in a universe of that general aesthetic.

I like the way they’re characterful but still “clean”, harking back to a time not all too many decades ago when sci-fi was a bit more wide-eyed, though it had well outgrown the “Robbie the Robot” phase. I’m far too young to have been around when Traveller and the stories it drew upon were new and fresh, but still, I grew up around that classic imagery of 60s-90s sci-fi book covers (me da’ was an avid science fiction fan, the old-school kind that rejected the word “sci-fi”) and I also recall some of that aesthetic still lingering in certain 90s computer games (Master of Orion and the like). I want to do a sci-fi project that pays homage to all that.

[Rhoderic]

By the way, they even seem to have expanded the Drantakh range with new sculpts, including support weapons and a very snazzy hovertank. Encounters of a scope large enough to feature tanks are a bad fit for me in 28mm, but I might maybe, just maybe, buy into this.

[Gone Fishing]

Exciting news. I meant to say it yesterday but got distracted – those Drantakh are great looking figures! Keep us posted on what you decide.

[Rhoderic]

For anyone who’s interested, Badger Games have a webstore up and running now.

http://www.badgergames.com/

The Drantakhs are under “Regiment Games”. I don’t think they have the whole range up yet, but I could be wrong. I seem to recall there having been more heavily armoured troopers as well.

They’re somewhat costly, especially accounting for their international shipping rates, but I’ll probably take the hit once I’ve recovered from the usual November-December shopping spree.

[cmnash]

Thanks for sharing that Rhoderic. If their international P&P wasn’t so expensive, I might have got some …

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