The Woolshed Wargamer

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Eureka Miniatures Visit – Melbourne, Australia

This November my wife and I took a trip to Melbourne for my birthday. For the record, the Melbourne CBD is one of the nicest big city town centres I have seen. So many wonderful restaurants and other eateries. If you go there, make sure you get a beer and a plate of wings from…

briansmaller
3–4 minutes
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This November my wife and I took a trip to Melbourne for my birthday. For the record, the Melbourne CBD is one of the nicest big city town centres I have seen. So many wonderful restaurants and other eateries. If you go there, make sure you get a beer and a plate of wings from the Young and Jackson Hotel opposite Flinders St Station. You can meet the famous Chloe there.

We met up with one of our friends and his lovely wife and after dinner spent an evening at the Old Melbourne Seaman’s Mission having a few drinks and singing Sea Shanties.

Anyway……I had looked up Eureka Miniatures on Google and apparently they were open on Fridays and Saturdays. This was excellent as it fit with my stay in Melbourne perfectly. I had ordered various things from Eureka for years so going to the actual store was a nice way to spend the morning whilst Mrs Woolshedwargamer was out spending the kid’s inheritance. So, together with my Shanty singing friend we headed to their location on the Friday. We couldn’t find the place – not sure what we were expecting but I thought there was a store – I mean they are open Friday and Saturday according to Mr Google. We found ourselves walking up and down a section of road that did not seem to have anything resembling a store on it – just light industrial enterprises and some empty shop fronts. Eventually we found a door with a very small sticker on it. OK, I thought, Eureka are keeping a pretty low profile as far as advertising their presence goes.

Now we find out that Eureka no longer has a shop, just a factory and Nick was wondering what these two miscreants were doing coming through the door they had not locked. Apparently Google is somewhat late in changing the information about Eureka and although it has their new factory’s address it retained the old opening hours information from their old store that they moved from earlier in the year. Well instead of telling us “we’re closed” he invited us in and we got the Grand Tour. What a top bloke. The Eureka crew were preparing for a convention stand the next day and were pretty busy but they made time for the tourists.

Woolshedwargamer and Nick

Nick discovered my love of Michael Morecock and he showed me an as-yet unreleased line of 15mm Jewel in the Skull inspired miniatures. They look great – I mean who doesn’t like legions of 15mm beast-masked warriors marching across the table? I was also shown some 28mm versions from another range/commission that sadly does not seem to be on the web-site. We had a great conversation about Morecock’s work and how it influenced later IPs like Warhammer 40K. Undying God-Emperor anyone? We were shown a bunch of other miniatures as well. We even got to partake in Nick’s quiz about a certain lad from Greystoke. I did not win the mini. He was also able to tell us of some wargamers in the small rural Victorian town my mate lives in so he has a contact to get back into gaming if he so wishes.

Now my entire purpose of visiting Eureka was to get a few of the Revolutionary Wars Vignettes that they produce. Specifically, a French Field Kitchen and a Cantiniere with Supply Wagon. When he heard this trip to Australia was a birthday trip Nick gave them to me as a belated present. That was not all – a spare cantiniere and a 28mm Baroness Flana in her Heron Mask from the 28mm Runestaff line. What a top bloke.

Now – this convention Nick was packing up for……

10 responses to “Eureka Miniatures Visit – Melbourne, Australia”

  1. plutarch64 Avatar
    plutarch64

    I go to Melbourne a few times each year for business and one of the guys I catch up with has an office just around the corner from Eureka’s old premises. If I was early I would often stroll past, but as it is usually a Monday or Tuesday it was always closed. I did see Nick coming out one day with an armful of boxes but he looked like he was in a hurry so I kept going. They really are a great company to deal with.

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    1. Nic Robson Avatar
      Nic Robson

      you should call us and make an appointment.

      Nic Eureka Miniatures

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      1. briansmaller Avatar
        briansmaller

        Thanks so much for commenting. It was wonderful to meet you at the factory and the next day at the convention.

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      2. Nic Robson Avatar
        Nic Robson

        Dear Brian,

        That was a lovely write up, thank you very much

        I hope we see you again sometime soon

        Nic

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  2. Thomas B Avatar
    Thomas B

    Canadian here. For a fair while in the latter part of the 1990s, I was enamoured of the Stargrunt II and Dirtside II (Ground Zero Games, UK – rule now free) for respectively sci-fi platoon level and sci-fi company or battalion level. The games were less ’40K’ than ‘Jerry Pournelle’s Codominium sci-fi’ or ‘Drake’s Hammer’s Slammers’ or Rick Shelly or Mike Shephard’s military sci-fi.

    The setting was interesting (scarily parts of that timeline were possibilities in the world of today) with humans scattered from Earth to inner and outer colonies (and some smaller outposts beyond) and eventually we meet several threatening enemy forces.

    Anyway, in the setting, there is a reunified Germany (and yes, it happened!), France, Africa as a whole, Japan, Swiss, United Nations, Scandinavian Federation, the New Anglian Confederation (which, after the US – Russia nuclear war, became the big dog) which included all of North America (which was hilarious because I once had a unit in a convention that was The King’s Own Memphis Rifle… after Elvis) & the UK plus colonial holdings, League of Latin Republics (South America), Israelis, a few different Middle East factions.

    What wasn’t really covered was minis for Aus/NZ. Guess who made them – 25mm troops and a few resin support vehicles? Eureka & Nick. He provided the product for the Oceanic Defense Force Union (check out our old site ‘stargrunt.ca’ and you’ll find some OUDF stuff and the system and setting). The OUDF had a number of Papua New Guinea figures as well as what you’d expect in standard infantry – snipers, light support, regular troopers, etc.

    At that point, Nick had a ‘100 club’ – which is if you could get 100 of a figure, he’d get a sculptor and get it made. We talked to him about building a special unit for the NAC (New Anglian Confederation) – Ghurkhas! I think there were 8 poses.

    Nick was (and I am quite sure is) always great to buy stuff and to talk to from the other side of the planet. I also liked the fact that the our Canadian currency and the Australian/New Zealand currency was about par… unlike what either of us could say to US prices.

    First rate business and owner! I’d hope the move to 15mms has been good for Nick and that he’s still finding good sales.

    https://stargrunt.ca/gallery_modeling/sg2_gal_fsepa/sg2_gal_oudf_1.htm

    (there’s a gallery that you can move through for OUDF figures… Look for ‘next picture’)

    https://stargrunt.ca/gallery_modeling/sg2_gal_gurkhas/sg2_gal_gurkhas_5.htm

    That shows you some of my the Ghurkas.

    Me and another few folks had made some conversions for the minis for use for platoon to battalion level conflicts in the Traveller universe (obviously no later than about TL-8 to TL-12, though I did get a bunch of Ventuarians in full armour (Zhodani) and GZG’s ‘United Nations Security Council’ Hard Suits (Strephon’s Imperial Marines) .

    GZG (Ground Zero Games) in the UK also do a lot of 15mm sci-fi vehicles and soldiers if you want to check them out. https://shop.groundzerogames.co.uk/

    http://stargrunt.ca if you want to poke around. If you want a free set of sci-fi rules, try out https://downloads.groundzerogames.co.uk/sgii.pdf

    Thanks for the post on your trips, Brian.

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    1. briansmaller Avatar
      briansmaller

      What a wonderful “comment”. Longer than my post 🙂 I also enjoyed Stargrunt and Dirtside II. I used Dirtside II for Mech combat – it worked much better than Battletech – and the scaling worked well as well. Nic is awesome!

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      1. Thomas B Avatar
        Thomas B

        Ground Zero Games East Coast Convention was XXVI this last April/May. I was there at the first and many of the first 14 or so.

        At GZG ECC III, I ran a triple slot game that turned 14 hour battle… I did have help with Carlos, Bob and Kurt, though Kurt helped a fair bit.

        The table was 8′ wide at the bottom, 2′ at the end of the valley, and 19.5′ long.

        https://gzgecc.com/gzgecc3/gallery/S3_GreyDay05.jpg

        https://gzgecc.com/gzgecc3/gallery/S3_GreyDay06.jpg

        https://gzgecc.com/gzgecc3/gallery/S3_GreyDay07.jpg

        This was before the meeting of the humans and the Kra’Vak. It involved a fight between the French (FSL) and the Germans (NSL) which was quickly put aside when a hostile unknown species arrives and killed anything in orbit. Then they came down and went after the humans. Legionaires and Panzergrenadiers fought together in a battle they were never going win.

        It was, in a sense, a retelling of the French Legion d’

        https://gzgecc.com/gzgecc3/gallery/S5_GreyDay01.jpg

        The Kra’vak push and the humans are desperately fighting to hold in the last redoubt. (Sunday morning…)

        The end saw the FSE and NSL hold at the final line…. but it didn’t matter, because when you control orbit, even if you don’t win, you can still be blown off the planet…. (that was always going to be true no matter which side carried the battle – the Kra’Vak wanted to task the humans to see how they fought….)

        Tom

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      2. briansmaller Avatar
        briansmaller

        What an epic game!

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      3. Thomas B Avatar
        Thomas B

        Another year, we ran a Command Simulator at GZG ECC.

        The setting had we had two tables (8 x 6) and a bridge between. There were two groups of players with differing concerns plus an off board (in a different room) commander.

        It had an urban situation. One group had to identify a target, intercept, capture and rendition the target. The other group was unexpected and their issue was they were looking to find a missing nuclear weapon (I think at the beginning, they only knew it was an arms smuggling ring).

        There was 4 of us running it – one for each table and two others doing trips to the command center (other room). We did an pre-game briefing complete with some neat ‘NVG imaging’ of the target vehicle and we briefed using the US Warning Orders that indicate the mission, the units involved, known and suspected hostiles or 3rd parties, weather, radio channels, chain of command, artillery and other supports, reinforcements available, entry and exit routes, lie up points, evac routes, etc.

        We had Teamspeak up in the main room and the player running the show was in the other room with a computer. We digital cameras and we’d take ‘drone footage’ and send it back to the commander off board. He had control of supports and reinforcements.

        The two boards were pretty different; The side that had the ‘snatch the bad guy’ side seemed to managed their mission as well as any friction points we through against them. (The team leader there was Jerry Pournelle’s son, Phil Pournelle, USN Commander at the time – he knew how to sift info and what to tell his subordinates and what to tell the commander off board).

        The troops looking for the arms cache got a rollicking fight and then they found out there was a nuke in play, they got UNSC hardsuits straight from orbit to try to prevent a nuclear detonation.

        The off commander found the operation was well understood and managed in the early parts, but as friction built up (and GMs love that), the units on the ground were sending reports but most of them didn’t really know how to send one or what not to, so confusion began to set in (a la Blackhawk Down).

        On the side doing the snatch, their team leader didn’t bother to tell his team about the hot nuke. His thinking was ‘We can’t change it, telling them will simply muddy their thinking and we have a job to get done.’. They didn’t even know there was a nuclear threat until the after session debrief.

        In the end, the bad guy was snatched, the arms dealers lost some folks as they fled, the terrorists that got the arms were smashed in a very close run situation – I think the UNSC hard suits were maybe one or two actions away from oblivion when they disabled the nuke. So that was a win as well.

        The main purpose was to let someone experience the challenges of command from a distance, for the people on the board, to focus on a mission even if other units are moving nearby, and that you don’t get all the info from higher ups. We also wanted to show the friction that happens from plan to actual execution.

        This was partially inspired by a game I played in Royal Military College, Kingston, Ontario, Canada during their wargaming con ‘Red Con’. They had two GMs and it was set at in the Balkans and one side was the government and the others (supposed to be one, but they weren’t well coordinated) rebels about to try a coup. The GMs each had headset mikes and talked to each other. My team was on the government side and I managed to stop the group of rebels that tried to take an arms cache (but it was a rough fight). It gave me the notion of how you could run a multi-GM game with the right tech where unknown forces and goals were in play.

        There was another bunch that did something similar based on the moment when an Imperial Fleet discovers the Assassination of Strephon in 1116. There were 3 tables of players, a status board, multiple GMs, and they’d set it up that each table had an Azanti High Lightning frontier cruiser in a force that included a 500K Tigress Dreadnaught, a fleet carrier, and a bunch of light cruisers and destroyers (all NPCs). Of the 3 tables (each an AHL crew), the captains had differing sides (A Lucanite, a Loyalist, and a Neutral) and that went through the other officers (the players) and all departments of the ships. In this case, the starting incident had the courier message being played from the Dreadnaught and the fleet carrier gave it an alpha strike and the badly hurt Tigress turned around and gutting the fleet carrier (removing all higher command) so then ships were on their own to determine what they do. And not only did a table/ship have to manage tasks (Captain and bridge officers and the ship’s fighter wing commander and the marine commander and their roles to deal with other ships, but also deal with struggles within the ship).

        I really loved those great memories. Nowadays, my friends are scattered, the world is more concerning, and some are old and some are gone.

        Nice to get to share a few of the great experiences.

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      4. briansmaller Avatar
        briansmaller

        I know what that is like. Should have started a tontine with my old gaming mates – I would be in the quarterfinals now I think.

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