ALL ALONE IN THE NIGHT

◗ brigademodels.co.uk

◗ £15

When it comes to space scenery, it’s hard to get some fun on to a plain, black table top. Mostly, one is limited to asteroids (see my article a few years ago in this very magazine on making them cheaply – and robustly – from household sponge) and another is planets, which usually means breaking out the ping-pong balls and an airbrush... However, the obvious item for ‘buildings’ in space is... a space station. Depending on period and scale, these can either be a series of tin cans/ rocket components held together like the International Space Station (or one of its smaller predecessors) or something grand and rotational from the likes of von Braun (via Kubrick). However, the third kind is an ‘O’Neill’ style rotating cylinder and the best screen-example was, for me at least, the eponymous Babylon 5 station from the groundbreaking TV series. I have a plastic kit of one of those for a (postulated) future game but its a foot long (and hard/expensive to find) so what about something more achievable?

Brigade Models have a new space terrain item to fulfil just that wish. The Argos space station is a solid resin piece 100mm long with added components. It has a cylindrical main hull with four metal solar panels, two either side. The station is not obviously armed though

Brigade make lots of gun bits and bobs you could add, should you need to. It’s not quite Babylon 5 but – as that was fifth in line – it might do service as a Babylon 1, 2 or 3. It would also make a great objective for a game of Full Thrust or Starmada, or as a installation in A Billion Suns.