Paint. Play. Repeat!: Strato Minis Studio Sci-Fi 6mm Miniatures Review

Why

Searching for different other sci-fi producers of 6mm miniatures I have arrived on the website of Strato Minis Studio. At the time when I discovered them, they already had a pretty complex range. It developed even more, coming to include watercraft miniatures, aircraft miniatures, infantry, other special miniatures and of course land miniatures. As it developed I started to be more impressed and I started to collect these miniatures, that were filling what other companies did not produced or what it produced with a very good design. As an important advantage to consider, Strato Minis Studio was based in Poland, which made acquiring products from EU definitely more cheap and faster than from United Kingdom, ”the country of 6mm miniatures”.

How

Almost all of the miniatures are from resin. They can be cleaned and glued fast and then painted easily. The website of the Strato Minis Studio has many photos of the miniatures, even painted examples, and this helped a lot in the process of identifying the miniatures and identifying a way to paint the miniatures in an original (not necessarily better than the examples from the site of the producer). In general, the miniatures were painted with Vallejo paints. I have used mainly 3 types of paint schemes: metallic, jungle and desert.

Results

I have not got the chance to buy all Strato Minis Studio miniatures (for example nothing from buildings range of miniatures, which truly it is a pity), but collecting an important part of them, from different ranges, helped me in constructing an idea about the miniatures from Strato Minis Studio. More than a hundred of miniatures were painted.

Review

The miniatures produced by Strato Minis Studio can be categorized in aircraft, infantry, land vehicles, battlemec.. sorry:) .. hardbots, watercraft and accessories. I was and still I am impressed by the design of miniatures and by this variety (the types and subtypes of miniatures). Let us take the examples of land vehicles. If we look at how they can move we can see that we have many options: wheeled, tracked, hover and grav. On the topic of their functionality, we have civilian and military miniatures. On the civilian side of miniatures, not that often encountered in the offer of a manufacturer of sci-fi miniatures we have civilian cars (many variants) and construction unit vehicles and different containers. If we are only interested in military units, then we will not be disappointed: we can collect fighting vehicles, troops transporting vehicles or support vehicles, simple or complex vehicle, with electronic warfare, command and recon capabilities, self-propelled guns, artillery, missile and rocket launchers, anti-aircraft, machine guns, guns, laser guns, plasma guns, sonic, engineer and other support vehicles vehicles (a subtype of vehicles that again will prove complex). From the point of view of armor we can choose from vehicles with no armor or with light, medium or heavy armor vehicles.

Apart from many well made designs, we also have many impressive miniatures. There are so many examples, like Zel-1 Tow Tractor with its imposing tow, Abaddon Mobile Artillery with its 8-wheels (disposed 4 in front, 4 in the rear), Brutus Heavy Tank with 3 guns and so on. The aircraft miniatures are again of different types and well designed, inspired from many sci-fi worlds (for example, R41 Aircrane is a Carry-All for me, from Dune). Again, there are not too many miniatures for sci-fi to be used on water in 6mm and Strato Minis Studio fills this gap and has plenty of good examples, from the little Licaon to the big and menacing Dagon AAT, from transport to war capable craft. Hardbot range of miniatures, influenced by BattleTech, but also by other producers of miniatures offered many good miniatures and for some, the possibility to modify them as pleased, adapted for different battlefields, and also resulting in unique combinations of capabilities (for example melee and ranged weapons). Because I have mentioned BattleTech miniatures, we have to write something that is true for all the miniatures from Strato Minis Studio, that although they are marked as 1:285/6mm, in fact they are even bigger, depending from miniature to miniature and taking into consideration that is hard to know precise for 6mm sci-fi which of them are out of scale and which are not, maybe only by comparing to historical miniatures. I had the chance of having only two hardbots, Arachne and Atrax, because 4-legs hardbots/'Mechs are not that common. The accessories range will help the hobbyist obtaining trully unique miniatures. With some work, the miniatures can be improved even more. If we take the example of aircars (6 types, already screaming: ”Star Wars”!), adding a base and a pole to represent the flying posture, and to be sincere, they can look even better with more care and work done than I did with Aircars. The website of Strato Minis Studio was also a platform for many so called ”independent” miniatures, meaning miniatures developed by different designers, not organized in a company (Ottoman and others). Other manufacturers may have more miniatures, but Strato Minis Studio had the most well-rounded range of 6mm miniatures. For all of these, I think Strato Minis Studio have done a great job with their miniatures. This all came at a price: first, quite a high price per miniature, and then a final price, which will be presented in the next paragraph.

At the time of working at this review of miniatures, the website of Strato Minis Studio was on hold: no more orders could be made on the webshop and basically the shop was closed. Now finishing this review, a big announcement was made: the whole ranges of Strato Minis Studio (miniatures and games - like Hardwar) were bought by a big company (a story of success in itself, starting small, and constructing good games one after another and also having an eye for original and well games): Modiphius Entertainment (especially known for their RPGs, but they also are producers of miniatures, miniature wargames, boardgames and accessories). The story of Strato Minis Studio (whose site does not work anymore, now it returns only the site of Modiphius) continues and the future really looks interesting for these miniatures and wargames alike.

Click on the links to access the galleries of the ranges of miniatures, totalling 100+ miniatures and thousands of corresponding images.