Spanish miniature maker Corvus Belli is 25 years old this year, and as part of the celebrations it's bringing some of the coolest out of production miniatures from the wargame Infinity back into stock - the Caledonian Highlanders, descendents of early space pioneers who took the culture of their native Scotland into the stars. Three boxes of OOP Caledonian miniatures are currently available to order on the Corvus Belli webstore - but you only have until 3pm PDT / 6pm EDT / 11pm BST on April 27 to get them!
The Caledonians are fully supported with game rules for the current version of Infinity, so these minis are a totally viable tabletop force, not just a nostalgia trip. There are three packs available, two large sets of infantry, plus one with a pair of named mercenary characters; buying all three together lands you a nice discount.
The Caledonians are a really distinctive force, taking on the drones, hackers, and camo-cloaks of their foes with reliable low-tech weaponry, Scottish determination, and wolfmen. Wait, what was that about wolfmen?!
Let's get into the lore. The Caledonians are citizens of Ariadna on the planet Dawn, and they're the descendants of the very first human space colonization mission. The settlement ship was a joint project between the power blocs that dominated the earth in the 20th and early 21st Century: America, Russia, and the European Union. But a disaster in wormhole transit left them cut-off from the rest of mankind - and from the back-up ship with much of their equipment - forcing them to settle an unforgiving alien world without help. That's where the wolfmen come in.
Dawn was already inhabited by the Antipodes, a hostile alien species with extremely fluid morphology capable of inserting its DNA into other hosts via a bite. The settlers of Dawn soon learned that this could affect the development of human embryos, resulting in people being born as shape-shifting 'Dog-faces' - sci-fi werewolves.
The Caledonian army has a dedicated regiment of Dog Soldiers, the Cameronians, who act as berserk, fast-moving shock troops - Scottish sci-fi werewolves. It also employs an elite unit of 'Wulvers', the children of Dog-face and human parents, special forces troops with devastating close-combat capability.
Ariadna developed for well over a century before it was rediscovered by the rest of humanity. It was still an untamed frontier world, with civilization only barely clinging to its surface, and the other, highly advanced civilizations of the Human Sphere thought it would be easy for them to exploit the resources of the planet - particularly the incredibly strong and lightweight metal known as Teseum. What they hadn't reckoned on, though, was being met by army of raging Scotsmen with weapons and armor made from that same incredibly strong and lightweight metal.
Teseum (or T2) weapons and armor are a characteristic of Ariadnan armies. Whereas most Heavy Infantry units in Infinity are equipped with high tech power armor, the Caledonian Mormaers simply walk around wearing huge slabs of Teseum, and compensate for advanced life support systems with pure bloody-minded grit.
Cateran snipers make use of devastating T2 ammunition, using good-old fashioned camouflage and sniping nests to get the drop on better equipped enemies. Even the regular assault rifles used by the veteran Highlander Greys come loaded with T2 ammo capable of boring a hole straight through a plate of power armor.
Every Ariadnan sectorial army uses some mixture of low-tech, high-skill strategy, relying on courage and guerrilla tactics to make up for technological shortcomings. The Caledonians might be the bravest and most stubborn of the bunch. Almost all of their unique units bring some melee skill (or a lot of melee skill) - the 45th Highlander Rifles might sound like basic line infantry, but they're close-combat berserkers who can take a lethal gunshot wound and keep on fighting (at least until you finish activating them for the round).
Sectorial armies aren't like subfactions in other wargames, since they're not just a "subset" of the units in the main faction, but more like an overlapping theme list. Every Caledonian unit is available in the Caledonian sectorial army, while only some of them are available for the main Ariadnan list. But one of those - which happens to be a model that's still in main production - who we have to mention is William Wallace. Yes, that William Wallace.
When it became apparent to the major powers of the Human Sphere that they couldn't simply take Ariadna by force, they began to experiment with other methods. One such project, facilitated by the powerful AI Aleph, involved creating a cloned super-human with a simulated personality based on the historical account of William Wallace. Wallace was inserted onto Dawn with an imprinted mission to support the nascent Caledonian independence movement and shatter the unity of Ariadna.
It didn't quite go to plan, and between his insertion vessel crashing and a little light neurosurgery, Wallace was deprogrammed. Now he's the foremost fighter leading the war for Ariadnan independence against the rest of the Human Sphere.
You can get Wallace in the main Ariadna Action pack, which isn't going away any time soon. But if you want to re-enact Braveheart with a full army of space Scotsmen (and Scottish space werewolves) at his back, your best bet is to pick up the Caledonian reprint packs from the Corvus Belli webstore while you have the chance. There's no word from Corvus Belli of the models in this sectorial being resculpted and reissued, and with 40 factions and sectorials in full production, you could be waiting for a very long time before they're available again.