We hope you've all had a good Christmas and New Year and that you're starting to prep your new projects for 2019! We've got a lot planned ourselves, so let's run through what's on the cards for the next 12 months...
Blitzkrieg Commander IV
BKC-IV is almost ready now, we're currently making a few tweaks to the army lists and then the pdf will be getting sent out to a wider group for final feedback. Once we get that back, we'll finalise the file and get it over to the printers. We've missed too many deadlines with this so we're not going to put another date on it at this point, but we are getting there.
Kickstarters
Whilst the feedback group are looking over BKC, we'll be making a whole load of moulds for both the 1809 Not-Kickstarter and our 28mm 'Bad Guys' Kickstarter as well. These two projects are due to be posted out in February and January respectively, so these will be prioritised to make sure that everyone gets their figures on schedule. With the success of both of these projects, we'll be looking at this same method for some other ranges later in the year.
Revamped Samurai range!
The mystery project has now been unveiled! With our purchase of the Castle Arts 10mm Japanese buildings, we're going to completely revamp our Samurai range to go with them. This will currently be a like-for-like replacement of the current codes, but with better sculpts and more pose variety. We'll have more info as we progress with this.
TB Line
In amongst the above we'll be continuing to bring the TB Line ranges back online. The work needed to get the figures prepped and ready for new production moulds has been more than anticipated so things haven't progressed as quickly as we'd have liked. We've got the Islamics and Teutonics to do next and they should both be done before Salute in April.
New Ranges
As well as the Kickstarter projects mentioned above, we've also got some ranges which have been sculpted and are just waiting to work their way through the moulding process. These include:
- Indian Mutiny will be first up with a comprehensive set of codes covering everything needed for this conflict. These should be done by March/April time hopefully.
- Next we'll be getting the Dacian and Sarmatian revamp moulded and released, which needs to be done before we can get started on the Greek and Persian moulds.
- There's quite a few odds and ends knocking about Pendraken HQ which we'll be slotting in wherever there's a gap, including WSS revamps, pirates, Vietnam additions, Nap French cavalry and Guard types, WWI narrow gauge railway plus a rather nice V1 launch ramp!
Sculpting
While the above is being released there'll be a steady stream of new sculpts arriving as well. We've worked through all of the sculptors and put together a rough plan of what they'll be doing, which can be seen here: http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,18123.0.html To summarise what's being done:
- Ancient Greeks, Persians and Indians, followed by some Fantasy Monsters and then Arab-Israeli.
- 1809 expansion, mystery project, Crimean War.
- Korean War artillery, then Italian artillery for WWII.
- Saracen and Saladin, followed by main MBT's and trucks.
Minibits
On the Minibits side of things, we'll be completing our 28mm Kickstarter campaign first and getting that sent out to all of our backers. We might run another Kickstarter in the summer, but we don't have any definite plans on that just yet. With that done we'll then have some more MDF buildings from RedVectors, so we'll be working on those next.
We've also got some new third-party product ranges which we'll be starting to stock through this year, so keep an eye out for more news on that in the coming weeks.
Website Photos
With the extra casting staff up to speed now, we'll be putting a lot of time and effort into the website photo situation. We've tallied up and there's a little over 1500 products still missing images, so we'll have the casting guys getting all of those missing items cast up and then I can start photo'ing once the BKC/Kickstarter/Indian Mutiny jobs have been ticked off.
Painting Competition
With the previous Pendraken Painting Competition taking place only 6 months ago, we've decided that rather than run it through February as planned, we'll leave it until February 2020 instead. With all of the work to be done on BKC and the Kickstarters, it's not really an ideal time of year to be running a large event, so we'll delay it a little and give everyone 18 months to build up some entries. This means that we'll be able to get a bigger pile of prizes as well, which is always a good thing!
I think that's about it, let me know if there's any queries and I'll do my best to answer them!
8)
Someone's going to be busy but...
...still no bears :( ;)
(are bears the new Centurions?)
The mystery project has piqued my interest!
Any chance of a Polish armoured train for WW2 :)
If it was you would almost make me as happy as when I left my ex wife! :d
You guys have another busy year ahead of you #:-S
Thanks for the openness and best of luck with all the various projects
Good call on the Painting Competition
Wishing you every success with your future projects, Leon.
Keep up the good work!
Look forward to the year ahead!
Quote from: andys on 03 January 2019, 08:58:13 PM
...still no bears :( ;)
(are bears the new Centurions?)
Hope not, still want bears though !!!!
I wonder how they escaped from the Pendraken zoo. Could they be hiding in the Eastham Bear Pits?
Hi guys
WSS revamps...... What are you revamping?
Quote from: jaztez on 17 January 2019, 01:16:35 PM
WSS revamps...... What are you revamping?
Command, artillery crew and cuirassiers: http://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,17936.0.html
OK thanks for pointing me to those, I missed that.
Good news, I'm now about to start a Marlburian project and those command look much better.
I'm hoping to squeeze these in between the 1809 Naps moulds so they shouldn't be far away now.
Just to clarify Leon, you mean in between nappy releases, or at the end? Just wondering if I should hang on, or send my painting order of without waiting for the commands to be released.
Quote from: Leon on 17 January 2019, 04:36:35 PM
I'm hoping to squeeze these in between the 1809 Naps moulds so they shouldn't be far away now.
Quote from: jaztez on 29 January 2019, 11:38:56 PM
Just to clarify Leon, you mean in between nappy releases, or at the end? Just wondering if I should hang on, or send my painting order of without waiting for the commands to be released.
We're putting the sculpts into the Nap master moulds wherever there's space, so we should be able to get the moulded for release alongside the Naps. We'll be sending out all of the 1809 backer orders first, so the Marlburians could be released while we're doing that. It's likely to be the end of Feb at the moment.
A quick question: will the Mutiny-stuff be avalable at Salute? A delegation from our club is going and bringing back all sorts of (pre-ordered) goodies...
Quote from: Cavillarius on 16 March 2019, 12:41:52 AM
A quick question: will the Mutiny-stuff be avalable at Salute? A delegation from our club is going and bringing back all sorts of (pre-ordered) goodies...
Afraid not, the work on BKC-IV / 28mm Kickstarter / 10mm Not-Kickstarter has swallowed up most of the year so far so we'll be getting the Mutiny ranges sorted out as soon as we're back from Salute, with an estimated release in early May hopefully.