2022 was another strange year, with Covid mainly in the rear-view mirror as far as restrictions but with the virus still hanging around and affecting show attendances. In general though we had a very productive year with a lot of ticks for our 2022 plans, so let's see what got done and where we missed our targets:
Peninsular Napoleonics - TICK!
With all of the pledges completed and sent out, and the ranges put out for general sale, this one is a big tick. The ranges have proved to be extremely popular as well, plus the new buildings look great and have been very well received. After the delays in getting the sculpts done and ready I'm still a little reluctant to run another 'not-KS' project but we'll have a think.
Cold War Commander II - TICK!
Another big tick here with the new Cold War rules released at Partizan in May and over 1000 copies sold now. The feedback so far has been very positive and there's a lot of new players that have joined the existing player base. The response to these rules surprised me a little as they've outsold the Blitzkrieg Commander set over a similar period, which I wasn't expecting at all, given that WWII is such a dominant gaming period.
New Releases - TICK!
2022 was our busiest year ever in terms of releases and all 324 of them can be found here: https://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,22184.0.html We've got equally ambitious plans for this year too so keep an eye out for those...!
Arab-Isaeli - TICK!
These and our Cold War ranges were the next big expansions for last year and have proved to be good sellers. With our new vehicle sculptor on board now we can really crack on with a lot of releases for the post-WWII era.
Sci-Fi Expansion! - MISS!
This project stalled purely due to finances sadly as putting the new roof on the building put a rather large £14k hole in our bank account. We've just about managed to get over that now so we'll be able to get moving on these this year. We'll have some previews for everyone soon as well...
More Fantasy - MISS!
We missed this one entirely, just down to all of the other releases needing to get done first really. We'll pick them up again this year and try to get something sorted for the summer.
TB Line - MISS!
Again with all of the other releases we were working on I just didn't get the necessary time to clean up the next batch of TB Line ranges. It's one of those annoying jobs that you know will take days to do so it's hard to work up the motivation at times!
Korean War Supplement - NEITHER!
This was shelved already so not really a hit or miss for our list. It's in progress now and we'll have more news soon.
New Army Builder Software - MISS!
Development on this has taken longer than planned but the software is just about there now. We'll be looking to run some testing very soon and then we can get it polished up ready for launch.
Dungeon World - MISS!
We got quite close in some regards with all of the master castings done ready for new production moulds. We've also had some new Dungeon modules designed digitally so we need to get those into resin moulds too. So this'll be a 2023 release now.
Red Vectors - MISS!
We got a few new Red Vectors products released but not enough for this to be considered anything other than a Miss. We had a slight issue in that some of the original files got corrupted somewhere so we're currently in the process of recovering those. Once that's done we should see a lot of new MDF stuff coming this year.
Moving on to other areas:
Pendraken Shop and Games Room! - TICK!
One of our biggest ever Ticks is that the shop was opened as planned and has been a great addition to our business in so many ways. Being able to host events and games in the Games Room as well is such a benefit going forward and opens up a lot of options for us. Shop sales have ticked over nicely but it'll take time to build those and get folks used to us being here.
Painting Competition 2022! - TICK!
The Painting Competition brought out the usual high quality entries and is one of the highlights of the year for me. I hope everyone enjoyed it and we'll be back with the 2023 edition next month.
Website Photos - TICK!
Even though this one is a Tick, I'm a little frustrated that we didn't get the last of the website photos done in 2022. I had a big batch ready to do over Christmas but then I managed to catch Covid and I lost about two weeks of work time. We did get from 396 missing photos down to 192 though, so that's progress. I'll be on with them very soon but I need to get caught up on some of the other stuff first.
Pendraken 30th Birthday! - TICK!
This was another highlight of the year as 60-70 gamers descended on Pendraken HQ to help us celebrate our 30th year. Everyone had a great time and there's a full report available here: https://www.pendrakenforum.co.uk/index.php/topic,21858.0.html It's tempting to do this every year...
So at the end of that we had 8 Ticks, 6 Misses and 1 Neither so overall pretty good with room for improvement I think! A lot of the ticks last year were quite considerable in size (Peninsular Naps, Shop, Games Room) so they took up a huge amount of time and resources and squeezed out some of the other plans a bit. This coming year we don't have as many of those major projects so we should find it a little easier to get through the plans. There'll be a lot more variety this coming year as well I think, with releases for Naps, 19th C, WWII, Cold War, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, scenery and more all on the cards.
We'll have more info on all of those plans coming in the next day or two, so keep an eye out for that!
=D> =D> =D> =D> =D>
Congratulations on a hugely successful year with many major accomplishments
I'm amused by the way you skip over needing to put a new roof on as if it's a minor inconvenience
You and the whole team should be very pleased with all you have accomplished
Bascially what Paul has said!
That is a lot of new stuff delivered in a year! You should be mightily pleased, and its good to hear that some are selling above expectations which is good.
I think you are a bit harsh with some of your misses - a couple seem like they have been slightly delayed nothing more - and having to adjust the plan based on unexpected events (storm and new roof) is just being pragmatic.
Seconded :)
Good year for us, the buttons in the Pendraken collection tin.
Quote from: Leon on 03 January 2023, 11:23:00 PMThere'll be a lot more variety this coming year as well I think, with releases for Naps, 19th C, WWII, Cold War, Fantasy, Sci-Fi, scenery and more all on the cards.
Yes, no, yes, yes, Amazons, yes, yes and probably.
Looking forward to the "Coming in 2023" announcement.
Looking forward to more 19th Century, Fantasy and Sci-fi!
The peninsula civilians and transport are remarkably flexible - not just Napoleonic.
I've sung the praises of "The Cardinal" in the past (From the Spanish Militia pack).
The Mediterranean Civilians have an excellent small town or rural feel.
The mule train, mule cart and ox wagon could crop up in many theatres.
Quote from: steve_holmes_11 on 04 January 2023, 04:01:49 PMThe peninsula civilians and transport are remarkably flexible - not just Napoleonic.
I've sung the praises of "The Cardinal" in the past (From the Spanish Militia pack).
The Mediterranean Civilians have an excellent small town or rural feel.
The mule train, mule cart and ox wagon could crop up in many theatres.
Wot he sed.
Absolutely agree on these - I know I've suggested this before, and not sure if the new web-shop software allows it, but adding a generic category would be a good way to pull together these more period independent figures out so they can be seen. Civilian figures are useful for much longer periods than military ones - and with so many ranges now these types can get a bit lost.
QuoteAbsolutely agree on these - I know I've suggested this before, and not sure if the new web-shop software allows it, but adding a generic category would be a good way to pull together these more period independent figures out so they can be seen. Civilian figures are useful for much longer periods than military ones - and with so many ranges now these types can get a bit lost.
It depends a bit on your web design.
It ought to be possible to index in to products by more than one route.
So (for example):
You retain the categories of Ancients, Medieval, Renaissance ......
But could also have Transport, Civilians.
QuoteAbsolutely agree on these - I know I've suggested this before, and not sure if the new web-shop software allows it, but adding a generic category would be a good way to pull together these more period independent figures out so they can be seen. Civilian figures are useful for much longer periods than military ones - and with so many ranges now these types can get a bit lost.
QuoteIt depends a bit on your web design.
It ought to be possible to index in to products by more than one route.
It can definitely be done on the new website and it's something I've got on my longer-term job list. It really comes down to how many do we want to do and where best to put them? It would need to be somewhere logical, so do they belong in an existing section or are we creating a new top-level section entirely?
And with the way the website works, the contents/details of the product would be identical across both categories. So where we just have 'civilians' listed in the current categories, if those were listed in a new generic 'Civilians' category there wouldn't be any text to explain which period/conflict they've originally come from. We can change the original product to say 'Japanese civilians', 'WWII French civilians' but that's going to look odd back in the original category page where there's no need for that prefix?
Regarding the naming - I don't think it would be a problem to include a bit more in the name of packs - it might seem a bit redundant with the main design, but currently when you search and get a page of results, it is pretty hard to work out what range figures are from anyway. So adding a descriptor to each pack of civilians would be helpful now, and would help with the idea of having a consolidated multi-period section.
Or you could just search for "civilians"?
Granted adding the range name to the search results would be helpful, but it works.
I've added a bit of period info to all of the civilians packs, so if someone fancies doing a website search for 'civilians' and see if that looks better?
Just did a search for 'civilians' and got the following 27 results -
ACW61 - 19th C. American Civilians (16)
BRF42 - Civilian with shotgun
BRF46 - Home Guard/Civilian with rifle, firing
BRF47 - Home Guard/Civilian with rifle, kneeling
BRF48 - Home Guard/Civilian officer
BRF49 - Home Guard/Civilian with Lewis gun
BRF51 - Upper class civilians
DAX1 - Dark Age civilian group (5)
ECW42 - 17th Century Civilians (4 sets)
FEU30 - Feudal Japanese Civilians
FRE15 - 20th Century European Civilians / refugees (6)
MON17 - Mongolian Civilians
MUB25 - 19th Century British Civilians
MUT10 - Bengal light cavalry, civilian dress
MUT2 - Sepoys in civilian dress
MUT24 - 19th Century Indian civilians
MUT4 - Ex-Company command in civilian dress (15)
MUT5 - Civilian insurgents / Badmash
NPX13 - 19th Century Mediterranean civilians
NPX2 - 19th Century European Civilians
NSP10 - Provincial Volunteers/Militia in civilian clothes (c1809)
PLW13- Plains Indian Civilians and children (10)
SC13 - Arab civilians
SFH10 - Sci-Fi Male civilians
SFH11- Sci-Fi Female civilians and children
SYW12 - 18th Century European Civilians (15)
VM30 - Vietnamese civilians
All with photos and very clear what each pack was.
I'm tempted by several of those now I've seen them!
:-bd
Excellent, although my OCD now needs to go and make all of the c's in civilian either capital or lower case...
Quote from: Leon on 05 January 2023, 06:53:36 PMExcellent, although my OCD now needs to go and make all of the c's in civilian either capital or lower case...
A man after my own heart!
"I don't have OCD, I have CDO. It's like OCD but the letters are in the right order." :)
QuoteA man after my own heart!
"I don't have OCD, I have CDO. It's like OCD but the letters are in the right order." :)
"Two pieces of COD and a scoop of chips please" 😋
Actually used some of the ECW preaching civilian figures on some Covenanter command stands. Some others now on the wanted list for a few small vingette stands to fill out camp scenery.
Quote from: Ithoriel on 05 January 2023, 07:02:12 PM"I don't have OCD, I have CDO. It's like OCD but the letters are in the right order." :)
:D