Author Archives: Gavin Syme

A look at Miniature Wargames magazine No 352

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I got my advertisers copy of this months new Miniature Wargames magazine in the mail on Monday so I have it fairly close to those who line up at WHSmith newsagents at the weekend.  Now that the carnage of the The Thinker’s tenth birthday is over I can do a wee look at this issue.  So without further ado….

Miniature Wargames No 352

Cupola: Andrew Hubback does his editorial commentary as normal and this time he announces or hints at a refreshed design for the layout of MW coming next issue.  I look forward to seeing the rests of his feedback from the readers.  Feedback is vital in all industries and I often feel as if I operate in silence because if the customers who buy my titles and miniatures do not tell me what they think of them or what they would like to see it is really tough to improve!

Letters Page:  Good letters in this month especially one from John Treadaway (ah..fond memories of Full Thrust!) concerning the lack of non-historical materials in the magazine (not just MW but focused on it).  While this can mean Fantasy and Science Fiction it also means ‘what if’ scenarios from history too.  This is an important point to take up.  MW own survey last issue showed how much non-historical gaming there was at Salute 2012 and I commented then about its importance to the future of the industry especially among younger wargamers.

Boxing Clever at Fisticuffs:  Nigel Pell and Gary Mitchell report from the Fisticuffs show in Weymouth (south coast of England).  A good read this and its always good to hear of the joy and suffering that wargamers go through getting to shows.  I have not been to Fisticuffs (it would be a thousand mile round trip from Girvan!) but it looked like a fine event with a lot going on including a large game of GrUnTz put on by the Wessex Wyverns local club plus of course Gary’s own excellent Space Vixens from Mars was there; love that range!

The Attack on Raedykes Camp:  The third article in the series by Peter Hall on re-fighting Mons Graupius with the Hail Caesar wargame rules.  This time a Roman Marching Camp hobby article and run through of two games centred around it.  I studied this campaign at university and Peter does an excellent job in turning it to wargaming.

Apocalypse Vow:  It is going to be the end of the world on December 21st this year if you believe the long vanished Mayans.  This article by Gary Mitchell looks the this prediction along with Mayan warfare and ways to use it on the tabletop.  As to the end of the world…no way…I still got rules to write!

The Osaka Campaign:  Part two, and sadly the final, of Kevin Jones look at the rise of the Tokugawa family and the Japanese feudal wars.  One of my favourite nations and a period I know a lot about and in fact I own almost of the books the author quotes as sources.  An excellent summary with some wargaming notes and ideas too.

Scuffle at Shevardino:  Napoleon’s 1812 campaign and the smaller battle that came just before Borodino written by Chris Hahn.  This is a fine article with a lot of history, maps and wargaming material in it but it did not grab me much.  Perhaps I am not in a mood for Napoleonics just now (I am busy with my preparations for a ‘Martian’  terrain set for 28mm scale but that is another matter) so I read it and passed on.

15mm.co.uk’s advert for Renaissance miniatures..gosh it almost looks like a professional did it!

Don’t Forget Your Tomahawk:  I always look forward to Steve Eardley’s pages in MW because he ranges wide and far for material and always delivers a good read.  This time its an approach to wargaming the French and Indian War (or the Seven Years War if you come from the civilised side of the pond!) followed by a delve into the miniatures that can be had for the conflict.  Four excellent pages!

Wargaming Gettyburg Part Two:  Jon Sutherland offers up the second part of his series on wargaming the biggest battle of the American Civil War.  It is a well delivered and sharp article which is just as well as I am fairly tired of ACW as a period and of that battle in particular.  Good for fans of the period.

France 1940:  World War Two booty for fans of the most recent worldwide conflict.   Mark Freeth presents a report on a battle that recently took place at his Wargames Holiday Centre.  It reads like a plug for the place but hey its a good plug and I for one would love a weekend of Mark’s hospitality!

A Spreading Insurgency:  Mike Haran presents a system for wargaming the action when the recent Arab Spring turns to a cold, cold Arab Winter of war and terrorism.  For me this near future article is the best one in this issue. Presenting a squared grid of the Middle East and surrounding regions along with outcomes allows for massive variety and unknowns in play.  Added to this is a system of unit deployment, spies, situations.  Excellent all around and could be adapted to a sci-fi setting with ease.

Darker Horizons: This time headed up ‘Redundancy’ Gary Mitchell begins my favourite part of the magazine by outlining his potential woes of facing the loss of his teaching post and having to do the ‘trolley shuffle’ so loved by the middle aged all across Britain’s thousands of supermarkets.  I wish him luck and while its not the purpose of this posting or this blog to get political it does make you wonder if teaching children is about experience or being cheap…ah but lets carry on.  Gary crams and I mean crams information into the pages listing all the current happenings of two dozen companies and fifty or more releases.  Black Cat Bases get a feature of their new ‘between scales’ Grey Aliens and Sheep while some other person gets a mention about his ‘amazing sci-fant empire.  I wonder where he finds the time?’…what can I say, not much sleep, fast typing, a strong work ethic and a loving wife.

MOTH and Me get a mention! 

Book Reviews: A collection of reviewers look at Twilight of the Hellanistic World (Pen & Sword), The Fall of English France (Osprey), Austrian Seven Years War Cavalry and Artillery (Ken Trotman Publishing), Napoleons Swiss Troops (Osprey), Forts of the War of 1812 (Osprey), The Eastern Front 1914-20 (Amber Books) and a biography of Georgy Zhukov (Osprey).  Good reviews but all I can say is thank heaven for Osprey eh, otherwise what would the review pages do!  I often think that a wargames magazine should review wargame rules as well as military history books in its pages; after all it is aimed at the wargaming hobby.

All in all a good read and recommended for those of you who can get it.   But then I would say that…I am in it!

GBS

Advertising in Miniature Wargames Issue 351 – Results!

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We were approached at 15mm.co.uk by Media Shed who are the advertisers of Miniature Wargames magazine to take out adverts with them.  After discussion we decided on a series of three adverts with them in issues 351,352,353.  A  It had been quite a while since we last advertised in a UK magazine so we decided to give it a go and see what happened.  It is now into the release month of the second of those three agreed issues so that means the statistics for the first month’s advert are now complete.  So, how did this advert work out?

Using a combination of customer responces to email and also web statistics and traffic to certain pages of the 15mm.co.uk website along with information from the previous three months of the same sources we came to the following conclusions about this advert.

   1.  Total website visits to both Alternative Armies and 15mm.co.uk dropped by 10% during the four weeks the MW351 advert ran.

   2. The pages of the 15mm.co.uk website dealing with the subject of the advert (the USE ME Series of titles) rose in the rankings of pages by popularity ending in second place for that period.

  3. Of the total sales of paper books covered by the MW351 advert some 40% can be directly attributed to viewing the advert in print.

  4. Sales of the download titles in the USE ME Series doubled during the period of the advert.

  5.  The advert was a reasonable success with an uplift over normal in sales and interest in the USE ME Series.  However it was not as successful as other email and postal campaigns on the same subject with a lesser cost involved to the company.

So in conclusion we are satisfied with the results of the advert and look forward to the results of the next two in issues 352 and 353.

I have started a thread over on the Notables Yahoo Group asking how many of its 550 members regularly read Miniature Wargames magazine and of them how many saw and acted on the advert for USE ME.  Also if what kind of advert they prefer, listings, information and so on.

Lastly those of you who read my blog and are not members of the Notables or prefer to please put your views in the comments thread of this posting.  I welcome your comments!

GBS

Happy Birthday Double Digits !!

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Happy Birthday my lad.  Happy Birthday my pride and joy.  Happy Birthday and thank you for the ten years that made a boy of you and a man of me.  My mirror and my conscious, my most precious creation and never broken promise.  I stand behind you with a careful hand upon your ever rising shoulder and point the way to take you toward the brilliant light and away from the darkness of failure that is all around.  My firstborn…my eldest, my brilliant son.  Happy Tenth Birthday.

Who says you don’t ever get ‘deep’ from me ‘eh.  Just an expression of a decade of joy and nervous stress at all times.  From a baby that sat in my hand to his own hand almost the dimension of mine.  It’s a lot to take on, but Birthdays are super cool fun and man did ‘The Thinker’ have a good time today!

The Birthday

 We kicked off early with the opening of the pressies.  A grand haul was gotten and again I would like to thank everyone on my son’s behalf for their generosity he was more than pleased with everything.  After this I had to go out for a while but I brought back the annual traditional helium filled balloon!  As you can see he keen on holding it (I remember he used to get hours of fun out of one, but then he was two!).

Got my balloon, its party time!

 This afternoon we all headed out in a small convoy of cars to the Activity Barn for the Birthday Party.  My good lady was totally correct in her assumption that all the kids would want to do was run about madly and then eat themselves silly.  So two hours passed in sweaty mayhem, rebounding footballs and bouncy castle fun.

A small part of the hall taking in the bouncy castle.

Come on people cheer! Huzzah for the Birthday Boy!

He behaved himself well and more kids than I expected turn up.  It was just as well that we catered for forty!

This evening will be spent with a video or two and perhaps a pizza.  I don’t know about the children…but I need a rest 🙂

Happy Birthday !!!

GBS

Join the Muster!

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“Make your way to the front of the line son.  You wanna fight for your King, you wanna fight for Prydia?  

Well you go right on in.  Sure, you get the Aketon Armour and the Moth Type 6 Rifle…but more than that; you get the pride boy!”

Sam Croes the digital man with the plan has posted the above artwork on his blog today.  Like me he has a liking for sweet little things in uniform (humm…not very PC, but hey it’s my blog!) so as he explains he created this bill poster in a couple of days just for the fun of it.  I want to get this as an actual poster for my wall.  It is that awesome.

Nice one Sam!

GBS

 

Moshi Cake Madness

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Happy Birthday Boy!

The grand day is almost upon us.  My eldest, The Thinker, turns ten years old upon the morrow.  I am so proud of him, he is a super lad.  Polite, resourceful and a hard worker to boot.

As part of his birthday celebrations it is customary for us to get him a unique cake that will serve thirty to forty people for his party.  This year the party is at an activity centre in nearby Dailly (a mile or two from Girvan) and the cake is all about ‘Moshi Monsters‘.  As you can see it is a great creation and proves there is a lot of talent in Ayrshire beyond the gaming sector!

I will post about the big day (assuming I do not overdose on Cake, Jelly and Ice-Cream) but I had to just show you all this icing coated treat before it is decimated by a horde of children.

GBS

WIP – USE ME Cyberpunk rules as a download

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A page from the download edition of UM011

This has been a tough week for me a lot of work on and not a lot of free time to go with it.  Next week proves to be much the same but it also has my eldest’s tenth birthday to look forward to but more on that next week!

In the time I have had I took a project from the pile and decided to try and get it done in the twenty or so hours I had spare.  What is this project you say!  Well it is the conversion of UM011 USE ME Cyberpunk from a printed title into a dedicated PDF electronic title.  When it is released it will be added to the growing list of PDF titles which already includes most of the USE ME series and also MOTH as well.  Like the others it will have three parts, full colour separate cover, a full colour main body and an ‘ease print’ plain version of the main body.   All in a zipped file for just $5.00.  Bargain!

15mm.co.uk has done well with PDF versions of its USE ME Series with electronic sales being about twenty percent of the total compared to print.  So far UM001 USE ME Science Fiction is the best selling and most popular but this does not surprise me as it is also the bigger paper seller too and it into its third print run!

I take some time over the conversion to electronic from print as I for one do not like it when I purchase a download only to find it is just a scanned version of the print book.   The files I produce are designed from the outset to be read on screen and as such feature bookmarks, links and other live material for easy navigation and use.  On top of this the ‘ease print’ version is for those who want to go to a copy shop or home print their purchase; it has all of the artwork, colour, table graphics removed leaving plain text.  It takes some extra time but from the email we get wargamers appreciate it and I am all about customer satisfaction!

There are a few dedicated miniature packs for this title including my personal favourite of the year so far…the Corporate Ashigaru.

HOF76 Corporate Ashigaru

I cannot give you a release date for this yet but it will be in the next month or so I imagine.

GBS

Welcome the Wildthingians to 15mm.co.uk

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Wildthingian Group

There is a small number of new releases this week into the SHM range on 15mm.co.uk all of them under the same heading and racial type…the Wildthingians!

There are five new conversions made by Rob Alderman being added to the two original designs by Steve Hazuka (SHM08,SHM09) which Rob simply insisted on being allowed to do, so I said ‘sure thing’ and here we are.  These are exactly the kind of weird specialised miniatures that the range is known for and which otherwise would not exist.  They are fairly large creatures (16mm and 20mm by size groupings) and tower over Human 15mm miniatures making good mercenaries and adventurers in a 15mm sci-fi collection.

Here is a list of the new codes;

SHM36 Wilthingian Leader    Furry Alien Leader armed with a Heavy Energy Weapon.
SHM37 Wildthingian Veteran  Furry Alien armed with a Heavy Energy Rifle. 
SHM38 Wildthingian Soldier  Furry Alien aiming Heavy Energy Rifle.
SHM39 Young Wildthingian II Furry Alien, arms folded.
SHM40 Young Wildthingian III Furry Alien, running. 

I have arranged for all of the Wildthingians to have their own section of the SHM part of the 15mm.co.uk website which makes them the first race to have that honour!

Assuming you are reading this after the 13th of July 2012 then go along to the SHM range and look for them there!

GBS

An Advert for Miniature Wargames Issue 353

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The Ion Age gets an Advert!

Busy, busy this week and despite a full ‘to do list’ written on my traditional blank A4 piece of paper (which looks like a bomb site by Monday afternoon!) I have fallen behind somewhat.  But I am busy rectifying that and here is the latest bit of work now complete and sent off to John at MediaShed.  Our half page advert for the issue after next of Miniature Wargames magazine.

After adverts for USE ME and for Altuos it is the turn of the Ion Age to get the full colour treatment in print.  The 28mm science fiction range is way too big to be listed so I opted for a general information and introduction advert which told a bit of a story and gave basic information.  Along with this some eye candy of the latest pack release and the cover of MOTH.  I had some space left so a sub-advert for Asgard 25mm Space Marines went in featuring the superb paintwork of Sam Croes.

Click on the image above to see the advert in full.

GBS

John Carter of Mars – Review

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I was surprised yesterday when my good lady presented me with a copy of John Carter which has just been released on DVD.  I had said I wanted to see the film but as normal did not make it to the cinema and then forgot about it until this month when the release was made.  It was like she read my mind!  So we sat down last night to watch it and while I normally have to be prodded to stay awake by ten in the evening this was not the case with this film.

John Carter is based on the book Princess of Mars by Edgar Rice Burroughs which I read many years ago and had mostly forgotten but some details did come back to me in the watching.  Carter is a cavalry officer after the American Civil War who loses his wife and daughter and takes to seeking out gold in the caves of Arizona.  Gold he finds and also the means to travel in an instant to ‘Barsoom’ or Mars to us Terrans.    As normal I do not want to spoil the plot so I will stick to the main areas of the film.  Firstly it is brilliantly rendered and shot with top notch special effects and traditional film making combined, much as you would expect from Disney Studios, and the actors are all well suited to their roles.  The historical scenes on Earth are accurate and skill full holding the plot well.  The scenes on Mars are astonishing in places with vast moving cities and creatures as well as airships and a ‘death ray’ too.  The film is fast paced and held my attention from the first to the last moment with good use of action, tension and drama as well as a love story and woven strands of a father daughter narrative too.

This film has lost Disney a lot of money on this movie and it has had some really bad reviews but ignore that.  I loved this film and as society keeps pointing out to me the kind of turgid crud that ‘people’ like and give good reviews to bores the hell out of me and things I like get slated and bomb at the box office.  Draw what you want from that statement but if you are a fan of science fiction and of strong alpha male leads in movies (remember those?) combined with beautiful and independent female leads then you will love this.  Some say the plot is a mess…I saw no evidence of this; it made perfect sense to me. John Carter is an excellent family adventure movie that really did remind me of the thrill of the original Star Wars movies.  A film with a fixed point of vision and not made on a ‘tick the boxes plot’ hollywood normally churns out since the early 1990’s.  Perhaps that is why it failed…

As for wargaming potential this film is stuffed with it; a gamers dream really.  Many set pieces, lots of aliens and monsters as well as historical weapons and troops.  Might well become my Mars project at this rate since learning of the new Total Recall.

Watch This Movie!

GBS

New Blister Backer

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A ‘rough’ of the new Alternative Armies and 15mm.co.uk blister backer card

Some of you might have noticed I have been in a ‘hobbit hole’ for the last two days and have not answered my usual three dozen or more personal mails a day. Well I had been handed a new and urgent task; to replace the current now almost extinct blister backer used by Alternative Armies and 15mm.co.uk.  I had expected to be doing this but due to the placing of a large trade order into the USA last week it was moved up the job list to ‘do it right now!’ status.

Those who purchase their miniatures from stores or at conventions will know what a blister backer is.  A piece of card with all the needed information about the company and about the product which goes inside a blister of miniatures allowing the customer to know what he is looking it along with how much it costs.  These used to form the back of a blister but those were ‘heat sealed’ use once blisters which we have not used for a decade or more.  We use a ‘clam shell’ plastic blister which is more secure but also is reusable and many wargamers use them to transport finished figures too!  So they full fill the same purpose but are no longer the ‘back’ but the name remains much like ‘watching a video’ does despite it being a DVD!

If you click on the image above you can see a low rez rough of the new design. Size wise it is 105mm by 75mm in dimension. It is simple and effective and tells you all you need to know over an attractive mottled blue with the famous Alternative Armies ‘arrowhead’ embedded in it.  The blue is used as it is the best colour behind white metal miniatures to be able to see them properly and the blank white area on the front is for the placement of the ‘product label’ which tells the customer what code he is holding.  This is different for each pack of course.

I will be catching up with the backlog of email soon as I can but this is turning into one hectic week!

GBS