Category Archives: News

Because of my role as Creative Manager of Alternative Armies and 15mm.co.uk I have access to material, news and information that will not be made public on the company websites for days or even weeks to come. I share it here in this category of posts.

777th Croaked Line – Finished Painted Sets for Flintloque and Release

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There is just a week to go now until the release of the 777th Croaked Line and since I posted the second part of the three that make up this arc about the Undead Toads a lot has happened.  In the last week or so I have taken delivery of two painted sets, both by pro-painters, each with a vision of just what these new and unique miniatures should look like.  There is no official uniform or flesh tone for Zombie Todoroni as it has never existed before so there was a free hand for both Rob Alderman and Eve Hallow to do their thing on a set each.

I have many images of the two sets but I am saving most of them.  Here is one shot of each of them so as not to disappoint or to spoil next week.  Eye Candy!

Eve Hallows Zombie Toads

Eve Hallows spooky and bloody ‘burtonesque’ 777th Croaked Line.

Rob Aldermans Zombie Toads

Rob Aldermans recently and long dead Bella Lugosi militia inspired 777th Croaked Line.

Along with the official release on Alternative Armies which will consist of a core set, trooper blister, recently dead blister and full unit too I have arranged with Craig Andrews over on Barking Irons Online to provide news of the release and an article about the characters of the set with lots of great images and a scenario entitled ‘Deep Freeze Toads’.  A bonanza for Flintloque players who have suffered my lack of attention at the expense of 15mm sci-fi of recent months.  I will not gush for long here in this post as this will happen in the article but I adore both these Flintloque sections.  I adore Rob’s clean lines and crunchy flesh while Eve’s use of bright skin and blood spatter combined with stark black and white skeletons is superb.

So until next week..which do you prefer?  Which will be the official uniform for the Croaked Line?

Its been a great build up but my role here is all but done…its Barking Irons turn now.

GBS

A Mercenary Dream Realised for HOF

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It has been a big, big year for 15mm science fiction miniatures on 15mm.co.uk and that means its been a big year for it for me too.  I have commissioned and accepted more than fifteen packs for the HOF range (and accepted two dozen SHM miniatures too) and while most of these have now been released some are still to come.  Of those still to come the next ones on the release schedule have been spoken of before on this blog the Rim Mercenaries.  So it really is a mercenary dream realised.

These are coming out this Friday and were designed by Elton Waters.  I plan an article on Barking Irons Online about them and the theory of the expansion and a little discussion about WHY more Rim Mercenaries and how it ties into the USEME series and O.G.Joel.

GBS

Two Mad Weeks and a new Postage Image

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Self Gratifying…only a bit!

Two weeks ago I posted about an offer that 15mm.co.uk was putting on that would give free postage on all orders for any address in the whole world.  That would be on an order for anything or any number of orders too…which as it turned out was just as well!  I am knackered and rather sweaty from the extra effort!

What a fortnight it has been for the company.  It turned out that thanks to email campaigns, website promotion, blogging posts and word of mouth that not only was order volume up by a large degree but we also sold items from every single range we have including codes so odd that we do not keep them in regular stock.  Customers placed two, three, four orders across a week or more and we had orders from half the nations of the world.  Most of the orders were as normal from UK, Europe and North America but there were a whole load from Australia and New Zealand (as I had predicted).  While it will be another week until all the orders placed are sent out I think we dealt really well and the majority of orders went out in our normal two day turnaround right up to the start of this week when the strain started to show.  Even so that is still a fast turnaround and as one email said ‘dear 15mm.co.uk I live in Illinois and my order from you in the UK arrived before my order on the same day from a company in this state!‘.

I do not yet know if economically it made sense to make this promotion as numbers are still to be crunched but in sheer number of orders it can be concluded that wargamers love getting free postage more than any one single promotion on a range or a percentage discount on product codes across the website.  If it did make business sense and I think it might well turn out to have then we may make this offer again during the festive season.

As an aside there were several emails and one phone call that I took during the offer that asked if we took credit cards (we do) and if we charged different postage rates normally by world region (we do not).  This set me thinking that perhaps the existing postage image on the header of 15mm.co.uk might be out of date or a little confusing so donning my virtual design hat I put together a new one.  You can see it above.  It is bright, clear and easy to understand conveying the idea of postage and telling of the flat worldwide rate. Below it are the standard icons for Paypal and all the major credit cards.  We will see if it makes a difference.

GBS

Alien Squad Leader 2.0 – Out of Print

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No books left…..

This morning I gave the nod for 15mm.co.uk to include an update for the Alien Squad Leader 2.0 game system.  This update was to mark the book for the game system as out of stock.  Essentially the last couple of dozen copies were polished off in the free postage offer that has just ended.  So where now for ASQL2.0?  Well the market has changed in the three years since the book was released and even in the last year since a new run was printed.  ASQL has been a success for the company and for Alex Self its creator and it is still a very powerful and unique rules system but more and more wargamers are asking for it as a PDF download paid for title and not in print.

I am speaking to Alex over the next week and a choice will be made.  Print or PDF or both?  We will see.  If you have an opinion then email me on the address to the right or post a comment below.

GBS

Free Postage – The Quest of all Wargamers?

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Does this image make Wargamers Happy?

At the end of this week 15mm.co.uk will be acting on input from a large group of wargamers all over the world who have been asking, cajoling, begging and so on for a ‘free shipping’ promotion on the website.  All of these messages basically came as feedback to our two months of ‘one week offers’ which while on the website were mainly distributed through Mailchimp as HTML emails.  This offer was suggested on almost all of the messages that came back to me.  Based on this I have been thinking that perhaps ‘free shipping’ is the number one wish for wargamers, especially those far from the UK such as in Australia  and New Zealand, even though 15mm.co.uk has the same basic postage rate for all regions.

As everyone knows I like to aid wargamers where possible so it will be interesting to see what reaction 15mm.co.uk has to this offer.  Will it increase order volume, will it mean more orders from far flung places or will wargamers not take to the this offer preferring a deal such as those on certain miniatures or ranges as I have been organising through Mailchimp.

If you are reading this and have an opinion on this offer then please do comment or email me directly.

GBS

‘The Zone’ – A new blog from the Winter ’79 Team

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The Game Begins!

Recently I have been speaking to ‘Maff’ one of the excellent gaming combo behind Winter of ’79 and also the awesome Dropship Horizon blog too.  He is a big fan of the Laserburn range of 15mm miniatures and sci-fi gaming in general.  To that end he sent me a link to a brand new blog where he will be extolling his adventures.  The name of this blog is….The Zone.  They also included an ‘in joke’ in the domain name of the blog, see if you can spot it.

At the moment of typing there are two posts on the new blog both of them crackers.  Intense urban skirmish…ain’t it the best kinda gaming for 15mm.  That is what I had in mind when I thought up the idea for HOF Fire-Team.

Good luck with the new blog lads.  I will be watching.

GBS

Fjodin’s SHM Aliens for October 2012 – Naming Ceremony

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Fjodin’s new 15mm Miniatures for the SHM Range

I have known Fjodin (I call him Nick) really since the first month after the SHM Range began on 15mm.co.uk.  A young and fierce design talent he lives in Australia and though we have never met we speak fairly often by email and I enjoy his blog too.  He has taken a real shine to the creatures of deep space and told me quite a while ago that he intended to sculpt as many of them as he could manage so that his vision of alien life would make it to the wargaming world.  This is what the SHM range is all about.  I doubt any miniature company except 15mm.co.uk (I am very responsive to industry and customer feedback, just read this ) would have looked at what will end up being a dozen unarmed creatures of all types and said ‘we will take a risk on these’.  It is a shame that a lot of existing and new 15mm ranges consist of nothing but more ruddy human soldiers in powered armour.

My plan is to release all of Fjodin’s designs into SHM as single miniatures but also as packs for wargamers and even just painters to pick up and adore because they are quite simply lovely.  Examine the image above, each of these creatures could very well be treading or oozing across the dirt of a world under a different sun right now.  In wargaming terms they will all feature in my next USE ME project ‘Alien Safari’ which is a solo game system seeing a group of hunters or soldiers trying to capture or evade random critters.  Fjodin actually inspired me to want to write this set of rules based on these creatures.

Fjodin left it up to me to name these creatures and so I have done so right here on this blog.  They are, from left to right, as follows:

SHM44 Nessian

SHM45 Slurmite

SHM46 Avarep Cobra

SHM47 Galdor Burrower

The miniatures in the picture were painted by Eve Hallow and he did a great job I think as he had no idea and no instructions from myself or Fjodin on what these critters looked like!

These SHM codes are out at the end of this week on 15mm.co.uk.

GBS

Mail Chimp for Alternative Armies

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Mail Chimp Logo

Back in June 2012 I put up a posting that 15mm.co.uk would be switching over to Mail Chimp for its email marketing.  Well since then the company has enjoyed using Mail Chimp and has built up a large mailing list which is responsive to weekly or fortnightly messages about new releases, special offers, support materials and more.  The time arrived this week for Alternative Armies to do the same and move across to Mail Chimp for its email marketing.

You can see my motivations for switching in the previous posting and I stick to them.  It is an excellent service.

So if you are a customer of Alternative Armies expect your inbox to feature some shiny new messages soon.  In addition to product news I intent to feature links to Barking Irons for scenarios and such that are related to releases and also links to featured blogs for hobby and painting and so on tips.  Plus some special offers too of course!

GBS

Ladies and Trolls!

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This week Alternative Armies will be making its late summer, early autumn releases.  I have been working on these for a few days on and off to get them ready and they are a lovely little lot indeed.   Several new Trolkin for use in Flintloque and in Slaughterloo along with the first female Elves in the whole range (aside from the Empress Morgana of course!) all of whom have been sculpted by the talented Rob Alderman.

Trolkin come from the frozen land of Copendaz and are the lesser cousins of the huge Trolka.  While smaller these Trollish soldiers share many of the same characteristics including stony skin and bulbous worty features plus a habit of wearing clothes too small for them and are more than a match for an Orc in a fist fight.  There is a great free booklet which I wrote that can be be downloaded from the company website (here is a link to get it from this posting) which gives the reader a mass of information on the Troll races plus great artwork by Edward Jackson.  The new miniatures include Colonel Skande Stoyne whose character was set in a Notables Yahoo Group competition last month (see this previous posting) and a character from the Troll booklet the owner of the Marske Company, Towern Marske.  Also a dead Trolkin in the uniform of the Lergo Line (a lot of wargamers like to put those who fall onto the wargames table).  These releases are another stage closer to the agreement that Rob and I had on bringing the Trolls to a full divisional force which would include cavalry, artillery, infantry and command.

The last of the releases is the Elf Ladies.  I have been looking forward to this pack for a while as I was the one who said ‘there is a real gap here, we need more woman!’ while playing Flintloque back in the spring.  Three lovely miniatures, a young strumpet, a wife of middling means and a more mature woman.  Really useful and top of my list for more Flintloque miniatures over on TTWG blog once I have the Elf Dragoons sorted out.

I have put images of the new miniatures in to this posting for you all to look at.   Both painted and raw metal alloy.  You will be able to find these white metal miniatures on Alternative Armies as of this Friday.

I have a Flintloque scenario for Barking Irons Online which features these new miniatures plus a full section of Dogmen Lancers and some Burrovians.  It has been playtested and I plan to do a concept posting on TTWG blog once time allows.

GBS

A Request to Review ‘Battlegames Magazine’

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BattleGround Magazines No 28-30

I was asked by John Howe-Marshall at Media Shed, the advertising bookers for Miniature Wargames Magazine and my contact for our own adverts in that publication if I had heard of Battle Games magazine.  I said I had but I had not seen it in a long time.  John told me it was as growing entity and that I should consider it for advertising but since it was not on the news stand and was subscription only he would send me a couple of copies to have a look at.  To thank him for this I told him I would do a review of those issues and share my thoughts with all you readers.

The issues arrived today!  So I hope to get an overview review of the three of them done this week.

GBS