Yep. Let's hope for better times ahead, where taxes, import duties, VAT and handling charges are returned to the dustbin of history between friendly economies...
Anyway...
In case you haven't seen these already (despite my egregious spamming of Facebook and marketing emails to Bloody customers / subscribers), here's the next release - the Bloody Horse.
As ever, Nick Collier has done an amazing job – 12 mounted figures full of vim, character and purpose.
The sculpts are now with the mould-makers to produce the metal master castings. Once received, checked and signed off, it will then take a couple of weeks to get into full production. All being well, these new packs should be in the web store around mid-October.
Anyway, here they are
Pack BM041: The Troopers
Stern harquebusiers in lobster-tail helmets, back and breast, buff coats, with slung carbines and drawn pistols. Righteous men all.
Pack BM042: The Flashing Blades
Dashing cavaliers: swords, big feathered hats, flouncy attire, lacy collars, cuffs and boot hose, and showy sashes.
Pack BM043: The Lobsters Ride
Grim-looked cuirassiers at the attack: three-quarters armour, pistols, hammers, axes.
Pack BM044: The Moss Troopers
Dangerous malcontents and discharged soldiers: long coats, long hair, floppy hats, pistols and carbines.
The cavalry packs will cost £12.50 for six miniatures (that’s three riders and three horses).
Or for a tidy £45 you'll be able to buy all four mounted packs together as the ‘A Thunder of Hooves’ deal, thereby saving a fiver.
Those prices may need to increase a bit on review - a lot of metal goes into making horses, and I won't know what the actual raw material production cost is until the first production run has been cast.
But that's what I'm going to start them off at and we'll see if they cover their costs!
The riders and horses won't be available separately, because each pack of six miniatures is cast from its own production mould. Logistically, this was by far the most efficient way of doing it, rather than having horses and riders in separate moulds.
The horses are the widely used eBob sculpts, which Nick has bulked out a little and adapted with new saddlery, manes and tails. They’re delightful mounts - a little ubiquitous perhaps, but a quarter of the cost of getting horses sculpted from scratch. And I don’t believe people really look too closely at the mounts on cavalry models anyway - it’s the rider that draws the eye.
I've gone for four different horse models and each pack will include three different mounts. If you buy the full set of 12 horses and riders, you'll therefore get three of each horse model. The horses and riders are entirely interchangeable by the way - any rider will fit any horse. If these mounted packs sell reasonably well, I’ll look at getting a second, different set of horses done for future releases.
I've had a couple of snippy comments about the horses. One or two people just don't like them. Someone else opined that they're too small. I disagree. To my eye, they’re nice looking mounts and a pretty reasonable fit to the figures. Mid-C17th horses would generally have been smaller in stature than their modern-day counterparts. Statuesque hunters and thoroughbred racehorses would have been few and far between, and unlike later centuries, there was no selective breeding programme to provide huge numbers of standard sized cavalry mounts for standing armies. In the ECW (and I imagine the TYW too), nags of all sorts and conditions would have been pressed into service. Less magnificent knightly warhorses - more hardy, serviceable workhorses.
You’ll notice the pistol holsters are empty. Instead, each cavalry pack comes with a separate sprue of six pistol butts that can be glued into the holsters (or not) as desired. This means that if the rider is depicted with pistol in hand, he doesn’t also have to have one stuck in his saddle holster.
There’s an old debate about whether horse pistols were holstered with the butt facing forwards or backwards for ease of grasping, drawing and firing by the rider. Opinion remains divided, but now you can put them whichever way round you prefer
Release 7 will also include a pack of 12 separate hands holding assorted weapons and other items. So you can customise your Bloody Miniatures with some nifty hand swaps.
More news on availability in a week or two...
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February 28, 2014, 08:32:53 AM