Rods for Backs, and Other Christmas Stories

Well I made a rod for my own back, didn't I?

"What a great idea!" thought I, when ‘fortknight to Christmas’ popped, fully formed, into my head. You see, the two weeks before Christmas are the deadest of dead times for us here at Mierce because Miercenaries realise they won't get anything before Christmas (or at least, they'd be lucky to) so nobody really orders anything; but I still have bills and staff to pay, so I have to try to extract money from wallets and purses with something tempting. In previous years I've tended to release a Christmas Creature, but this year I hadn't really planned for that and so I had to let my brain loose.

One mailshot later, I suddenly realised I would be doing the same thing every morning for the next two weeks. D'oh! As someone said once...

Anyway: at least you guys get to see some amazing newly-mounted miniatures just before Christmas, not the least of which is the superb Cormac Fir Danu carrying his horse, which I hope brought a smile to many of your faces. It certainly did to mine and the sculptor, Rafael Callegari!

There's five more knights to go after today's and we do have a surprise or two up our sleeves, so keep watching your Christmas inbox for more!

The End of Digital

Many of you will of course have seen that we are not going to sell our digital files any longer; we extended the deal until next Monday the 23rd, but after that you won't be able to get them at all, so use this weekend wisely to grab what you'd like.

We will probably keep the files up for another week or so afterwards, so that everybody can download them, though.

Santa Hat-a-Lantes

This brings me to December's battle host - the last one we'll be doing as part of the monthly deal. It will of course be for the Atalantes, and the digital files for them will be given to you at some point over the next few weeks (and probably into January) as the khalkotes have not yet been sculpted. Don't worry about this, if you're worried about the STLs; we'll make sure you can download them!

I'll be doing some graphics showing the Atalantes for you over the next few days and hopefully there'll be something to show early next week.

So, yes, to re-iterate; we won't be doing any more ‘monthly battle hosts’ - it's simply too much of a time and cost burden for us. We will of course be releasing new stuff every month, but certainly not in the same volume as 2024. Don't get me wrong, we've got a lot of the kickstarter backlog sculpted, so that's good, but by crikey it's put a strain on our resources.

To put it another way: if we'd carried on doing monthly battle hosts I think we would all have expired from working too hard!

The Kickstarter Back-Yule-Log

Speaking of the kickstarter backlog, we are getting there; there's not a great deal left to be sculpted now, once the Atalantes are done. The Jute ghūlas (not a Greek dish) are up next thanks to the ministrations of Cleyton Amorim. Cweld / Acweld below tells his own story.

After the ghūlas (along with the gryreghūlas and the nihtbats) the next biggest set of miniatures will be the reiver horse, which I'll probably get Rafael Callegari to do; then we're bitting and bobbing with the new wild oghurüc, the rend-vras, the ḡeoguth and the two club brutes and rogue-drunes. Suffice to say, we've broken the back of it, got all our ducks in a row and can see the light at the end of the tunnel in 2025. Finally!

So, thank you guys for all your patience with us; we do always get there in the end. Once that backlog is gone, done, dusted, the future will bring mucho amazing new miniatures, but at a sedate pace where the miniatures will actually be sculpted and produced before we announce them. At least, that's the aim...

Christmas Inbox

I was Wham!med fairly early this year; I blame Joanna, she's the one that told me Last Christmas was going off in the background in the shop. Bah. Still, it could be worse: one of our playtesters, Dayle, was Wham!med in his own home, by his wife. Tsk.

I'll still be in touch with you guys over Christmas (not least because of all the knights to come) and Santa Claws will make his usual appearance on Christmas Eve, too; so please keep watching your inbox - or the Facebook page, or the news blog - for more nonsense from me.

I'll leave talk of what will be happening in 2025 until after Christmas, but I should think today's background image may give you some clue as to what you can expect. Praise be to the Stefan Kopinski...