Top of the Sceops!

Life sometimes tests you with reverse swing (or curveballs, to translate a cricket term for our American friends), but such trials can often lead to great things. When I came back from France, I had a major reverse swing delivery to deal with: one of my team had decided he wanted to leave, and in the past couple of weeks I've been getting up to speed on 3d printing like never before.

I can confidently state, á la Richard Hammond, I'm now a 3d printer god! Or, at the very least, a 3d printer fettler.

Ahem. I'm getting there, anyway. Look, spending two weeks working on production has, of course, freed my mind once more, as manual labour tends to do; so it's been a bit like a holiday, and working in the back room has got my mind thinking - a dangerous thing sometimes, to be sure. Such thinking - and where I'm doing it - has led to thoughts of...

A Mierce Shop!

You read that right. By December of this year, we'll have ourselves a Mierce shop, where you can peruse our beautiful painted models in their cabinets, pick up and gawp at our unpainted models like you could at Salute, have a cuppa tea, buy our miniatures from the shelves and slatboards (yes, we'll have stock, both in boxes and blisters) and get a demo game of Darklands with yours truly (by appointment only). Oh, and we'll also sell lots of hobby stuff as well as model kits and possibly even miniatures from other companies (more on that later).

Our blisters, boxes and painted models!

You see, here at Mierce Towers we are blessed with rather a lot of internal space, as anybody who has visited will know; we have a very large workshop area, where we do the resin casting, packing, storing and computering, and in the back room we have space for two 8'x4' tables as well as the printing (and in days of yore, the metal casting). We have two toilet rooms and a large entrance which we never use, as we don't need to - a throwback from its days as a miner's welfare and playing field changing rooms. We also have a large (free) car park and, as mentioned, a big playing field out the back, so you could even visit and do a bit of dogging by take the dogs for a walk. That's what dogging means, right? Right.

You'll be able to come and see our painted miniatures!

So, to business. The back room will turn into the shop (it's about thirty feet by thirteen feet) with lots of slatboards on the walls and a nice counter. We'll open up the main entrance which can be tarted up quite nicely, we'll turn the small bathroom into the kitchen and move the printing into the current kitchen (ideal as we need a sink to wash things with). The big bathroom will be cleaned up and decorated but stay pretty much as is.

With me so far?

There'll be two gaming tables and possibly a hobby table, too, in the middle of the back room. We'll have Mierce stuff all along one wall, in blisters and in boxes. We'll have Vallejo and other hobby stuff along another. The painted miniatures in cabinets - along with unpainted models you can pick up and hold - along another. We'll have model kits and miniatures from other companies on the last wall; but we're not talking about the usual suspects. I have a mind - once we've sorted out our own stock - to get merchant tiers for some of the amazing digital products out there, support them and print them in grey wulf (or maybe cast resin for the big things). To my mind, there's nobody else that does this, at least physically, where you can see before you buy. I'd sell books, too, from history to sci-fi and so forth.

You could pick up and hold these!

It'll be a destination for you. We'll have a grand opening day on a Saturday with a burger van (and yes, we'd be open on weekends). It will look lovely, you can have a cuppa or a slice of cake, you can bring your dogs and walk them on the field, you can buy Mierce stuff in person or you can just come to see that stuff and hold it in your hand. You can make an appointment with me for a demo game, you can bring your own mate and play whatever you want on our gaming tables, or you can just turn up to paint some monsters. It's entirely up to you!

If all this excites you, then good - it excites us! Watch out for more announcements and work in progress shots soon, so you can see how it shapes up over the next few months. First job - move the kitchen... hmmm... I know some plumbers!

Monstrous Stuff

So, on to miniatures, which you all love to see, right?

Our good friend Rafael Callegari has now pretty much sculpted the living version of Drēorgan the corpse-dragon - Adannwg - including with a rider, Urien, that moustachioed marvel of the Brythoniaid!

Urien on Adannwg

Adannwg in all forms should be on sale next week, and he is, of course, the Monster of the Month for July. He'll likely be £299.99, as he's bloody enormous - at least the size of Lludial, at least in terms of bulk. We'll do a deal on the first go though, so it won't tax your wallet too much...

Next up for Rafael: turning Adannwg into Drēorgan the corpse-dragon!

We have finally got the last two remaining Warlords done for the 100 Warlords project! Cleyton Amorim has just about finished Kraan...

...and Eorcenbehrt...

...who has turned out far better than he has any right to, to be honest!

There's still a few details to fine-tune, including making some very thin parts a lot thicker to be able to print properly, and they're done. So I am confident in saying that the first prints will be winging their way to you in early August, all being well. That's all the warlords, so you'll get the ten warlords plus any extras you've ordered. I'll put them on sale on the webstore shortly as well, if you would like secondses - or firstses, if you missed the project!

Moar Monsters!

We have more monsters coming for the Monster of the Month. None of these are completely the finished article, but let's see if I can get you all excited about these... 

Iskarnos, Szalamakh

Sculpted by Ivan Flaman, but not quite yet finished, here's the new Iskarnos - funnily enough, to replace the old one! We think he is bloody amazing!

That's a 110x60mm base, by the way...

Uuluu, Backwhale

Now then. Also sculpted by Ivan Flaman, Conand gets a simply ENORMOUS monster in the near future, so big even Fornjötr can give him a good stealth bumming (below). Olfactory noticing aside, Uuluu will definitely need a new base: I think I worked out one to fit his back legs and front flipper to be over 200mm long. So what we'll do is get Rafael to make a nice scenic base for him, and cast that in resin!

Let's hope his parts fit on our print bed...

What else have we got? Well, the next monsters that Ivan will be sculpting are the new oghurüc units; they should be done in early August. (That's another kickstarter sculpt ticked off). Rafael is doing the corpse-dragon. (and another). And Cleyton will hopefully do the ghulas and gryreghulas... (there's yet another). did I tell you he'd already done Cweld / Acweld?

After those, Rafael should do the new reivers and reiver horse, as well as the thulean raiders; but I'll probably get Cleyton to do the geoguth and shadow/rogue-drunes. Ivan is reserved for monsters so he'll probably do the nihtbats, brute beasts, gabrox and rend-vras. All of this, I'm hoping, will be done in time for Christmas.

Let's see what Santa's sack will empty into your hole this year!

Pre-order Adannwg

Next week you'll be able to pre-order Adannwg; we may do a pre-order system on this guy because we don't think we'll be able to cast him as quick as others as he's so huge. So in the first week we'll make ten, the second week ten, and so forth. So to get the ball rolling, we'll only offer him for sale to ten lucky people at around £124.99, over 60% from his retail price... an offer never to be repeated on him! So get your pre-ordering fingers ready...

As to when, I'll have the files this week, hopefully get him supported and printed next week, and in rubber the next, so early August is when you'll be able to get your filthy mitts on him.

Mirroring

(that's ‘meering’, for our American friends)

So I've been beavering away in between print jobs to get all the various beasties like the wulfas, dog-razh, drune-hounds and whatnot mirrored, with graphics to show this. That means that if you buy some beasts, you'll get five sculpts and five mirrored sculpts, so you have more variety on your tabletop!

The meered hound-aberrants

For the smaller beasts, we'll mix the mirrored versions in the units of ten; but for the bigger units, you'll get a separate unit to buy, such as the Hounds of Enezun above. You can also purchase each mirrored beast individually, if you want 'em.

I'll be rolling this out to infantry at some point over the next few months... but it will be a gradual process.

Elves, Orcs and Dorfs

So, hopefully famously but probably not, we don't do elves, orcs or dorfs*. But what if we made and sold other companies' elves, orcs and dorfs instead?

In the course of doing the digital stuff I came across some absolutely superb miniatures from companies that really should be known better - and available in shops to physically look at and buy. So in the not too distant future, when we've sorted our own stock out, and our backlog**, I think we'll go down the route of making other company's miniatures and selling them in our Mierce Shop. How's about that then, eh? For example, you could get Avatars of War orcs, dorfs and trolls in beautiful Grey Wulf resin in your actual hands! To look at and touch!

Watch this space...

*midgets

**with my new printing system, it won't be long before we'll have beaten the backlog and held stock. But I'll probably have lost all my hair in the process. You win some, you lose some!

Keep it Mierce!

That's all for now, ladeez and gennelmen... until next time, keep it Mierce!