British Royal Mail and Customer Service

So I recently ordered some bits being offered by very cool company in England.  I figured they would look great on my Rough Riders and I just couldn't resist.  As usual the bits were shipped within days of ordering and I sat back and began to wait.  About 2 weeks later I came home and there it was, the little brown bag o bits, and I couldn't wait to get it open. 

As you can see by the above and below pictures the contents were not quite what I had expected. Some Wingnut decided to swap out the original contents with those displayed in the pics. (I have to admit though, the Lindt Chocolate was good, The bacon chips thingy... not so much)

To make a long story short, I jumped on the computer and shot an email of, and over the next day or two we came up with a plan to get the order shipped again.  The company planned on registering a complaint by the Royal Mail, and I do hope they figured something out. And the whoever made the swap deserves a good slap upside the head.

Not to drag this out, but the new shipment arrived yesterday, and this time it is complete. :) So be looking forward to some Rough Rider updates.

 @ "The Company" Seeing that I didn't ask if I could post about this, I've removed all references to the real you. 

Re-Post: The future of Games Days and Games Workshop - Part 9

 Now I'm not usually the one to do this, but I thought this has been one the most interesting reads regarding GW's financials on the Internet. This is a chain of post by Zaphod over at Masterminis.net

n Zaphod Beeblebrox

n Zaphod Beeblebrox

Read more at:

I know, it's another wall of text. But I believe you really should read this if the miniature and gaming hobby is close to your heart. 

I am old and slow. And apparently I have at least one working crystal ball.

Two days ago we simply reported about the dramatic decline of Game's Workshop's value. On a single day, the Company lost 24% of its value. This followed the release of their half-year-report in which they showed -12% lost sales, -30% profits....
It is unlikely you have not heard of it, since our post about this yesterday has become our 2nd most read post ever And it's even just a little over a day old.

- See more at: http://masterminis.blogspot.de/2014/01/the-future-of-games-workshop-part9.html#sthash.EjPkneyn.dpuf

The future of Games Days and Games Workshop - Part 9 

Well, that escalated quickly!

I know, it's another wall of text. But I believe you really should read this if the miniature and gaming hobby is close to your heart. 

I am old and slow. And apparently I have at least one working crystal ball.

Two days ago we simply reported about the dramatic decline of Game's Workshop's value. On a single day, the Company lost 24% of its value. This followed the release of their half-year-report in which they showed -12% lost sales, -30% profits....
It is unlikely you have not heard of it, since our post about this yesterday has become our 2nd most read post ever And it's even just a little over a day old.

- See more at: http://masterminis.blogspot.de/2014/01/the-future-of-games-workshop-part9.html#sthash.EjPkneyn.dpuf

    The future of Games Days and Games Workshop - Part 9 - That escalated quickly!

The future of Games Days and Games Workshop - Part 9 

Well, that escalated quickly!

I know, it's another wall of text. But I believe you really should read this if the miniature and gaming hobby is close to your heart. 

I am old and slow. And apparently I have at least one working crystal ball.

- See more at: http://masterminis.blogspot.de/2014/01/the-future-of-games-workshop-part9.html#sthash.EjPkneyn.dpuf

I would recommend taking an hours time and start with Part 1, and work your way up to the current post, but if you start at Part 8 that's enough.

Book Review: Fellguard Parts 1 & 2

 

Fellguard Part 1: The Siege of Fellguard (eBook)

Ok, so the stories themselves were good, and I'll give the author credit, but they really are over priced.  The Story follows the Cadian 39th as they attempt to storm and hold Fellguard and fight off the denziens of Chaos.  Most of the Story Centers around their Castellan, Regimental Commissar, and a Junior officer as the siege one of the central Bastions covering "No Mans Land" between the City walls.  

I won't give away the end, but for a short Story i enjoyed it, and to be honest I wouldn't mind seeing more in the future. The issue I have with them is the Price.

Fellguard Part 2: The Hour of Hell (eBook)

Now I know that eBooks have a different number of pages depending on your device, but on a 7" Tablet I had a combined page count of about 65 pages. All that for a whopping 6 Euro!!  I mean a standard BL paperback with 300 Pages run on average about 14 Euro ($19). Which is bad enough considering that just 4 years ago they were about 10 Euro ($14). 

I mean even if we use simple division, a paperback at 14 Euro equals about 1 Euro ($1.32) for 22 pages. That means that my 65 pages should have ran me about 3 Euro ($3,96).  But hello, these were E-BOOKS, so all I payed for was text file, a license, and the feeling of being ripped off. 

Which leads me to ask, why the hell are GW / BL e-Books so freaking expensive?  e-Books in Germany are generally expensive, because the Germans have some crazy law called a "Fixed book price agreement". I won't even venture down that road and how worthless I think the law is. But that aside, GW really needs to open there eyes and adjust their price model for e-Books.  

In the end though my recommendation would be to save your money until they're bundled together, with a lower price. 

 

Kurgan Winter Guard (shameles plug)

Not sure how many of you are familiar with Mad Robot Miniatures, but if your not go check out their website .  He's been offering some really nice bits for a while now, and although I personally haven't tried any out, I have been thinking about it more and more. (I need to finish my other projects first)

Now he's offering a sort of kickstarter call Roll Call, where you can get the above miniatures for a reduced price.   I love the workups he's done (Works in Progress), somewhere around page 50 or so in the thread, and even though these guys aren't my cup of beer I still thought I'd give them a short plug.

And expect to see more of the 7th Scansin soon.

Review: 28mm steampunk inspired heavy weapons (Part 2)

 And here's part 2. Part 1 can be found here = Part 1

The good:
Very little clean-up was needed. I only found one place with a little bit of mold release left over, and that was gone in a jiffy.  I would still recommend giving the kits a good washing though as it is resin and all.

As I stated in the last post, 90% of the flash flakes off at the touch.  To get the last 10% you need a hobby knife and a couple of files.  (Don't take your wife's nail file though...  They won't like it when they find out what you've been using it for). 

As promised here's a few pics showing off the awesome detail in the kits:

The Bad: 

No Insturctions... Although to be honest these kits are super easy to put together and I really don't see a need for printed instructions.  The only time I wished I had a picture was assembly of the Rocket Launcher.  I used the pictures that were on thee kick-starter page for reference.  IF the good Col. Gravis reads this, maybe putting up some finished model pics on your website with a note as to where we could see the pics would be nice in the future.

The Middle:

The points where the mold connected to the wheel was a bit worse, but if you turn the that part to the bottom it's not visible any whey.

There were also a couple of mold lines here and there but they were easily removed with a file.

And as requested by "Buffer" in the last post here is a comparison shot of the Bombardier.

Left to Right:  Mix of Victoria Mini's an GW Legs, Bombardier, GW Preatorian, GW Master of the fleet.

Review: 28mm steampunk inspired heavy weapons (Part 1)

Some of you might remember this post IG Heavy Weapons from Curious Constructs. Well I received my pledge the other day, (last week, but I was on vacation so it doesn't count) and thought I might  as well get a review up of everything that came in the box.

Unpacking: ;) look at all these new toys!

Initial Impressions: Lots of flash, rocket launchers a bit bent, but fixed within 10 minutes.The flash is extremely thin, and crumbles away when you touch it so it's not that hard to remove. 

 Clean up:  All I needed was a hobby knife and a normal file. To clean this one up took me about 5 minutes. 

Now the metal bits (the gun crews) and limited edition "Bombardier"  had almost no flash on them at all.  Just a hint of a mold line here and there, and those can be cleaned up with a simple file.  Below is a not so good picture of the Bombardier, and all the gun crews.

What I really think is great are the number of heads that are included.  We all know from experience how much it hurts to build our army and every 4 models have the same head.  In this case we received 10 heads for every 6 Troopers!!

Kit and Detail:  The kits themselves are very nicely done, and go together in a breeze.  The detail on these is simply amazing, from the rear of the gun-shield to the pistons and machine parts on the guns themselves. I am more than impressed with the work and attention to detail that went into these, it really makes these look sharp.  I'll get some more pics of the individual weapons up in Part 2, as I begin to assemble them.

And last but not least, here's the start of the "Bombardier", I just couldn't wait to get started on this guy, he's still a WIP but for 30 minutes of painting he'll fit in perfectly with my army. Now I just have to pick a name for this guy. 

Over all:
Great stuff and I'm really looking forward to finishing some of these up to use in my army. More detailed pics of the weapons and assembly in Part 2. 

28mm Steampunk (Kickstarter plug)

Now I'm fairly confident that most of you have seen this, but seeing that this has been a draft post since last week I should finally get it out there.  Have ya'll seen these? 

Meridian Miniatures

Now I do feel that there are to many kickstarters going on but this one looks interesting.  The officers are really well done, and I'd love to get my hands on them.

 
What really got me going though was the larges assortment of head option (wink, wink, nudge, nudge to some of my other favorite bits stores that are making selling heads  ;)   )   I just which he had a pic with of his heads on a GW mini.

and last but not least for those of you who might be interested in using these in 40K here's a couple of pics of his mini's next to GW's (and others)

Personally  haven't made up my mind as of yet, but I'll be keeping an on this over the next few weeks.

Review: GW vs. Dystopian Legion

(Photo's are not by me*)

After my last post I was really looking around for more photo's of the new models from Spartan Games.  My thoughts were to use some as IG Veterans.  My hopes were dashed  though as I found this and other photo's showing the true scale of their models. 

As you can see in the photo they are at least 2 heads taller than GW IG models...  Which would explain why the Drummer Boy (Musician) that I bought is almost the same size as GW mini's.

I guess I'll just have to keep looking.

Original Photo and more comparisons can be found here: AD Publishing

Review: Spartan Games "Dystopian Legions Drummer"

I recently pre-ordered the model above for use with my Imperial Guard detachment the "7th Scansin Regiment of Foot".  The company is Spartan Games, and it's from their Kingdom of Britannia line for Dystopian Legions.  Their website states that you get 2 Miniatures but never actually show you a picture of the 2nd Mini.   Naja, I thought it's either two of the same, or something close, and went ahead and ordered it. These came in yesterday and of course I just had to get it open and see how they looked.  Below is the back side of the box they came in.

Here's my first surprise, the second model comes with a field hat, and not even a Pith Helmet. My 2nd surprise is that the one model that comes with a Pith (the one I was really after) is bare footed...  :(  Now I'm stuck trying to decide what to do.  Either Green stuff a pair of boots (which I'm not good at), use the 2nd model, or I have to start cutting. 

The miniatures themselves are very well done, but there was quite a bit of flash to clean up, which went pretty quick though.  Another thing that bothered me was that the slots in their bases is too small, and you have to trim down the piece below the mini to get t hem to fit.    The attention to detail is very good, and I was blown away and all the fine details when you look closer.  I'm really looking forward to getting these painted up.

Above is a picture showing the hight of the miniature next to Marshal Argos himself.  They pass quite together well I must say, although he could off been a tad smaller seeing that he's supposed to be a child.  All in all an Excellent Miniature and I'm already considering using some of their other Miniatures as Storm Troopers.

New Air Brush

 

So I picked up a new airbrush a couple weeks ago and finally had the chance to try it out the other day.  I'll admit it's a beginner's class starter kit from Revell.  But I am just a beginner with one of these so I don't mind at all.  Besides it's there to help m repaint all my armour, and as you can see in the two pics below it works wonders.  It's super easy to use, and feels quite comfortable in the hand.  The trigger on top is easy to push so you don't have to squeeze hard at all.

 The clip in the front is for the paint jar so and feels quite balanced in the hand.  He only issue I had was that I originally didn't have  enough paint in the jar (I was only testing it) an I found that rotated the gun to achieve different angles I would loose the paint... 

So anyways heres the progress of tank one after 20 minutes time painting and a bit of drying time between 3 layers.  

Yes I said 3 layers.  Black, Dark Green, hairspray with salt, and the 3rd layer of lighter green. And all that with a painting time of 20 minutes!!!   Love this thing!!!

Here's my only worry..  how long does one of these cans last? 

 More news and pics as I get further along.

Max Mini (a review)

First time I´ve ever done a review of a Bitz company before, and although it´s primarely a positive review there were a few things that I felt could have been improved.   I ordered 2 blisters from Max Mini, the first was the Heavy Machine Guns found HERE and the 2nd was the Mechanical Hammers found on the same page.  Now after 2 days I received an email stating that my order was being processed.  Three weeks later it was still being processed so I droped them an email asking if there was delay.  What really disappointed me was that I had to send a 2nd email 5 days later asking the same question before I got an answer.

They were still working on my order because the Machine guns were out of stock, but not to worry my order would ship in the next 7 days.  Of course I waited 10 days and again no product, again I send an email asking what the delay was, and again pretty much the same answer as the first time.  This time though they actually shipped and after 7 weeks I finally got my products.  Whats cool is that they threw in these heads Fallen Legionnaire heads.  Unfortunately I can´t use them in my Guard army so they´ll be going up for auction sometime soon.

Oh, and on an interesting turn of events, 2 days after receiving my order I received another package from them containing Mechanical Gun arms, Mechanical Hammers, and round shields.  Thinking this a mistake I sent them another email asking if I should return them.  At the time of this posting, I´ve sent them 2 emails and waited 10 days...  no reply.  So maybe I´ll put these up for auction as well.

 Opinion:   Their bitz look great, and require very little prep work to be used. BUT,  their communication sucks...  No two ways around it.  I would definetely order from them again, I just wouldn´t expect fast delivery or timely responses to emails.