The end of 2010 is almost here…

This year has been an interesting one to say the least. Not a lot of excitement around here, but not a lot of much else either. Real-life took a goodly portion of my time this past year, so we didn’t get to complete as many new projects as we wanted to. We will work hard in 2011 to make up for the lack of new releases in 2010. Not sure what all we will release, but we do have plenty of goodies to bring back into production as well as some new figures to release…

As previously mentioned we have some ‘lost’ 25mm Scruby figures to release in January. We also have some ‘new’ Blasted Planets figures nearing completion. The Bloodaxe line will see some new WWII Germans as well as some Spanish to go with our Moro Rebellion range…

Next time I’ll post some early pictures of some of the releases we are working on. In the meantime here is one more picture from the upcoming Early Napoleonic release:

J-144 – Italian, Cisalpine Republic, 1799, on guard

Pictures took a little longer than planned (weekend and holiday season madness)…

I’m still fiddling with how best to prepare figures for photography, so these still are not what I’d like, but they do show the figures.

J-50 - Boer infantryman, standing on guard

J-51 - Boer infantryman, standing, firing

J-52 - Boer infantryman, walking, rifle at trail

J-53 - Boer soldier (artillery/utilityman)

JC-54 - Boer rider, firing from saddle

JC-55 - Boer rider, holding rifle on thigh

Our next “Lost Figures” release will be: 25mm Early Napoleonic Soldiers

I’ve located masters for the following figures:

J-143 – Bavarian Musketeer, 1799, on guard

J-144 – Italian, Cisalpine Republic, 1799, on guard

J-147 – Russian Musketeer, 1794, on guard

JC-148 – Russian Cuirassier rider, 1794

J-149 – De Meuron’s Swiss (in light dragoon helmet), 1800, standing firing

J-150 – Hardy’s York Fusilier, 1800, advancing

And now for a sneak peek:

J-143 - Bavarian Musketeer, 1799, on guard

Look for these Napoleonic figures in January.

I’ve been hinting at our next release of “Lost Scruby Miniatures” and now I can finally announce the availability of our 25mm Boer Soldiers. I’ve been wanting to release these for some time now, but couldn’t find the original masters and reworking the figures was very time consuming, so the project just never got done. Last month I was searching for some other masters and found the original master figures for all but one of the 25mm Boer soldiers (the lone missing master is JC-54 – which I have recreated using an original gravity mold) . Even with the original masters there was till some work to be done. First JC-54 had to be remastered from an original pattern mold. Next In order to cast J-52 I had to cut the master into castable sections. Cutting JC-54 turned out to be far easier than I expected, as I was able to disassemble to master at all of the original joints (left arm and right hand). As a result this is now a 3 piece model that you will need to assemble.

And now on to the figure listing. Our figure listing is taken from the 1967 Scruby Catalog:

25mm Boer Soldiers, 1899

The Boer soldier of the Republican armies of the Transvaal Republic and the Orange Free State was purely a citizen, without uniform or pay and with no parade-ground training. “Whether opposed by man or beast, his sole weapon was the rifle which he grew up with, and he preferred to keep his distance, neither using a bayonet nor believing in the heroics of man-to-man struggle. He kept his pony close to the scene of the action so that he could simply run away if things got too hot – and live to fight another day.” (From: ‘Good Bye Dolly Gray’) “Almost all Boer officers were elected, but every burgher was equal, entitled to give advice and participate in councils of war.”

These two descriptive paragraphs should give the war game player some ideas on how to use his Boers in war games against the British. Below you will find a listing of the 25mm scale Scruby Miniatures of these famed fighters which, with the proper (rules to consider their peculiar fighting ability), should make for some interesting battles – whether using the Boers against the British, or using a ‘Boer Commando’ within the framework of your present African War (or Mafrica War) miniatures armies.

You will find it fun to paint these Boer soldiers too, since they wore all kinds of clothing and did not wear uniforms. The Scruby castings are clothed much as the man swinging his rifle is, in the illustration above. One should remember too that although every Boer was mounted, they always fought on foot, so a judicious choice of our models can give you the correct figures to represent this – for example, one mounted man as a horse holder, several horses, and several foot fighters could be mounted on a moving try to give the idea of ‘movement’ on horseback, and fighting on foot.

If all goes as planned (no snow/blizzard expected) I’ll have photos to post early next week.