Hasslefree Miniatures Newsletter – New Releases Galore

Yes, I know we're a few weeks in but frankly the HF crew have had a crappy January so we're starting a little late. Both the Whites and the Blacks have had a bereavement in our immediate families, Jenn and I have moved house, Sal has been ill, Kev got sick and business-wise we started running out of some of our better sellers because all of the above happened while we were catching up fom Christmas break.

So, forget all that, as far as we're concerned 2014 is starting right now :) We've had some fantastic new releases arrive, a few additions to the Modern Trooper and Grymn Powered Armour ranges to properly show off, we've won some awards and we have a bunch of resin masters, both new and from just before Christmas, to show you. There's a painting contest we're sponsoring and Kev is off 'on the road' and needs your input.

So yeah, a huge amount of stuff has built up while we were busy so let's get on with it!

(No, I have no idea why I do such daft titles, I think I get a bit stir crazy when sat at a computer for hours on end).

So, we won stuff! More specifially, in the recent WAMP awards, we were already proud to have been nominated in a number of categories and even more proud when it turned out we'd won 2 (and placed in another 2) *beam*

First up, Sal won 'Best Community Member', which I'm pretty happy about as it makes me less likely to get a slap for embarrassing her in the last newsletter :)

Second, we won 'Best Company'. Jenn has decided to accept the trophy for that and to be fair she does most of the work around here anyway *knows which side his bread is buttered on*

Third up, we took second place for 'Best Sci-Fi Figure', while we didn't win we were still very happy with this as a) The winner was a pretty damn good bust and b) It leaves the door open for our new and improved sci-fi figures to take 2014 by storm :)
Hmm hang on, this one is clearly Kev's trophy, someone seems to be missing, oh wait there was a 4th...

Dammit! Fourth up, Crackpot placed 3rd in 'Best Painted Historical' with a beautifully painted Hanako. Can't really claim any credit there either.

So, yeah, I got squat *pout* . I now formally suggest a new category of 'Best Office Monkey' for the Wamp Awards 2015 *mutter*

(The title was gonna be 'Pee Wee's Big Adventure' but I have to see him tomorrow and he works with sharp instruments)

(Oh, and yes, there will be miniatures soon I promise :) )

This April, while the rest of us are hard at work at Salute, Kev is off on a US road trip all on his lonesome.

To start with he has Adepticon, just outside Chicago, over the first weekend in April. While he has other reasons for being there, Kev will be spending a good deal of the 3 days putting on sculpting classes. The classes wil be 2 hours long and have limited places available to purchase. I've just checked, and while Sunday is sold out, there is a single place left in one of the Friday classes and a few places left on Saturday. If you're interested in going and attending one of these then you can find the info HERE (This is a direct link to Saturday's classes, including Kev's. To book the last Friday slot or hope that a Sunday spot opens up via a cancellation just click the different days along the top).

And to Finish, Kev will be at Reapercon in the last weekend of April (page not yet updated for 2014).

Which means that for 2 whole weeks there is a Kev loose in the states! As such we've created a Facebook thread and a Forum of Doom thread for you to come up with ideas for what Kev can do and offers to show him about something of interest or put him up in your basement etc. Any serious offers considered (any funny offers should be sent to me by PM and I'll probably present a compilation to him as his itinerary and see how many blood vessels I can get to burst on his head) but please don't be offended if Kev doesn't take your kind offer of a hammock in the back yard and a tour of the local water treatment facilities :)

First up is Lenore, the Enchantress of Evermore, a mysterious sorceress from the fabled Nor'western city. Clad in a full length robe, full length dress and thigh high boots.

This is the mini that Kev made by dressing the dolly that became Concubine (c) below and it's come out pretty damn special.

Next up is Jholkar, the White Lion of Bolverk. He's already available in metal HERE but when we purchased the mini from the incredibly talented Tre Manor the green was lost to time, and there was no master mould available to us, so Kev has basically magicked up a working master with a metal copy, some green stuff and a not inconsiderable amount of elbow grease and genius :)

All of that left us with a shiny new master for a future new production mould 'and' to sell copies of to you lucky people. Only minor changes have been made to the figure (As mentioned Tre is one of the best) so it's basically just a lot sharper in detail now and will allow us to continue selling him indefinitely :)

These two are resin masters that were soft launched before Christmas but never made it into a newsletter proper so this is just a friendly reminder (or completely new info for those who missed them on FB or the website :) ).

Volk the Bastard, Volk the Mongrel, Volk the Half Breed etc. etc. etc.

Volk is the leader of the Barbarian Tribes of the Eastern Steppes, together with Kalyna, he rules the upper grasslands. Volk is an odd sight amongst the Easterners as they tend towards the rangy and favour horses, while Volk tends towards the brick ... outhouse and doesn't hate horses enough to ride one (Although he has been seen on a chariot during battle). His nicknames derive from the, heavily believed, rumours that he is the offspring of the great Barbarian, Wolf, who himself is believed to have Ogre blood running through his veins. The story of his facial scar is a source of many a campfire rumour.

Armed with a great runeaxe and double-bladed broadsword the heavily muscled barbarian also wears a bearskin cloak to protect against the bitter nights in the region.

Kalyna is the Queen of the Eastern Steppes, ruling alongside her partner Volk. Already considered fierce amongst her people, her reputation, and right to rule, was only strengthened upon her partnership with the huge Barbarian nomad. Together they control a goodly portion of the north eastern grasslands and lower Kurok mountain range.

Kalyna is armed with shortsword and broad dagger and wears a bearskin cloak as protection against the harsh night time elements.

While the first of our Sci-Fi prototypes was well received Kev was niggled by the need to give the concept a bit more 'oomph' and this is the result (The original prototype female will now be the prototype design for 'scout' armour rather than powered armour which these represent)

Male Prototype - Female Prototype

The basic plan for this is for Kev to make some prototypes using his usual green stuff method, finalise the design, then shift over to digital sculpting using his funky tablet that we acquired for him last year. Then digitally sculpt us our very first, hard plastic, box set. Citing!

Just in case the final design changes in some small, but significant way, Kev is hoping to make a couple more variants of these green stuff versions so you can at least buy a small matching squad. We also plan on releasing the gun and helmets as armoury sprues.

Concubine (c) is one of those things that exists pretty much exclusively due to you guys and your feedback on Facebook. Kev showed off what was essentially a body blank for a new mini and, as Kev sculpts practically whole figures then dresses them, we were immediately asked to release the blank as a figure. So Kev finished her up and here she is.

This figure won't be available in metal because you'd have to cut her up due to the voids (gaps between legs and arms etc.) being across multiple planes so this is a little experiment to see if this works as an idea.

As Kev makes body blanks with the final figure in mind, he doesn't normally keep in mind the casting process for the unfinished version, so in the future similar figures may be available but only in resin. The results of this experiment will determine if we'll get more 'concubines', maybe even a male one!

Ken has been announced before but immediately went out of stock as we discovered that we'd made a perfect resin master mould of a broken green :) (A small hard to see part had fallen off without any of us noticing) so now he's repaired and back!

As Volk and Kalyna were released in resin before the Christmas break we have a rather unique situation of officially launching the resin 'and' metal versions at the same time.

As the story descriptions of the figures are above I'll use this space to mention that Volk is now officially our most bulky 30mm scale human mini.

He's 35mm tall and 20mm across at the shoulders, in our scale that's a man above six and a half feet tall and about 300lbs. What this means for us is that a) you don't fit many in a mould and b) he's heavy as hell, well over 30grams (Which is a lot for a human mini, weigh one of yours and see :) ). With his rough cloak and pointy weapons combining with that bulk he's also not too pleasant on the moulds. All of this is reflected in his increased price unfortunately, as it makes him very expensive to produce.

On the other hand he's an awesome figure so I'm pretty certain nobody will mind too much :)

The first prototype that Kev made of our planned Sci-Fi range has now been designated as 'scout armour'. It may now be a while before you see any more joining her as Kev will first be concentrating on the powered armour designs, but if sales/interest dictate then we'll make sure this armour style gets a squad too!

I'm combining these together as they are related.  When Kev first started making the Modern Troopers we couldn't know just how popular they would be and we also couldn't foresee just how many times I'd get an email or a message asking something like 'I really like Hassle's head but I'd like him to be wielding the P90 and is that a new backpack I see on Demon?'.

Which is why we tried to accommodate by making the parts available in an incredibly encompassing way. However to do that weve just been breaking up sprues until we got enough sales information to know what ratio of each part to put in new 'bitz' moulds. We have now collected that info and are putting the moulds together. Until they make it through the mould queue though we will be in and out of stock of the Modern Trooper parts, I'm afraid it's just an unfortunate side effect of making sure we kept them affordable. If I had to pick a time I'd say middle of February for a more stable and permanent stock level.

It was exacerbated further by releasing the new body variants Kev had finished, pictured above. These are the existing bodies with integral hydration packs sculpted on plus some drinking tubes etc. Three of the bodies have the standard 3-5L packs and one has the squad-sized 20L pack (Personally I think this one could also be easily modified to a parachute pack if so wished). These are all currently available but there is a head shortage as you'll notice pretty fast, sorry!

Similarly to the above, the Grymn Powered Armour is something we have tried our best to offer with as much flexibility as possible.

These two new sprues are an Assault Backpack Sprue with over-the-shoulder weapon options and a sprue that may also be of interest to you 15mm guys out there as it's Robotic Arms with heavy weapons making the Grymn PA look like interesting 15mm mechs.

Both of these sprues were digitially sculpted by the excellent John Bear Ross who we're hoping to work with again this year on a related poject :)

Along with the Modern Trooper items, while we were dealing with Christmas and our personal issues, we also slipped out of stock on a number of Studio and Golgo items which has now been rectified :D

Time for some Martial Artists vs Zombies action methinks!

We're sponsoring a painting contest by Colour of the Gods.

COG (and please feel free to go tell him it should be COTG as that rolls off the tongue much more nicely *grin*) is a painting community and youtube channel run by Gus Pollard.

As well as running this contest Gus will soon be adding a video to his channel with a painting tutorial/review of our very own Boudi, so we'll be sure to point you in the right direction once that happens too.

Full rules for entry can be read via the link above but basically it's like the facebook page, subscribe to the youtube channel and then you can enter either one single human sized mini or one squad of human sized minis or both. Some entries are already up so you can see the standard set but for those of you you who may be worried that you can't quite match that standard we offering a separate prize for 'Best HF Mini' so there's another goal to aim for :)

I'd like to say *whew* like we're all done with that lot but not even close. Salute is now significantly less than 3 months away and our schedule up until, and right through, the show is 'packed'.  We already have over 10 new releases in the mould queue plus we have acquired a small range from another company to swell our ranks on top of that. We have the Salute game to arrange, Salute itself (which is always hard work just on it's own), Kev's trip, our planned expansions into hard plastic, more retail and more accessories. We have production problems to fix on the beleaguered Grymn Walker variant and Sal's new etched brass plus new moulds for a few old minis that are struggling and a 'lot' of armoury sprues waiting in the wings to be relased. That's all in the next 10 weeks or so!

I also still need to find some space in these newsletters for a gallery section, we have had some amazing paintjobs put forward over the last year and we should definitely start showing them off to you guys. I'll make a special effort to squeeze some in next time.

Talking of which...

'Til next time,

A Very Tired Arty.