It's that Janus time...

It’s that Janus time again…

As regular readers, (now there’s me starting 2019 with optimism by using either of those terms about the Baccus News posts), will know, the first entry of the year is a retrospective of the last twelve months linked to a somewhat futile attempt to outline a production schedule for the coming year.

I’d like to start with a couple of general points about the last twelve months.  Firstly, it’s not been a great secret that we’ve had staffing issues which has greatly restricted the time available for anything other than just keeping mail order turning over.   It’s not all doom and gloom however, as you’ll find out in the second part of this piece.   Secondly, we’ve seen a big increase in demand for our ranges both domestically and internationally and while this is an excellent turn of events, once again, it’s restricted the opportunity to get the new stuff out there.  I’ll return the this point later.

Sooooooooo…let’s start with the ritual humiliation that is seeing just how well the freshly minted forecasts of January 2018 fared when they met with the harsh and unyielding Brick Wall of Reality.

And the first innocent Hostage to Fortune was..,

The obvious starting point will be our plans to finish off WEC range.   To this end, you’ll very shortly see the release of some cavalry variants.   Dragoons are sculpted and just need to be put through the moulding process.   To round things off, work on the Lowland Scots is well underway.  

While the words, ‘finish off’, now look a little jaded, we’ve not actually done too badly at this.

The afore-mentioned cavalry variants were indeed released,

the Dragoons and the Lowland Scots Foot, Horse and Artillery were all made available.

We’ll finish the whole thing off with some Highlanders and armed peasants…

Ah.  Yes.  Those hairy chaps in plaid and the rather smelly ones with agricultural equipage.   We didn’t quite manage to get those done.  The WEC range therefore remains firmly in the, ‘Work in Progress’, category.

Moving on,

 ‘…at which stage we will get straight into the late seventeenth century codes and accompanying flag sheets.

You guessed it.  Not a chance.  Not even the slightest, remotest, glimmer of a notional opportunity to propose the feasibility of some outline planning to sketch out a possibility.  Epic Fail #1

IF this goes as planned, work will start on overhauling our venerable but still very popular GNW ranges.   For those of you familiar with this process, you’ll get new figures and we’ll include any codes that we omitted first time around.   This process will also include finishing off the Ottoman Turk range which is currently woefully short of cavalry.

In my defense, I did start that section out the with a capitalized ‘IF’.   Not good enough for you?  Looks like we have the Hanging Judge in tonight…Okay – Epic Fail #2

Moving into the twentieth century, we’ll be completing the Great War in the Middle East.  The British and Indian troops have already been sculpted and it is just a matter of us getting the moulds made.

Let’s lighten the mood a wee bit.  We did get the Middle East Brits and Indians out,

.

Thus completing, (you know I think I will type that again, C-O-M-P-L-E-T-I-N-G) a predicted project.  Come on – allow me a little pleasure amidst all this auto-flagellation!

Staying with the Great War, work is well underway on moving our focus to the Eastern Front.   The Russians have already been sculpted and work on the Austro-Hungarians has started.   Our aim is to have this front completely covered by the end of 2018. 

There you go with all them negative waves again…The Russians did make it into our ranges in their entirety, but sadly, the other nations weren’t quite so fortunate.  I really did wish to complete this major part of our range by the end of last year, and if there is one missed target above all that I really regret, it is this one.  Epic Fail #3.

Speaking of WW2, we are finally hoping to crack the final technical issues that will open the floodgates the release of vehicles and artillery to accompany the infantry that are already available.

I suppose that it all depends on now you define the term. ‘floodgates’…

We did get our first codes in the series out, and in our defense they really were cracking little models and have been very well received.

..however, we’ve just not been able to get to anywhere near our projected release schedule on these items.  Not quite an Epic Fail, but still a disappointment.

Moving away from figures, I am finally making serious headway on the Polemos Seven Years War rules by Nick Dorrell.  

Let us now draw a veil over the above line and imagine that those words never really existed…Epic Fail #4

The process of overhauling and expanding our older ranges of flag sheets will continue.   The WSS sheets are the next to get the treatment and expect an announcement on that very soon.

At last, a gentle curve upwards on this roller-coaster of emotions as I can smugly say, ‘Job done’, because the WSS flagsheets were completely overhauled and expanded with more nationalities covered and with superbly detailed artwork in a far superior vector graphic format.

The afore-mentioned Stewart the Tech Chap will be nailed to his chair in order to complete the Polemos Napoleonic app and do some bits and pieces on the site.

The crafty buggar not only managed to get the nails out, but also undid the ropes, unlocked the door and made good his escape before I managed to get the, ‘To do’ list to him!  Some people…

The Joy of Six will continue to highlight all that is good in 6mm wargaming and offer a brilliant showcase for the talented modellers and gamers out there.   More details of this to come shortly.

Let’s finish this section on a high note.  The Joy of Six moves from strength to strength.   The new venue proved a great success, there were more attendees, the games were epic, we had attendees from all over the UK and beyond and some excellent coverage in Miniature Wargames.   A wonderful high point of our year.

And let’s keep some positivity here as we actually got some bits out that we’d not actually predicted in the form of our first motorised and armoured options for the Great War.

So, that was 2018.   On a personal note it was probably the most demanding that I’ve experienced since starting the company.  To be honest, given the issues that we’ve faced over the last twelve months, we’ve actually done quite well to get any new releases on to the books, at all, but that doesn’t stop the disappointment about the amount of unfulfilled expectations, and that is something that will be addressed in 2019.

What to expect as we look ahead?   Good question.   In the full knowledge that I’ll have to go through this lot again in twelve months time, here is the definite/probably/possible/putative/speculative/rumoured Baccus release schedule for 2019.

Let’s kick off with the WEC range.  This will definitely be completed.  I can say that with confidence, as it has all now been sculpted and it remains only to be put through the processes that turn the master sculpts into finished products.   (Those of you in the know may have spotted the heavy use of irony in the term, ‘only’.)    These final flourishes will be well worth the wait, with four separate codes of Highlanders, some Irish for those of you with a Celtic bent and bringing up the rear will be a bunch of armed rustics.   Here is a picture of some of the Highland masters.

A confident start, and yes, there is more to come.   We WILL finish off the Great War in the East with Austrians, Italians and Serbs.  Once again all the actual sculpts are done and it’s a matter of getting them into production.  The Austrians will be along very soon...

Staying with the Great War, once the East is dealt with, we’ll be doing a quick diversion westwards and adding some Belgian forces before finishing off with some much-requested British Highland troops in kilts..

…and that will just about to do it for the Great War…except that it won’t really.  Expect to see some more vehicles and interesting bits and pieces over the coming months.

Let’s go kicking and screaming backwards a couple of centuries or so.  With the actual completion of the WEC range being a real possibility that opens up the possibility of the late seventeenth century range finally strutting its stuff, and with a liberal sprinkling of the ‘If’ word, maybe even the semi-legendary Great Northern War resculpt will finally making its entrance.

Continuing the chronological retrograde leaps we’ll finally begin to build on the foundations laid by our wonderful Crusades range to add the codes needed to cover Western Europe including the wars of the Plantagenets which will certainly add a nice little One Hundred Years range to our books – as the latter is a personal favorite of mine from many years ago, I have a real interest in seeing this one come to fruition.

Finally, on the modelling side of things, you will see a steady expansion to the WW2 vehicle and artillery codes as we steadily expand and deepen our coverage of the subject.   Work is well in hand and expect a few surprises as this range progresses.  Just to show that we really do mean business, here’s a little sneak preview.

On the subject of rules, I will make no predictions, but work is being done on more than one project, so keep your eyes on the News page for updates…

I had originally decided that given the issues surrounding 2018 that the release schedule for 2019 would be far less ambitious and far more practical.   Looking at what I’ve just put down, I may have got a wee bit carried away.   Bets are now being taken as just how much actually gets done.

All of which brings me to a ‘Serious Bit’.   It’s been apparent that we’ve had issues in the past few months in terms of actually getting new releases out, but also crucially in turning mail orders around in a reasonable time and getting sufficient stock at shows.  For all of this, I apologise.   The main reason has been a series of long-term staffing issues, made acute by a period of sustained illness.   In truth, Baccus has expanded beyond the staffing model that has served us well for so many years. The good news is that 2019 will see us addressing these problems.  By April, the Baccus workshop team will have increased from two to four staff.  This will enable us to cope better with demand, but crucially will widen the personnel with key skills all essential to improving our performance as a team.  The addition of a third casting machine will also give is that extra capacity needed to meet demand.

And it is also that question of ‘demand’ that is very interesting right now.   Over the course of the last year we have been getting progressively busier on week by week basis.  Undoubtedly some of this is increased overseas sales as the UK£ begins its pre-Brexit nose dive, but there are other factors at work here.   Last year, I wrote a fairly innocuous piece stating my personal opinion that 28mm figures were increasingly being used for skirmish gaming and less so for large scale actions, and that wargamers would, as a result, increasingly turn to 6mm (and 10mm) for big battles and new projects as these offered huge advantages for this sort of game.  As it happened, this seemed to touch a raw nerve with some folk and generated a petty hefty response, both positive and negative across the web.  Well, I would have to say from this little corner of the world, this trend is gathering a little pace.   Our current growth has mostly been driven by new customers, and lots of them,  on a weekly basis.   My email correspondence is increasingly along the lines of, ‘I want to start a new period, but can’t bring myself to paint several hundred 28mm figures.’   In short, the smaller scales are gaining traction amongst the habitual 28mm gamers, albeit in small numbers at the moment, but as these individuals find out that they actually can paint the wee chaps without their eyeballs getting fried and then latching on to the things that the rest of us know about cost, speed of painting, mass effect and all the other positives that come with going small, then others will be drawn to them in turn.

As is usual I’d like to finish by saying a big and very personal ‘Thank you’ to lots and lots of people, all of whom, in some way make Baccus 6mm the company that it is.    The products that come out of our workshop and are sold to you represent a massive collective effort from a large and diverse group of people ranging our ever-patient accountant, (Hi Gill!), family members who help out ‘voluntarily’,  extremely talented sculptors and designers, the odd graphic artist, rules writers, an elusive Tech chap and a motley crew of supporters, well-wishers and not least of all, You Lot out there, the Customers.  Come on, stand up and take a bow - nothing would happen at all without your support.

Thank you all very much and may I wish that you have a wonderful 2019!

Peter