2nd December 2011 - Victrix news update and future releases
This is just a brief news update to keep you abreast of what we (Steve and Julian) at Victrix are up to and what is coming from us in 2012.
Firstly the French 54mm Grenadiers and Voltigeurs sets. We had expected to get these out as a Christmas release. We were supposed to get test sprues of both sets in October so we could complete the box art but as yet we have only received figures for the Grenadiers set. Artmaster studio is currently painting some of these for us and we hope to have some photos of these next week. (The figures we have look great!)
The tooling company has told us we will have Voltigeurs sometime before Christmas. If that is the case we will have them painted, prepare the boxes and then it takes a few weeks to print them. All going well they should be a late January release. We are disappointed to not have these out yet but there was nothing we could do to speed them along.
Work has finally continued on the long awaited Greek sets (Hurrah!) These had to be put off due to economic reasons. The part count in these sets is quite high for the variety required for Ancient Greeks. More parts means more expense (you will notice how most plastic manufacturers part counts have gone down since we all appeared on the scene! Every company involved is learning as they go and have realised that they can’t put everything they want in a box as it adds thousands more to the tooling bill which takes longer to recoup)
Anyway we had to make sure the company was economically safe in these trying times and did not want to overstretch our finances. We are now clear to continue with the Greeks and they will appear as soon as possible in 2012. Work has started on the box art and we should be in a position to show some of that around Christmas time. Also we have decided to expand to 4 sets of Greek hoplites, not just the initial three. We are sculpting some extra heads and command parts to make a set of Greek Mercenaries in mostly a mix of Pilos, Attic and Thracian helmets. We can’t fit all head options in one box so this set will flesh out the head types we were not able to put into the Athenian set. The Mercenaries will be able to be mixed with all the sets and will be ideal as Spartan allies and Greeks fighting for the Persians.
The French Early Dragoons are being revamped and re-sculpted at present. We had a rethink over the figure design for these and went back to the drawing board. These are being finished off by Rob and we will have something to show in the New Year. They are coming on a treat; Rob is really putting a lot of work into these beauties! And we will be able to springboard from these to do more cavalry sets a lot faster next year.
Also in the works is an adaptation of out Old Guard set. We are going to do some changes to the set layout to produce the Middle Imperial Guard in covered shako for 1813/1814 and Legere/ Voltigeurs/ Grenadiers in greatcoats. It will be a really versatile set.
As well as all this we plan on finally getting a proper rulebook out for the ‘March of Eagles’ with rules for all arms and lists. These are being written with Barry Hilton who is a very busy man so we fit it in were we can. For Salute 2012 we plan to have a March of Eagles participation game using 54mm figures! Which should be rather spectacular with a few hundred troops on the table.
