1ST SEPTEMBER 2010(hit F5 'Refresh' to check for latest updates!)
1ST SEPTEMBER 2010
PRICE INCREASE COMING!
For the last couple of years the price of metal has moved up and up, and is now four times as much as it was when I started Heresy as a sole trader back in 2001/2002. Four times as much! It's staggering, it really is. Anyway, I've always been reluctant to pass the price increase on because I've always thought that £3.00 was a natural price for a single figure. I've been forced to put the price up on the big, heavy monsters and things as they use so much metal but this is the first time that I will be increasing the price of all the human-sized (and thereabouts) figures. A lot of the kits include multiple parts and additional options and I just can't afford to continue selling them at the price they are at now, unless the price of metal alloy comes down again, which it doesn't look like doing. Making all the figures in resin or plastic isn't really an option, before anyone suggests it, especialy plastic which costs around £40,000 per sprue ignoring design costs etc.
So, from September the 13th, the prices across the range will be going up. As a guide, £3.00 figures will go up to £3.50, £3.75 or £4.00 depending on factors like weight, castability and so forth.I haven't worked out all the prices for each figure yet - I encourage you to pop any orders in that you've been holding onto before the price rise comes into effect.
PARTIZAN 5TH OF SEPTEMBER, KELHAM HALL, NEWARK...
Someone dropped out and at last Heresy got the call to take up a spare table at the show this Sunday! Fortunately Craig was willing to give up his Sunday (even more heroic when you consider he's doing night shift at Sainsbury's on Sunday night, straight after unloading the van post-show) and so we'll be coming along with a reduced stand - everything in blisters so limited amounts of stock - get there first or miss out: we will however post out anything missing later in the afternoon. If you want to reserve something please ring us during Friday so we can put it together and make sure it's on the van.
25th June 2010
WHOOPS!
Sorry for the lack of updates on this page - I'm so used to just putting out micro-news as it happens on Twitter that I've totally neglected to update this page. It seems so old-fashioned - and also weird to be able to type more than 140 characters! (LMAO.)
STUFF!
Since Salute, I've been desperately trying to get my house ready for selling to try to pay off a massive flexbile loan I've had with Cahoot for several years now. A couple of years ago, as the recession took hold, they put the interest rate up from the 6.9% I signed up for to 17%. The interest payments alone are now just too much so the only way to raise the £15k to pay off the loan is to sell my house and use the pitiful amount of equity there to get rid of it. Sadly, my house is only worth as much as I pad for it 5 years ago, so no extra funds to spend on say plastics. Bah!
FOR THE LOVE OF GOD, NOBODY OPEN ANY DRAWERS OR CUPBOARDS
Anyway, after two months of frantic housework (all those 'little' jobs that have been piling up untouched over the last 5 years) and an amazing amount of sorting through paperwork in boxes and sweeping surfaces clear of carloads of what turned out to be stuff that couldbe thrown out, I have only got the garden left to returf, so next week should see me able to resume work on the Dragon at last!
I'm really, really looking forward to finishing that bad boy off after all this time! I will announce it on Twitter/Facebook/FOD/etc when it's finally done and off ot the casters for the initial submastering. What's submastering, you ask?Well, that's where I send the main body off to specialist resin casters who will produce an initial casting that I can then use/modify to make sure all the rest of the bits will definitely fit together on the completed final version. If major modifications are needed then a second moulding takes place to use as the final masters from which production moulds can be made. So there'll be a bit of to-ing and fro-ing as we say in the UK, or as the Chuckle Brothers espouse - 'To me!' 'To you!' "To me!' etc.
To those of you who have paid in full for the Dragon, do not panic. You have not been forgotten about or ripped off; indeed, I have a special page just waiting to be printed with the names and addresses of the first dozen or so dragons to be sent out when the first batch of production castings come in!
IT NEVER RAINS BUT IT POURS!
One thing I have learnt over my years of doing this - when one expensive-to-buy-in thing runs out, they all do. Thus, this week, not only do I have to pay the workshop rent (£900),an overdue invoice for labels for trade blisters (£1000), deposits for upcoming shows (£500) and the £2000 to cover my mortagage and various loan repayments, but the boxes I use for the mail orders, the putties and tools have all run out at the same time; the putties are the worst as they cost so much to get shipped from the USA, especially the green stuff, which for some reason costs twice the shipping amountof th e pro-create and takes weeks longer for th eorder to be processed and then arrive. Each bulk buy of putty costs upwards of £700, and those tools aren't much cheaper. So apologies for the lack of things in stock in that section of the store! They wil be back, but only once I have some sort of money available to pay for them. June is always like this for some reason...
17th January 2010
Dragon WIP updated...!
Go take a look at the latest Dragon updates on the Dragon WIP page!
20th December 2009
Happy Holidays! WE'RE CLOSED...
...Heresy will officially be closed from 22nd December through until Tuesday 5th January, when we'll start posting orders out again. I was going to work until the 23rd but the bad weather around the England/Scotland Borders meant I had to cancel a planned trip up to see my parents at the weekend. Therefore the last day that i will be posting orders out will be Tuesday morning - I'll nip into the workshop early on and sort out whatever has come in overnight before setting off ont the 270 mile journey to Coldstream. Unless it snows more between now and tuesday in which case I'll have to postpone the trip til after Christmas Day anyway.
Thanks to all of you who have ordered from Heresy during 2009. It's been something of a rollercoaster of financial troubles this year, let's hope 2010 will be more pleasant!
2nd December 2009
HURN SHIPPING AT LAST!
As you will have seen (because you've been avidly reading my Twitter feed, naturally) The first couple of dozen Hurn orders have shipped today - there would have been more but we unexpectedly ran out of quality fresh metal. More metal arrves tomorrow though, and we're hoping to get another 50 or 60 orders out in the evening. As you can probably deduce from that statement, there's quite a pile to get through so please don't fret if yours hasn't arrived yet!
12th November 2009
NERDLORD SHIPPING ALREADY!
Sometimes I even impress myself. (OK, I'm easily impressed, but still...) Managed to get a load of masters cleaned up and a production mould made in record time (mainly thanks to being forced to wait in all morning for a Broadband Engineer to arrive at my home, which gave me time to clean up 13 Nerdlord master castings) So if you have ordered the Nerdlord (and not the Hurn at the same time) your order is already on the way! A mere day after I photo'd the master!
HURN DISAPPEARING FAST
Blimey! Around 100 gone in the first day or so! If you want one, best get that order in sharpish...
11th November 2009
PRE-ORDER THE HURN AT LAST! AND ALSO A JUNIOR DOCTOR!
The long-awaited Hurn prototype model is now available to buy from the pre-orders page. It's a limited edition run which may last no time at all if I get the expected nasty letter. So don't hang about. I am going to do more Hurn but they will look different to this one with different heads, armour etc as I try out a few ideas to make them look more alien and a bit less derivative. Once this version goes out of production you will not be able to buy it anymore.
Also on the pre-order page is the new Junior Doctor/Nerdlord model. If you want to turn your games up to Eleven, use this model ;)
LEADBELT TOURNEY, NOTTINGHAM 14TH/15TH NOVEMBER, HADDEN SPORTS CENTRE
We'll be attending this weekend-long event, will you? You get to see the Dragon, the Hurn, and maybe even a few castings of the Junior Doctor...
http://www.leadbeltwargames.co.uk/index.html
27th October 2009
THE BIG SALE HAS NOW ENDED!
If you didn't take advantage of it, sorry, but you've missed your chance!
26th October 2009
THE BIG SALE ENDS TODAY!!
Sale ends TODAY, Monday 26th October, and some figures will no longer be available; please check the NEWS page for more info! You only have a couple of hours left to get your orders in!
17th October 2009
SALE ENDS SOON! LAST CHANCE TO BUY SOME OF THE OLD FIGURES!
We are now officially caught up with all the orders. If you have ordered during the sale, your order has now been posted and you can stop emailing me asking me if this is the case! I said, Stop It! Everything is out the door up until Friday 16th October evening . Normal service is resumed.
Well, sort of. Turns out the UK Royal Mail is holding a big strike next week, on Thursday 22nd and Friday 23rd October. It's unclear at the moment if any collections or anything at all will be carried out, so expect disruptions! It's likely some sort of special arrangements will be made to collect non-standard services such as Special Delivery etc so if you need stuff sending asap, that's going to be your only option.
Because of the Royal Mail Strike action, we're extending the sale to cover it. Therefore, the current sale offers will last until Monday 26th October, ending 12 midnight UK time (ie when I get up on Tuesday morning, the first thing I'm going to do is delete the Sale page. Don't come crying to me about missing out, you've had a month and a bit!)
The following figures will no longer be available after the sale - mainly the original, cough, 'classic' figures that I started Heresy with and which are sadly outdated. Due to poor fitting, dodgy sculpting, moulds running out etc, etc the list of fatalities is thus:
HEROES
VILLAINS
DEMONS
This is your last chance to get these figures for the forseeable future!
15th October 2009
HERESY (UN)LIMITED
After 7 years of sole-trading, Heresy is finally incorporating as a limited company! Apparently, this is a good thing! (According to new, cheaper accountant) It makes no difference to you lot, except that any cheques should now be made payable to Heresy Miniatures Ltd. Heresy's official trading address will in fact be (I have to use 'Our' here instead of 'My' since Heresy is now an independent creature, which I have to say feels very weird after all these years of it being, well, me...) our accountant's office for purposes of them dealing with all the official legal paperwork, but from this point on all actual orders etc should be sent to our new business address which is UNIT 25, PERKINS YARD, MANSFIELD RD, DERBY, DE21 4AW.
11th October 2009
"SERIOUSLY, READ THE NEWS PAGE!"
Many people are emailing me with confused or even angry emails about not receiving their order, without first checking the many, many news notices! If you have ordered since 18th of September and haven't received your order yet, do not panic - we're just really behind on the orders due to the Workshop move (see below) and you should have noticed when you ordered all the warning signs telling you of the delay. Seems a lot of you didn't bother to read the warnings though, so I apologise again for the delay in getting your order out. As of time of writing, we've reached the 1st of October in terms of orders, so if you ordered before that date, then your order is on the way already!
There's another UK postal strike on the way which will doubtlessly interrupt delivery of orders . Please bear with us if your order gets delayed during this strike action. Not our fault!
You should really follow me on Twitter, you'll get kept up to date with this sort of thing.
8th October 2009
Orders going out again!
We're finally organised enough in the workshop that Craig was able to make a start on the mountain of orders and thus things are being posted again. Since tuesday, in fact, we've posted 80+ orders. This is good news, especially for all the people who have been emailing me angrily demanding to know where their order is because they didn't read the big warnings I've been plastering everywhere regarding the inevitable delays the workshop move would cause. I honestly don't know what else I could have done to stress the delays, since I posted information on this news page, on the sale page, on the forum of doom, on Frothers, on TMP, on my yahoo newsletter, my Twitter feed (lots of posts on there regarding the workshop move) my facebook page and even a brief notice on TGN. I can only apologise sincerely to everyone upset by the delay who somehow managed to miss all these news notices. of which it transpires there are at least three or four people every day this week.
24th September 2009
Get your hands on Battle Scene Boris !
I have decided thus:
The person who makes the biggest order during the sale will get a set of the few metal master castings I made for the unfinished, unreleased Battle Scene Boris. This consists of Boris (some cleaning up required due to extensive mould slip that scuppered the whole project) two guys he's standing on and a bloke with enormous and badly sculpt feet. I started this project a couple of years back but got firstly disheartened by the moulding problem (Boris was too big for the mould I think. With hindsight, I should have made his torso and legs separate) and then totally distracted by my then part-timer mysteriously disappearing on me leaving me scrabblign about for several months. Battle Scene Boris might be worth something on eBay one day once more than the people on the FOD have heard of me. In about 20 years time, I reckon.
I'll try to find and scan the bits.
I should point out too that someone has just put in a massive order, so you'll need to spend a fair bit to get him!
17th September 2009
It's the Big Sale!
Up to 35% off some miniatures! Bargains galore, and the end of the line for a few of the oldest figures! To see the list of what's in the sale click here to go to the sale page. I need to raise a few thousand pounds, quickly, so please give generously. (See long explanation below) I have decided thus:
The person who makes the biggest order during the sale will get a set of the few metal master castings I made for the unfinished, unreleased Battle Scene Boris. This consists of Boris (some cleaning up required due to extensive mould slip that scuppered the whole project) two guys he's standing on and a bloke with enormous and badly sculpt feet. Might be worth something on eBay one day once more than the people on the FOD have heard of me. In about 20 years time, I reckon.
It is important to note that you must buy the figures from the Sale page to get the reduced prices. If you buy them from the other, normal pages on the site, then you will pay full price and tough luck if you do, I'm keeping your money if you can't be bothered to read the instructions! 
No orders will be posted out between Friday 18th September and whenever we get the workshop sorted out, which should hopefully be by the week ending Friday 9th October. I reckon that gives you 3 weeks or so to get your orders in. Once the orders are posted they should only take the usual amount of time to arrive but please don't email me about your order's shipping status until I announce that we've settled in and things are going out the door again! Until then, it probably won't have shipped!
Please also note that the 10% and 20% discounts no longer apply during the sale - the Sale figures are up to 35% off in the first place! Rather than apply a blanket discount across everything, I've specifically reduced the prices of the majority of the miniatures range on the special Sale page. This means I don't lose the usual small fortune from people buying tools and putty only and thus getting loads of money off items that I have to buy in at huge cost and tiny trade discount in the first place!
What's the reason for the Sale, Andy?
OK, so traditionally, around this time of year, some calamity or other occurs that leaves me gasping for cash. Well, it's not so much a calamity this time as a fatally general lack of goodness. Long story slightly shortened: I am around £48,000 in debt at this point, thanks mainly to Cahoot and their flexible loan. Interest rates in general have plummeted in the last year, but the Cahoot flexible loan remains at 16.1% interest, shedding not a jot, not a point, of rates. They even sent me a helpful note saying it was easy to get around the high interest problem - just pay off the loan. Uh-huh. Right. When I took it out, the interst rate on it was 8.1%, then a couple of years ago they suddenly massively increased it to the current rate or thereabouts. My balance is now a little under 19,000 on that one, and every month I'm paying £400 in interest alone, not even scraping the actual credit amount. There's only one thing to be done: Sell the house and hope I've got some equity left, which I can use to pay that particular loan off. To sell the house, I need to empty it of all the boxes of crap that running your business from home brings, eg remove the huge messy sculpting area from the lounge, and the stock boxes, mail order packaging, casting equipment and moulds from the garage. Along with the display cabinets, boxes of perspex stands, boxes of blisters etc,etc. which are placed around the house.
So I've finally found a small workshop to move into! As you long-term Heretics will recall, I used to have a workshop in Broxtowe in Nottinghamshire a few years back which I abandoned when I moved into this house, working out of my double garage. Now the circle is complete and Heresy is moving into a separate location again (just down the road fom my house, handily). Downside: I can't actually afford the rent on the workshop and the mortage on the house at the same time, so I need to raise some cash quickly to cover it until I sell the house!
After weeks and weeks of searching and other workshops falling through and so forth, it's all kicking off over the next couple of weeks. Helpfully, Craig has decided to bugger off to France next week to help a friend cut down a tree (don't ask) which doesn't help speed things along, I'm hoping that the whole process should only take a couple of weeks to sort out, but in the meantime NO ORDERS WILL BE POSTED! Now, to apologise for the inconvenience of this, I have made a list of all the miniatures that you can buy at vastly reduced prices - some of them up to 35% off! The full list can be found by clicking the SALE sign on the left hand menu
What about the dragon? Won't that help the finances?
It will when the bloody thing is finished, or if the 100 people who've reserved one decide to pay their second deposit 
29th July 2009
More Dragon news!
Just updated the Work in Progress page for the Dragon with new pics - feel free to wander over and take a browse!
Ask me anything!
John Price of TheScreamingAlpha.com is looking to interview me for his website. If you have a question that you think he should ask, please either post it on the FOD in this thread, or contact him via his website. You can see a previous interview of his here.
He needs the questions by 2nd of August, though!
Workshop News
I'm hoping to sort out a new workshop fo rHeresy in the next few days. More news soon on this and how it will temporarily affect your orders!
27th May 2009
Ecclescake!
Added a new model to the sci-fi range, one Malcolm Ecclescake, who should make an excellent civilian type or indeed some sort of enigmatic, time-bothering interfering do-gooder. Check him out in the pre-order section now!
11th May 2009
Drags-on!
Updated the WIP page for the dragon - click on the menu to the left or here to see the latest pics. This is proving to take a LOT longer than I thought it would.
Don't forget:
My Facebook page
Follow me on Twitter
1st May 2009
Gone Sculpting!
I'm taking the week off from Saturday 2nd May to Sunday 10th to do some much needed sculpting:
OK, so it turns out that doing everything myself all the time, like in the old days (Remember, my helper Craig left at the end of march) leaves me with either no time or no enthusiasm to do any sculpting. It doesn't help that, shortly before Salute, I had to remake around 25 old production moulds, and those same replacement moulds turned out to be inferior rubber and all need replacing yet again. It's the time it all takes that annoys me most, never mind the money. I could (easily) rant at length, but you don't want to read about that , you want happy tidings of joy and all that crud. Well, the strawberry plants are coming on a treat, and I've branched out into tomatoes and potatoes, so I hope that gives you a warm and cozy glow. :)
Anyway, the upshot of it is that I'm taking next week off to do some sculpting. I need to make some headway on this dragon for one - doing the scales is so time consuming it's not funny and if I don't get it completed soon, it's going to be a real millstone around my neck. Only way to do it is to take the time to do it, as obvious as that sounds. So no orders are going out next week. Sorry for the inconvenience! Hopefully during the week I'll be able to post some update pics on the dragon, once I've reassembled it from the sections it's currently in, and some pics of my new Time Bothering Vagrant if I get to mould him. (At the moment he's in so many different shades of putty you can't actually see what's going on properly) You never know, I might squeeze some sculpting time in on something else whilst doing the dragon too.
I've also got some new communications type options for you - Facebook and Twitter. I know the traditional Wargamer is something of a luddite but these are really quite useful; ways to keep tabs on people, especially Twitter, I've found. Both are free to use and you can sign up on my Facebook page if you like as one of my Friends, or Follow me onTwitter. I particularly like Twitter out of the two as one can put a series of micro-updates out about anything that comes to mind without a big self-important newsletter - my current followers have already heard about my potential new workshop, how the dragon is going and so on, you can even use your mobile phone with it. And of course, stalk celebrities online (See my list of people I'm following)!
My Facebook page: http://www.new.facebook.com/profile.php?id=695581924
My Twitter profile: https://twitter.com/Heresy_Andy
If anyone is interested in a job, Mon-Fri 10am to 4pm, £6/hour once trained, then let me know. I need a new minion to take over casting and packing duties!
Have a great weekend!
All the best
Andy
2nd April 2009
New Stuff!
Check out the pre-order page (see menu to the far left)- a new Deathball figure and an apprentice Mage!
Goodbye and good luck to Craig!
YFor teh last two years, I have had the invaluable help of Craig Nunn, who has come in two or three days a week and spent all his holidays helping me out for free. But now, he has decided to move on and start hios own Painting-For-Hire business. I wish him good luck, and would like everyone to share these fond memories of his final two days at work - Salute 2009! Firstly, in the bar at the Premier Inn the night before:
And secondly, in the van on the way back, about five minutes into the journey after the obligatory stop at the pizza hut near the venue:
He's such a gentle snorer.
We didn't have as good a Salute financially as I had hoped for...
Although our friends at Black Scorpion and Hasslefree apparently had a cracking day, we just about broke even. I confess myself disaapointed, but we'll be right back there next year with even more stuff to choose from! You see if we aren't!
The day itself was as fun and crazy as always, of course. I spent most of it explaining about the Dragon, which I brought with me, and about the difference between green stuff, brown stuff and pro-create, which is normal... I only left the stand three times during the day for loo breaks and didn't get to see anything (except the floating wall trying to demolish Hasslefree's stand beside us - see the FOD for details!) yet again!
Dragon Update !
Salute is over and done with so i am trying desperately to get some sculpting time on the Dragon this month! But without Craig to help out, it's going to be even trickier to get him finished quickly, now! I'm hoping to get the sculpting done by the end of May in between everything else, and then get him off to the resin casters. He's probably going to cost at least £100, and will be limited in number - so don't miss out. Something around 80 have been reserved alreadys and I think it'll be 250 at maximum - it depends on how difficult and expensive it turns out to be to cast up, and how many moulds it eats! (I'll be doing some of it in metal such as the end of the tail and potentially snappable wing claws, etc)
21st March 2009
It's almost here! And we're almost ready!
Yes, for the first time ever we're in danger of being fully ready for Salute, the Christmas Day of the Wargaming World, the South London Warlord's massive convention show in london's Excel exhibiton centre. We'll be there alongside our old chums hasslefree on stand T104 - the bottom right corner of the floorplan as you look at it - simply turn right as you enter the doors and head for the corner of the room. I'll be bringing the dragon (once I've re-attached its various limbs) for you to look at and maybe even a small amount of pre-release castings if all goes according to plan during the next week. (It may not. Currently, I'm still awaiting some magnetic discs to make our setting up faster and they were supposed to have arrived by now but may not do so until the day before we leave, which means a lot of last minute work atttaching them to the bases of all the figures for the cabinet. Ah, well...it wouldn't be Salute without a last minute scramble to sort stuff out the day before!)
19th January 2009
I'm desperate to pay my Tax Bill of £8,000 - can you help by paying a deposit on this dragon, which will be a limited edition, and finished by summer of this year? Do you know a friend who loves dragons who might like this one? Send them to me! Now!
To give your opinion on the Dragon and what you'd like to see me do with it (Eh?), go post on the Forum of Doom!
New Postage Rates
Sadly, I can no longer afford to subsidise the shpping. I worked out that I lost around four hundred pounds a month on the shipping each month last year. Heresy is in a desperate state financially due to huge loans that suddenly had double interest applied to them by Cahoot (17.9% at time of writing, the interest alone is £200 a month) . For more info on the new shipping rates, click here.
19th December 2008
It's that most wonderful time of the year....ie two weeks off to do some sculpting, eat a fatal amount of chocolate and work out where to get £8,000 from!
From today (19th December) until January the 5th, 2009, Heresy is officially on holiday - no orders will be posted after this afternoon for two weeks. I'll be using the time to finish a few things and generally recharge before the hard slog of casting and packing for the two shows at the start of next year, hammerhead and Salute.
There's also the little matter of finding £8,000 to pay the taxman so i don't have to shut up shop. .Why do I not have the money, you ask? Well, unfortunately I have two huge loans, one from HSBC and one from Cahoot. It's the Cahoot one that's the killer; £15,000 at 17.9% interest. Interest on that one alone costs me £200 a month -although the actual payments I've been making are £400 a month, the total amount doesn't seem to be coming down. HSBC is another £240 a month. Then there's the mortgage, which thankfully has come down to £990 (although Northern rock haven't passed on that last massive interest rate cut, the barstewards) but for the last year has been coming in at around £1700 a month with insurance etc. Bills on top of that are £160 fo rthe electric and gas. Food extra, council tax at £160 a month, yadda yadda... Anyway, the long and the short is I've been scraping through on the bills and stuff but unable to put aside extra for tax. Which leaves me kind of stuck. I was going to sell the house last year but the arse dropped out of the housing market, almost like it knew...
So, if you have a few spare pounds to put my way over christmas, they'd be much appreciated! Along with any ideas for magic figures to raise money - I'm looking for the sort of thing that will guarantee multiple sales on one huge whopping sale per customer. My thoughts are running along the lines of a dragon or some sci-fi army guys. I needs me some units of stuff!
I'm also prepping for a new 15mm scale line of sci-fi figs! You can see the discussion on the FOD here.
Don't forget - the free shipping offer and the multiple item purchase discount prices (eg when you buy 'x' of one figure,the price comes down) are ending at the start of January - this is your last chance to get those offers! (As an example, in october I took £260 in postage from orders, but it cost me £900 to post all the orders - I just can't afford to subsidise it to that extent any more!) I will probably be putting in place shipping as a % of the order for the various countries.
27th November 2008
Loads of new stuff to pre-order! Some of it gross!
Go check out the pre-order page now!
26th November 2008
New home for the FOD!
The Forum of Doom has now moved to its new separate server and web address - make sure to update your bookmarks!
Let's hope this means the end of the Heresy site being down at the same time as the FOD!
25th November 2008
We're under attack!
The Forum of Doom suffered some sort of (assumed) hacking attack last night which obliged my webhosts to suspend the site entirely, temporarily - for the time being, the FOD has been removed whilst I transfer it to a separate server so that the Heresy site won't be lost at the same time and thus lose me precious, precious sales. Sorry for the inconvenience! Normal FOD service will be resumed once Chris K has had a look at the database to see if he can tell what exactly happened...there will be a new Forum of Doom web address so you will need to update your browser favourites once it comes back - stay tuned!
25th October 2008
"The Heretic's Ball Winners - Wave 1!"
Behold! The first batch of winners from this year's sculpting contest are now available to pre-order! The first three models to be released are The Space Adventuress, the Wraith and The Colossus! Congratulations to the sculptors - Andrew Rae and Justin Hackett - they were not only my favourite three but also the favourite three from the FOD poll too. There'll be more new figs in a week or so's time, once I've sorted out all the moulds etc for this lot and had a chance to master up the next wave. I'll also be bringing you some cute halfling militia with spears by Warren 'Vermis' Beattie, and a spiffy mage from Matt Lord. It's great to have a few new sculptor names in the range as well as some new models!
If you think you can cut it as a sculptor, why not send me a pic of your model? If it's good enough to go in the range, I'll be happy to make that happen! Email me at one of the usual addresses...
"Uh-oh. Taxes !"
Seems the Inland Revenue have brought forward the date for submitting taxes this year, which was something of a surprise. Fortunately the payment date is still the end of January next year. Unfortunately, I have no idea where I'm going to get the money from this time around - I need £6,000 to cover it, I reckon, so if you see anything at all that you fancy on the site, please buy it now so I can try to put some money aside. (I've been trying to do so all year but the blasted mortgage is through the roof and my £36,000 of loans are eating my income up. Thanks to Cahoot for putting the interest rate up to 16%. Cheers, much appreciated. Arse.)
I have several plans. One is to do a runner and live like a tramp. A second is to give up and get a real job doing something else. Another is to sculpt some massive figure that will cost £100 and hope 100 people buy it. Or some figures that everyone will need hundreds of to make armies with. Suggestions via the FOD, please!
10th October 2008
"All orders caught up with. Sale officially over!"
I have done nothing for the last three weeks but stare at a small area of white plywood behind the casting machine. Casting, casting , casting. And in between, mouldmaking to replace old crappy moulds that just won't hack it any more. The casting machine seems to be working well enough, although to my paranoid ears it doesn't sound quite sure of itself. But the important thing is that all the orders that were delayed, to the best of my knowledge, have been packed and sent. Huzzah!
If you don't receive your order in the next few days or so, please do let me know!
"And the winners are..."
The Heretic's Ball is over, and the winners are being chosen. I've got four so far, with the possiblity of two more. To see all the entries, click here . This weekend I hope to master up some of the first winners to be released, as well as make a production mould for one from the last contest I ran, one very Fat Ogre by Mark Craggs. It never stops, round here... Must finish off ome of my own sculpts as well, before it's back to the casting next week to catch up with the delayed Trade Orders...
9th September 2008
"Something expensive has gone wrong. It must be autumn!"
Yes, tomorrow scientists in Switzerland are switching on a machine that may or may not cause black holes to be formed, that may or may not dissipate instantly depending on if Stephen Hawking is right or isn't. If they do, all well and good. If they don't, whoops, sorry, there goes the planet. Still, at least that means I won't have to worry about the casting machine having broken down. Which, this being autumn, it has. Yes, every year around this time, for the last four years, some piece of machinery I won has broken down and needed fixing at precisely the same time as I have no money. It was the car, then the PC blew up, then the casting machine last year and, in a slight alteration to established protocol, this year it's the casting machine for the second time in a row. Yes, the new casting machine that I got one year and one crucial month ago, ie it's outside its twelve month warranty, yah-boo sucks to you. At least the manufacturers are giving me free collection and delivery but I'm still looking at several hundred pounds in repairs cos it's either a control board or the motor (and it'll take two weeks to get a new one of the latter). It has occurred to me that if I had a pound for every time a casting machine has broken down on me in the last 6 and a bit years of trading, I'd have four pounds. That might not sound like a lot, but it's four pounds too many.
So, with a sense of wretched anger and without banging my head on the desk too many times, I must yet again announce an impromptu sale to cover the fact that I'm not going to be able to send out many orders for the next two weeks - we were in the middle of casting up stock of everything in time for Salute next year, but half the drawers are empty, so chances are that a lot of people are going to have to wait for alot of things. if you're lucky, you might still get your order in good time, but you should expect to wait a couple of weeks until the machine comes back from repair. Sorry, it's unavoidable at this point.
Thus: it's free shipping and 20% off time again! I really need the cash, so please spread the word amongst your friends and get those orders in. Anyone ordering £25.00 or more gets 20% off, no questions asked. This offer only lasts as long as the machine is away, so if it comes back in a couple of days time, then you'll have missed your chance. My money's on the two weeks or more, though.
The first five people to spend £100 (after discount, ie the order total must be £100 or more) will also get a master casting of the trenchcoat ganger with mini-gun I've been working on. That's as many spare castings as I've got, so first come, first served!
Cheers
Andy
4th July 2008
Happy Birthday to my nephew, Alex!
Got bogged down with the sculpting. Been a bit depressed due to lack of money and social life, and the tax man wanting a couple of thousand I haven't got, etc,etc. Every time I picked up a sculpting tool I alowed myself to get distracted by something else instead, and then got angry about not sculpting, and then was too angry to sculpt. Vicious circle. But coming out of it now and to cheer myself up I've got a demon underway. Should be some pics in the next couple of weeks.
Orders have been a bit thin on the ground in the last couple of weeks - at one point I was getting around £11.00 a day, which will quickly put me out of business. So I'm begging you - if you fancy something, don't 'wait until later', buy it now!
21st May 2008
On Holiday!!
Special offers: Netherlord II
Only whilst we are on holiday!
PLUS:
Free Shipping on all orders over £10!
10% off all orders over £30!
20% off all orders of £100 or more!
Remember, no orders will be posted between now and 2nd June 2008 when we return!
See you then!
14th May 2008
On Holiday!!
Annoyingly, Craig has decided to take 2 weeks off starting 16th May and coming back to work on June 3rd! This means I won't be able to do anything other casting and packing so instead I am taking some time off myself, to catch up on my sculpting. It'd be nice to have a proper holiday but I can't afford to go anywhere again. No orders will be posted after Wednesday21st May until Tuesday 3rd June. if you have something urgent to order, please do so in the next few days! There will be free shipping on offer between the 21st and the 2nd to compensate for the delay. Hopefully at the end of it I will have some trenchcoat gang members and maybe even a new demon of some sort for you to pre-order.
Who'd have thought miniguns would be so hard to get one's sculpting head around?
30h April 2008
Yay! Salute's out of the way and I can get on with sculpting some stuff instead of casting and mouldmaking! On with the sci-fi!
New stuff in the Pre-order/Latest releases section - Paul Muller's Necromancer, Familiars and some HellHounds by yours truly are all available to buy right now! Go take a look!
26th February 2008
Here we are at the end of February. I'm now officially 33 and a bit, and still not rich. Not by a long shot. Oh, no. Bloomin' taxman...I hate January...
Dr Masterson has escaped government custody and can now be found in the sci-fi range where you can get him either individually or as part of the usual 2 for £5.00 deal. Click 'Sci-Fi' on the menu to the left.
If you go to the FOD and have a look in the sneak peek section you can see the new Hell Hounds I'm working on. I'm quite excited about these little puppies and hope to get 5 or so done for Salute in April, time permitting, as ever!
20th January 2008
Sale ended! Phew, what a lot of orders in the last twelve hours. If only I had that many orders every day, I'd be able to take on a full timer and get on with the important stuff like sculpting most of the time... There may be a slight delay in receiving your order as I work through this pile...! Thanks to everyone who chipped in!
16th January 2008 - Happy New Year...!
Sale ends soon! This weekend, (19th/20th January) in fact! This is your last chance to get 20% off all the miniatures regardless of order size, after this weekend we'll be going back to our usual "Spend '£50' to get '10% off' or £100 to get 20% off", approach. The free shipping levels will remains the same - i.e. spend £25.00 and the order goes post free, worldwide...
Don't miss out - order before Sunday - 20th January!
I'll be updating the site when I get out of bed on Sunday morning...
A slight delay on the Angel but he's almost ready to go into his final master mould. Needed to alter the bits so that he fitted together better - there were too many big gaps and twisted limbs that would have had people banging their heads in despair - but they seem to be fixed now. I'm putting the final touches on his alternate flaming sword and the pillar, should have them mastered this weekend and then it's straight into production casting to fill the dozens of pre-orders that are waiting! And after that I have to cast up even more for the Hammerhead show at Kelham Hall on February the 10th! (Hey, this year I get to take my birthday off - the 12th - for the first time in three years! Great!)
Goblins! I spent several weeks before christmas sculpting some goblin archers in between sorting out the Angel and the other models you saw in the sneak peek section, only to have said goblins wrecked during the moulding process, and due to an experimental new mould that i didn't realise was very soft, I didn't get any usable masters out of it all! Happily, I think I have managed to salvage something, and I am currently also cleaning up around 90 goblin related components, in between sculpting angel bits, which I am hoping to get sorted out for Hammerhead, but it'll be a very tight squeeze to get them done in time - stay tuned! As soon as I can get some usable pictures I'll let you know. If you come along to the show, ask me if I have any Goblins for you to see or buy!
21st December 2007
The Angel is at last available for Pre-Order! Go check him out now! Smite your foes with this beefy incarnation of Righteous Anger...
The Diorama of Doom 2007 contest results are in! The lucky winners received£150 of credit to spend at Heresy, Hasslefree and Black Scorpion! Click here for the pictures!
We're off for the next two weeks. No phone calls or emails will be answered. I'll be visiting the family and catching up on some sculpting (I always enjoy my Christmas holidays for this reason!) No orders will be being posted after today, until Monday January the 7th, 2008! Please be aware of this! On the other hand, the 20% off miniatures sale will be on until that date, so fill yer boots and have a great Christmas and New Year, Heretics!
12th December 2007
Attention, overseas customers! The official Last Posting Date has now been and gone so if you want to stand any chance at all of getting your parcel before christmas, make sure to choose Airsure/Signed for as you postage option on the shopping cart! Sadly this doesn't guarantee for definite that you'll get it in time, but it does give you a much better chance. (Note, Europe is still OK for a few days, but don't delay! Order now!)
I am currently doing my taxes - so excuse the lack of comments on the FOD. Normal service will be resumed shortly.
We will be closed from 22nd December through to 7th January (Hurray! I loves me my Christmas holiday...) No orders will be being posted during this time, but to compensate for that you will still have 20% off the price of miniatures!
4th December 2007
Bloody Christmas time again. Every year it springs out of nowhere unexpectedly, before I've had a chance to do any amusing chrimbo figures to sell. Same as the Heresy birthday in April - due to Salute taking up all my energies, i never get round to doing that king Boris figure I keep meaning to...
The sale is still on, but probably not for much longer. I'll keep it going over christmas and the first few days of January, so get your stuff now!
I'm just putting the finishing touches on the Angel. (Filling in crappy bits, chopping off the legs, etc) Moulding of the first masters will take place tomorrow...stay tuned...
Oh, yeah, the UK postal strike was over ages ago, but you need to place your orders asap to get them in time for christmas, esepcially America, Australia and the Far East ! It takes two weeks for parcels to arrive in a normal week, never mind when the Christmas rush has begun!
Happy Holidays to everyone everywhere, whatever it is that you celebrate around now...!
4th October 2007
There is currently a big ol' strike action going in the UK's Post Office. this means no parcels are being sorted/delivered.My sincerest apologies for the inconvenience! But, hey, 20% off still, right?
Wanna see a concept sketch of a Heresy Goblin? I finally decided what they should look like, more or less: click here to go look!
2nd October 2007
Want to help playtest the Basic version of the Netherhells game? Of course you do! I've written the first draft (minus all the colourful fluff and pictures and stuff) and you can download it. You'll need to find some sort of boards to use to represent your dungeon - if you have the old Heroquest or WHQ boards (copyright Games Workshop, blah, blah), or the boards from the D+D boardgame (Wizards of the Coast, I think) or similar, they'd be ideal; you'll also need to mock up some dice or make do with regular d6. Here's a Dice you can print out and glue together, thanks to Ajsalium on the FOD:
The rules can be downloaded from this site in pdf format Get yourself Adobe Acrobat reader for free from Adobe.com if you haven't already got it. I'm adding and tweaking stuff as I think of it, and as I get feedback. There's a discussion on the FOD for comments etc, here!
Don't forget - the Diorama of Doom contest ends on Halloween - win over £150.00 of prizes from Heresy, Hasslefree, Black Scorpion and even Spyglass!!