Welcome to the latest Pendraken newsletter!
Firstly, Happy New Year to everyone, we hope that you all had a good Christmas filled with too much food, too much drink, and maybe some 10mm goodies! We returned to work on Wednesday 3rd January and we're working hard to get all of your orders completed and sent out for you. We've got a lot of news for you this month, so let's get straight into it!
Orders Backlog
Firstly this month, we'd like to say a massive Thank You to everyone who placed an order ahead of our price increase on January 1st. We returned to nearly 500 orders so we're currently running the casting machines from 8am to after midnight each day to work through the backlog and get your orders out to you asap. Since we got back to work we've cleared almost 300 of those orders but there are still 214 orders from December that we need to get done.
So if you're currently waiting on an order, please allow a little longer than usual for us to get it done and we'll update as soon as your package has been shipped.
How did we do in 2023? And what have we got planned for 2024?
As we hit the new year, it's time to review what we managed to tick off our list for the last 12 months, and then give you a bit of an idea of what to expect over the next 12!
2023 saw almost 200 new releases with the arrival of the Russo-Japanese range, the expansion of our Korean War ranges to go with the Forgotten War supplement, more Cold War additions and more, so head over to the Forum here to see how we did.
Obviously a lot of our plans were impacted by the financial issues we faced in the summer but with our price increase in place and the business on firmer ground, we can take an optimistic look ahead at what we'll be working on over the next 12 months! We've put up a list (in roughly chronological order!) on the Forum here, so head over and take a look at what's in the pipeline.
First pair of Sci-Fi ranges released!
We're very excited to announce the launch of our first two 10mm Sci-Fi ranges! The Human Collective and Human Empirical are now up on the website and available here.
With the launch of Games Workshop's new Epic (in 8mm) and the impending launch of Mantic's Epic too (in 12mm), 2024 is going to be a massive year for smaller scale Sci-Fi games. We'll be working on our own Future War Commander rules over the course of the year, so we'll have more news on that for you as we progress.
These packs are all structured to provide a unit/base worth of figures, aside from the infantry that come in larger packs. The vehicles include driver/commander torsos too, to add a bit of extra detail. There's full info and pictures available on our Forum here.
Army Builder Software now live!
Our new Army Builder is now live! Army Builder allows to to build, edit, save, export and print your own custom army lists for the various rulesets produced by Pendraken. Currently the builder includes the 44 army lists for use with our WWII ruleset (Blitzkrieg Commander IV) and we'll be adding the lists for Cold War Commander 2 very soon. You can register here and then subscribe for a bargain £10 per year.
Next batch of Vallejo Xpress paints now available!
The next batch of Vallejo Xpress Color are now available, adding another 36 colours to this popular range! They've also added some Intense options too, eight exclusive colors with higher pigment load for more vibrant and saturated shades. These sold out within a week last time, so make sure to grab some quickly from our website here.
5mm Dice Back in Stock!
After a bit of a struggle with the supply of these, we're really pleased to have all of the 5mm dice back in stock and available again. Sadly the exchange rate and increased shipping costs mean that we've had to increase the prices on them, but hopefully folks still find them good value. These are all available on the website here.
Pendraken Painting Competition 2024!
It's that time of year again! Get yourselves ready for the Pendraken Painting Competition 2024!
Our annual Painting Competition will once again be running throughout the month of February, so get those entries finished, grab your camera and get them posted! The Competition will open to entries on February 1st and will run all the way through until the end of the month. This year you'll get an extra day too due to the leap year! You can enter anything that's been painted over the past 12 months and we can't wait to see the entries.
Closing date for the competition will be midnight on Thursday 29th February and we'll then open up the voting threads for everyone to decide our winners. All of the info on the categories and over £500 worth of prizes can be found on our Forum here.
Website Photos Complete!
14 years ago we had a dream... A dream where all of our little metal figures could be seen by people online, from such far away places as New Zealand, Peru and Doncaster. And now, almost a decade and a half later, the job is complete!
Back in 2010 we launched our first proper website, but we were missing images for the 2300-ish products in our catalogue at the time. We set a family member the task of sorting it out, but real life got in their way and the job fell to me to take on. Over the intervening years we've released over 2000 new products as well, so that's currently 4605 products that needed to be done!
Now 14 years is far longer than I ever anticipated but the problem has always been that adding photos is simply a very time-consuming process. Just a batch of 20 products can be anywhere from 5-8 hours of work to cast them up, assemble, blackwash, photo, edit and then upload. So that 4600 products represents close to 1500 hours of work in total! To put that in perspective, if the website photos was the only job you ever did, all day, every day, every week, every month, it would still have taken nearly 9 months to get them done.
So as I started this task before my now-secondary-school-age son was even born, you can imagine the amount of satisfaction and relief that comes from being able to say that it's done!
2024 Show Dates
It won't be long until the show season kicks off again with the excellent Vapnartak in York, on Sunday 4th February. As always, make sure to get your pre-orders sent through to us at least 7 days in advance of the event, and a full list of this year's shows can be found on our Forum here.
Important Dates
Sun 4th - Vapnartak, York - https://vapnartak.co.uk/
Sat 2nd - Hammerhead, Newark - https://www.hammerheadshow.co.uk/
Sun 17th - WMMS, Wolverhampton - http://www.alumwellwargames.co.uk/