Welcome!

Welcome to the new Mierce Miniatures webstore - and to this, the first blog post of what I hope will be many!

As you have no doubt seen over the course of the last couple of years, we're in a big period of transition here at Mierce Miniatures, and I can only apologise if things seem a little chaotic right now. As well as the enormous change in materials and the way we produce our miniatures, we've now got this awesome new webstore, we've got a promotion running on the old webstore to reward all our loyal customers, we're changing our digital subscriptions a fair bit and... well, there's even more going on behind the scenes - which leads me to the point of this blog.

For a long time I've wanted somewhere to show you all what's going on at Mierce Miniatures; not just what you can expect in the next few months, sales and whatnot, but a way to give you lore snippets, new concepts and a way into my head's way of thinking - and to allow you to comment on it!

The old webstore couldn't really do that, but this new one can - and so I will attempt to write a blog post like this every week, probably every Friday, with everything that's going on. Time is always a factor, though, so please bear with me if it doesn't happen every week - although even if I don't write anything, I'll always try to give you some pretty pictures of concepts and miniatures.

Pretty Pictures

To get the ball rolling on that front, here's some lovely artwork from the equally lovely Tommaso Lucchetti, focussing on the Conand creatures that you can expect next year...

(note: I can't quite seem to get these images larger for the moment, so you'll have to squint a bit).

I will say nothing more on this for now, except... make a date with Kickstarter in January 2025!

We've got some amazing new miniatures coming soon, too. Here's a few work in progress snippets...

Aradae Mawr, Pencawrdraig of Gwaelod (Rafael Callegari)

Gunnhrafn unit (Vitor Menezes)

Gonraad, Ograx of Baalor (Ivan Flaman)

Tlachtga, Mórdruí (Rafael Callegari)

Rikkaard, Champion of Baalor (Cleyton Amorim)

...and there's lots more miniatures to come, too!

Flippin' Mental

Something I'm trialling with the new Jute battle host is horizontally flipped miniatures, giving you more different warriors in each unit. You should be able to see this with the jutsweords, jutgār and jutboḡa, which each give you four horizontally-flipped warriors; it's relatively painless for us to do this and gives you all something different on the tabletop - so why not?

If it all works out okay we'll probably roll it all out to all of our digitally-produced infantry units (and beast units such as the wulfas) that require a lot of miniatures in them. Some may need reworking (those with asymmetrical logos, for example the Red Hand of Ulster, will have to be altered by a sculptor), but that's a minor issue.

As well as that, we may well offer a requestable "flip" service for you for any of our digital miniatures - as of course you may want different wizards, or monsters, or two different units of monstrous infantry. More news on that when we've worked a few things out.

Battle Host Releases

You may (or may not) have noticed, but working with the digital side of things made me realise that a monthly battle host is a great way to release new miniatures. So we'll be doing that for the foreseeable future!

This month of course it's the turn of the Jute human infantry of the Cant realm, but I have many plans for the next few months and years! October sees the fantastic ograx of Baalor battle host; November should be the brutes of the Ysians; December the khalkotes and kórikolossi of the Atalantes; January the more ghoulish Jutes; February some lovely oghurüc for the Albainn; March sees the rend-vras and other rodents; April the ḡeoguth of the Anglecynn, and like as not some resculpted ḡesith; and lastly in May, the Thulean raiders of the Fomoraic. After that, the kickstarter backlog is pretty much done, and we're into new concepts territory - which is very, very exciting!

That's not to say there won't be the odd release here and there, especially as some of the Kickstarter backlog is the odd unit that doesn't really fit into a battle host yet (I'm looking at you, reiver horse, Rikkaard and the fiannagh).

The Future

With the last sales of the old webstore finishing soon, all my attention will be focused on this new webstore, and I have a few things coming that should make things more interesting for you all.

Let's have a list of what you should see at some point, in no particular order:

• a blog post each week
• Vallejo paints added (with a view to adding more hobby products from other companies, such as The Army Painter)
• a re-work of the product pages to show product contents as well as sculptor/artist information, heights and videos
• being able to pay in instalments (probably with Klarna)
• a PayPal option for payment too
• components for the monsters at first, then hopefully a lot more
• ensuring the category pages are similar to the old webstore, showing items by class - warlords, then warchiefs, then infantry, and so on
• digital downloads for all that can be in digital
• subscriptions for the battle hosts (digital and physical)
• some deals and offers!
• new battle hosts for each kindred
• a page for the Darklands rules and musters
• the long-awaited videos showcasing Darklands and going through the rules
• the 2024 compendium!

In short, there's plenty to keep me occupied and hopefully a lot more for you to digest, look at and marvel over.

Oh, and in case you were wondering, the above artwork (which is actually unfinished, but so cool I wanted to show it anyway) of Penda is by Quinn Colvin, a fantastic artist I'm using for the upcoming lore book, Savage Hordes. Watch out for more images from him soon...

More next week - until then, keep it Mierce, Miercenaries!