Funktionality

Hwæt ho, fellow Miercenaries!

Today I shall be talking to you about some funky functionality for the new webstore - namely, the new kindred pages - as well as showing you some upcoming releases, blathering on about the awesome razh-horror war tower and much more besides...

New Kindred Pages

You guys have asked - and I have delivered! Well, will be delivering, because I've only done one kindred's pages yet, the Anglecynn ones, but I'll be doing the rest over the next week or so.

Simply put: shopify doesn't give you a lot of leeway in terms of how they present products, or at least my chosen theme doesn't; and you guys are used to the old webstore and how I've always presented Darklands miniatures - in class order for each kindred (and then for each realm separately) like this:

So what I've been doing alongside my programmer guy (a visigoth!) is to create a page that shows the miniatures from each kindred in class order. Behold:

This is quite laborious, unfortunately, and it does remind me that the old site - for all it's faults - worked bloody well; but I'll be soldiering on over the next few weeks to get this sorted for each kindred.

All your Realm are Belong to Us

Thanks to many requests, as well as that I'll be creating a page to show all the miniatures from a kindred, like the old webstore, as well as those only from a specific realm. I've already done it for the Anglecynn!

To show, not tell: when you click on the drop-down menu at the top, and click ‘Anglecynn’ (or ‘all Anglecynn realms’) it will take you to a page with all the Anglecynn miniatures, from every realm.

You can still choose to see miniatures from a specific realm only of course; just click the name!

There'll also be a few more cosmetic things happening - the ‘all realms’ kindred page will also show all the realm icons for that kindred, which you can click on to take you to a specific realm (handy for the Fomoraic for sure). I have plans to add more detail to the item cards as well, but we'll get on to that another day. 

Stumper of a Stump Beast

Who would have thought a stump beast could be so cute, and yet so threatening? Rafael Lozano has done a superb job in getting Orach sculpted... 

...as well as three versions of him sitting in the ground, ready to spring up!

While Orach will be part of November's battle host, the stumps won't be; you'll have to purchase them separately. Sorry not sorry!

Cormac of the Red Hand

The Rafael of the Callegari variety has had a bout of the ’flu but he's still putting in the hours with a resculpted Cormac for the November Irish:

...and no, he's not going bowling, although Bowling Cormac would be pretty cool; that will eventually become a very separated gabrax head...

Rafael's also sculpting Cormac Fir Danu - watch out for the warped warrior next week!

Bloody Bugs

Speaking of November's battle host, and battle hosts in general; the earsling that is the subscription app I'm using has a bug. Well two, to be exact, but one that is most concerning for us all.

Unfortunately it seems that when you sign up, you pay immediately but the app then waits until the 1st day of the month after the next one to charge you again (and will then charge you on the 1st of each subsequent month). Why it does this I have no bloody idea, despite many to-ings and fro-ings between my good self and the app developers. Maybe I should remind them they're dealing with a king-slayer?

Regardless of that, I will have to contact those of you in this situation to request a manual payment via PayPal to ensure you get this month's files.

All I can really do is apologise for my poor choice of app: I will attempt to find another one with the proper functionality, but for now, we'll just have to deal with it...

Channelling Action

Many of you are not aware that we do in fact have a Youtube channel, and recently I have been beavering away doing loads of 360° rotation videos which you can now see in all their glory over there (and on each product's page, of course).

They don't take too long to make and I've got it down to a fine art now, so I'll be uploading more and more videos in the future. Soon I'll be adding the Irish for November's battle host, so subscribe to the channel, like and share, everyone!

Get your Rat Out

I was too scared to use that title in the mailshot, but I couldn't resist it in the end.

So anyway, those of you that have been paying attention will have seen that the long-awaited and bloody awesome razh-horror war tower  (sculpted by Ivan Garcia a while back) is being produced in January - and while I wasn't ever going to offer it digitally, I am doing so for today only.

The reason we're only offering 20 to purchase (that will be produced in Grey Wulf in January), is simple - that way we can try and get the Grey Wulf backlog down and still get this superb miniature out to you fairly soon. Because yes, ladies and gentlemen, we're struggling to keep up with orders for Grey Wulf resin!

Of course the fact that you're all loving miniatures in this fantastic material is great: but it does come with a few issues, not least of which being I can't afford to throw any more bodies at printing (mainly because of the latest budget). This means we are, as ever, beholden to your patience, which is both humbling and astounding, especially regarding you long-term valued Miercenaries. I guess we must make some bloody good miniatures...

Anyway - for those of you that have ordered from the last promotion on the old webstore, please be assured we're working on your miniatures and they'll be made just as soon as we can make them. Believe me when I tell you the lads are working harder than ever.

Fridays that are Black

That leads on to Black Friday, of course. This year we'll be doing something like what we did last year: if you purchase anything over £9.99 in November, you'll be invited to a special 60% (cast resin) / 30% (anything else) offer, but if you don't you won't have an offer that includes Grey Wulf, and the Black Friday deal will be 50% / 25%.

Black Friday for us will probably start next Friday, so watch out for that mailshot soon.

That's all for now - I'm off to write some sculptor briefs. And no, I don't mean pants!