New Ancient Persians!

[Leon]

...but I do like the idea of seperate horses and riders so irregular cavalry look more varied.

That's a tricky one as well as it immediately requires 2 moulds per pack instead of the one, doubling the labour time required.  We've kept the separate on the TB's to see how it goes but we had to charge an extra 25p on those packs.  (t's actually costing us 70p just to do that extra spin, so we're making less profit on those codes!)

When will the Ancient Greeks and Persians be available

Shouldn't be far away, hopefully early October all being well.  I'm working on the Dacian production moulds at the moment and the Greeks/Persians will be following those.

[toxicpixie]

Blimey, it's really 70p per 15 figures to do separate riders on cavalry? You're in the wrong game, sell up and become a disaster capitalist

I wonder if you could actively explain that on the codes and put the price to a more sustainable level?

[Leon]

Blimey, it's really 70p per 15 figures to do separate riders on cavalry?

Sadly, it's at least 60p just to put any mould in and spin it.  The majority of that is the direct labour costs for the casting guys, £9 per hour ish / 15 spins per hour = 60p per spin minimum, plus the minor electric and heating costs for the melting pot.  The separate cavalry uses more metal than cast-on riders which pushes it up to roughly 70p.

It's one of the reasons we have to charge more for the custom orders.  If you're wanting just 4 figures from a code then we're charging you 80p, but 60p of that is gone straight away to spin the mould.  Hence why we keep spares of as many codes as possible, to reduce the amount of times we're having to do a fresh spin.

[toxicpixie]

Ouch again.

Nice as separates are that's not really sustainable, is it :S

[Techno]

No.......Not unless the Dark Lord knows he's guaranteed to sell thousands...or tens of thousands 'straight off'.

There's an awful lot more to this 'biz' than many folk realise.

Cheers - Phil.

[Dunnadd]

Sadly, it's at least 60p just to put any mould in and spin it.  The majority of that is the direct labour costs for the casting guys, £9 per hour ish / 15 spins per hour = 60p per spin minimum, plus the minor electric and heating costs for the melting pot.  The separate cavalry uses more metal than cast-on riders which pushes it up to roughly 70p.

It's one of the reasons we have to charge more for the custom orders.  If you're wanting just 4 figures from a code then we're charging you 80p, but 60p of that is gone straight away to spin the mould.  Hence why we keep spares of as many codes as possible, to reduce the amount of times we're having to do a fresh spin.

Use robots to run the casting machines. And make sure they're really efficient robots that don't need £9 an hour of electric.

P.S Does anyone know if you can get a job as a management consultant if your only skills are the ability to tell people "Use robots/children/slaves instead?" Or maybe as a Management Consultant Consultant, who tells Management Consultants "you're doing it all wrong. You should run your management consultancy by looking scruffy, turning up late and telling the client firm "Just use robots, children or slaves instead."

[Duke Speedy of Leighton]

Youre hired!

[pierre the shy]

The separate riders on the TB Line figures are tempting me to try my hand at painting a few 10mm Teutonics/Eastern European knights for a couple of BBDBA armies myself, since the number of figures involved is fairly minimal :-

The references to robots and management consultants reminds me of the marketing division of the Cirrrus Cybernetics Corporation in Douglas Adams' Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy