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Ancillary Products & Bushido Player Aids

I’m finally adding a bunch of ancillary hobby products to the store, as well as some Bushido-related projects. There will be many more products to come which are designed for Bushido, such as faction measuring widgets and steppers, but finalising designs and adding them, to the store takes time! So here’s part one of the release. Hopefully the majority of other products will be available before Christmas.


I’ve added several Gamegenic products: from basic and affordable workhorses, to hard-shell shoulder bags, zip-up folders, and magnetic convertible boxes with interchangeable coloured parts.

Bushido cards are a little smaller than those in your typical collectible card game. This can mean baggy sleeves. I dislike baggy sleeves, and so should you! Inner sleeves can be a good solution.
I’ve used Ultra-Pro’s Pro-Fit inner sleeves for Bushido since Risen Sun came out in 2019. The downside of inner sleeves is that they tend to be thinner in order to fit inside a regular sleeve. These inner sleeves from Gamegenic are double the usual thickness and great for Bushido.

Many of the terrain items I have been working on for Bushido have been designed, or scaled from 3DAW designs, to fit on an area described by card sizes. That is, a fairly large element may occupy an area equivalent to two cards on the board, many will occupy that of a single card, and some will occupy some proportion of a card. This aim behind this is to keep the size of all these elements easily understood and follow the example set within the ruleset, and seen with products such as the Ice Patch and Tilled Field, where many in-game effects which create terrain do so by placing a card.
The first of these is the Ideal Terrain element. Card-sized is my largest recommended area for this type, and I plan to add at least one smaller variation.

Finally, and after many iterations, the folding objective ruler!
Personally, I find measuring to the centre of a scenario objective to be pretty irritating, so I’ve made this handy folding ruler to make setting up for objective scenario games as easy as possible. They double as movement rulers, and can be used to deploy either 30mm or 50mm scenario objectives by following the engraved instructions.

More to follow in a few weeks, I hope!

Ben.

I’m now stocking some excellent Ultimate Modelling Products… products. UMP have sourced some of the best acrylic polyurethane primer out there from Badger in the US and, in support of the growing range of MCM decals, I’ve also started stocking their decal solutions. Similar to Micro-Sol and Micro-Set, UMP have 3 strengths to choose from, depending on the difficulty of the surface and thickness of decal.

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Recent Delays; Future Projects (but also delays)

Hello there. I’ve been a bit shit the last few weeks, and I apologise if your order has been affected. It’s been a string of hurdles – illness, family support stuff, toddler stuff, family vomitting carousel – all one after the other. None massively affecting on their own, but I guess it all added up in terms of depleting both time and my mental resources.

Here in the UK, industrial action is being taken by members of The Communications Workers Union (CWU), who work for Royal Mail and Parcelforce Worldwide.

There may be disruption to letters and parcel services on the following dates:

  • Friday 26th August 2022
  • Wednesday 31st August 2022
  • Thursday 8th September 2022
  • Friday 9th September 2022

I’ve got a bunch of cool Bushido-related stuff in the hopper. Some finished, some in various states of work-in-progress, I’m fighting with myself over how many I launch at once – more later, or fewer sooner with follow-up release. There’s also a whole load of work to be done adding them and their variations to the store backend!

Tattooed oni Bobata painted by GavSwine

Thanks,
Ben.

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UK Games Expo

MCM Graham and I are off to the UKGE this weekend! No stand, though – we’re competing in the Bushido Grand Masters tournament along with a bunch of people from our area, many of whom have appeared on the Robot Dice Explosion podcast (now on Anchor.fm). I’ll probably be wearing either a Master Crafted Miniatures t-shirt or hoodie, or a Robot Dice Explosion t-shirt. I highly recommend a mid-tournament change of outfit! Come and say hi if you see me.

I’ll have a few soon-to-be released products with me and, if you have an order, I’ve added an event collection option to the checkout. If your order isn’t ready in time, shipping is free to UK & EU. EDIT: the workshop is closed on the 2nd, so all orders for collection at UKGE have now been packed.

Also, added some pads!

Cheers, Ben.

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Boys from the Dwarf

They’re here! I was planning on making this a big release, with marketing hype and such, but we’ve had enquiries from people who missed out at Dimension Jump 2021, and I’m short on time, so with all the fanfare of a squeaky fart in an empty theatre… here they are.

Sculpted by Andrew of Recluse Studio. Here’s a little info he wrote about the project:

The choices were primarily made up of moments that fans would hopefully get. As diehard fans ourselves, it was very important to make a connection to other fans by choosing non vanilla, non generic poses. Real moments from the show that hopefully say we laughed at the same bits, too. In it’s various forms, Red Dwarf has helped us through difficult times… even if it’s just because we’re not 3 million years from home with only Rimmer for company. 

The Rimmer Shapiro felt like taking the recognisable salute pose but tying it to “Future Echoes”. I just wanted to capture the super smug moment before he looks in the mirror.

With Kryten, his role is usually in service or with a prop. I originally sculpted the psi scanner and his triangular bag from Quarantine but it still felt too generic. I remembered hearing that the audience laughter went on for so long during …that scene in “Polymorph” that they had to cut part of it out. Kryten’s ‘Oh, no!’ face and the changeling underpants seemed like the perfect pose.

When it came to Lister I had originally wanted to make a sculpt on his gibbon style trike but it just became a nightmare to work out manufacturing. We settled on Jim and Bexley because they actually feature in the “Better than Life” book and it was sort of getting three characters for one. Mostly though, it was like showing Lister’s character with some depth rather than just having a lager or a curry.

Sticking with the books, I loved that Cat had spent 28 hours preparing a cufflinked spacesuit for the totally-alive-and-not-dead crew of the Nova 5. Truthfully, I really, REALLY wanted to make the original cone helmet from the book but thought that might be a little too niche. From the episode “Kryten”.

As the rest of the crew had been chosen from the earlier series’, it only felt right to go with the Norman Lovett’s Holly. Also, we didn’t want to have to manufacture a whole wall on the mini base so his being smeared with jam and half buried in a Rhyll sandpit fit perfectly. From the “Better than Life” episode.

We hope that they’ll be popular enough to do more in the future with different versions of the cast and other characters but, if not, we got to do at least a set and share it with other fans. That’s what the whole thing has been about so we’re over the moon to be finally here and shipping them out! 

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A Multitude of Things

Falling Behind

I’ve had a tough time keeping up for the last couple of months. Not just with the store, but with my main job too. I’m really sorry to those of you who have waitied too long for your orders. I think I’m catching up with things, but it’s been easy to say that in the past only for me to find I’m actually not. I’m working on it.

I won’t spend any real time musing here as to why I’ve allowed this to happen. In short, depression and poor executive function are not ideal partners!

My main failing with the store, other than many orders being slow to go out, has been keeping up with customer emails. My MCM inbox has become more and more cluttered over time and customer emails weren’t getting the priority they require – some have been completely missed until way too late.

My attempt to address this is a much-overdue move to a ticket-based support system. This is very much a trial but, with tickets being tied to orders, I hope it will lead to much quicker resolutions. It’s still just me, with MCMGraham handling casting and much of the order packing one day per week, so please bear that in mind.

New Releases

We’ve got a couple more products for the store. These are mostly commissions which had been waiting for stock levels to get high enough to go public, and I then forgot existed until today!

Salute

Preparation for Salute in November has begun, and traders have already been asked to apply for spaces at the April show. I’m not sure how great it will be to have two Salutes within 6 months of one another, but I intend to be there for both. We’re taking a different approach this time around, with a walk-in space and products all bagged-up in a fashion approximating a professional operation. We hope this means that there will be less of a traffic jam at the stand and more opportunity to browse.

Boys from the Dwarf

One of the projects I’ve been working on for a while has been producing a set of Red Dwarf miniatures. I’ve been involved from the start in terms of planning, but my main responsibility has been prodcution, with Andrew of Recluse Studio doing a great job on the sculpting. Here’s a little info he wrote about the project:

The choices were primarily made up of moments that fans would hopefully get. As diehard fans ourselves, it was very important to make a connection to other fans by choosing non vanilla, non generic poses. Real moments from the show that hopefully say we laughed at the same bits, too. In it’s various forms, Red Dwarf has helped us through difficult times… even if it’s just because we’re not 3 million years from home with only Rimmer for company. 

The Rimmer Shapiro felt like taking the recognisable salute pose but tying it to “Future Echoes”. I just wanted to capture the super smug moment before he looks in the mirror.

With Kryten, his role is usually in service or with a prop. I originally sculpted the psi scanner and his triangular bag from Quarantine but it still felt too generic. I remembered hearing that the audience laughter went on for so long during …that scene in “Polymorph” that they had to cut part of it out. Kryten’s ‘Oh, no!’ face and the changeling underpants seemed like the perfect pose.

When it came to Lister I had originally wanted to make a sculpt on his gibbon style trike but it just became a nightmare to work out manufacturing. We settled on Jim and Bexley because they actually feature in the “Better than Life” book and it was sort of getting three characters for one. Mostly though, it was like showing Lister’s character with some depth rather than just having a lager or a curry.

Sticking with the books, I loved that Cat had spent 28 hours preparing a cufflinked spacesuit for the totally-alive-and-not-dead crew of the Nova 5. Truthfully, I really, REALLY wanted to make the original cone helmet from the book but thought that might be a little too niche. From the episode “Kryten”.

As the rest of the crew had been chosen from the earlier series’, it only felt right to go with the Norman Lovett’s Holly. Also, we didn’t want to have to manufacture a whole wall on the mini base so his being smeared with jam and half buried in a Rhyll sandpit fit perfectly. From the “Better than Life” episode.

We hope that they’ll be popular enough to do more in the future with different versions of the cast and other characters but, if not, we got to do at least a set and share it with other fans. That’s what the whole thing has been about so we’re over the moon to be finally here and shipping them out! 

MCM Graham and I have produced a limited quantity of numbered sets for the Dimension Jump 2021 Red Dwarf convention, including some nifty base toppers. We look forward to making sets available after the show, and hopefully producing different sets in the future, so keep an eye out for more information.

Thanks, Ben.