Friday 27 August 2010

Whining, moaning and complaining - that's how I roll

Battlefront, makers of the Flames of War WWII toy soldier game and my favourite range of 15mm WWII wargames figures and models, have finally, after many years, got around to re-releasing stuff for the early part of the war. They've had a little bit of early war stuff available, but really only for the North African desert campaigns; now they've re-released stuff for the Polish and French campaigns of 1939-40.

As seems to be standard practice these days, all the special rules for this period have been packed into a high-quality, colour illustrated hardback book. That's fine and dandy, but being a high-quality hardback book means that it will cost near enough to a hundred eighty-five bucks. The information actually needed to play FoW in the early war period could fit easily into a 24-page saddle-stitched booklet; the ratio of fluff to crunch in these volumes seems to be about 10:1. Never mind, hopefully I'll be able to find some sucker to pay for it so that I can take a look through it and jot down the few snippets I need.

More irritating — much more irritating — is the way they've gone about the re-release of the figures and models for the period. They're available (for the moment) only in large boxed sets, costing about $300 each. I have no idea why they're not releasing the models individually, like their other inventory, nor do I have any idea how long it's going to take to get around to it. I've been waiting for years to get my hands on this stuff, and now it looks like I'm going to have to wait even longer.

I'm disgruntled.


Postscript: It would appear, from the news given on their website, that it will be another couple of months before they start dribbling out individual models; they give no indication of which stuff will be set free first, or any sort of release schedule at all apart from the fact that there will be those first two months in which only the boxed sets will be available. Looks like I will just have to wait, and wait, and wait.

Postpostscript: I suppose I could always get most of what I want from other manufacturers, but I haven't found any 15mm stuff I like as much as the stuff modelled by Battlefront.

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