Tactical Command
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State of the Microworld 2019
http://www.tacticalwargames.net/taccmd/viewtopic.php?f=137&t=33962		 Page 1 of 2
Author:  thedespot29 [ Tue May 28, 2019 2:46 am ]
Post subject:  State of the Microworld 2019
Reading over last year’s update, it was a bit of a downer. I will try to make this one more positive/ fun.

I thought it might be interesting for people to hear what my top items and lines were over the past year and a half or so. Top 5 items with % of total sales dollars:
Dwarf Mega Bundle (2.3%)
Ratkin Mega Bundle (2.2%)
StahlRitter Standard Infantry (1.76%)
Wood Elf Army Bundle (1.72%)
Microwasteland Vehicle Sampler 1 (1.51%)

So, items that were released like 8 or 9 years ago remain my top sellers, which is great, it would just be more great if I could decrease my dud ratio. Its tough to find other products with the same sort of longevity to grow the business into the future. Something else to notice, the investment to earnings ratio on the items listed above, WAY not the same, and that is the power of the Epic proxy. A single 3-pose pack of stahlritters grossed not that much under another item that was a $3k+ investment.

The individual products don’t really paint the whole picture though, as the high dollar items like the bundles tend to be pretty spikey. The below are my top 5 lines period over the past 1.5 years:
Renaissance (10.45%)
Dwarf (8.44%)
Undead (6.73%)
Orc (6.1%)
New_Terra (5.51%)

That’s it for retrospective sales numbers. I unfortunately can’t give solid timelines on any new releases for various reasons. Everything is pretty much guesstimates, which are often wrong.

Definitely the new 6mm Undead are coming out this year, as I physically have half the molds with me right now. They will be out next month, the remainder will follow in maybe 3 months time, aka, whenever the moldmakers send them to me.

Elves…archers and spears are ready for release, but I have been holding off since I don’t have the command models ready. My ability to release these this year will depend on whether or not I can get some of the casting issues resolved.

Next army up for sculpting is the Kingdom of Light crusader army. If the sculptor keeps to the schedule he has been on the past few commissions, I don’t expect to have them in hand till the end of the year. I really need to get an additional sculptor for the 6mm Fantasy stuff to speed things up a bit.

3mm scifi – Team Kukri will either come out before or after the Elves. Probably before because they will not take a ton of molds to get done. After that I need to get some concepts done for the line and see where that takes me.

Fantasy naval - Orcs, Elves, Imperial humans, and Dark Alliance fleets sculpted. Just had some issues resolved with the Elf ships, and I got the first of the Imperial masters and the orc escort masters in hand the other day. Tons of art being made for the rulebook. I was hoping to avoid Kickstarter, but the Dwarves didn’t really sell the way I needed them to by a large margin. Kind of torn between running a Kickstarter for the models sans rules or just waiting till the rules are 100% finished to launch the Kickstarter.
Option 3 would be to just release all of the fleets at once and not really care about what they make. I work long hours in my day job, so option 3 might be the way I go.

6mm Dieselpunk:
I will shoot a little update in the dedicated thread, but lots of stuff going on in the back end. Looking at 3 complete armies at launch. Again, a Kickstarter probably makes the most sense…but it will be at least 6-8 months before everything is ready to roll anyway, so there is time to decide.
Microwasteland – I should have a set of modular monster trucks, big war rigs, and another Denizens set out in the Fall. Maybe some additional infantry sets too, if the schedule works out.

Lots of other random stuff and ideas for future releases. I have dabbled a bit into 10mm Fantasy, but the sculptor I was going to use just isn’t available anymore, makes it kind of not feasible since my existing sculpts in the scale are CAD and I want everything to be done by one person so it doesn’t look hodge podge. There are also a ton of makers out there doing stuff in the scale, some of which either have Kickstarters underway or soon will. Makes me feel the entry into the 10mm arena isn’t all that necessary. I can’t really compete with a company that is run by a sculptor, they are just able to execute a lot better and easier.
I am going to do 6mm Bronze age in a big way, as it is a personal interest, and the Renaissance stuff has seemed to sell okay. I wanted to start doing some Chinese historicals too, but I think Rapier might be going in that direction, I don’t want to horn in. We’ll see over the next 6 months.

Would love to do some Ghibli-punk inspired airships and 2-3mm scale vehicles, I think it could be an interesting line.
Probably towards the end of the year there will also be some experimentation with CAD designed 3mm fantasy strips. They might be too small, even for me, I’ll definitely post up some test prints, even if I decide not to move forward with a full line. I was thinking of some really exotic warbeasts and war engines a la Chronopia empires, sort of like the same scope and scale as some of Adrian Smith’s HATE artwork. Even in 6mm you can’t get that sense of mass…kind of like an ocean of infantry punctuated by some giant creatures, that sort of thing.
Author:  godismycopilot [ Tue May 28, 2019 7:40 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
First of all I'd like to say thank you again for producing such great miniatures. They are brilliant and a joy to paint. I am looking forward to the release of further undead and the crusader types. Will a number of the figure codes be usable as historic crusaders as this might help with sales via a crossover to historical gamers?

Perhaps some arabic forces as opponents with potential fantasy elements flying carpets and djinn. Oops getting carried away.
Author:  Legion 4 [ Tue May 28, 2019 9:04 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
8) YES !!!!
Author:  thedespot29 [ Wed May 29, 2019 3:41 am ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
Yeah, the art kind of resembles Tuetonic knights a bit, so I was thinking about a crossover of some kind. I think their basic infantry is going to be pretty close to generic 14th / 15th century men-at-arms.

Yeah, definitely want to do a desert-themed fantasy nation, but there are a few other things ahead in the queue. The pecking order is roughly:

Undead Expansion
Elven Kingdoms
Kingdom of Light
Egyptian Undead
Dark Alliance Expansion
Author:  boywundyrx [ Mon Jun 10, 2019 7:52 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
Thanks for the update, looking forward to the new fantasy releases, and I think I'll pick up some naval too, and any new Microwasteland stuff. A lot of other ideas on your list also tweak some interest (e.g. airships!).

I'm one of your customers who's caught up on most (nearly all) of the back catalogue, so I ride the new release curve pretty closely, usually buying in bulk after a couple of new releases come out (off to calculate an undead order this week). Not sure if that helps with any of your planning though.

Chris
Author:  Samsonov [ Sun Nov 24, 2019 12:47 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
I am very interested in the CAD designed 3mm fantasy strips. The recent oddzial osmy 3mm romans and celts are really specular and fantasy could be really wonderful in this scale.

A word of warning though, if you want your 3mm fantasy range to be a the same scale as existing historical lines. There are two lines with incompatible sizes and, in my view at least, one of the lines is simply much nicer than the other. Both magister militum and oddzial osmy have 3mm ranges. I must have spent around a £100 on each range so I have some familiarity with them. They are not really in the same scale. The magister militum models are significantly bigger in size and width, to the point that they are incompatible with one another (and that is not including the magister militum models being on a base that is about 1mm thicker compared to the oddzial osmy). Given this difference in size, plus me thinking that the odzdzil osmy are nicer sculpts, I am abandoning my magister militum 3mm romans and celts and restarting with oddzial osmy.
Author:  thedespot29 [ Fri Nov 29, 2019 7:08 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
Just so folks know what @Samsonov is talking about, I have been getting some 3mm stuff done on the side as a personal project:

Image

Comparison with MM 3mm historicals and one of my 6mm Stonemen, so you can see how ridiculously small they are:

Image

have heard people generally like oddzial's stuff better, I will have to order some and see how they compare. I can see the charm of MM's line also, as the chunky details are nice to paint at this scale.
Author:  thedespot29 [ Fri Nov 29, 2019 7:37 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
I thought I would post a little end of year update before things get crazy in December with holidays and what not.

All in all I am extremely happy with how the year has progressed. We moved the needle on a lot of existing and new projects, and I have a ton of stuff ready for release / Crowdfunding (maybe?) next year. Lack of availability for sculptors, particularly digital organics, continues to be a sticking point for various reasons.

Some updates of various lines and releases:

6mm Elves - I continue to be torn on whether or not to get these re-done by hand to better match my existing offerings. It would be an easier pill to swallow if I used the existing CAD sculpts for 10mm which segues nicely into:

10mm fantasy - Sadly has stalled. Not too many folks that sculpt small scales digitally, and the ones that do...why would they take commissions rather than just do a Patreon or release stuff themselves via Crowdfunding? I have had a couple of people turn me down as it just isn't worth their time, so on hold for now.

6mm Dregs scifi beastmen): Bunch of stuff ready to roll for these guys. I was going to split these into 2 waves of releases, but I have had mixed results when I do that, so I wanted to wait for the 2nd wave to be sculpted. Unfortunately the concept artist hit a run of bad luck which has delayed things a bit, but I'm hoping to get back on track for the new year.

If there are any other releases folks want updates on, feel free to ask away!
Author:  Legion 4 [ Fri Nov 29, 2019 9:20 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
Neat !!!!!
Author:  lylekelm [ Fri Nov 29, 2019 11:05 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
Really sweating on the 6mm Dregs range.
Cant wait.
Author:  Mr. Average [ Sun Dec 01, 2019 7:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
I couldn’t possibly be more in favor of the 3mm Fantasy Project. And while I know they’re a niche product I’m a huge fan of the 3mm Sci Fi lines as well - they go great with the New Terra range.
Author:  Samsonov [ Wed Dec 04, 2019 8:41 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
Size comparison pictures between the magister militum on the left and Oddzail Osmy on the left. Full size picture hosted on dakkadakka, click to see them.

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Big size difference as you can see. Also, despite being smaller the detail on the 08s is sharper.
Author:  Legion 4 [ Thu Dec 05, 2019 7:27 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
NICE !!!!!!! ;D
Author:  Logain1555 [ Fri Dec 13, 2019 6:11 am ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
At one point you had mentioned getting some 3mm buildings in the pipeline...is that still a possibility?
Any 3mm sci-fi infantry, gunships or walkers in the works?

If you produced two factions that look that good for 3mm fantasy I’d pick up a couple armies!

Looking forward to the 6mm insect nomads, elves and orcs! You’ve got a lot of irons in the fire!
Author:  thedespot29 [ Fri Dec 13, 2019 3:30 pm ]
Post subject:  Re: State of the Microworld 2019
Ha, to be fair, probably way too many irons in the fire at the moment. Everything just takes a long time to do and coordinate, so I like to have multiple things going at once.

Yup, 3mm buildings definitely in he pipeline, in resin. I want to wait till I have the Sabre and Kukri ready to roll and release all of that at the same time.

No gunships or walkers at the moment, we will have to see how the buildings and other new releases sell, because sales in general for 3mm aren't really stellar.

The plan is for multiple 3mm fantasy factions
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