Hasslefree Miniatures Newsletter

No naked chicks this time but there's still some cool stuff in there...

TABLE OF CONTENTS • Back to Normal! • The More Things Change... • Falgrim Jarlsson, Veteran Thane • Ari Wilhelmson, Ranger • Sigurd Sigurdson, Youthful Thane • Olvir Brutisson, Herald • A Matter of Size and Cost • Along came a Spider... • More Resin Masters! • Here Comes the Z-Squad • The Magnetism of Hasslefree • And Finally... Back to Normal! Allo everyone, as you probably read last week we're in the middle of some changes at the moment here at HF. I'll add a few words about them myself below but I just wanted to let people know that things are pretty much back to normal now after an extended period of remoulding and reorganising behind the scenes. As such we have some exciting new releases this week, a few a little different to the norm :) Below you'll find some new dwarves of a brand new variety for HF, 5 more resin masters to ad to our expanding offerings,some new survivors of the Zombocalypse and news on neodymium magnets and restocks. But before we get to the pretty pics... The More Things Change... Anyone following our newsletters will have heard from Sal during our last one about the ongoing changes here at HF Headquarters  (If you didn't get to it you can catch up HERE). I thought I'd throw in a few words myself, mostly of reassurement :) Firstly, you'll be happy to know (I hope) that despite Sal announcing it a couple of weeks ago, a lot of the changes have been ongoing for quite sometime.  My wife, Jenn, and I  moved up to HF late last year and with Sal's ongoing battle with her illness taking her time I've been slowly taking over a lot of the day to day duties. A fair few of you haven't noticed any difference, some even going so far as to regret that Sal won't be doing the newsletters any more etc. :) There's a simple reason for the smooth transition, Sal and I think very similarly about business. We both like to keep things informal and we both think it's important to converse directly with our customers as often as possible. Feedback is especially important to us (as you can tell by the amount of times I mention our Facebook page every newsletter ;) ). I would also like to lay to rest any fears that the signature HF service will change in any way. Whenever someone receives an order from us they get a 'comp slip'in their envelope or box, the person signing that comp slip sent your order. For the last 10 months you'll have been receiving comp slips signed by myself or my wife (The ones with an unintelligible scrawl are mine *blush*). That's a long-winded way of saying if you haven't noticed any change up until now, then you never will :) Customer service is another thing Sal and I agree on. Hasslefree will still continue to be operated from the UK, we will still continue to bring innovation, character and, well frankly, Kev's ludicrous level of skill to all of you and HF Minis will still be a family run business, the only difference is that now the Whites have been joined by the Blacks ;) (You  may also see my wife pop up on our Facebook page  from now on too under the nom de guerre of 'Jennifer Black', so that'll be 3 people now to field your many and varied questions! It would be 4 but it's basically all we can do to stop Kev typing 'No, sod off' to every request on there ;) ) Ok, enough of that, on with why you really opened this, the pretty pictures... Falgrim Jarlsson, Veteran Thane Enter the Norse Dwarves! Starting with Falgrim here we have the first 4 of our Norse Dwarf collection made up of minis by the incredibly talented Tre Manor. They are a slightly different style to our Norman-esque dwarves as you can see but blend well with some of our  Dwarf character codes and are the same height and bulk as certain large miniature companies offerings ;) (Painted version by Duff) Ari Wilhelmson, Ranger Second up is our Norse Dwarf 'Ranger',  Ari Wilhelmson. A two part figure with the crossbow being a separate piece to the body. (painted version by Squig Hunter) Sigurd Sigurdson, Youthful Thane Next up is Sigurd, a youthful (for a Dwarf) Thane armed with a two-handed rune axe. A two-part mini with the axe and both hands being separate to the main body. Olvir Brutisson, Herald And the last of our first batch of Norse Dwarves is Olvir, son of Bruti. Armed with hammer and shield and carrying his faithful horn. (Painted version by Bluesabre) A Matter of Size and Cost We thought we'd head a bunch of scale/size questions and throw up some quick comparisons. As you can seeheight and scale/wise they are apretty good fit with our other various Fantasy Dwarf minis. The Norman-esque Dwarves are a little longer of leg and more slender of chest but nothing too outrageous. It's mostly the style of dress that separates them, so you can merrily mix them and have them be from different parts of whichever fantasy world you should you wish :) Not sure quite why I'm hiding it down here but we also had a re-assessment of our Dwarf multipacks lately and have decided to lower the prices for a test period of time. While we know the time that it takes Kev to make a unit figure is much the same as any other figure we also understand that for people wanting to buy whole units they could seem on the expensive side. It's one of those judgement calls we constanty have to make. Hopefully the lower prices will see a higher enogh level of sales that we can keep the prices down for the forseeable future :) Along came a Spider... As she is highly awaited I thought the release of her Resin Masterdeserved a special section by herself. This is Ekaterina 'The Spider', our ultra-modern assassin who some people have mentioned turned out to look a bit like Lady Gaga :). Beautifully reproduced by the artisans at Grey Matter. (Her metal version will be a late August release  assuming all goes well.) More Resin Masters! We have another 4 Resin Masters for you this week,including another little bonus that hasn't been released yet... Mystic Warrior Libby joins her mystic partner Kev in all their resiny goodness. Hamlet is the first of the Teenage Gang and Dog to appear in a resin format. Dynamic Tiriel was deemed a perfect candidate for  offering in resin after it was found she needed remoulding. All those interlocking armour plates and smooth surfaces really highlight what a Resin Master can do for a mini. And lastly we have Dynamic Kalee, with a slight change. This version of Kalee also needed a remould and it turns out that Kev, the silly billy, had forgotten that at some point he sculpted one of 40mm Kalee'sextra weapon options as an extra for the 28mm version. So this Resin Master comes with a choice of dread axe or broadsword! (When the metal variant gets remoulded it too will get the broadsword option, this will likely be in late August)  Here Comes the Z-Squad The newest addition to the growing horde of Survivors from our Studio Collection is the 'Z-Squad' (Technically Z-Squad 1, which seems to indicate they will be joined at some point by more squads?;) ). Sold only as a set of 4 I'm afraid. You may also notice they are all carrying weapons we sell in ourModern Armoury :D The Magnetism of Hasslefree We had a big restock of Neodymium Magnets in lately and it ocurred to us we hadn't let people know that the strength (and quality) of the magnets we offer is significantly higher than average craft grade. Our magnets are grade N42 whereas standard craft grade is N35, which might not seem a lot but when you are dealing with the pull strengths of 1mm and 2mm magnets that extra 20-25% boost is a big difference! And Finally... Apologies for the physical length of this week's newsletter. The simple reason is that our air conditioner at the HF office broke down this weekend and frankly the working conditions there got pretty hot pretty fast. I was not a pretty sight (or smell more than likely) This led me to do a bulk of this newsletter on a small netbook which makes image editing a huge pain. We'll be back to montages next newsletter! Since Kev has been away from the office and my nagging ways (at least until he sets up his new computer) he has basically been given free reign to sculpt whatever he fancies and has come up with this fantastic piece of art, head over to the link and get a vote in on her name :) The next few newsletters should be very busy indeed. We have a lot of news releases on the horizon, a great deal of expansion planned 'and' a Kickstarter. Exciting times ahead and if you'd like to keep your finger on the Hasslefree pulse then, as always, the best way is to like ourFacebook page. We just passed 4000 of them and are now hunting down the big 5k ;) Right, I need some sunday dinner and a nap so that's it for this week. 'Til next time, Arty