Bolt Action Plastic WW2 Comparison

Lot's of folks have been asking about the new plastic WW2 Germans from Bolt Action/Warlord. One of the most frequent questions is "do they fit with". I took this comparison shot with all the WW2 figures I had on hand in 28mm scale. They are all mounted on either pennies or washers of the same thickness as a penny. Sorry about the paint jobs, some are quite old!

Click the picture to see it bigger.

You can Pre-Order these from us here:

http://tiny.cc/f79sv

Don't forget shipping is FREE in August for Continental US Orders of $50 or more...

New Products Ready for Sale

We added all the above to the Web Store today.

WW2 Battle Report

We have dusted off and are play testing a very old but reliable set of WW2 rules (homegrown) called The Squad WILL Advance! We intend to put them on the website as a down loadable PDF sometime in the near(ish) future. On Saturday, some of our fellow club members came over and we took the rules out for two test drives in one night. The first game was chronicled in this down and dirty Combat Report available here:

http://www.architectsofwar.com/gaming.aspx

These trucks are full of guys racing home to view Architects of War's First Newsletter. You can view it too by clicking on the following link.

http://conta.cc/cmL9IG

If you have not registered for our Newsletter, please do so by clicking on the "Join Mailing List in the Newsletter or register on the Architects of War website .

Let us know what you think.

Dead Guys and Dead Cows

I just snuck into the shop and put the finishing touches on these figures for tomorrow night's game. Dead guys. Dead Germans, dead Americans, and dead cows. What's really sad is the picture shows only about half of them!!!

I'll write up a couple of combat reports on tomorrows action as soon as I can. We are playing two games to continue testing our upcoming WW2 rules The Squad Will Advance! and we needed casualty markers...

Modeling Barrages, Shell Bursts, and Hit Vehicles

I have posted another How To article in the How To Information section of our website. It's about making markers for Barrages, Shell Bursts, Destroyed Vehicles, etc. To get to the How To articles you can click on the link below or click on the How To Guide button on the Home Page of our website.

You can download the PDF free of charge here:

http://www.architectsofwar.com/howtoinformation.aspx

Woods and Forests How To Posted

My friend and fellow club member is currently running a 6mm ACW Black Powder campaign I am happy to be playing in. As always, not doing so well with my troops, I decided a few forests to hide in may help my cause. After finishing the forest pieces, I decided to base our first "How to" PDF for our website on this project.

You can get there by going here:

http://www.architectsofwar.com/howtoinformation.aspx

Of course, the PDF is free to download. The next one will be about assembling and painting the Warlord Hanomag.

By the way, if you haven't seen any of the instruction sheets for one of our products, you can find quite a few of them here:

http://www.architectsofwar.com/productinstructions.aspx

It's a nice way to check out the kits before purchasing.

This Week's News

Here is the News of the week:

Architects of War is celebrating its Grand Opening on the web with FREE shipping on all Continental US orders $50 or more for the month of August!

Coming this month as new releases- 28mm Hedge Row set, Stone Wall set, and more !

Just arrived and in the webstore NOW are some brilliant new Warlord releases:

Bolt Action Defenders of France- $33.00

Unleash Hell! Special Roman Character- $7.00

Fantastic Roman Civilians- $13.00

Pike and Shotte Cuirrasiers- $33.00

Plus a restock on Black Powder Rulebooks and more...

Architects of War Products are available in Europe from exclusively from Warlord Games.

We are currently researching a distributor for Australia. Any recommendations welcome.

Hedge Row Sneek Peek

These are shots of the almost finished test run on the Hedge row set. You get about 36" of 28mm old growth Hedge Row and a couple of curve pieces. The set will be offered as a kit with trees and foliage included. We took these to our production caster today and hope to have them for sale next week. The picture with the wall in it is a teaser from another new set also coming soon but it is not part of the hedgerow set. It will work with the hedge row set. Foundry Perry drummer shown for scale reference and won't be included in the kit.

Texture

I was once told by a very good friend when I was an "apprentice" model maker (many years ago now), that when replicating "nature" you had to have lots of layers of texture. When you go outside, unless its man made, nearly nothing in nature is flat and smooth and it almost always has something growing on it. I try to sculpt all of our pieces of terrain with plenty of molded in texture. When I finish them, I add more texture with flock and little details but they don't have to be flocked. I also try to make the detail a bit heavy so its easily dry brushed and therefore faster to paint. Painting French Napoleonic figures perfectly takes a lot of time. I figure people would like to spend less time painting rocks. If you DO want to paint lots of detail it is there to paint on our products but flocking something like tree stands gets you there faster.

Above are some quick and dirty pics that are examples of me making sure there is plenty of texture on our most basic products. I always paint the second piece out of our master mold to make sure its right. I then fix anything that's wrong before we send it off to our caster if we aren't casting it ourselves. These pieces need a little work. The entrance to the rabbit hole doesn't have the right texture yet. I'll try to get some pictures of these finished up for tomorrow. Its part of our August release.