New Range of Scenery.

We have been working on a new range of scenery with our good friends Nick and Tash at N-FX. The plan is to offer a comprehensive range of scenery for war gamers in all time periods and genres.  A rather ambitious task but something that we have been keen to do right from the outset of the business. I guess the clue is in our name.

We already have a few unbranded products that we are able to resell under the Arcane Scenery name and we will start to bring all of these together so that they are more accessible to customers, along with a bit more help as to how best to use the products. Again, a pretty obvious thing to do but a massive task in itself.

The other issue that we have been wrestling with is that of pricing. There are some items that we can buy in from other suppliers such as pet shops, DIY stores, florists and other miscellaneous sources that we know will be invaluable for Wargames – I use many of these products myself. The thing is, will customers be prepared to pay the addition cost for the convenience of having these items in one place and being able to buy in suitable quantities or will they feel that they are being taken advantage of?

A good example of this dilemma is illustrated by the product, Basing Sand. Lets face it, it’s just sand! You can get it for free if you visit the beach. Or, if you go to a builders merchants, you can get a 10kg bag for about £5.00. There will be enough to last you a lifetime of basing! The other alternative is that you can go to  a model shop and pay £5.00 or so for a small tub of the stuff. I guess, it is up to the individual which option that they choose. You either pay for the convenience or you get a hernia lifting the 10kg bag into the car!

I have digressed somewhat, back to our Scenery range. We decided that we would start our range with subjects that would support and fit with our DeeZee range of Ice age/prehistoric animals. We also wanted something that would be a little bit different. So we have started with a range of  Neolithic ‘buildings’ and constructions.

I have long been fascinated by these ancient structures. I was brought up in the West Country of England – Dartmoor has many stone circles, standing stones and stone bridges that I visited as a child and picnicked next to! That led to my interest in other such structures, Stone Henge, the Avebury Stones, and more further afield, the Moai on Easter Island. As a teenager of the ’70s I was also sucked into the writings of Eric Von Daniken who postulated that some of these monuments were made by visitors from outer space. All very entertaining, if now somewhat daft, but great background for Pulp gaming.

We have launched the range with four subjects, a Moai, our version of  a stone henge and two burial cairns. There is of course more to come, so that you will be able to create a complete themed look for your gaming table or just make a one off feature. I think that the scenery will be suitable for any sort of fantasy, pulp fiction or science fiction themed game. Of course, it will be ideal for an ice age or Neolithic setting.

In designing the range, we have deliberately not gone for exact copies or scale models of subjects but produced our interpretation of the subject. The pieces are sized with ’28mm’ figures in mind but would be suitable for other scales. We have also ensured that there is plenty of texture on the models that can be brought to life with a simple dry brush technique when painting them.

I hope that you will enjoy these pieces and find them useful for your games. The range will grow steadily to encompass some of the more fashionable war games periods, Napoleonics and World War Two spring to mind! Over the course of my blog, I’ll put together a few articles showing how I painted and based my examples. In the meantime, if you would like to have your own ‘henge’ or Moai, click here.