Trench Crusade: Communicant anti-tank hunter

Almost there...
25 days ago – Mon, Jul 01, 2024 at 12:42:46 PM

Blessed pilgrims,

I've been battling through the chaos of the warehouse (a.k.a. my living room/my parents' garage) and am making real headway! Many of you will have received yours by now, many more are on the way and the rest are being packed as we speak. I hope to have the last parcel out of the door in the next two weeks! Then I might lie down for a bit of a rest...

Address changes and general queries

As per the last update, if you have moved/are planning to move soon, please drop me a message and (if I haven't already sent yours) I can update your address for you, since BackerKit is closed so you won’t be able to do this yourself. I appreciate that because this has taken longer than anticipated, some of you may have moved to a new home. 

Please also feel free to message me if you have any other queries at all. I may not be able to reply the same day, but I will get back to you!

Thanks again for your incredible support, kindness and patience you have shown. You are all super awesome! 

All the best,

James

Sitrep from the trenches
about 2 months ago – Wed, May 29, 2024 at 01:41:21 AM

Blessed pilgrims,

Sorry this update is a bit later than usual – it’s pretty full-on here at the moment… so no change there! I have to be honest with everyone; I’ve been struggling physically and emotionally recently.

Fulfilment is ongoing but is still slow I am afraid. I really wanted to have everything out by the end of this month, but unfortunately that won’t be possible. Between work, family crisis, cost of living… it’s all taken a toll. I have several hundred left to send out so fulfilment is going to go into June now, which is really disappointing I know and is adding to the stress. I’m working every day, in those hours available to me whether day or night, but it’s impossible to have any real structure to my workflow right now due to other things going on at home. It’s a perfect storm. I’m naturally a positive, glass-half-full kinda guy, but I am finding it a bit harder to remain quite as jovial these days.

Lessons have been learnt on this journey – in future the manufacturer will be doing all the checking, sorting, bagging and packing (which is unbelievably time consuming. To give you a rough idea, it takes on average 10 minutes to pack a single order, due to the sorting, checking, bagging of tiny parts, bases, box making, label printing, customs form filling… multiply that by more than 2500 orders and you get a rough idea of what I've been up against). I am getting more help in June which is much needed as I am kinda running on fumes right now.

All these delays have also pushed back other projects (and meant I’ve missed out on work) which are compounding matters for me. And home life really isn’t great right now. Worst first half of the year since lockdowns in 2020.

But please rest assured that I am working as hard as I can and will be getting all pledges out. It is just taking a lot longer than I anticipated. I can only apologise from the bottom of my heart for all the delays.

Address changes and general queries

If you have moved/are planning to move soon, please drop me a message and I can update your address for you, since BackerKit is closed so you won’t be able to do this yourself. I appreciate that because this has taken longer than anticipated, some of you may have moved to a new home. Please also feel free to message me if you have any other queries at all. I may not be able to reply the same day, but I will get back to you!

Thanks again for being so amazing. I am so grateful for all the messages of support.

All the best,

James

A little token of our appreciation
3 months ago – Thu, Apr 25, 2024 at 08:43:54 AM

Greetings pilgrims!

I hope you are all well. Just a quick update to say a couple of things:

1. Fulfilment is ongoing
2. Latest version of the Trench Crusade play test rules
3. A small token of our gratitude to our amazing, super patient backers!

Fulfilment

Things are still difficult here (please see last update) but I am steadily working through fulfilling all outstanding pledges. Please be assured that, if you have yet to receive yours, it will be on its way soon! Thank you again for bearing with me during a pretty tough time. :)

Play test rules

Tuomas has recently updated the latest version (v1.3.2) of the Trench Crusade play test rules (Kickstarter for the skirmish game is due later in the year). If you want to give it a go, feel free to download the rules here:

https://www.trenchcrusade.com/playtest-rules

A small token of our appreciation to our backers

Since you have all been so incredibly patient and understanding, sending many messages of support (sorry I could not reply to all of them!), we at Trench HQ thought it would be nice to give you a little something. I sculpted a female version of the Communicant Anti-Tank Hunter and you can download the STL for free here:

https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fo/5rkhh07crgsmix0dp758z/AI_Qu__48GrW9J6cPOaD06s?rlkey=4q9zis6ftkwl1936jpvu0tdkt&st=o5zgbs83&dl=0

You will find a supported and unsupported version, as well as the .LYS Lychee Slicer file if you wanted to tinker with supports/printer settings yourself. Apologies that this perhaps isn't of much use to folks without printers! 

As always, a huge thank you from all of us for being such amazing backers! 

Until next time,

James

It doesn't rain, it pours
4 months ago – Wed, Apr 03, 2024 at 01:33:36 AM

Blessed pilgrims,

Really sorry that many of you are still waiting for your pledges. It has been a bit of a nightmare, since I have been doing the vast majority of it myself and we had a family emergency that came from nowhere (and is currently ongoing) and that has had a huge impact on our lives. I was hoping the family emergency would not have such a negative effect, but it has. It's been pretty tough, gotta be honest. I really wanted to avoid posting about it, but it has had such an impact on our lives that I now have no choice. I just want to be as open and honest as I can be with you.

That being said, I can't go into details about the crisis we are going through since it is very private and with devastating consequence. As much as I want to be open with you guys, something really bad happened and it is not something we are ready to talk about with anyone, including our extended family and close friends. It is something we are trying to come to terms with in our core unit, trying also to work out the best way to deal with it. It really came from nowhere and we are still reeling. Apologies for being so vague about it - I hope you can understand our need to keep things private.

We will get through this. I am still working on getting all your miniatures out to you, although it is taking longer than I had hoped. I am chipping away at it whilst we deal with our ongoing situation. 

Again, so sorry for the delays - I am slowly getting through it! Everyone who has yet to receive their pledge will be getting their miniatures hopefully soon! Please bear with me.

Thanks again for backing and your incredible patience and understanding!

Big love,

James

Packing Party!
4 months ago – Thu, Mar 14, 2024 at 10:58:08 AM

Blessed pilgrims, welcome to this quick update! Brought to you by the Synod of Strategic Prophecy in association with Beelzebub…

A couple of weeks ago I received a message from my mate Curtis up in the Lead Belt (Nottingham, UK). It had come to his attention that I was attempting to sort, bag & pack a ridiculous number of miniatures for fulfilment and, being a splendid fellow, he kindly offered to help! Roll on yesterday and I found myself driving a couple of hours up the road to his studio where we were joined by some equally awesome fellows for a Packing Party!

It was a really great day – super productive and we also a good time chatting and networking, as you do. From what everyone said, much fun was had whilst also managing to sort and bag at least a couple of thousand miniatures (I haven’t managed to count them yet – all I know is there is a LOT)! The reason we have to bag everything carefully, apart from ensuring all the miniature parts and bases come together, is to keep the shipping costs down since the fulfilment centre charges extra for each item packed per parcel. It may work out as pennies per item, but when that is multiple items per order, and there are 2.5k orders, trust me that soon adds up!

So, I would like to give a big shout out and huge thanks to Curtis, Monk, Scott, Pablo, Dave & Ratty for helping me with this mammoth task. Also a shout out to Rob for very kindly letting us use his studio space. Thanks chaps, you really did us a solid and have literally saved me several days of packing!

Feel free to check these wonderful human beings out on their socials and give them a follow, if you are so inclined:

Curtis: https://www.instagram.com/ramshackle_games/

Monk: https://www.instagram.com/googlyeyedskull

Dave: https://www.instagram.com/adhcreate

Pablo: https://www.instagram.com/thestilltower/

Scott: https://www.instagram.com/scottweightman/

Rob: https://www.instagram.com/thehonestwargamer

As per the last update, shipping is ongoing but this Packing Party has really helped to move things along. So thanks again Curtis and his crew! Big love guys.

And big love to all our patient backers! I am biased, of course, but your patience will be rewarded. :)

Cheers!

James