State of the Nation
Presidents and prime ministers around the globe give state
of the nation speeches at the beginning of the year. Here at Skirmish Sangin we
thought we would borrow the concept and look back briefly over the last 12
months and to let all our loyal players know what’s happening in the next 12
months.
So the last 12 months have seen a great deal of growth in
the Skirmish Sangin market. The year was book marked by the release of Sangin
Despatches 2 and 3 and one of the key highlights was our trip to SALUTE which
was a great deal of fun. Our Insurgents/Taliban figures were released.
Phalanx Consortium came on board as our US distributor and that is a relationship that's gone from strength to strength.
Unfortunately we lost a great good person along the way. Stuart Griffin of Griffin Moulds (Sangin's Figure Manufacturer) and we would like to take this opportunity to pass on our deepest condolences to his family and colleagues.
So what will 2015 have to offer?
Now we can’t reveal all as
we have signed a number of non-disclosure agreements with companies but there
is a core of projects that we can reveal, some of what is going on.
Now before I go in to detail can we just say a little about timelines.
All of the team have full time, high-pressure jobs and while we indicate
deadlines and do our best to work towards them, we are always deliberately vague
simply to avoid disappointment.
Our projects tend to take a while to create and sometimes
can be held up by even the most innocuous of things. 2014 had a few among them
the birth of beautiful baby James to Chris and Rachel. Pneumonia and a serious knee
operations for Colin and a PHD for Craig, all of these thing vied for our
time.
We hope there are less this year but you never know. Anyway
enough waffle what's happening.
First quarter 2015
The first of our Battle Books will be Maalintii Rangers (Day
of the Rangers (Mog) - to those of us that don’t speak Somali). This book will
concentrate on the battle made famous by the book and film Black Hawk Down. It
will have additional rules, background info and ORBATS for everything from
Street mobs and Somali gun man to the D-Boys and Rangers. A set of entertaining
scenarios that focuses on various stages of the battle and ideas of how to
model and paint the participants.
IMAGE ABOVE - Rough Scamp of the cover
To support this we will also be releasing our first set of
28mm Americans, initially an 8 man Rangers squad, that’s ideal for Mog and more
than usable for Iraq 1 and 2 and early Afghanistan as well as some more goodies
we have in the pipeline. See the Ranger renders below.
We are also planning a running a Kickstarter to help us
expand this figure line but we’ll let you know more about that nearer the time.
Also in this quarter you will see the release of the final 28mm
Insurgent/Taliban so there will be more than enough to build a sizeable force.
ABOVE: Some of the new Insurgent/Taliban figures
Second/third quarter
2015
This will see the release of our first fantasy game,
currently called Outbreak – This is a zombie horror skirmish game. This will be
launched at GENCON and a number of us are making the trip to Indianapolis to be
part of the fun. So do come along and see us.
ABOVE: The almost final cover for Outbreak
We will also be at Historicon with plenty of Skirmish Sangin
goodness (as part of our month long trip to the USA) so that will be another
opportunity to chat if any of you are heading that way. We hope to have more
than a few new goodies available at both events.
Third/fourth quarter
2015
Sangin Despatches no.3, yes number 3, we have so much useful
stuff left over from SD2 that we plan to bring you another book to conclude
Afghanistan.
Now anybody that has played Skirmish Sangin know the system
can work for any conflict from ww2 onwards and this year we plan to use the
system to venture further a field and expand both globally conflict wise and
back through the ages to help our players use the system to play there
favourite genres.
So that’s all the big picture stuff we can talk about and as you can see we haven't been lazing a round but
also we are going to do our best to use this blog to bring you some
great Skirmish Sangin Goodness.
It’s our plan that each month we will release you a free
scenario for the remaining 11 months of 2015. We will also increase the number
of articles and After Action Reports (AARs) to as many as possible. This will
allow players to see the flexibility of the system and get some great new ideas
for their gaming. We are kicking off our first free scenario in February with a
look at the Australians and what they got up to in Afghanistan.
Obviously this is not all but its all for now. Do let us
know what you would like to see in terms of ORBATS etc. and any game ideas and
we’ll do our absolute best to bring them to you.
cheers
Colin
