I think this is the latest in the year I have ever done one of these. I am very much in a sort of hobby phase with the business. Sales continue to decline across the board, costs continue to increase across the board…morale oscillates accordingly. I work all the time, and sadly…I am getting old lol. I don’t really have the energy or time to do very much marketing, or proactively run a ton of KS’s or anything like that. I started the business in my late 20s…crazy how time passes. I had a lot of good intentions last year, and I thought I would accomplish XYZ…but the reality is I work a gazillion hours, and I don’t have much gas left in the tank anymore.

This year, we pushed out 3mm Imperials, Early Bronze / General bronze age 6mm, and Merc Team Kukri for 6mm scifi. There will be at least one more release for this year, most likely 3mm Fantasy Undead, as I really wanted to push those out this year. When it is all said and done, I basically will only have managed quarterly releases this year, which is pretty bad considering the backlog of stuff I have, somewhere around 20 projects or so of varying size. Some of the slowness in releases is driven by labor resources, availability of moldmakers, etc. The other is sales driven. For example, my new releases this year, combined, have grossed about $1,310.

Let’s see, 3D printing…honestly I go back and forth on converting to a print farm. I do truly believe that miniature businesses incorporating it into their business model is truly the way to go. That said, I don’t really like 3d printing all that much. Doing it for yourself is fine, fun even, but producing a ton of minis up to a quality you might want to sell? Pretty annoying! It also produces a ton of waste, microplastics, gross chemical byproducts, there is no part of it that is fun time. Again, printing for yourself, kind of finite and manageable. Doing it as a business, whole other scale of problems. When it comes down to it, I don’t make much / any money anyway so it really has to be something I don’t actively hate doing. I DO have a 3d-printer buying problem though. I have 6 of the things at this point, its crazy. If another large box arrives at the house, I fear my wife’s reaction.

Okay what else…good news, positives! I think I finally settled on a printer + resin combo where I am satisfied enough with the results to print straight for production molds. I do still need to pass the hurdle of actually getting the prints to produce a mold successfully, which could result in a failure for many reasons that I’m not sure a moldmaker doing contract moldmaking would even be motivated to address, but for now, just having the prints I will take as a big win. Pics below!







The littlest wights!


This is a big win because mastering costs + 3D printing costs are bonkers and are really annoying from a logistics standpoint. So we basically save on time, money, and hopefully no more filing and cleaning master castings till my fingers bleed and I go cross-eyed.

And just to close, people reading this may wonder why I bother staying in business, or maybe they think I am kind of down on the endeavor. I do it because its awesome. Because as I am sitting and filing the mold lines off of a little 6mm late landsknecht pikemen, I am thinking about how paintable the sculpts look and how great they will look based up (which I will never have time to do, but who cares!). Even if next year is a total disaster, and I only get two or three releases in, it will still be awesome. Do you see the pictures I posted above? How can you not get excited? Bronze age lion centaurs in 6mm? Cobramen? 3mm skeleton hordes? Next year is going to rock. Except for work, that is going to suck and devour my soul. And the geo-political instability/horrors…and probably a recession. But miniatures though, the miniatures will be awesome.

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For all your Dark Realm, 6mm scifi and 6mm fantasy needs: http://www.microworldgames.com/

Figures as always awesome. I'm sorry to hear it doesn't make too much money for you. The figures are the best quality 6mm figures I've seen. Recently against my wallet's better judgement also ordered some 3mm and very excited for release of undead. Long may you keep going and I hope keep enjoying what you do!

Best wishes for the future.

Hi Steve,

Do you have any other pictures of the up and coming 3mm undead miniatures? Do they have an ETA and are they going to be in resin or metal?

Best wishes,
Ronnie

Definitely going to be metal, I am aiming for a release before the end of the year. When I get the masters in I will definitely post up some more previews.

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For all your Dark Realm, 6mm scifi and 6mm fantasy needs: http://www.microworldgames.com/

Hi despot29 I was locked out of my account for a while so I'm just catching up on a whole bunch of threads so apologies for the late reply here.

I'm sorry to hear that work takes up way too much of your time, microworld games minis are fantastic and I'd love to see more on tabletops!

As for the lack of time advertising- if you only have time for posting one post a month then I really would recommend getting stuff posted to the '6mm wargaming and terrain' group on facebook. (https://www.facebook.com/groups/266872090170793) I really don't see enough microworld on there, let alone enough fantasy at small scale! We have over 8.5k members now, a couple of thousand more than the other big 6mm groups. I keep nagging vanguard to post there as well- we do have a very big audience who might otherwise only be looking at the more 'well known' 6mm supplies or get pushed to more active 3d printer companies that post there almost weekly!

In a similar regard- I've been waiting for you to restock the space rats. With the release of new Epic I'm fully committed to finally finishing my space vermin force for epic. I've brought a ridiculous amount of new vehicles and terrain, I just need more troops. Once they are back in stock, I'd like to sling an order and I'll be cross posting my work on them to pretty much all the Epic forums. That would be a bit of exposure of your minis to the wider 'new' epic community. I'll probably expand the army from some of the other lines as well, I'm just waiting for the space rats restock!

Thanks for keeping microworld going, I hope that 2024 picks up in sales so we can see MWG continue for many more years!

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Thedespot29

Do you have any 6mm scifi planned for 2024

Thanks & regards

Gerard

I've got some 6mm scifi in the near future. I had all of the Kreen insectoid nfantry resculpted that need to be released. I also have some random tentacle-ish mutant infantry as a standalone. No vehicles for those at the moment.

I have some vehicle-heavy releases that will likely need to be mostly 3D print in nature. Still reconfiguring my workshop to facilitate more printing / faster printing. I do hate it though. A lot of the vehicles would just be a bit too heavy in metal. I could probably try to hollow them a bit to help with that, but honestly 6mm scifi vehicles generally haven't sold well for me, so small production runs via 3D printing just make more sense.

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For all your Dark Realm, 6mm scifi and 6mm fantasy needs: http://www.microworldgames.com/

Thanks for the update

Gerard

Happy New Year! Do you have any updates on fantasy ranges? Specifically any pics of the 3mm undea d range?

Many thanks, Ronnie

Could you post pictures of the tentacled mutants?

Thanks

Gerard (Templar2)

I know you are very busy but would appreciate a State of Microworld 2024

Thanks in advance and regards

Templar2

There was a Facebook post two days after you made this post. Magister Militum has sold 3mm moulds to Microworld.

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He mastered the art of not caring about irrelevant things.

I will definitely do a formal update, probably in a couple months.

Nothing too new to report really. I'm fairly senior at my day job now, lot of hours, lot of stress, nights, weekends. New releases have been demonstrably very slow as a result. I feel like I say some variation of that with every update, but it is very much my reality.

I have also been hit with price increases on all fronts, both on services and material, that has really required me to sit back and think about the way I do business and how I might need to change that in the future. In all cases the increases have been quite large. Larger models are less impacted by labor cost increases, contract casting costs for 6mm models is the real issue. Every caster I work with now charges as much or more than what Baccus charges per miniature for non-UK customers, which I find alternately horrifying and hilarious. It really just means that I need to cast any 6mm releases I make myself...but there are precious few folks out there that just do contract moldmaking, so that acts as a bit of a bottleneck also.

I could streamline my process by just 3D printing almost everything. I did recently finish my small print farm setup in the workshop, and I don't usually sell a high enough volume of most things where I think speed would be an issue. It is definitely what makes the most business sense, and many businesses large and small have gone that route. But...3D printing 6mm infantry full time...I just personally don't like it, and I will do all I can to avoid it.

I did purchase MM's 3mm line. I have become a huge (no pun intended) 3mm fan over the last few years, and I thought it a shame for the line to come to an end, especially since I have a good working relationship with the sculptor. Little bit of a weird move from a business standpoint, as the hand-sculpted stuff is a bit chunkier than my exisitng fantasy line, so i will be billing it under a different heading to avoid confusion, "heroic 3mm") or some such. My own 3mm Fantasy line will continue apace and the legacy MM line will continue to expand into new historical eras. I have spent a lot of late nights casting and building stock up, and should have the Romans and Celts up very soon, with other eras to follow.

I did also try to puchase their (MM) 10mm fantasy line specifically, as I try to become the US-equivalent of Irregular Miniatures, but the cost was a bit more than I was willing to entertain.

I spent the last week sorting and bagging the 3mm Undead miniatures. I just have the command packs left to do, but they have the most pieces so I need to gear myself up for that. 2 of the packs for the release will be 3D printed, the revenant giants and flesh golems. Everything else is glorious metal. One of my chores today was supposed to be dialing in the flexible resin and getting the first production prints rolling on those for a couple of my machines. They will definitely see release some time in May.

I was planning on doing a large 6mm Fantays KS at some point in the next few months, to push out 3 armies (Elves, Egyptian Undead, Amazons). Frankly though, I am unsure if I have the time or energy to do so. I have been debating myself on it for months. It is the best option by far from a business perspective, but much more annoying and more work from a personal perspective.

Right now the main thing I am waiting to hear on is how my first 3D-print to production mold experiment has gone. Its something I should have resolved 6 months ago, but life kind of gets away from you. Regardless, I expect to hear back in the next couple weeks hopefully. If it ends up working, would be a huge win for the business and in getting 3D models released in a much more timely fashion.

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For all your Dark Realm, 6mm scifi and 6mm fantasy needs: http://www.microworldgames.com/