Oddzial Osmy 1:600 – new arrivals at Fighting 15s

Oddzial Osmy 1:600 (3mm): BW-625 MAN 7t milgl truck

We’re pleased to say that our latest consignment of new releases from Oddzial Osmy’s 1:600 ranges of WWII and modern vehicles and aircraft has arrived and the codes are now in the online shop.

Arrivals include:

Moderns:

BW-625 MAN 7t milgl – heavy military 6×6 truck

MN-601 Saab J35F Draken
MN-602 Saab AJ37 Viggen

US-656 M41 Walker Bulldog – US light tank, made to replace M24 Chafee
US-657 PBR Mk II  – Riverine fast patrol boat
US-658 M551 Sheridan

UK-626 Fox armoured car
UK-627 Rapier (tracked)

WWII:

WBR-624 Bofors 40mm and Morris, AA gun with tractor
WBR-625 2pdr portee, AT gun mounted on truck
WBR-626 Daimler Mk I heavy armoured car
WBR-627 British 25pdr field gun
WBR-628 Morris C8 Field Artillery Tractor
WBR-629 British 6pdr AT gun
WBR-630 Loyd Carrier

WWH-663 Sdkfz 11 artillery tractor

Packs cost GBP2.50 inc VAT each and typically include 15 vehicles or 8 aircraft. That’s about GBP2.17 ex VAT, or USD3.50 per pack.

Oddzial Osmy’s first 1:600 releases for the Israeli forces are expected to arrive at Fighting 15s within the next week.

Eureka 28mm Pulpitations: the Dogfaced GIs

Eureka Miniatures 28mm Pulpitations: Easy Company, the Dogfaces

Easy Company, the Dogfaces, the first release in Eureka Miniatures’ 28mm Pulpitations line of WWII pulp fiction figures is now in stock and available in the Fighting 15s shop.

The figures are available as a complete set 100PLP01 containing codes 100PLP02 to 100PLP14 inclusive and, for a limited period, the mini-diorama 100PLP15. The Dogfaces in their entirety  cost GBP22.00 including VAT (or GBP19.13 ex VAT).

Figures are also available separately at GBP1.65 inc VAT for singles and GBP3.30 inc VAT for pairs or sets (that’s GBP1.44 and GBP2.87 ex VAT respectively).

The set represents a saving of GBP1.10 on the price of the individual codes (or a saving of GBP4.40 while it includes 100PLP15).

Please note that we have a limited number of sets on our initial shipment, and re-stocks can take eight or more weeks to arrive.

More 15mm 1st Italian War of Independence arrivals from Aude

Here at Fighting 15s we love Aude Historica’s figures and dealing with the charming Ugo del Col. But arrivals are a bit sporadic and, as at Christmas, you never know quite what you’re going to get. It largely resembles what we order, but there are sometimes interesting variations…

Our latest order has taken something like four months to complete, thanks partly to the Italian shows season and because Aude uses a contract caster. So what was bright shiny and new when we ordered it is a little less hot, and we will have to play catch up to get the latest additions to Aude’s range of 15mm First Italian War of Independence 1848 figures and to bring in the promising Colonials range.

None the less, we now have the following new codes in stock for the 1848 range:

AU006 Austrian Hussars
AU007 Austrian dragoons
AU008 Austrian uhlans
BB003 Borbon artillery
BB007 Borbon generals
MI004 Milan “Battalion of Death” and Lombardy Finanzieri
RO004 Roman Republic Garibaldini
RO005 Roman Republic Bersaglieri del Po
RO008 Roman Republic Lancers of Death (Garibaldi’s lancers)
TO003 Tuscan Civic Guards in helmets

Packs contain 24 infantry or 12 cavalry, including command, two guns and eight crew, or four mounted and four foot generals. They cost the somewhat princely GBP10.00 per pack including VAT thanks to the appalling exchange rate with the euro. And if you think that’s bad, the packs cost 12 euros each direct from Aude. Codes on the packs may be at variance from those on the Aude website, so please go by the description of the contents.

We are in the process of putting some of Aude’s better pictures on the site (some don’t meet our requirements for quality and level of detail), but they are viewable at www.audehistorica.com

Shadowforge 28mm: new arrivals at Fighting 15s

Shadowforge 28mm Temple of the Light Auxiliary Archers

By new, well, we mean they arrived some time ago and family circumstances have only just allowed us enough time to unpack and sort them today. There are new releases, however, in the form of the auxiliary swords and archers for the Temple of the Light range, 1 FALM108 and 1FALM109 respectively. Packs contain six figures and cost GBP12.00 each including VAT.

Not new from Shadowforge Miniatures in the slightest, but new to the Fighting 15s shop is the range of Gridiron teams: female, bunny girl, nun, orc, elf and wicked elf. We’ve been meaning to get these into stock for ages, but they have not really been part of our core subject matter so they’ve not been a priority. Teams start at GBP20.00 inc VAT (GBP30.00 for the orc team), and we also have the management and support packs, plus the referees.

The Australian dollar is not being very kind to the pound at present, but none the less our tax-inclusive prices are still comparable with the tax-exclusive prices at Shadowforge itself. And we charge shipping at cost based on the total weight of items in an order.

Our next order should bring in the new Politburo releases.

Fighting 15s catches up with new releases

Cardigan & Clockwork parlour game, Eureka Miniatures

Fighting 15s is at last up to date with all Eureka Miniatures’ new releases of the past nine months – or we hope we are! As the health of my wife improves during her recuperation from her treatment for leukaemia, I have been able to find more time to devote to the online shop and have gradually been adding Eureka’s new releases. The last of them, which even Eureka may have forgotten about by now because they were released in 2008, are the Cardigan & Clockwork parlour game, and the Beowulf set, which finally went up last night.

Yes, releases dating back to 2008. It has been a hard nine months. Anyone who wants to in effect be a single-parent, run a business, cope with home, garden and family, learn to drive, and make more hospital visits than I’d ever thought I’d do in a lifetime, is welcome to try to do better.

Now that we’re on top of Eureka Miniatures’s releases, we will be moving on to updates from Shadowforge and Oddzial Osmy over the next week or so. Stay tuned.

Farewell to logging in Fighting 15s

We have temporarily removed the need to log in to place an order in the Fighting 15s shop. This is an experiment to see how well this change in the checkout procedure is received by our customers. If this change is well received we will make it permanent.

The advantage of removing the login is that you no longer need to create an account and password to make a purchase, and therefore you don’t need to remember which email address or password you used on a previous visit. It will also, we hope, eliminate the very rare moments when security software on the user’s PC or old cookies and browser cache information interfere with logging in.

The disadvantage is that all customers will have to enter delivery information each time, slowing down the checkout process if you are a returning customer – unless you use autofill. Our shop software does not permit customer accounts and the quick checkout procedure to be used at the same time.

Fighting 15s accounts have only ever been used to store customers’ delivery and contact information for convenience for future orders. We do not use this information for mailing campaigns or other marketing exercises. Unlike some other online carts, the Fighting 15s cart has always shown delivery costs without requiring customers to first set up an account.

Confession time at Fighting 15s

Over the past nine months I have been slow trying to handle the demanding needs of my wife’s illness, family and the business, but I thought I’d been coping quite well with everything apart from emails (which I admit continue to overwhelm me at times). Until, that is, I discovered last week that in a confused state I’d shredded a few outstanding orders using that nice cross-cut shredder I’d got in to help meet security requirements with regards to customers’ credit card details.

The result is that I’ve minced a few manual (i.e. telephone or snail mail) orders beyond recovery. They were mainly orders originally intended for Salute, which I never got to attend, and what they have in common is that I have been waiting for deliveries to come in to fulfil them. Quite obviously these orders cannot now be fulfilled, for which I apologise, and I have no clue to whom they belonged. So if you’ve been waiting for an order to arrive and you placed it by phone or post sometime this year, the likelihood is that it is in pieces and you will need to get in touch and, assuming you have sufficient confidence I will not do such a half-brained thing again, place your order again.

I should emphasize that payment has not been taken for any of the affected orders, because the orders had card details to be charged when ready for dispatch, and that no more than half-a-dozen orders are affected.

Orders placed in the online shop are safe from such idiocy because copies are kept by the computer, and I can therefore recover them.

So, once again my sincerest apologies. As the burden of dealing with Janet’s illness lightens, normality and efficient order processing will return.

Eureka 28mm AWI and FIW releases at Fighting 15s

Ragged Continental artillery, Eureka Miniatures, 28mm

Eureka Miniatures’ latest additions to its ranges of 28mm figures for the French and Indian Wars and the American War of Independence are now available in the Fighting 15s online shop.

Additions include ragged Continental artillery crew and cannon for the AWI, and provincial regular infantry and a young George Washington with horse and dogs for the French and Indian Wars.

Our stocks are limited, and therefore delivery may take eight or more weeks if we sell out.

Foot figures are priced at GBP1.40 each, cannon at GBP6.00 each, artillery crew at GBP5.60 for four figures, and the George Washington set costs GBP5.00. Prices include VAT at 15%.

Isle of Wight Festival 2009

The Isle of Wight Festival on 12 to 14 June will take Fighting 15s out of the loop from Thursday 11 June as we take an extended break to enjoy it. We will be closed from midday on Thursday 11 June to about midday on Monday 15 June, when our usual haphazard service of the past nine months will resume.

The event is a pale shade of the 1970 festival that happened just a few miles from where I live, but none the less attracts around 60,000 people. Bands of interest to me this year include The Pixies, The Zombies, The Arcadian Kicks, Neil Young, The Ting Tings, McFly, The Charlatans, The Australian Pink Floyd Show and Killing Joke.

Latest additions to Fighting 15s shop

One wet Sunday afternoon later, and we have been able to add a number of releases from Eureka Miniatures to the online shop.

The WWII Gurkhas, Russian partizans, and US Pacific Theatre troops (US Cavalry, Sailors and Filipinos) have been added to the 15mm category. Stocks of the Gurkhas and partizans are limited and the others are available to special order, and delivery may therefore take eight or more weeks. We appreciate these figures have been available for some time, but shop updates have been a low priority compared with paid-for orders and, of course, the health of my family.

As with all new additions to the shop, there is also a special code to buy individual rank and file figures instead of the usual packs of 8 infantry or 4 cavalry, allowing greater flexibility in compiling forces. We will gradually be implementing this across all the ranges we stock, but it will take some time to accomplish. The prices for the single figures include delivery based on the average delivery charge for all orders at Fighting 15s, and therefore do not add to the shop’s base delivery charge. This is the only way we have been able to deal with sub-10g items in a shopping cart that calculates delivery charges based on 10g increments.

We have also been able to add pictures for the 15mm range of Ancients from AB Figures, as these images have now been provided to us by Eureka Miniatures.

We still have to resize the bulk of pictures on the site following the redesign, as well as add the new releases from Shadowforge when we can find time to unpack our shipment.