Sunny days ahead

It looks like the English Summer has arrived and I’ve got a few days off work to make the most of it. So far, the omens are good. Yesterday I made a day trip over to Calpe Towers to catch up on the latest news with Peter F. He’s really pleased with the vulcaniser that he’s had built and is pressing on with sculpting the masters and making the moulds for the upcoming releases. The eagle-eyed among you may have spotted an advert in the latest issue of Wargames Illustrated for the vulcaniser and the new casting machine – so they’re on sale for those who’d like to order one!

Peter’s workshop is full of figures for the next few releases. I’m not going to go into specifics of what troop types will be covered by these releases but I do want to say a bit about the general nature of what to expect from Calpe Miniatures over the coming months. From memory, I can think of at least five sets of figures that are almost ready plus several others that are work in progress. What do I mean by a set? Well, a good example is the Saxon musketeers in march-attack pose – i.e. it’s a complete group of figures that’s enough to make up a whole unit of figures in a given pose. You may recall that this Saxon set included over 50 different figures, so that gives you some idea of the log-jam of new figures Peter has stocked up.

After all the investment of time and resources in the vulcaniser and casting machine venture, Peter is keen to start releasing the new sets but don’t expect a “big bang” release of everything at once but rather a measured programme of releases over the coming weeks and months. A lot of our conversation centred around the order in which releases might happen and Peter’s got a couple of decisions left to make about small details like head variants and some definite ideas about how certain sets relate to each other. He also wants to target the early release of sets which will sell well. I know this all sounds cryptic but I can guarantee that these releases will be very popular with Calpe customers and I predict that one in particualar will cause quite stir of excitement.

I took along my copy of Republic to Empire for Peter to see and he was really impressed with the production quality of the book. I think Barry can look forward to another sale! I also had a rummage through Peter’s library and discovered that the range of plates created by the Knötels is even more extensive that I realized. I knew about Bands (Volumes) I to XVIII and two of the Neue Folge (New Series) that followed. So you can imagine my surprise and delight to find plates from later Bands up to and including XXIII in Peter’s files. Several of these are of especial interest to Prussian fans – one shows foot artillery battery No. 6 sporting “Prussianified” British uniforms in September/October 1813! But the one that was particularly relevant and informative for me shows four soldiers of the Pommeranian infantry regiment, including a detailed depiction of a volunteer jäger. I’ve never seen scans of these plates online anywhere before, unlike the lower numbered volumes.

And the good news didn’t end there. When I got home I discovered that my replacement Litko plywood bases had arrived. Nice and flat this time!