UPDATE: Bastogne Church Pics

Battlefront is really doing the PR on this right. When they sent out the email saying the church would be late they actually sent pics along with it. (which is why I feel comfortable publishing them) And they look really awful. Thanks to a reader for sending these over.

Breaking: Bastogne Church Delayed!

(Ed: in my haste, I spelled Bastogne wrong. Fixed now)

Yllanes, one of the forum denizens over at WWPD.net, just received an email saying that the paint quality on the first building in the new round of Battlefront's building subscription system for Flames of War, the Bastogne Church, was painted so poorly they're actually sending them all back to get repainted. It'll take 2 months to get them done and out the door.

Three things here: 

1) Kudos to Battlefront for owning up to it and communicating with its customer base. 

2) I can't even fathom how this got by the factory. Do they not have in house quality control?

3) BF is going to do a small run for us subscribers so we, who foisted up a ton of money up front, will only have to wait a month or so for the church. 

Here's the full text of the email that Yllanes posted up on the forum:

Dear Valued Customer,

I wish I was communicating to you today to share with you good news but unfortunately I have to be the bearer of bad tidings. After working so hard with our manufacturing partners in China this past year to improve the quantity and maintain quality at the same time on our Battlefield in a Box range I was angry and disappointed to discover today that the delivery of our first premium house, the Bastogne Church, that has literally just arrived around the world in all our offices is well below the expected quality level. 

The castings of the model are fine but the paint jobs are so bad I cannot fathom how this has happened. After thinking it might be just a few we checked the deliveries in each office and have unfortunately found nothing to suggest this terrible lapse in quality is across the board. I have a few images below to show you just what we are talking about and given you are probably an owner of some our range already you will quickly see just how bad these are. They are not even close to the master sample we approved and even the dry brushing shade is the wrong colour so something has seriously gone wrong with our run.

Working in China certainly has its issues but we have had relationships with two companies these past five years that

we use for the larger scale items that we cannot make ourselves and everything from Gothic buildings to woods have come out as expected. Given the long timelines and payment up front you must make to do anything in China there is always a risk that what you paid for is not what you get but having spoken to the owner of the plant who did this job even he was stunned looking at the images at what has happened. We have already agreed that the run is to be returned for re-painting which will delay the release of this model now for almost two months. We also agreed that I will now be sending one of my senior managers from our own factory in Malaysia to inspect the future shipments before they leave. This will not impact future planned releases in this range as they will be now be checked thoroughly before they leave so I see no reason why number two onwards will not arrive as scheduled. 

You have made a serious commitment to us for a subscription and we are not happy with the idea that you wait for another eight weeks so we will instead be making a new small run of buildings immediately and having them air-freighted out to us for shipment to you. This is the fastest way I have at my disposal to get you the model you have paid for in good faith assuming we would deliver to you as agreed.

Based on the information I have right now this will take another three to four weeks to get made, painted and shipped so right now to be safe I will say that we will get you your Bastogne Church in the first week of September at the latest and if it looks like it will be sooner we will let you know straight away. 

We will be making this public tomorrow as we communicate with our stores and the world at large but I felt it only right for you to find out directly from me before the news breaks.

I know this is frustrating and I can only end by saying on behalf of myself and the company we are very sorry and regret that this failure diminishes your trust in us and our reputation that we have worked so hard to earn.

Regards,

John-Paul Brisigotti

Managing Director

The whole thing just makes me feel like this: 

An Interview With Steve McLauchlan soon to be formerly of WWPD

Stole this from the interwebs. I didn't even
Get WWPD's permission to use it. Cause
I'm HAXXOR.

For those of you who pay no attention to the online Flames community you’ve probably never heard of Steve McLauchlan, this also means you likely don’t exist. Steve is one of the founders of WWPD.net and its News From the Front Podcast. Now, he’s moving on to greener hobbit filled pastures, taking a position with Battlefront Miniatures, makers of our beloved Flames of War. Recently, I had a chance to digitally sit down with Steve and grill him on WWPD, his future with Battlefront and all sorts of other good things.

Throck: For those folks who are new to the site it seems like WWPD has always had a special relationship with Battlefront. Jointly hosting the Overlord campaign, free stuff for product reviews and regularly cross posting your podcast are just a few of the examples of that relationship. But, it wasn’t always so. How did WWPD’s relationship with Battlefront begin? How did it grow?

Steve: A fair question!  Honestly, it grew as WWPD grew.  Our industry is small.  It’s a total niche community, and the Battlefront employees work at Battlefront because they’re keenly interested in the product.  So our community grew with them along for the ride, because at the end of the day they want to go home and play with their toys too.  It soon became evident that it made sense for them to expand the relationship with WWPD!  

It really started when me, Sean, and Joe posted our first podcast.  It was novel, and the guys liked it.  Over time, the relationship really grew as a result of Joe Krone.  Smart guy, Joe.  He knew that it’d cost Battlefront peanuts to send us some models for review, but that our enthusiasm was about as good of advertising as one could get.  Smart investment.  We were happy with the arrangement because it generated content for our site that was worth looking at!

He looks nothing like that any more.
Way less hipster now.

T. Were there any bumps along the road?

S. Definitely!  But most of them resulted in Battlefront not really having a point of contact for us.  It was (and to a point still is- this will be part of my new job!) difficult to just establish a steady stream of review material- especially with enough lead time to not totally miss the boat.  None of their guys’ really had a dedicated mandate to do this, so it was whoever we could catch free at the moment.  In recent months, a much better system was worked out.  Kudos to the US warehouse guys who bore the brunt of the work there, and probably dreading getting emails from us!

More after the break!

Historicon Top Pics

H-Con is done and I'm still hungover.

But, I put my carcass into drive and cut 1200 pics from the weekend down to the top 30 or so. We've got Steve's last News From the Front podcast, army pics galore and all sorts of other bits.

Come on in and enjoy the pics.

We start with the Tale of the Suicide Chaffee's:

Round 2 of the double tournament, Ben and I face off against KV-88's, IS-2's and a horde of tiny little Russian tanks. Knowing there was know way we could take out the big boys from the front and only sporting 3 Priests for arty support I decided to go insane. Noticing that one of our opponents had to double time the IS-2 platoon command to get up to the rest of the platoon I zoom a platoon of Chaffee's around the flank, assuming that I'd loose the platoon, but knowing his was way more valuable I decided the trade was worth it.  

I kill 1 and bail 2.

Next turn he kills 2 of those plucky little light tanks then I take out another of his IS-2's. 

I take out a 3rd and he does the same. He's down to 1 tank and I'm down to just one and a bailed. His fearless dudes fail their morale check and run off the board. VICTORY! 

More after the break

Last round!

Ok I lost 5-2 in free for all against Romanians.  I didn't really feel like sitting back and drawing the tie like you can easily do.  And me and my partner were both middle of the board so wet agreed on just having some fun. 

I just happened to be on the short end of the fun. :)

I had a great time at the tournament. And blogging for the 5 of you that read this.  I'll be posting a bit more tomorrow and then it's vacation time.

Bruce and the Battlefront crew run a great tourney and kudos to them for hosting an excellent shindig.

The plot thickens!

Round 4, I'm in the top 20, but it's me playing Ben,  my long time gaming partner and roommate!

Dun dun dun!

7-0 awwww yeah

Killed otto  karius, pics and debts to come.

Blerg! Lost 1-6

Next round very soon and uploading pics takes 10 minutes. 

I was very stupid against dug in  2ID in cauldron.

Your early morning porn

Matt varnish and Jesse from Showcase put together a couple of just amazing boards. 

Matt brings us an awesome 21st Pz Div and Jesse the D-Day weiderstandnest

5th place is the bomb!

We got 5th! Out of 38 teams! Here's a pic of the top 5.

Round 3, win!

OP  Sherman makes the winning kill against a jadgtiger on turn 6! That was epic. (check the last picture)

Well we did it. We went 3 and 0, last round was fighting withdrawal work is on the attack and captured the 2 outside objectives both on turn 6.

We won 4-3 as Ben  couldn't seem to keep his poor little Stuarts alive vs. a jadgtiger and 4 Pak 50's.

They were running a jadgtiger and 2 sturmtigers and a mix of fearless and reluctant infantry.

Attackers must be aggressive in this scenario so we charged right up and the game went our way.

Best part is we played two really great guys Jessie and the dude who makes all the terrain for the store we love up in Philly. Well and gentlemanly played good sirs.

I don't think 14.9 will put us at the top of the table but it was a fun tourney and I'll let you all know how we did.

Round 2, win!

5-2 versus Rota and extremely heavy Tankovy. In part our dice rolled extremely hot and we got to defend,  but that was one of the worst possible match ups we could have faced.

That was a tense game from start to finish with some epic sweeping movements and clutch saves.

Ben played well and I followed his lead,  to victory!

Suicide chaffees

Who wants to live forever!

Round one, doubles WIN

Woot! We picked up our first game 5-2 with 9 domination points against walkurie PDF and volksgrens.

The mission was the I-95 home brew blind domination, you can find the rules for it in the downloads section of wwpd.net

For the record jadgpanthers are terrifying against light tanks. But we ended up killing all 3!

Here be pics!