Bessarabian Nights

First thing – Tony is having a few days off next week, some delayed R&R after the rigours of Salute. We should get all outstanding orders packed today and posted tomorrow, but after that any new orders will have to wait until he returns to the workshop on Monday 12th May. We’ve scheduled a couple of blog posts for next week just to keep you all entertained during the hiatus.

You might have noticed a new icon on the right hand side of this blog (you’ll probably only see it on the desktop layout). We’ve been selected as one of the top 10 UK miniatures blogs by Feedspot, so they gave us a virtual medal to put on here. Smaller outfits like ourselves don’t usually get much of a look-in when awards come round, so it’s nice to be recognised.

Onto the next addition to the website – these are the new 15mm vehicles for the Republic of Bessarabia (the Bessies), one of the final entities to appear in the Hammer’s Slammers stories. For those who don’t know (and apologies to everyone who’s read this several times on the blog already), David Drake wrote one final Slammers story that appeared in the 2015 collection ‘Onward Drake!’. The Firedrake tank destroyer, which we released at Salute last year, is also Bessarabian, and we’ve added the rest of the vehicles that pop up in the story alongside it. The story is set against a wintery backdrop so we’ve gone for a cold white/grey/pale blue camouflage scheme to match this.

In the story, a column of vehicles drives past a farm held by a small group of infantry from the Slammers regiment. Leading the column are several 8×8 wheeled tanks, followed by a number of APCs and some support vehicles – you’ll find all of these here. Preceding the armoured column, a couple of scout cars get a bloody nose from the Slammers, so we’ve made those too. And later on a troop of combat cars encounter some Bessie rocket artillery, so of course we had to make those.

HS15-5002 – M-36C Leu Tank – £8.50
HS15-5003 – M-19B Atacator APC – £8.00
HS15-5003a – M-19SF Rinocer Support Car – £8.00
HS15-5003b – M-19R Tunetor Rocket Launcher – £8.50
HS15-5004 – M40 Cercetas Scout Car – £6.00

Credits where they are due – the background image is from Jon Hodgson/Handiwork Games, the mat in the photos is by Geek Villain, the roads were picked up in a French toyshop (manufacturer unknown). The buildings are our new Agricultural Colony range – they’ll be released very shortly…