Pendraken Plans for 2020

Welcome to a new decade!  After a virus at Pendraken HQ wiped out the past 3 weeks we're back on track and looking ahead again!

We've got some big plans for the next few years so 2020 is going to be the 'Year of Getting Stuff Done!', getting the decks cleared a little so that we can push on into the open water beyond.  Let's have a look and see what's going to be happening at Pendraken HQ:

Greeks/Persians
Our first release of this year will be the Ancient Greek and Persian revamp.  All of the Greeks have been moulded and are ready to go, while the Persians just need production moulding.  The plan is to get that done over the next fortnight and have these ready for release before the York show (and before the price increase...!)

Price Increase
There's a small price increase coming on February 1st, more details on that here:

Revamped Samurai
Following on from the Ancients will be our revamped Japanese range, which was previewed here:  This new comprehensive range will be a huge improvement on the existing figures, and once we've got the Castle Arts buildings back into production alongside them, we should have the best Feudal Japanese offering in the 10mm market.  We might even have a look at some rules for the period as well...

TB Line
The gift that keeps on giving, we'll be trying to get the last two TB Middle Ages ranges back into production, with the Islamics and Mongols still outstanding.  Those should be completed by the summer, all being well.  The remaining ranges are all Ancients and are a slightly older sculpting style to the later figures.  These will probably benefit from some work to the sculpts themselves, making them a bit more detailed and better proportioned, so we'll be getting that done before moving to new master and production moulds.

Not-Kickstarter
We'll be running another Not-Kickstarter project around March/April time, to produce comprehensive Napoleonic Peninsular ranges covering the British, Spanish and Portuguese.  We're working on the range lists for this at the moment and we'll have more news once we're closer to launch.  Sculpting on these will take 3 or 4 months so we'd be looking to get them into production in time for Christmas.

Other Ranges
Looking forward to new ranges to be sculpted...
Crimean revamp - This will be our first range after / at the same time as the Peninsular stuff.  We were hoping to have started this already but the illness has scuppered our research time.
Napoleonic French Guard - These have been hanging around for far too long now so we'll definitely get them sorted out and released.  Timescales should be sometime after Salute, while the sculptor is working on the Peninsular project.
Post-1950 MBT's and trucks - Martin has been working on these over the past few months and we should start to see them soon.
Korean artillery - We're a bit behind on our plans here so we'll have a chat with the sculptor and see where we are with timescales.  We want to get these finished off so that we can move on to the WWII Italian artillery.
Fantasy - We've got a lot of Fantasy work coming over the second half of 2020 probably, adding some new Amazon and Ratmen ranges, while also expanding some of the other races and monsters.

SCW Supplement
This will be our first BKC supplement to cover the Spanish Civil War.  We'll have 20-30 army lists for the different factions, as well as some historically based scenarios as well.  We're getting closer to having this complete so we should be able to release it before Salute.

Korean War Supplement
Once the above is done, we'll be moving on to a Korean War supplement as well.  Both this and the above will be released as pdfs through Wargame Vault for a small fee.  Hard copies are not planned at this stage, but we can look at a print-on-demand service if there's enough interest in it.

BKC Online Army Builder
We've got a brand new army builder currently under construction, with a view to release around Salute time.  This new software will completely replace the old BKC Battlegroups software and provide more features for a lower one-off cost.  You'll be able to save, print and share your army lists, as well as convert them to a buying list for the Pendraken website Basket.  There may also be an option to store your current armies/units and then the software will be able to calculate which new items you need to complete a new army list.

For the longer term, this new software will be able to host multiple rulesets and lists so all of our future rules will be run through this same software.  We'll have more info on this as we get closer to launch.

Cold War Commander II
With BKC-IV complete and out there, Mark Fry has turned his attention to CWC-II.  The initial draft of the rules has been put together so we'll be checking that over before putting it out to a group of players for the first round of feedback.  A small group of people have been working through the army lists as well to expand the attack values into Anti-tank and Anti-personnel stats.  The plan for this rulebook will be to print the rules and scenarios into a hardcopy, while the army lists will be available as free pdf downloads through the Forum here.  This will allow us to update the army lists whenever we need to, without the need for additional errata lists or reprints.

Dungeon World
Another job that's been pending for far too long now, we'll finally get the Dungeon World rules revamped and get the Dungeon Sets back on sale.  We need to do some remoulding work on the monsters and furniture, as well as putting together some nice Hero groups, so this will all be a 2nd half of 2020 timescale.

Forum
Sadly the chap who looks after our Forum has been extremely busy with his day job for a long time now and hasn't been able to do the maintenance and upgrade work needed here.  Things like the apostrophe bug, new member registration, the order of the boards on the homepage being all scattered about, the newsletter function being broken, etc.  We need to transfer the Forum over to our own hosting account and then we can find a new web guy to take on the Admin of the site.  This is something I want done asap but our hands are tied until the existing webguy can transfer the domain/files.

Website Photos
With 1375 photos to be added to the website, we've still got a chunk of work ahead of us.  There is good news though as we've got several ranges away with pro-painters at the moment:
- The French-Indian Wars range is over with Kev Rouse in Hungary and should be back with us in the next few months.
- All of our WWII vehicles are with JAD Designs and he'll be sending them back up to us in batches.  The first to arrive was all of the Sdkfz 251's, which I'll be photo'ing later this month.
- The WWI British range is over with a new chap in Spain and will be coming back to us after Salute I'd expect.  We'll then be sending the Germans and French over for the same treatment.
- While that's going on, I've got all of the Dark Ages ranges blackwashed and ready to be photo'd later this month.  The Late Romans and ECW ranges will follow that, and then the GNW codes.

Minibits
On the Minibits side of things, there's not a lot planned at the moment.  We were due to do another 28mm modern Kickstarter but we lost our sculptor to the evil empire (!) and need to find a new one.  I've put that on the backburner for now and we'll start looking about in the summer I think.

We've got some new stuff coming from RedVectors though, including 28mm Wild West Wagons, 6mm Mono-rails, and then some WWII/VBCW buildings in both 20mm and 28mm options.

And that's about it I think!  There's no doubt a bit of optimism involved with a list of this size but with a larger team of people at Pendraken HQ now we should be able to move quickly through a lot of these jobs.  Let us know if there's any queries!

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