Welcome to my yearly round up of all things Critical Mass, here I will give a quick review of happening at Critical Mass Games in 2010 and look ahead into 2011.
2010 has been a great time for Critical Mass Games and also a tough time, with the successful launch of many different ranges, including;
ARC fleet vehicles range
ARC Fleet buildings range
Protolene Khanate Vehicles range
Kaamados Dominion Infantry range
Kaamados Dominion Vehicle range
A Horde of Mercenary Miniatures
And the beginnings for the Praesentia Range
A total of 26 vehicles, 34 infantry packs, 16 buildings, and 1 objective marker.
April 2010 saw the launch of the Critical Mass rules beta, with many people signing up and providing great feedback for the rules development and eventual release towards the end of this year.
April 2010 was also Critical Mass Games show début at Salute in London and also the first outing of the Kyushu Bay participation game. The game has continued to draw crowds all year around the UK Show circuit with the highlight being the best game in show award at Phalanx.
Whilst we have had a lot of good times the economy has always been lurking in the background for us with rising commodity prices continuing to affect metal markets globally. This unfortunately meant a price rise in October 2010. The price of metal continued to rise though out the year being roughly 33% higher in December 2010 than it was in January 2010.
In order for Critical Mass Games to continue to we have had to find ways to cut costs and have targeted the use of 3rd party contractors as unsustainable at this time.
To counter these costs in the long term we took the decision to move metal casting in house in 2011 and ordered casting equipment. Whilst this expensive outlay has hampered the release of new models in the short term we have seen it as a necessary step for us as a company to ensure some stability in our pricing into the future.
The installation of this equipment also took a lot of time from Dale and I in the last 3 months of 2010 meaning our presence online became been somewhat patchy as we re-fitted our workshop.
Additionally we took the time to expand our resin casting capacity in preparation for the new terrain sets we will be releasing in 2011, with the addition of another much larger volume pressure pot.
We apologize now for any inconvenience that this may have caused but hopefully for most you will not have noticed any drop in service.
Having forged past these woes we can now look ahead to 2011.
This year will begin humbly in January with the release of the next 2 packs of Praesentia Infantry, the Phase Shifters.
This will followed by a single release in February of the ZAS mercenary miniatures.
March will see us talking a break in the release schedule whilst we make our final preparation of April’s releases and our return to the Salute show. As we learned in 2010 this show is a massive event a preparation for the show took a lot of time, particularly building the Kyushu Bay board.
Items to be released in April 2011 in time for Salute will (all being well) include;
ARC fleet Grav bikes. First seen in Sept 2009 we have had some trouble with damaged masters and have had to have these items re-worked. These will finally be making an anticipated appearance.
Ayame Assault suits. Expanding the weapons capabilities of the popular Ayame range this will bring even more firepower to the hands of the Protolene Khanates.
Ayame Khans. Available in both battle and assault suit flavors you will finally have some unique leader models for the Protolenes.
Okami Assault Walkers. The medium IFV for the Protolene forces will have arrived allowing you to deliver infantry units into the fray and provide fire support.
Praesentia Drones. The Sentinel (3 bottom middle), Guardian (2 on right) and Hyperion (2 on left) class drones will bring some sleek and deadly fire power to the ranks of the Praesentia infantry. To give you an idea of size the Hyperion uses the same base as the ARC Fleet Heavy Grav tank and the Guardian uses the same base as the ARC Fleet Grav Scout.
RAL Infantry. The robotic foot troops finally arrive to do the bidding of the Praesentia.
Praesentia Ancients. The greatest warriors of the Praesentia arrive to command the army.
Kaamados Buildings and Accessories. Inspired by ziggurats of the Inca, the Kaamados buildings and accessories bring you yet more unique architecture to bring your gaming experience alive.
Dractamaa Battlefield Repair Vehicle. You can now haul off those wrecks for salvage with this impressive recovery variant of the Dractamaa.
Vorq La Mercenaries. Not forgotten the mercenaries get two new packs of heavily armored and armed fighters.
Building Accessories. Bollards, Street lamps and bulk heads all with an ARC Fleet flavor for dressing your terrain.
Reworked Arc Fleet building sets. These proved very popular, but having had the moulds fail several times we have taken the opportunity to strengthen these components and will be re-releasing some of the existing sets with slight changes to some of the buildings.
Releases beyond April
As of yet nothing is set in stone, but the designs are already on the table for;
Naga infantry
Naga Draconum
Protolene Khanate buildings
Protolene Khanate Khan Miniatures
Mercenary mecha
Mercenary vehicles
ARC Fleet command centre
Battlefield Repair Vehicles
Praesentia buildings
Objective Markers
Oh and I nearly forgot, the Critical Mass 15mm Company level rule book.