Privateer Press Supply

In a word, dry.

Privateer Press supply is pretty well drying up everywhere and even my once mighty stock is thinning. It is rather worrisome actually.

Privateer is pretty much setting the standard for customer relations and communication in this industry. Their letter published on the miniatures page was very interesting. Basically they expected sales to double this summer, figured planning for that would keep them ahead. However, sales quadrupled instead!

Now they are running to catch up, buying new machines, hiring more staff. They are rebuilding their supply, and besides new releases I dont think any distributor has had a restock since before Gen Con. I myself have an order in since the Con and have seen nothing :-(

Fair warning to other retailers, Im going in today and buying Privateer inventory for the store and clearing out as much as I can. What is happening now reminds me most of the bad old days, when you could barely ever buy too much as it was moving too fast and was in too short supply. to my customers - if you place a Privateer order please understand that some things might be out of stock, we are working very hard to get them back into stock, and some things might actually be out for several more weeks :-( Mercenaries like Ashlynn, Hammershields, Ogryn Bokur etc are a special problem.

Hopefully we will see some of the problem ease next week.

Going to Historicon 06? Get ready for a return of the Catapano Farms Wargames Society, and our masthead game - Beachead.
That's right, Beachead is returning after at least 7 years of retirement. We are re-doing the game, actually painting the figures with brushes instead of a paint can, using terrain that isnt made of wood, and all in all giving it the treatment it really deserves.

In case you never played, Beachead is US Marines vs the Japanese defenders of a fictional island in the South Pacific. The players are all Marines, the Japanese are run by the game umpires. Pretty straightforward so far right?
The Japanese are not set up at the start of the game, but rather they are detailled on cards. Each player gets a 5 card hand filled with Japanese units, nasty suprises, and cunning defenses. The craziness begins as the players play Japanese troops, bunkers, suicide sappers, and Banzai charges on each other. We keep a running total of who is winning, and for some reason the top runner seems to attract a lot of enemy :-)
Other fun things include bidding victory points for air support missions, hiding victory points cards, and rolling for medals when your troops do something good (including dying valiantly).

7 years later and people still ask me about the game -- well, its coming back.

We might eventually get our Vietnam Helicopter game back up (The Ride of the Valkyrie!), and of course, the Stalingrad varient (Where the Streets Have no Name....).

I be a paintin!
Neal