August is Afoot

Right then! It's been a while since my last missive, for which I can only apologise: the new webstore has kept me occupied for a little while!

Strap in though, for I bring tidings of many upcoming changes...

August's Battle Host

You'll all be burning to know about August's battle host, of course: it will feature the frankly awesome hydrar of the Khthones, as you can see above. I'm still waiting for a few files from the sculptors, but it will include:

• Thoth, Anax of Ýdron

• Hanokh, Pentarkh of Ýdron

• **NEW** Lilekha, Hydrargós of Ýdron

• Spite of Ýdron, Khine Hydrar Unit

• Malice of Ýdron, Flail Hydrar Unit

Loyalty Reward:

• Khalkisun, Hydra of Ýdron

I'm not quite sure yet what the monthly beast will be.

We should be able to get everything sorted for August's battle host by the end of next week.

Patreon Will End

This is the last battle host to be offered on patreon.

(TL;DR at the bottom)

To expand: I have considered ending the digital side of things completely over the past few months, for a number of reasons. I'm still not 100% convinced it's the best thing for Mierce - or for Darklands - especially with the amount of people pirating these files.

I've been very disappointed by the amount of subscribers we've garnered (both here and on MMF), as well as the support offered by MMF themselves; to be frank, it's a heck of a lot of work for not a great return, and it has definitely hurt the sales of our physical miniatures. I did hope that the loyalty rewards would keep people's interest, and the monthly beast for £1 would generate more interest, but that hasn't happened at all.

How other companies do it I do not know - although bear in mind if we had 1,000+ subscribers, it wouldn't really matter - but we have been charging too little for each month's battle host. While we were using existing miniatures it wasn't so bad, but with existing miniatures pretty much all out there now, I don't believe we are getting enough of a return to justify what we are giving you, especially when factoring in the costs of new sculpts. With patreon and MMF not allowing us to change tier prices easily (and the amount they charge us for each sale), and the amount of work it takes to actually get the files to you, it simply can't continue as it is.

We could of course stop producing digital files for customers completely, and that has its attractions for me, but I'm not sure that's the best way to go yet for you avid Darklands printing fans.

If I want to keep the digital side of things going, I either have to increase the prices of the tiers or reduce the amount of miniatures you get each month; and while I don't really want to do the latter for the hosts, I will remove the BEASTMASTER and SELL-SWORD tiers. The monthly beast hasn't garnered anywhere near enough interest.

So, I'm going to increase the price of the MIERCENARY tier (the WARLORD tier will remain the same), but I'm shifting things from patreon and probably MMF tribes (I haven't made my final decision on that yet) to the new webstore.

The store.mierce-miniatures.com's functionality is, frankly, amazing: shopify do some great things, and I'd be daft not to take advantage of them. I can do subscriptions there, you see, as well as blog posts like this, and - crucially - I can add digital files seamlessly. Another advantage is that the store price is what you pay - there's no extra tax on top.

I'll be setting it all up in August, and I will of course ensure you guys know all about it here, but please note - before the end of August this patreon page will close and you will have to subscribe on our new webstore to continue getting the files.

I am unsure yet what I will do with MMF; it may be that I remove tribes completely, remove all the files from there and only sell the digital files on our webstore. But I haven't made a final decision on that yet. Again, altering tier prices over there is difficult - I have to unpublish tiers and so forth, and get people to resubscribe.

I do hope you all understand why I'm making this decision; it's not something I've come to overnight. I simply want to ensure Mierce can produce miniatures in the future.

TL;DR

In summary:

• I'm closing this patreon at the end of August

• The new webstore will offer a subscription for our MIERCENARY tier for £19.99 in September

• There won't be an early bird tier

• Loyalty scheme will continue from where it leaves off if you continue your subscription on the new webstore

• The WARLORD tier (for physical miniatures) will stay at £99.99

• The new webstore will offer our digital files