NAP0066-NAP0071 - Westphalian Jaegers Carabiniers Available for Pre-Order (1 Viewer)

[FirstLegion]

Just wanted to let you all know that NAP0066-NAP0071 Westphalian Jaegers Carabiniers are now available for pre-order and will ship to customers on November 22nd 2008.

The Elite Westphalian Jaegers Carabiniers were part of the 24th Division of Junot's VIII Corps which engaged the Russians in the woods south of the Bagration Fleches protecting Davout's right flank as he launched the main assault.

The release consists of six figures as follows:

NAP0066 - Westphalian Jaeger Carabinier Officer
NAP0067 - Westphalian Jaeger Carabinier Loading Biting Cartridge
NAP0068 - Westphalian Jaeger Carabinier Kneeling Firing
NAP0069 - Westphalian Jaeger Carabinier Loading Ramming Cartridge
NAP0070 - Westphalian Jaeger Carabinier Standing Firing
NAP0071 - Westphalian Jaeger Carabinier Cornet Player

These figures will work equally well deployed in skirmish order or in close order line of battle, where they can be setup in a 3 rank line of interlocking bases as shown below.

NAP0066-NAP0071 Westphalian Jaegers Carabiniers Production Figures


Hope you enjoy them.

Regards,

Matt
First Legion Ltd

 

[King's Man]

More excellent figures. I see the price is $39.95 each. Is this to be the new standard price for foot figures?

King's Man

 

[FirstLegion]

Thanks, glad you like them.

This has been the price of the basic foot figure since our last release, the Wurttemberg Jaegers. We're going to try to hold prices here, but we make no promises on that. As many of you have noticed, costs have gone way up as discussed at length on the K&C forum section and even K&C figures went from $25 up to $32, a near 30% increase. Our increase was less than 15% for basic figures.

At $39.95, these figures still represent by far the best price to quality ratio of any toy soldiers in the world and are probably underpriced as to where they should be/what we could sell them for. However, we want them to remain accessible to the average collector, so we will do everything we can to keep pricing as affordable as possible.

Regards,

Matt
First Legion Ltd

 

[OldDragon]

How sticky are TS prices .. once they have been raised. Granted that the current releases must have been put into production months ago when every key component of production/shipment were at a peak.

However in the last 3 weeks, we have seen oil plunged to the US$70s level, a collapse of freight tariffs, major toy maker in China going belly up putting thousands of workers iinto unemployment and the US$ appreciating against all major currencies.

So can we realistically expect TS prices to fall back ... say in 6 months time ?

OD

 

[FirstLegion]

How sticky are TS prices .. once they have been raised. Granted that the current releases must have been put into production months ago when every key component of production/shipment were at a peak.

However in the last 3 weeks, we have seen oil plunged to the US$70s level, a collapse of freight tariffs, major toy maker in China going belly up putting thousands of workers iinto unemployment and the US$ appreciating against all major currencies.

So can we realistically expect TS prices to fall back ... say in 6 months time ?

OD

Who knows, anything is possible no matter how highly unlikely. In the last 3 weeks we've also seen the near collapse of the world's financial markets. Prices will be irrelevant if no one is buying toy soldiers as discretionary spending on items such as these are always the first to get cut from the household budget.

The single biggest components in pricing are the labor rate and the cost of raw materials and I find it doubtful that either of these will drop. In the countries where we pay for our R&D and our production figures, the rates are going up and up and up.

I just had a similar conversation regarding major factories in China closing and the notion that many workers should now become available and that it would seem that finding skilled labor would be easier and at a lower cost. To me that seemed the intuitive result. That's just not the case however, as the workers are merely going back home to the provinces and may or may not return after the Chinese New Year. So the labor rates will most likely continue to rise as workers simply don't want to do the work at the current rates.

I'm no expert in the intricacies of the Chinese economy and the basis of my knowlege is pretty limited to the particular products we make. However, I will be the first to lower our prices should our costs go down. That is wishful thinking on both of our parts. I find our prices to be extremely reasonable given that on average our costs are 2.5-3 times higher than other toy soldier companies yet our prices are only about 25% higher. Thus, I believe our figures are a tremendous value in the price/qualty matrix. If you want to buy anything similar/better, you have to pay well over $100/figure and you simply can't get the variety and stock levels that we offer.

If you want us to lower our pricing you'd be essentially asking us to lower the sculpting and painting quality of our figures. If this is what the market wants from us, sure, we could sell you a $30 figure, but it wouldn't be nearly as good.

All of this being said, we could probably have a never ending discussion about this, so this is the last I'll post on this topic. I don't want a conversation that is supposed to be about some lovely new figures we've just made available to turn into a conversation about pricing and then to further digress into the state of the world economy.

Where else in the world can you buy Westphalian Jaeger Carabiniers?!

Regards,

Matt

 

[OldDragon]

Who knows ...

Where else in the world can you buy Westphalian Jaeger Carabiniers?!

Regards,

Matt

Matt

Thank you for your explanation ... in all fairness, this issue is more approriate for General TS Discussion, rather than appearing here and appearing to be directed at FL alone. My apologies for that. Perhaps Brad can move this post.

All in all ... I cannot disagree with your last point.

OD

 

[FirstLegion]

Matt

Thank you for your explanation ... in all fairness, this issue is more approriate for General TS Discussion, rather than appearing here and appearing to be directed at FL alone. My apologies for that. Perhaps Brad can move this post.

All in all ... I cannot disagree with your last point.

OD

You're welcome. No need for any apology or moving of posts to other sections or threads I don't think. All is well.

So, back to the figures at hand. It will be interesting to see how well the Westphalian Jaegers Carabiniers and the Wurttemberg Jaegers sell being such "fringe" releases. If they do well, we'll continue to supplement mainstream French/British/Russian stuff with items like our Wurttemberg Line Infantry (which we have paint masters of now and are stunning). If they don't do well, however, then we'll need to make a difficult decision as to whether or not it is commercially viable to really cover the variety of the Napoleonic period in the detail level that we'd like to or if we're better off just doing the same old same old...

No doubt this is why in WWII you see the same sets being made again and again from other companies. Because folks buy them and don't buy the fringe stuff as much. I hope the same doesn't prove true in Napoleonics because we really want to continue doing releases such as the Wurttemberg Jaegers and the Westphalian Jaegers Carabiniers and explore the full variety of the period....

Only time will tell. I guess worst case scenario if they don't do well is that I'll have a full battalion of them at 1:1 for my personal collection!

Regards,

Matt

 

[Spitfrnd]

.....So, back to the figures at hand. It will be interesting to see how well the Westphalian Jaegers Carabiniers and the Wurttemberg Jaegers sell being such "fringe" releases. If they do well, we'll continue to supplement mainstream French/British/Russian stuff with items like our Wurttemberg Line Infantry (which we have paint masters of now and are stunning). If they don't do well, however, then we'll need to make a difficult decision as to whether or not it is commercially viable to really cover the variety of the Napoleonic period in the detail level that we'd like to or if we're better off just doing the same old same old...
.....

There is nothing about any of your figures so far that is same old, same old; no matter how popular or fringe they may be. Just remember, "Allah loves wondrous varieties" but he also loves quality.

 

[FirstLegion]

There is nothing about any of your figures so far that is same old, same old; no matter how popular or fringe they may be. Just remember, "Allah loves wondrous varieties" but he also loves quality.

Thanks Spitfrnd, nicely said.

 

[King's Man]

Matt,

A five dollar increase is acceptable. As you have stated the quality of your figures is something new to the mass market and is still a bargain even at the new higher price.

About the Wurttemberg Line Infantry painted masters. This is a release I am very looking forward to, when can we see them. Are they to be painted with the blue lapels of 1812 uniforms or the earlier uniforms showing the regimental colored lapels?

Do you have a future time set for their release?

Thank you for any information you can share with us.

Kings’ Man

 

[FirstLegion]

About the Wurttemberg Line Infantry painted masters. This is a release I am very looking forward to, when can we see them. Are they to be painted with the blue lapels of 1812 uniforms or the earlier uniforms showing the regimental colored lapels?

Do you have a future time set for their release?

I know you are looking forward to them. As am I. One of the problems with sharing sculpts in advance like we do on our workbench (other than the potential for them being copied) is, as you can see, we have many new releases to get out and different customers want different ones! Another problem with sharing stuff in advance is that posting new figures too early merely serves to distract customers from the figures that we have available today in favor of what we'll release tomorrow.

That being said, the lapels are in blue as per 1812 of course as we're doing them for Borodino. The regimental differences are only in the collar, cuffs, and the color of the standards. Personally, I like the 6th regiment best while my partner favors the first.

In terms of when we'll post the paint masters, don't expect to see them on the site until we've definitively put them into production. This could be in as early as two weeks, but more realistically won't be for many months...

Regards,

Matt
First Legion Ltd

 

[King's Man]

Thank you Matt,

I can and will wait. You have so many great things out there already more then enough to keep me broken for many months to come.

King's Man

 

[Spitfrnd]

....In terms of when we'll post the paint masters, don't expect to see them on the site until we've definitively put them into production. This could be in as early as two weeks, but more realistically won't be for many months...
....
First Legion Ltd

I just finished reading the news letter and as far as I can tell, the only release you have planned through February, other than the surprise) for which we have yet to see a paint master is the mounted French Colonel (the sculpt is shown in the work bench); is that right and will we be seeing him soon?

 

[FirstLegion]

I just finished reading the news letter and as far as I can tell, the only release you have planned through February, other than the surprise) for which we have yet to see a paint master is the mounted French Colonel (the sculpt is shown in the work bench); is that right and will we be seeing him soon?

Yes, that is correct. Everything that is announced in what you just read has been shown in terms of masters except for the unnannounced release(s) and the French Mounted Colonel. You will see the French Mounted Colonel in about a week or so and he should be done at the same time as the British Mounted Colonel.

And no, the Wurttemberg Line Infantry are not the suprise release.

 

[Spitfrnd]

Yes, that is correct. Everything that is announced in what you just read has been shown in terms of masters except for the unnannounced release(s) and the French Mounted Colonel. You will see the French Mounted Colonel in about a week or so and he should be done at the same time as the British Mounted Colonel.

And no, the Wurttemberg Line Infantry are not the suprise release.

Thanks for the update Matt. I know what I would like to be surprised with but then so do you so there is no need to say I suppose.