That's what I call service!

I cannot recommend the North American producer and distributor of MiniFigs enough -- Tom Dye and his small crew at Game Figures Incorporated are on the ball! I just gave them a ring a few minutes ago to check on the availability of Prussian and “German” Austrian infantry standard bearers. You might recall that I intend to replace the figures that came with the Revell 1/72 SYW sets with heavier metal figures, so I can use the wonderful standards from the WarFlag and NapFlags websites.

Anyway, the man I spoke to, “Ted”, checked on figure availability immediately. He told me GFI had molds for both and, although my order is only for 12 figures, that they would “spin” enough to fill it. No problem. Best of all, he added that the order should ship early next week. Plus they already had my address and payment information at hand, so we were only on the phone for about 5 minutes. It was an impressive display of customer service. If all goes well, I might have the figures here in Central Illinois by late next week!

Since the Christmas season is coming (and the pigs are getting fat), I also thought to ask about the availability of Prussian cuirassier figures and horses. Stollen and Zichenau need two heavy cavalry regiments -- one for each respectively, of about 30 figures each. I’m going to drop a rather large Christmas hint to my wife in the hopes that she or “Santa Claus” might fill all or part of the request.

Well, Ted checked on mold availability for the SYW Prussian cuirassier figures and associated horse castings. In seconds, he confirmed that GFI indeed has all of the molds necessary for those figures too. How is that for rapid and personal service?

Now, if and when any of you in North America decide to call GFI with a question of figure availability or an order in mind, there are a couple of things you should do to expedite the process. First, visit the mother ship -- MiniFigs UK – website, to note the item numbers and description of the figures and/or equipment you would like. These are common to both retail outlets on either side of the Atlantic.

Keep in mind too that GFI might no necessarily have ALL of the molds in question. So, as the Duke of Wellington suggested, it is a good idea to have an alternate plan in mind should GFI lack a mold for the particular figure(s) you want or need. Based on my experience in recent weeks though, they have come through marvelously.

In sum, based on various frustrating, and sometimes disappointing, service from other figure retailers in the passed 22 years, I cannot say enough good things about GFI. More generally, MiniFigs has always provided me with excellent service, and I’ve purchased figures by mail, in person, and online on both sides of the Atlantic at one time or another. Well done GFI (USA) and MiniFigs UK!!!

And We're Off!!!

Arrrgh! Gotta go back into camera settings on my iPhone to bring all of the frame into focus. Blast! Painting is underway on the 60 or so Minden Austrians, which are slated to become my version of the Anhalt-Zerbst Regiment of AWI renown. More or less indistinguishable from Austrians of the era really, right down to the red facings and turnbacks, but the eventual flags (already in my files) will set them apart. I went ahead and based-coated all of them over a couple of days lthe last week of August, using a mix of light gray and white acrylic gesso, before next applying my usual basic alkyd oil flesh tone to the faces and hands. In a day or two, I'll hit that with Army Painter Flesh Wash to tone things down a bit and bring some definition to the faces and hands. As usual, the plan is to focus on about 20 figures at a time, splitting the regiment roughly into thirds along with the color party and regimental staff. Depending on ...

Sunday Morning Coffee with AI. . .

A rmed with a second cup of fresh, strong coffee, I messed around a bit this morning with artlist.io using its image to image function in an attempt to convert my hand-drawn map from September 2006 to something that more resembles an old map from the mid-18th century. And just like my experiments with Ninja AI in June, the results are mixed. The above map is pretty good, but Artlist keeps fouling up the place names and has trouble putting a faint overlay of hexes across the entire area. Hexes, admittedly, are not likely to be found on any genuine maps from the era in question, but there we are. Frankly, I prefer the appearance of the Ninja map, but there were problems getting it to correct its errors. Grrrr. As is the case with so much having to do with the various AI's out there now, the output generated is a direct result of the prompts entered. For text alone, and when you develop a lengthy, highly detailed prompt, it is...

Continued Regional Map Revisions. . .

F ooled around a bit more with the revised map just before and after dinner this evening, using the Fotor app to reinsert missing text . I also removed a few other things using the 'Magic Eraser' function, which works surprisingly well. Now, we're getting somewhere. I just have to figure out how to ensure that the text is all a uniform font style and maybe figure out a way to add a few bunches of trees to suggest forested areas, Ninja AI is not always entirely cooperative to the tune of "I'm sorry Dave. I can't do that." -- Stokes

Bluebear Jeff said…

I've never ordered any Minifigs (although I've purchased a few in stores) . . . but Tom Dye always seems to be quickly answering questions on the various "Yahoo Groups" that I'm on.

His helpful nature (as demonstrated by his comments) lead me to believe your good service from GFI.

-- Jeff

http://saxe-bearstein.blogspot.com/

7:05 AM

Poruchik said…

I've ordered MiniFigs in the past from Tom and GFI and had really good service. If Minifigs ever releases a 12mm WWI range I am all over it.

I did purchse some SYW Prussians in 25mm and really like them, unfortunately not all nationalities are available in March Attack which is the pose I prefer for the SYW. So I'll stick to RSM's and give my Minifigs to a buddy of mine.

3:43 PM

The Grand Duchy of Stollen

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