Bad news from Rackham

When chatting about miniatures on events like last week's Mini Art Con, a subject that keeps returning is the demise of one of the greatest miniature manufacturers of the past 10 years: Rackham. When I started out with miniature painting, their figures had rapidly become my favorite. I followed their new releases every month, on the lookout of nice figures to suit my painting needs, often for competition entries. I also played their game Confrontation for a short while.

But then news appeared about financial troubles at Rackham. The production of new figures came to a halt and after a long silence they re-emerged with a new game called AT-43, which featured pre-painted plastics. But they promised to keep producing the existing metal miniatures range under the name of Rackham Legends and even introduce some new ones. I think they produced 2 or 3 new ones, all of them extremely limited edition and quite expensive. On top of that they even replaced their existing Confrontation game with a pre-painted equivalent.

I still had some feeble hopes that the company would return with some good quality metals, until I read this forum post. The announcement says:

In the last months, promotions on our webstore have given you the opportunity to purchase miniatures from our metal range at attractive prices.
Our stock of these miniatures has dwindled, but it’s still taking up a lot of space in our new offices. Thus we have decided to dispose of it. We will not commercialize these metal miniatures any more in the future.
The existing stock will not be destroyed; it should be sold to another company, which you will be able to buy the remaining miniatures from at a cost that’s bound to be very attractive.

A few posts down someone asks:

Do you know if this new company are going to have new metal minis commissioned, or jut sell the existing range/parts?

And then the reply:

That is very unlikely. The molds for the metal miniatures don't exist anymore anyway, so they would need to have them remade...

Expect the existing stock to be sold and nothing beyond that.

I think this says enough: "and nothing beyond that".

I still can't believe how this company turned their arse to the fans. I understand the company has had some hard times: financially, designers and sculptors leaving, but on the other hand why do they decide to completely discontinue something like the Confrontation line of miniatures. And then I'm not even talking about their other projects they failed to get off the ground: Hybrid, Cadwallon, the Cry Havoc magazine.

For now I will keep an eye out for Rackham minis I want to paint one day, and buy them while I still can. Fortunately I still have some old catalogues and Cry Havoc magazines to relive the old days :)