Empress released the first of their Vietnam range about 10 months ago. Since then we have released nearly 130 figures mainly covering USMC and NVA but also some civilians and ARVN M113 crew. These USMC Recce figures are the first of what you would call elite. That's a pretty small percentage in anyone's book.
We have also released;
M48 Patton
M67 Zippo
Ontos
Gage Commando,
M113 Early
M113 ACAV
2 x wagons.
We are just about to release;
Aussie Centurion,
T54/55
Mighty Mite
Mule, in several versions.
PT76
M76 Otter.
PBR- Patrol Boat River.
We are currently sculpting more NVA, USMC, plus a lot of other things for release in the coming months.
Considering all of the in depth research that is needed to achieve this release rate, plus time to sculpt, By the incredibly talented Paul Hicks,design, ensure that the figures actually look like people and basic principles such as ensuring the figures accurately portray national/ racial characteristics, especially regarding physical proportions. That characters that are 6'4" such as LT Cheatham are in scale to reflect this. Plus other ranges that we are also releasing for and that there is actually only TWO of us working in Empress Miniatures on a daily basis that seems pretty good going.
Moving forward we will be adding a great deal to this range so that in 12 months time we would expect the range to be twice, possibly three times its current size. Quite a significant financial outlay to say the very least. Amongst those releases will be a lot of ARVN and more Elite troops. There may even be a Laotion army elephant, you never know.
Don't forget folks these are all available from our US Distributor Age of Glory and our Australian distributor Elite.
Cheers, Paul
