Tuesday 3 December 2013

Curious Constructs Lasercannon

Hiya folks,

Finally had a little hobby time tonight, result, I've assembled one of the new Curious Constructs Lasercannons - still needs a little tidying, and to get the rest of the weapons cleaned up! Pretty chuffed!


Monday 2 December 2013

In a word, manic! Kirton Games and the Kickstarter Conclusion!

Hiya Folks,

Well well well its been a little while since I’ve posted, with one thing and another I’ve been insanely busy and not lifted a paint brush in a while! The reason for that is two fold really, so let me tell you a little bit about what I’ve been up to.


First of all, alongside my closest friends Tim & James I’m now running a Brick & Mortar Gaming Store! It’s all been a little bit crazy really how it happened all of a sudden, though I will add I’m not quite crazy enough that this is becoming my day job! I’m still working full time in my previous employment despite the manic number of hours both take up. We’re running Kirton Games (which officially trades as Curious Constructs) in a part time capacity open in the evenings and at weekends. It’s a rather small, but perfectly formed(!) store which can be found in my hometown of Crediton in a shopping arcade called the Creedy Center.



We've started off by stocking what we know, Games Workshop, we carry a small permanent stock of 40k, Warhammer and the Lord of the Rings, but we’re currently expanding this, and should also be carrying Warmahordes, Magic: The Gathering and Flames of War amongst others. Though our held stock is small we do have the facility to order in almost anything that a gamer might want through our suppliers.

We’re currently offering a minimum 5% discount on all products in store, with 10% discount for members of local clubs as we aim to help grow the hobby in mid-devon. That said, we do of course have the nearly mandatory webstore which is coming together slowly – our push was to get the store up and running, so this has taken a little bit of a back seat! At present a good portion of the GW range we have available to us is uploaded, with more still to come, pictures are something we still need to work on though especially. No small challenge as GW trade does not permit you to use their own stock images, so we’ve got to take our own! We’d of course welcome your support, not to mention your custom online as we start out, every purchase counts at the moment no matter how small! And as a little incentive all of those who register on the webstore will be entered into a draw to win a £5.00 gift voucher. The draw takes place on December 25th.

You can find the webstore at,

Of course that all said, it would be great of course to see any of you in the store sometime if your local (and I know some of you are!), we do have a full size 6x4ft gaming table, custom designed and built by James with a bit help, which is free for anyone to use during our opening hours, so please drop in and say hi!

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Monday
CLOSED
Tuesday
16:00-19:00
Wednesday
16:00-19:00
Thursday
16:00-21:00
Friday
16:00-19:00
Saturday
09:00-16:00
Sunday
CLOSED




There’s a lot of avenues open to us, and a lot of things being discussed still, its early days, but please do watch this space as I’m sure I’ll be charting our progress!


Of course the other thing which has been eating up my time was the Kickstarter, though this finished its funding period all the way back in May it has only just actually completed! The Kickstarter you may remember went absolutely crazy, I asked for £600 to fund a Steampunk themed Anti-Tank Lasercannon, instead the final total was a massive £7295!

This saw all the stretch goals funded and required a massive amount of production, well over 1500 sprues to be delivered to nearly 140 people, quite an epic for me!

There was a short delay in the design phase as the last of the kits were finalised, this included the late addition of the Multiple Rocket Launcher and Mule LSV. While everything went well initially in the casting, delays quickly started to creep in pushing back the first shipments by over a month, the second shipment was further delayed, and by the time of the third I made the decision to switch to a new caster in the face of delays and a number of casting issues. Of course switching casters in itself also pushed things back a little further, but finally I dispatched the last kits last week, many of which I now know to have arrived.

So at last, all the Kickstarter funded products have now finally reached the Curious Constructs webstore (yes, for now this remains separate to the Kirton Games store due to a number of rather unexciting reasons!). Anyway, if you missed out on the original Kickstarter, now is your chance to get hold of these kits which include the Field Artillery Kit (comprising of a Carriage, Lasercannon, Gatling Cannon, Tesla Cannon and Autocannon), Multiple Rocket Launcher Kit (comprising a Carriage and the Nebelwerfer), Gun Carriage kit, Rocket Launcher, Mule LSV, Artillery Crew and Bombardier. There are also discounted sets of multiple kits. I'll go into more details and singing and dancing surrounding these as soon as I can actually get around to assembling some!

You can find them on sale on the Curious Constructs webstore at,


Right, back to work now anyway! More soon!