Read the news on their Afterlife Kickstarter a while back, makes a lot of sense to do more of this type of modular products to keep the company healthy. Afterlife will hopefully continue to be developed in the background as well.

Anvil Industry is definitely on top of their production / development game, they produce some of the most crisp resin casts I’ve had the pleasure to work with. And at quite reasonable prices as well. Also rather cool that they produce models from Miniatures from the North, love that guy’s Fallen Dwarf sculpts!

For those interested, the full statement from Anvil on the topic:

“The Kickstarter to launch Afterlife funded and then some, and we are very grateful for the support of our backers, but it didn’t bring in huge sums of money beyond what we needed for the first waves of miniatures. We have successfully created a miniatures range which we are extremely proud of, and have shipped thousands of extremely high quality miniatures to backers.

Beyond the miniatures, the development of the game itself (background, rules, art, playtesting etc) has been far more work than we expected and is still not complete. Work continues, but it has been at a rather slow pace, delayed first by the sculpting/shipping of all the physical miniatures, and since then by the general day to day trials of running a small business.

The Kickstarter funds ran out some time ago, but luckily we had an established range of “bits” and Exo-Lord products to sustain us. I know many KS backers are also fans of our conversion bits and other miniatures, so thanks if you have also purchased from those ranges in the past year!

We are actually soon celebrating our 5th birthday, which is an important milestone for a small business!

Over the past month we have taken a hard realistic look at the company’s financial position and revenue, and have concluded that as much as I love Afterlife and am passionate about it, the game is not yet making enough money to fund its own continued development, and continuing to focus all our resources on it means we run a very real risk of running Anvil Industry into the ground, destroying all the work we’ve done so far.

Any of you who follow our Facebook page or email newsletter will notice we have released several new and updated “bits” components in the past month, this is part of a new, deliberate strategy to move some focus away from Afterlife, and spend some time developing other product ranges.

This does mean that while we will continue to develop Afterlife as much as we can in the background, delivery of the final definitive rules, full missions and miniatures for existing and new factions etc will be delayed. This is not what we intended, and I know some of you may be disappointed.

I am 100% committed to developing Afterlife, finishing Volume 1 and releasing new volumes in the future.

In my best judgment, taking a break now to focus on other products/ranges (which have broader market appeal) is the best way to ensure we will have the resources and time in the future to continue development of Afterlife and properly support it, rather than rushing out a half finished product and then being forced to abandon it (as is the fate of many smaller wargames/Kickstarters).

So what are our plans going into the summer.

Release an updated version of the Afterlife rules, with all the main sections added and completed (vehicle rules are an obvious missing component), and some example missions from the Shards of Liberty campaign.
Continue the release of new and updated ‘bitz’ components for both Exo-Lord and regular human scale miniatures, including torsos and arms for our Infantry kits range.
A full overhaul of our Exo-Lords range, with brand new core miniatures, replacing kits and components which are now around 3-4 years old with newer ones which make full use of our greatly improved design and manufacturing methods. At the moment we are provisionally planning to re-launch the Exo-Lords with a small Kickstarter project in April, as this is the best way to judge demand and get feedback on the new kits before they go into manufacturing.
A Board Game, with our high quality figures and set in the Afterlife Universe, but aimed at the mass market rather than table top wargamers specifically. I can’t give any more details at the moment, but backers of this project will be the first to know when I can.

Looking further ahead..

We eventually want to produce a full printed Rulebook for Afterlife, with the completed rules, loads of background and artwork, full campaign missions, painting guides, model showcases and hopefully rules and miniatures for new factions! As and when the printed rulebook is available, we will work out some kind of discount or extra bonus, exclusively for backers of this project.

If you have any questions, suggestions or other feedback, I will reply to any comments below, or you can email me – info@anvilindustry.co.uk

Thanks once more for you continued support!”