The word keeps coming up. I’ve talked about its first release, I went through all the previews and teased my involvement all the way back to March. But what actually IS Gunslinger?
Gunslinger is a brand that forms part of the Flytrap Digital Patreon, releasing Ultramodern figures. After having made a range of Ultramodern physical releases under his Warfighter brand (as well as producing commission work for other parties), Anton decided back in 2019 that he wanted to re-enter the Ultramodern space with his own range and began gathering assets and designs
My role in the story has been mentioned before but I enter the story in March 2023. After chatting with Anton over Facebook, we met up and got to go more in-depth over his plans for Gunslinger and to provide some feedback on them. However, there was an invitation to expand my role in the project if I wanted to. After a few months of thinking about it, and some more back and forth, I finally decided to go all in.
The Core Ideas
With Anton and myself approaching this project from two different places, one of the first things we decided to agree on was a set of core ideas for what we want Gunslinger to be. Working out the core ideas gives us some guidance as to what we should be aiming for at every step of the operation, from designing new ranges and selecting how to release them to all the final touches on the figures themselves.
These core ideas are:
- 80% Realistic, 20% Cinematic, 100% Playable – This ratio is the core concept behind the Gunslinger figures. Realism is the lead element, the jumping-off point to this genre we enjoy. But, allowing an element of Fiction into the design expands our possibilities, letting us take a leap forward to produce a more interesting range. However, as you can see, the cinematic influence is only a fraction of the whole – we’re not going to go too outlandish with our designs (at least in THIS range). At the end of the day though, the figures Gunslinger makes must be Playable game pieces forming a range designed to support as many rule systems as possible.
- Onwards and Upwards – Gunslinger is focused on taking advantage of advances in 3D sculpting and printing to produce a range that pushes what is out there. Each and every figure in a release should be exciting to paint, being unique in terms of details yet cohesive on the tabletop alongside the rest of their range.
- Operate with Integrity – At every stage, Gunslinger aims to do this business right. When we make a mistake or find room for improvement, we’ll try our best to correct it. As money is exchanging hands, we want the people choosing to buy into Gunslinger (no matter if it’s monthly support or through the ala carte offering on My Mini Factory or Cults3d) to know what they are getting.
The Background
When Anton and I first met at the Fairfield Manor hotel outside York and I got my intro into what he had been making for Gunslinger at that point (spoilers: it was the Black Sector guys that were released in July 2023), we really got to talking about the types of figures we’ve wanted to collect over a couple of beers. During that discussion, something that came up was a collection of shared interests – one of which was a love for the era of Tom Clancy games in the mid-2000s (the era of GRAW, Rainbow Six Vegas, HAWX and Splinter Cell Double Agent), separate games covering different events that acted as companion pieces to each other, toeing the line between realism and still portraying its own world of rival intelligence agencies, special forces, paramilitaries and more. Anton and I both lean closer to the cinematic angle when it comes to wargaming and so during our discussions, exciting concepts and ideas combined into the first thoughts for the background to the world of Gunslinger. That night, after getting back home, I started penning a tone piece, a wide-angle view of a world for our releases to inhabit. Luckily for me, Anton loved it. I’ve included it below, giving you a taste of what’s coming.
The world is falling apart.
– Gunslinger Tone PieceThe rules-based system of international politics that has given the general population a sense of peace is slowly breaking.
World governments become increasingly reluctant to deploy standing armies to trouble spots, as economics and public opinion conspire to drain the will of the decision-makers. In the background, as the world finds someone turning up the heat, changes in the environment are starting to lay out the planet of the future, with people flocking to ever-expanding cities as the deserts creep forward, the seas rise and the resources available are becoming scarcer and scarcer.
In this situation, the monopoly of force is no longer in the hand of the nationally maintained forces. Private military companies and paramilitary groups are now the tools of choice for the state, while criminal and terrorist groups grow like weeds in the gaps of broken nations and shrinking states, watered by covert extranational assistance as part of an ever-expanding game of chess being played by both governments and multi-national corporations. In conflicts that are barely seen on the news in the West, constant ongoing warfare grinds ever on, consuming life, resources and currency.
As national standing armies shrink, veterans of the long wars of the last few decades take their skillsets and spread out globally, forming an ecosystem of individuals, ad-hoc groups and even companies to offer their services, either to the highest bidder or the cause they consider the most deserving. To many, they will be unnamed, unusual figures – caught in clips from the mountains of combat footage generated each day, seen in blurry or redacted photos captured by unnamed civilians or passing mentions in news reports, social media posts and government records.
These are the modern Gunslingers.
Now, I should stress that the lore of Gunslinger is important to us (it helps to fuel the creative side) but it’s not our core focus – the focus is always going to be making great models for the Ultramodern Wargaming space. Though we may be designing them to represent forces 15 minutes into the future, the vast majority of what we produce will be inspired by teams and groups in the real world and ready for real-world, modern-day situations. However, this setting does give us some breathing room to add elements that technically wouldn’t work at the moment – such as a private military company having enough funding, paperwork and contacts to get a deal with a certain German arms maker.
The Background is going to grow as we release more ranges and unveil more factions, giving patrons even more ideas for scenarios they may want to play.
The Results
All of these are wonderful ideas but this blog is a monument for writing things down and then not doing them – at the end of the day, patrons who support Gunslinger need products in hand (or onto hard drives in this case). For that reason, we’ve worked out a schedule, both on a month-by-month basis and in the long term.
Every month, on roughly the 15th, patrons at the Gunslinger tier will receive at least 10 uniquely posed figures (but potentially more). These will be split into two elements – some months the elements will be equal, in others we might lean more towards one than the other. All figures within these elements will be provided both supported and unsupported. In addition to the elements, we may also include some other useful bits, such as additional head variants or anything else that Anton has come up with. Moving forward, most of the main range figures will have swappable heads, letting you use the additional bits to customise them more easily than having to perform surgery. There will probably be exceptions, especially with the Character teams (more on those in a moment).
In the first six months, we’ll be hitting two separate ranges – each range will take 3 months to release all the currently planned figures for them (you can see a clip from our planning doc above). However, once this foundation is out of the way, we may adjust our release schedule depending on the ranges being done at the time (as well as the mental state of Anton sculpting away) so we can give more variety.
As well as the elements dedicated to a specific range, we shall also be releasing Character Teams. These sets are designed to augment the larger ranges, giving you a set of specialists with unique visuals and equipment to expand their capabilities and give something special to paint and play with. These Character teams might be specific themes that don’t fit a larger release or potentially test sets for larger ranges – in both cases though, these sets will be complete with a selection of capabilities and unique visuals.
And with that, that is a brief description of what Gunslinger is. If you’re interested in joining the Patreon, you can find it at the Gunslinger Tier at the https://www.patreon.com/flytrapfactory. This blog will be full of updates on the project as we move forward, as this is a process we want to be quite open with.
We’re all excited about the possibilities that Gunslinger can provide going forward. Depending on its success, we’d love to be able to expand Gunslinger further, keeping some of the same concepts but hitting different eras. But that’s for the future and you don’t go revealing all your wishes.
However, you won’t have to wait long for another post covering Gunslinger. It’s going to cover our first faction Black Sector and in particular its Global Interdiction Group. As well as its background and design notes, it will also provide a closer look at the figures released already, as well as may hinting at what is coming down the line.
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