ALT: two men are standing next to a wheelbarrow that says hooray on it

You might recognise this character - we used him as our avatar on various social media sites around this time last year. He's a physical version of this rather crude one which we used in previous Octobers. Well, he somehow crept into a corner of the droids mould last week so we thought we'd make him available for everyone. And not just for Halloween, he'll be there all year round. SF15-027 - Brigadier Pumpkinhead - £0.60 * with apologies to Andy Partridge and the rest of XTC...

We're stepping back down to 15mm sci-fi for our new release this week. We have a new pack of six general purpose droids ranging from a bipedal liaison droid to various wheeled and tracked utility models. Perfect for all your adventuring needs, from background characters to members of a Five Parsecs from Home or Stargrave crew. SF15-026 - Utility Droids (x6) - £3.50 Background image by Handiwork Games.

If you're in Canada, you'll know that your posties are on strike again. Consequently, Royal Mail have suspended deliveries to Canada once more. So any Canadian orders will still be processed and packed, but will have to sit in a box in the corner of the workshop until services resume again. Apologies to all our Canadian customers for this, but it really is circumstances beyond our control.

Pioneer Station is a large facility and needs constant upkeep. It can't keep all the parts that could possibly be needed for repairs in its stores, instead it has its own manufacturing facility that allows it to fabricate just about anything from scratch using a combination of 3D printing and CNC. The FMAL (Fabrication Machine Assembly Line) is located in the lower reaches of the station and is mostly automated, with the crew able to program in whatever they need from a massive library of standard components.

Pidge coaxed the attitude jets of the Maverick 3 into reluctant life again, slowing the ship as it approached the imposing bulk of Pioneer station. They hissed and spat erratically as the avian fought the controls and attempted to manoeuvre alongside. "Gently !" hissed Drenk. "We don't want to side-swipe this one as well". "Then stop being such a cheap-ass and get the thrusters fixed" retorted the pilot in her distinctive warbling.

Pioneer station is, as space stations go, pretty big. One entire level is given over to crew accommodation and recreation, and at the centre is the Mess Hall. Although not as grand as some surface installations, for an orbital station it was well equipped. Unlike smaller deep space operations which survive on freeze-dried rations from sealed packs, the Pioneer crew is able to eat properly prepared and cooked meals.

The summer's drawing to a close, but there's still time to slip in one more short break before the winter is upon us. Tony's off to Dorset with the Brigadieress and faithful hound for a few days, hoping that the weather will be a bit better than forecast... So the workshop will be closed next week, September 15th-19th. As always, the website remains open and any orders placed will be dealt with when we get back on the 22nd.

We're all packed and ready to go to Colours this afternoon - it's just over a couple of hours round the M25, traffic permitting. We have a couple of new last minute items which we'll have with us tomorrow. One that we have really been looking forward to is Osprey's brand new Voidfighter rulebook - our first batch of stock only arrived this morning, so we haven't had a chance to even flick through them.