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https://www.4groundpublishing.co.uk/

Lots of good MDF terrain on sale.

Thats a shame. I always wanted to make an town from their dead mans hand collection for the legends of the old west game.

I hate seeing companies like this one drift away. Definitely news worthy. I feel this is a net losd to the miniature wargaming community at large.

And also definitely the time to get what you might need. These are some of the best laser cut sets out there.

Dunno, I had these on my mental ignore list filed as "mdf at resin prices"

They are expensive, no doubt.

With 3d printing becoming mainstream, its hard to justify mdf laser cutting costs. Still, even the the price is premium they are still pretty good quality. The engineering alone has value.

Shame, got a lot of their Chariots, found them to be great value for money.

Shame to see another hobby company go under.

A shame as their kits are lovely and I'm sad that I'll never be able to field a table full of their buildings now. But after they dropped the ball on their kickstarter a few years ago, it was clear the company was living on borrowed time. But thems the breaks. Sometimes you embark on a risky project and it pays off.. and sometimes it does not.

The only thing that remains to be seen is if this is simply the end of the 4ground name, with product being sold under the Tymeagain banner in the future.. or if they really are getting out of the MDF business for good.

That's a shame, but not unexpected. MDF tends to look so unimpressive next to 3D printed terrain, but isn't really cheaper. It's kind of a PITA to prep, as it soaks up paint and warps, and the pre-painted stuff looks off with the visible burned edges ruining the illusion. Companies should be looking to have resin bits and laser cut card as add-ons to break up the limited depth of surfaces, but even then it feels like trying to trick out a buggy whip as cars are becoming more mainstream.

I guess they will officially never fulfill their Kickstarter that they never fulfilled

Disappointing news.

Thats a real shame. Their stuff was expensive but really good quality I found and they had a good mix of stuff that could be used for different systems.

Has their been any explanation of what has happened to them? I am guessing a combination of 3D printing, shipping to the EU now hamstrung because of the 'B' word, and general economic malaise?

 judgedoug wrote:
I guess they will officially never fulfill their Kickstarter that they never fulfilled

Well they have been ignoring us and deleting comments of any nature good or bad, that are asking about the KS on their social media since Oct 2020!

I might buy a couple of things to round out my Mordanburg town.

Sucks for those not getting their KS stuff. It's a shame when a company that has a good name in the hobby isn't able to deliver like that.

I not really sure how much 3D printing really affected them. The selling point of this line was pre-painted exteriors and interiors (which is uncommon) that were also really detailed for MDF so very little time outside of assembly. This is much more along the line of high-end RPG terrain and I'm surprised 4ground never really tried to market to the D&D crowed, that I know of, as there's lots of money there that would have loved this.

Their terrain always looked fantastic at game shows, then I saw the price and didn’t buy it.
Shame to see them go, but not fulfilling a Kickstarter is a death blow for most companies.
I know they sold a lot of stuff designed by small one man band style outfits, I hope they all find another avenue for their sales.

From what I understand the whole Kickstarter fiasco was them not actually owing a lot of the art rights to the miniature line they were kickstarting due to them not understanding UK's work for hire stuff. Paid for art but couldn't use that art to make 3d sculpts would be an example.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
From what I understand the whole Kickstarter fiasco was them not actually owing a lot of the art rights to the miniature line they were kickstarting due to them not understanding UK's work for hire stuff. Paid for art but couldn't use that art to make 3d sculpts would be an example.

1st ive heard about this, can you point me in the right direction for more info into this please.

 Original Timmy wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
From what I understand the whole Kickstarter fiasco was them not actually owing a lot of the art rights to the miniature line they were kickstarting due to them not understanding UK's work for hire stuff. Paid for art but couldn't use that art to make 3d sculpts would be an example.

1st ive heard about this, can you point me in the right direction for more info into this please.

Looks like it was from this KS update
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/250544710/the-legends-of-fabled-realms/posts/2559432

but that's really not what was going on. It was part of it as 4G was a separate entity and the design work was done for contract by Tymeagain (the original company/owners) the which owned those rights. Basically they had big financial issues when trying to break 4G away from their original company due to 4G being in huge debt to the original company (which a part was the art rights) and at this stage 4G was owned partly by private investors and not just the original founders/company. This was 3 years ago.

A) 4G owed TY a very large sum of money, when liquidating, a company may only base its liquidation on its state of finances. Due to the money owed to TY, 4G was not solvent (the reason for the liquidation) and as such had to perform a Creditors Voluntary Liquidation. Without the debt owed to TY, the company would have performed a Members Voluntary Liquidation (or would not have had to liquidate at all).

Other updates after that are along the lines of claiming people saying they had the law wrong in the post I linked and suggesting people file as a debtor (which they ask backers to not do) are slandering them and they might sue to "we paid for a cheap plastic factory and got cheap plastics that no one will want so now we have to spend money to do resin for everyone which will cost us more" type of poor planning stuff. Also from the KS comments they've been blocking anyone mentioned Fabled realms for at least a year (even those talking about it positively) on social media.

They ended up having to split the IP 50/50 with another entity (which is covered in another post near the top) due to the debt and liquidation and after all that happened basically the whole KS died and there hasn't been another substantial update. This might actually be worse then the whole Palladium/Robotech fiasco as it appears they knew about some of these issues before the KS ended but couldn't talk about them "legally".

Q) Why was none of this communicated with the wider world or Kickstarter backers?

A) TY and 4G were under legal constraints that caused the companies to be unable to communicate any of this fully. The directors of 4G are legally required to make every effort to remunerate their creditors. As such they could not inform, hint or advise, anyone that 4G was about to cease trading as if that was the case it could be seen that they willingly caused the creditors to receive less remuneration, breaking the law. TY could counter this by accepting the dispatch of the orders and kickstarter as an act of goodwill, and under the auspices of the insolvency practitioners, to not damage the 4G name which they had just acquired.

So reading about everything they shared themselves I'm surprised they hung on for as long as they have as whoever helped the 2 companies split really messed up. I think the UK was giving money to small businesses to stay alive during the pandemic and maybe that kept them going for a while?

 Monkeysloth wrote:

 Original Timmy wrote:

 Monkeysloth wrote:
From what I understand the whole Kickstarter fiasco was them not actually owing a lot of the art rights to the miniature line they were kickstarting due to them not understanding UK's work for hire stuff. Paid for art but couldn't use that art to make 3d sculpts would be an example.

1st ive heard about this, can you point me in the right direction for more info into this please.

Looks like it was from this KS update
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/250544710/the-legends-of-fabled-realms/posts/2559432

but that's really not what was going on. It was part of it as 4G was a separate entity and the design work was done for contract by Tymeagain (the original company/owners) the which owned those rights. Basically they had big financial issues when trying to break 4G away from their original company due to 4G being in huge debt to the original company (which a part was the art rights) and at this stage 4G was owned partly by private investors and not just the original founders/company. This was 3 years ago.

A) 4G owed TY a very large sum of money, when liquidating, a company may only base its liquidation on its state of finances. Due to the money owed to TY, 4G was not solvent (the reason for the liquidation) and as such had to perform a Creditors Voluntary Liquidation. Without the debt owed to TY, the company would have performed a Members Voluntary Liquidation (or would not have had to liquidate at all).

Other updates after that are along the lines of claiming people saying they had the law wrong in the post I linked and suggesting people file as a debtor (which they ask backers to not do) are slandering them and they might sue to "we paid for a cheap plastic factory and got cheap plastics that no one will want so now we have to spend money to do resin for everyone which will cost us more" type of poor planning stuff. Also from the KS comments they've been blocking anyone mentioned Fabled realms for at least a year (even those talking about it positively) on social media.

They ended up having to split the IP 50/50 with another entity (which is covered in another post near the top) due to the debt and liquidation and after all that happened basically the whole KS died and there hasn't been another substantial update. This might actually be worse then the whole Palladium/Robotech fiasco as it appears they knew about some of these issues before the KS ended but couldn't talk about them "legally".

Q) Why was none of this communicated with the wider world or Kickstarter backers?

A) TY and 4G were under legal constraints that caused the companies to be unable to communicate any of this fully. The directors of 4G are legally required to make every effort to remunerate their creditors. As such they could not inform, hint or advise, anyone that 4G was about to cease trading as if that was the case it could be seen that they willingly caused the creditors to receive less remuneration, breaking the law. TY could counter this by accepting the dispatch of the orders and kickstarter as an act of goodwill, and under the auspices of the insolvency practitioners, to not damage the 4G name which they had just acquired.

So reading about everything they shared themselves I'm surprised they hung on for as long as they have as whoever helped the 2 companies split really messed up. I think the UK was giving money to small businesses to stay alive during the pandemic and maybe that kept them going for a while?

Its all smoke and mirrors, both companies are/were owned and run by the same people, its a big family business and im not sure where you are getting some of your facts from, as according to the UK Goverments Chapter House website, no investor group owned or was in control of 4Ground, in 2019 Liquidators were called in to arrange the liquidation of the company, i think you are getting liquidators and investors mixed up.

4Ground: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/07783782/persons-with-significant-control

Tyme Again: https://find-and-update.company-information.service.gov.uk/company/03888894/persons-with-significant-control

Yes they were in serious debt and their claim of "Without the debt owed to TY, the company would have performed a Members Voluntary Liquidation (or would not have had to liquidate at all), the last part in brackets imo is very dubious, as they owed a total of £529,262.22, £182,000+ was owed to Tyme Again(Family owned) and £99,000 owed to Mr and Mrs Cresswell-Jeal(family), they still owed £250,000+ to banks(£25,000), HM Customs(£34,000+), PayPal(£60,000) and various other businesses, plus the £107,000+ they took for the KS without sending anything out unless you backed at the £400 and up pledge levels, as they sent out the MDF terrain to them.

Chapter House liquidation letter including owed debts: https://tinyurl.com/bdfedwff

Are you referring to the IP 50/50 split with the other company being Thomas Gunn Miniatures? in September last year a backer reached out to them to enquire and got the following reply.

"Unfortunately I have to advise that we have decided not to proceed with the Fabled Realms project.

"I have been advised that we left the project with 4Ground and we have not heard anything from them in over a year so we have assumed that it is therefore no longer proceeding.

I apologise for any disappointment caused."

Looks like 4G wasted everyone's time with that!

Looks like the company was passed from the parents to the son's.
Shame people are out of pocket over this failed venture.

 Original Timmy wrote:


Its all smoke and mirrors, both companies are/were owned and run by the same people, its a big family business and im not sure where you are getting some of your facts from, as according to the UK Goverments Chapter House website, no investor group owned or was in control of 4Ground, in 2019 Liquidators were called in to arrange the liquidation of the company, i think you are getting liquidators and investors mixed up.

It was in the same post I linked. Tymeagain didn't own the whole thing and others bought rights to it. I have no idea who those people are, family from what people are saying, but everything I posted was from their own updates. So if I have wrong information it's because of what 4G themselves shared.

Tymeagain Ltd. retained 50% of the original 100% ownership but 4G was no longer a brand within TY. As a trading company 4G started to file actual annual trading returns to companies house (so from being a TY brand it had now broken away to be trading independently of TY.). Later Cad (Benedict Cresswell-Jeal) was also brought on as a shareholder owning 26% of the shares with Tymeagain and Adam Cresswell-Jeal split with the remaining shares.

Companies House, Original Timmy, not Chapter House.

From the UK Governments Companies House records, 4Ground was started in Sept 2011, A1 Company Services Limited filed the papers on behalf of 4Ground and it originally started with 1 share owned by Mrs Barbara Kahan, who worked for Woodberry Secretarial Limited. The company and shares were then handed over to Damian Benedict Cresswell-Jeal and Hellyn Claire Cresswell-Jeal and they were both directors of the company, the shares have also multiplied to 2, with each director owning 1 each,.

Original incorporation certificate 2011: https://tinyurl.com/msyp7zx2

In Sept 2013, Adam Peter Cresswell-Jeal was made a director and the shares multiplied to 100, with both Damian and Hellyn giving up their director positions and shares, the shares were then split 50/50 between Adam and Tyme Again which is jointly owned by Damian and Hellyn, they have been the joint owners of Tyme Again since the company started and they still are today.

Allocation of 4Ground shares Sept 2013: https://tinyurl.com/yru6hkz7 page 5

In Oct 2016, Damian and Hellyn were brought back on as Directors and the shares had multiplied to 1000 and were split between Adam 370, Tyme Again 370 and 260 to Damian which gave Damian and Hellyn complete control of both companies(Damian isnt going to vote against himself) and it is how the shares stayed divided until the day they closed the doors in July 2019.

Allocation of 4Ground shares Oct 2016 until the company folded: https://tinyurl.com/rbhwmpky page 3

Allocation of Tyme Again shares Dec 2016: https://tinyurl.com/4rnf7hbt page 3

Its worth noting that a week after the KS ran, on July 25th 2017, Adam was relieved of his director position of 4Ground, which left Damian and Hellyn taking all director and owner positions of both 4Ground and Tyme Again.

Termination of appointment: https://tinyurl.com/bdz4d5x8

Originally 4Ground was a dormant company up until 2014 when they actually started making and selling items, from what i can tell each year up until they closed, they were owing more money than they earned and each year it got worse, there are no records for 2018/19 as the liquidator was called in before the filing date, the last the records on show is 2017 and they had assets worth £140,447 but had a total debt of £235,596. By the time 4Ground closed Damian and Hellyn doubled the debt that Adam left them with when he was in charge.

4Ground dormant account records: https://tinyurl.com/5aybp7jv

4Ground 2014/15 account records: https://tinyurl.com/dkv37hxc page 3

4Ground 2015/16 account records: https://tinyurl.com/35z3a9yk page 4

4Ground 2016/17 account records: https://tinyurl.com/bdz3yfad page 3

To be honest i never had high hopes for the future of 4Ground after it had been taken back under the Tyme Again banner, as its the exact same people in charge that put 4Ground in just over £575,000 of debt in the 1st place!, they made some great mdf buildings, i own quite a few myself and i'll probably buy a couple more before 4Ground are gone forever, but imo they made some questionable business decisions to put them in that much debt.

Hopefully those links work!


Automatically Appended Next Post:

 Dysartes wrote:
Companies House, Original Timmy, not Chapter House.

Doh i knew that too, as when i was googling the website, i searched Chapter house and it wasnt bringing the website i wanted up for obvious reasons, i got there in the end though lol

So a classic case of good craftsmen being awful at business and resorting to shady gak to cover it up for as long as possible. Strong Defiance Games vibes.

Even their closing down prices are way too expensive vs what other companies are offering like warcradle for example, who's most recent stuff is also pre coloured. That's always been my biggest issue with their stuff ,that and most of their range is 28mm scale and not 32mm. Oh yeah, one other thing I found problematic about their range was the thickness of their mdf....ok if you are careful with it, but if its terrain that's going to see heavy use at a game club or be transported around etc I could see a lot of it getting broken with how flimsy it is. If there is some last minute all stock must go 50% off sale or something maybe ill pick up a few things...

I liked 4G and it's a shame. I've got a few items of their Gothic city stuff for MCP and Batman.. but you have to be careful with it. Most of my customers (I'm a store owner) have switched to TTCombat. I might pick up a few pieces for Fallout before it finally fades away.

4Ground always released so much quality in MDF, houses with detailed interiors etc it was really something special each kit.

Problem is that MDF is still MDF but such detailed kits are quite pricy, which collides with the general idea MDF is cheap.

Overall Im always gutted to see companies that deliver hobby quality products, fold.

Best of luck to everyone involved.

Hmm, had a couple of tabs open with some closing down sale items I was interested in, but having had it confirmed above that the company was always basically the same 3 people using what were effectively shell companies to stay vaguely afloat while not delivering on their Kickstarter? I will pass.

Some added context as to "why now" Jeb from Antinocities posted the other day that in the UK the cost of MDF that's used in terrain has gone up 5x since Brexit and the main place he sources it from recently shut down likely increasing the costs even more this year as the supply lessens.

Even if 4Ground didn't have all this debt the company would have to significantly increase prices to offset the rising costs to keep operating.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Some added context as to "why now" Jeb from Antinocities posted the other day that in the UK the cost of MDF that's used in terrain has gone up 5x since Brexit and the main place he sources it from recently shut down likely increasing the costs even more this year as the supply lessens.

Even if 4Ground did have all this debt the company would have to significantly increase prices to offset the rising costs to keep operating.

Your not wrong about the price rises 4Ground had, around the start of the 1st lockdown 2 years ago i brought Halgars Blacksmith, which was £50.50 and its now £71.50rrp, the barge boards i brought were £3.50 and they are now £6rrp, im also sure the Stoic Arms use to be @£125-130 and the rrp is now an eye watering £190.

With a 5x price rise of materials, i wonder if its not the last MDF terrain manufacturer we see close down.

Antinocities has been teetering for years do to their main resin caster/mold maker leaving to go make way more outside of the tabletop industry (which is not a very profitable industry and that's partly to do with prices really haven't increased much over the past 20 years unless you're GW despite inflation).

I'm curoius how long some of the others can keep their prices. I find Sarrisa to be very affordable for what the are as well as TTcombat but I don't see how they can keep those prices. 3D printing has kept coming down and while I feel there are things that are better as MDF (wood structures just look better in wood) I think MDF kit makers will keep feeling the pressure.

To give some ideas on prices I've been looking a lot at model railroad stuff for Fallout as it's just shy of American O scale (1:50 vs 1:48) and kits for railroads are about 3x the price and a cheaper wood. There's generally more outer detail parts to put in (sometimes inner as well).

I bought this kit during the winter to build sometime this year and see how they really compare and it's $40 for a 5"x3"x3" area. The wood is sturdy enough for play but not transportation (which I'm fine with). I also bought the internal detailing kit for $25 which is a mix of materials. This is one of the cheaper buildings I found of this quality.

https://www.interactionhobbies.com/O-Scale-Kit-Standard-No3-Single-Tool-House_p_115.html


Compare that to this shack from Sarissa that I also bought around the same time for $20 that's 5.5"x 5" x 3.5" being made out of a more expensive, thicker wood. (note it would look almost as good as the one above good if the same build method was used, covering joints with compounds or cardboard siding and using something to indent fake nails).

https://sarissa-precision.com/collections/retro-americana-28mm/products/survivor-shack



Now the model railroad kit does have more parts on the outside but not enough that it would be $20 more with being smaller and of a thinner wood. Tabletop games are a much larger hobby then railroad and people will argue that railroad people are just use to paying higher prices but the fact is that hobby has seam to kept up with inflation why ours hasn't. Probably because it's demo is much older when people start vs tabletop gaming.

 Monkeysloth wrote:
Now the model railroad kit does have more parts on the outside but not enough that it would be $20 more with being smaller and of a thinner wood. Tabletop games are a much larger hobby then railroad and people will argue that railroad people are just use to paying higher prices but the fact is that hobby has seam to kept up with inflation why ours hasn't. Probably because it's demo is much older when people start vs tabletop gaming.

Are you quite sure about that? Because my understanding is that it's the other way around, with model railoading being by far the largest hobby. At least in how much money the industry generates.