Delay in manufacturing & Essen Spiel 2023
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 06, 2023 at 11:27:57 PM

Hello Backers,

first of all, I would like to apologize for the delay with this update, but I was waiting on all the information about the manufacturing.

Delayed manufacturing

The manufacturing has a delay because of the broken mold of the dice. The mold we used for the previous print run (prototypes) has been damaged and the manufacturer needs to fix it. 

As we have other games using this system we decided to give priority to quality and after further discussion, we decided to re-make the mold for the dice faces and screws.  New mold making and testing take at least 1 month or so. But for the sake of quality, we have to do the work.

Essen Spiel 2023

Despite the bad news we would like to invite you to our booth at the Essen Spiel Fair to see the final shape of the game and the new games we are working on right now. So if you will be attending the fair we will be happy to meet you in person and show you our games. You will find us in Hall 5 booth M103.

Thank you and apologize for the delay,

Stepan

The manufacturing has started
over 2 years ago – Fri, Jul 21, 2023 at 12:23:21 AM

Dear Backers,

There is not much to show and write right now, so this update will be short.

After all your juicy feedback on the rulebook we got from all the sources, we are finally done with all the game assets, they were approved for printing, and we are now waiting on getting a pre-production copy for final approval. They are scheduled to be in our hands in the next 2 weeks. After the approval, we will start mass production which should end in the second half of September.

Games will be shipped out from the factory by the end of September. We are now finalizing the shipping plan so we will inform you about the new delivery date in the next update. But you can expect to receive it in December. Overall, the project got 3 months Delay, and we apologize for that, but we hope, the waiting will be worth. 

Thank you,

Stepan

End of the development phase, Proofreading and entering production phase
almost 3 years ago – Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 10:06:32 AM

Dear Backers,

we have finally finished the development phase and recently entered the pre-production process.

We would like to start producing samples during the next week. This means that we need to upload the final version of all files by the end of this week. And that is the reason why we need your help right now.

We put our hearts and souls to finish the game. We did hundreds of small improvements in the rulebook and other components to make the game less complex and better understandable. But we are humans and we still can do some mistakes. So, it will be great if you will have time to proofread the rulebooks and game boards in the next few days so we can fix some issues that we might add during the last iterations. Those who speak more supported languages (English, German, Czech) can check if the translated rulebooks and boards are the same and if there are no differences regarding the rules.

Rulebook

English rulebook

German rulebook

Czech rulebook

Invasion board

Player board

Other game assets

For those who want to participate deeper and have time to check all the game assets, feel free to contact me, or join our FB group, your help will be appreciated.

Stepan

Pledge Manager, Translations & Manufacturing
almost 3 years ago – Sun, May 14, 2023 at 11:38:14 AM

Hello Backers,

here is the list of news about the game progress we would like to share with you.

Pledge Manager

All orders will be locked on May 23 so those who still did not finish the survey, please make sure to finish it before the deadline, as the changes will not be possible to be made manually after that. There are still 175 backers who did not finish it. Most of them are 1$ backers, but if you know you will not increase your pledge please finish it so we have the best possible outcome before we start manufacturing the game.

After the lock is done, we will charge for the shipping.

Retailers' pledges will not be locked and will remain open until the last possible date we can afford, usually a month before we start the local shipping. So retailers still have a lot of time to decide the volume they want to order.

Translations

All 3 translations are almost finished, there are just only a couple of things left. Once they will be finished (hopefully during the upcoming week) we will share them with you. We had to incorporate a lot of suggestions from the publishers, translators, proofreaders, and from you.  And we hope the rulebook is in a much better shape now and all the possible questions that could arise during the game have been fixed.

We got a little delay as we needed to reword some cards because we are finishing the content for the expansion and some effects did not work with it. Yeah, you might say "Isn't it too early to work on the expansion?" But the answer is no, it takes months to be finished and we need to start asap and make the basic game fully compatible with the possible expansions.

Manufacturing

The start of the manufacturing is planned for the end of May.

Regards,

Stepan

Pledge Manager has been opened & Kickstarter exclusive content in details
almost 3 years ago – Sat, Apr 08, 2023 at 01:33:48 AM

Hello Backers,

we finished the next step and would like to share with you some important details.

Pledge Manager

The Pledge Manager (Backerkit) has been opened. We launched a Smoke Test to catch any possible issues that might occur. A smoke test sends surveys to 5% of backers from each pledge level in the campaign. Once we see everything is smooth and there is no issue we will send the survey to the rest of you (it depends on how fast we get the feedback from those who were already invited). If you will not receive the invitational email during the next week feel free to contact us.

Shipping cost

We tried to keep our estimated shipping cost we announced during the campaign as much as possible, but the rise of the price during the last months forces us to rise the local shipping a bit in some countries. No dramatic changes, there is usually a 1 or 2 EUR difference, on the other hand, some countries are cheaper as we have found better shipping solutions. 

Kickstarter exclusive content

There were a lot of changes in the game itself during the final testing and we had to change some rules to the Kickstarter exclusive campaign as well, but we hope you will enjoy it as much as we do.  The campaign offers you 3 ways how you can finish it, and each of them has slightly different conditions and rules on how you can beat the Invasion. 

Counterattack

This path is mainly focused on dealing massive amounts of damage to your opponents, trying to reduce their numbers as much as possible. The closer to their base you are the stronger waves of invaders you are facing so try to be as fast as possible.

Defend the base

If you do not feel so strong to strike back against the Invasion, you can stay in your Base and just defend it against the waves of invaders, trying to stay alive until the invaders run out of resources and are unable to continue.

Bribery

Do you feel you are rich and your economy is strong? There is no better way than bribe your opponents so they avoid your base and let the others do the dirty job!

As the Spieleschmiede campaign was successful we decided to unlock all the stretch goals we can afford, so here is the list of what will be inside of the Kickstarter exclusive content. The rest unlocked things during the campaign as additional starting cards, etc. are part of the base game. We will not share the cards from the exclusive content with you as we do not want it will be public for those who did not back the campaign.

KS exclusive content:

• 2x Leader cards
• 1x Protocol card
• Plastic insert for the core box
• 4x Upgraded screwdrivers 
• 19x Campaign cards
• 70x additional screws of different colors
• 1 Extra plastic tray for tokens (this replaces the bag for tokens from the All-in pledge level. There might be a lot of errors during the assembly if we do it only for the All-in pledge level so we decided to put it directly to the exclusive content for everyone (except the Recruited pledge level). We hope that The All-in pledge backers will not be disappointed by this change.) 

Thank you,

Stepan