Beginning of the End
almost 4 years ago
– Sun, Jun 28, 2020 at 12:15:06 AM
Hello Heroes!
I hope that rather ominous title grabbed your attention! We have a lot to talk about. But the most important information is that we have one copy of all the physical deliverables here in our office and they are wonderful.
No brown pizza boxes! Everything is in a nice package. Here’s the game set up for play:
You’ve seen the miniatures, so let’s focus on other things. There are two token boards in the core box.
And all the minis have vacuum-formed trays.
Our translators worked very quickly, so the core game and expansions in all the languages will be sent in one big wave. Here are the four language versions of some manuals:
So what does this mean for you? There are two important dates to give you. The factory will finish production and load the pallets on transport ships in mid-August. Shipping, customs clearance and transportation to the hubs takes a little time, so we expect your games to start leaving the fulfillment centers in October, 2020. As we get closer to those dates, we can be more specific. You still have some time to log in to your BackerKit survey and update your shipping address if you need to do so. We will let you know before we lock addresses for shipping.
There are some digital deliverables and we are still working on those.
We’ve started the customization kit, the map editor is nearly complete for example. I know it is slightly off topic, we made a customization kit for The Order of Vampire Hunters and a few days ago, we saw user-created cards for Guillermo de la Cruz from What We Do in the Shadows. We got a real kick out of that.
There were many Demons added to the Stretch Goal list. The minis and cards are being made in China, of course, but there are some special rules for them that will be a PDF. The rules were written when we play tested the cards and just need to be formatted.
Solo mode is in the last stages of testing – it has been a background task that we have been working on for some time. There are cards for this, which are complete and were sent to China for printing with all the other files. The rules may need very minor tweaks, it’s really balancing the Encounters that is getting focus. We need to work on the rules for the Witch Master vs. Witch Master mode, but that is simple.
Finally, the Italian translation is expected to be complete in mid-September, so it will be easy to get these tasks completed before delivery.
Stay safe, stay sane, and pick a side!
Translations and More
almost 4 years ago
– Wed, May 20, 2020 at 11:34:20 PM
Welcome Witch Masters!
As the world begins to return to a new normal, we hope our global backer community will stay safe and regain a little sanity.
English Production: Many moons ago, we told you we had arranged a firm production window with our manufacturer. This required us to get the game material to them by the end of May. We set ourselves an internal deadline of April and worked hard to meet this, knowing it would leave us some room for slippage. We have delivered all the necessary sculpts, cards, rules in English to meet the manufacturer’s deadline. It is not yet May 30th and we have taken one step further: we have been sent the e-proofs of all the printed material in English and we have approved them. The next step will be for the manufacturer to send us a physical prototype. Obviously, we are really looking forward to seeing this.
Other Language Production: Our original plan included a delay between English and other language production – we estimated translation would take an additional 3 months. We established great relationships with translators and gained a lot of experience during our first Kickstarters and this allowed us to shave some time off this process, for example by starting translation of some material before we had all the English documents ready. In fact, we have translations into French, German and Spanish in hand and will be able to deliver them in May, so that all versions of the product will be manufactured and shipped together.
You can see the results here:
French:
Core Rule Book
The Cursed Fjord Rule Book
The Witches' Sabbath Rule Book
German:
Core Rule Book
The Cursed Fjord Rule Book
The Witches' Sabbath Rule Book
Spanish:
Core Rule Book
The Cursed Fjord Rule Book
The Witches' Sabbath Rule Book
We have the cards too, but they are not in a good format for showing to you: each card is one PDF file. We’ll try to sort this out in the next few days.
Miniatures: Mass production of our miniatures is well underway. About half the miniatures have been produced and the factory is working hard to finish the time consuming task of casting, cleaning and assembling all our awesome miniatures. We have some more photos that they have taken for us:
These images show the scale of production. There must be tens of thousands of miniatures in these images. It’s amazing to see this game come to life. If you want to see better pictures of the individual miniatures, take a second look at updates #56-58, where showed you the production minis as we approved them.
Update #56
Update #57
Update #58
Boxes: The art and text for all boxes, in all languages is complete. The last part of the puzzle is the bar code. They have just arrived and we will paste them in tomorrow. Here’s a sample, the core box in English:
Address Changes: You can still log into the Pledge Manager and change your address yourself. There is no need to contact us to change your address. We will give you plenty of notice before we lock this feature of the PM, but expect this to happen mid-July. We will give you an exact date once we know it. We will have to lock the address at that time to give our fulfillment partners time to process the paperwork in advance of shipping.
Dates: We are confident that we will meet the end of May deadline. As we said, the manufacturer has started processing the English files and is creating miniatures in bulk. We expect packages in all printed languages to leave China in the second half of Q3. It may take up to 5 weeks for these packages to arrive at our fulfillment centers around the world, so we expect that fulfillment will start in Q4. As we get closer, we will be more specific.
Stay safe, stay sane, and pick a side!
Off to China
almost 4 years ago
– Fri, May 08, 2020 at 08:50:22 PM
Hello Heroes!
As the Covid-19 pandemic continues, we hope you and your families are well and that the only ill effect is the boredom and stress from isolation. Stay strong and do what you need to do to keep everyone around you safe.
A lot has happened since our last update.
Large Rule Books: In the last few updates, we showed you final copies of the Word document versions of all three rule books. Many thanks to those of you that read them and sent us feedback. All three rulebooks have been laid out, reviewed and approved. We think they are lovely! As was planned, they were sent to the manufacturer in April. You can see them here:
Core Rule Book
The Cursed Fjord Rule Book
The Witches' Sabbath Rule Book
Note that the core rule book is the high resolution print version. We need to recreate the low-res online version. We will switch the files over when we do that task.
Cards: All game cards, for the core, the large expansions and smaller Add-Ons have been also been sent to China, again in April.
Miniatures: We’ve already shown you a lot of progress creating our minis, first sculpts, then resin prototypes, and finally approved PVC miniatures made from production steel molds. There is only one more step and it’s started: actually mass producing the miniatures. Here are photos from the factory floor:
Boxes: We are currently adding the finishing touches to the boxes, and hope to get that done this week.
Translation is going very well. We originally forecast a 3 month delay between finishing the English material and the translations. The English content was completed in April and we are almost done with the three translations. Here are the details:
Card Translations: German and Spanish translations have had a final review and we expect to approve the last of the edits on Saturday and Monday, respectively. For French, we hope to get the final file next week.
Rule Book Translations: All three rule books have been translated into German and Spanish and these are being laid out now. We are expecting completed French rule books next week at the same time as the cards.
Once the cards and rules layouts are complete, we’ll show the translations to you (at the moment, the documents are missing their images, so they are hard to understand).
Production Review: The next stage for these items is for the manufacturer to send us digital and then physical proofs. It will be great to get our hands on cards and rule books in the second step!
Address Changes: You can still log into the Pledge Manager and change your address yourself. There is no need to contact us to change your address. We will give you plenty of notice before we lock this feature of the PM.
Dates: We told you we wanted to get all the material to China in April/May. The bulk of the English material, the three large rule books and all the cards were sent in April and the English boxes will follow soon. We should start sending translated material next week. The manufacturer assures us that the Coronavirus in China will not affect production of the game. There has been no slip in the deadline, compared to the last update.
Stay safe, stay sane, and pick a side!
No Rest for the Wicked
about 4 years ago
– Fri, Apr 10, 2020 at 11:06:25 AM
Welcome Witch Masters!
We’re back with another progress update, but first let us say that we hope everyone is okay. Even if you or someone you know is not sick, we are sure the Covid-19 pandemic is having an effect on you. Stay strong and do what you need to do to keep everyone around you safe.
The Witches’ Sabbath: We have shown you the first two rule books, here is the third. By now, you know the drill: this contains the special rules and Encounters, but the lore is written in an external document that the graphic artist uses to fill white space as they lay the main document out. (Since this is a pretty small rule book, we think the lore might end up as a simple section in the middle.)
Here is the PDF, if you want to take a look:
Click here for the near final “The Witches Sabbath” rulebook.
If you send us feedback to the support e-mail address, we will try to incorporate it. Be quick, we want to send this out to the translators.
Core Game: This is progressing through the system. We sent it to the translators and our graphic artist some time ago and we have received good feedback. The translators are ahead of where we expected them to be and the layout of the English version is almost complete (it looks lovely!). We expect to show you the English rulebook in the next update.
The Cursed Fjord: Like the core book, this is off our desk and is in the pipeline. Translators have reviewed it and asked great questions, so we know work has started. For the English layout, this is not started yet, but that is our choice. It will follow the style of the core book, so we want to get that finished first. Since “The Cursed Fjord” and “The Witches’ Sabbath” rule books will use the same formatting and are much shorter, we expect their layout to be done very quickly.
Late Pledges: We will stop taking late pledges on April 15 at 3 pm EDT.
Address Changes: If you need to, you can still log into the Pledge Manager and change your address yourself. There is no need to contact us to change your address. We will give you plenty of notice when we lock this feature of the PM.
Incomplete Pledges: There are some backers that have not completed their pledges. You can finalize your pledge to stop BackerKit sending you mail about this project. We have emailed backers that have not completed their pledge ourselves, but we did not always receive responses. Please keep in mind that there might be additional charges in case where you do not complete the pledge manager before the deadline: April 15, 3pm EDT.
Production Review: The manufacturer has sent us a handful of cards as color proofs. We have great news – we have approved the colors from this first batch!
Dates: Way back in Update #56, we said our best estimate of when we will be sending all files to the manufacturer would between April and August. We are now revising that to April-May. We are pushing really hard to get the material ready for the end of April. The manufacturer assures us that the Coronavirus in China will not affect production of the game.
As should be clear, we are now working with many people outside the company, graphic artists, translators, the manufacturer, etc. So far, this has been an excellent process and we are very happy with both the results and timing. However, with more people involved, there is more chance that someone will be badly affected by the Covid-19 pandemic. We want all our colleagues to be safe. Please understand these estimates are only estimates.
Stay safe, stay sane, and pick a side!
Progress – The Cursed Fjord and More
about 4 years ago
– Tue, Mar 10, 2020 at 02:16:50 AM
Hello Heroes!
We’re back with another brief update to let you know we are making solid progress.
The Cursed Fjord: The new rules have been collected together for the first time as a rule book. The 5 Encounters are fully play tested and written up. We are almost done with the rule book, just a few more re-reads for proofing!
As before, the lore is written but is not incorporated into this draft of the rule book. We pass it to the graphic artist in a separate document and they use it to fill white space as they lay the main document out. (Since this is a pretty small rule book, we think the lore might end up as a simple section in the middle.)
We have a PDF of this version of the rule book, if you want to look at it:
Click here for the near final “The Cursed Fjord” rule book.
If you send us feedback to the support e-mail address, we will try to incorporate it. Don’t worry, we will proof read it again several times before the release!
Core Game: This is progressing through the system. We have sent it to the translators and our graphic artist! I can’t wait to see how it looks. We can report on this in more detail once the different teams work up a head of steam. Right now, they have only just started.
The Witches’ Sabbath: Starting next week, getting this written up will be our focus.
We have not revised our time estimate from Update #56, where we said our best estimate of when we will be sending all files to the manufacturer would be between April and August. Since publishing that date, work has continued well and we think we will likely be sending the files in the early part of that time window.
As you all know, the Coronavirus has affected work in China. We are currently told that it will not affect our manufacturing window. However, we can only be sure that the situation will change. Let’s hope it’s a change for the better and people around the world are safe. Of course, we will continue to monitor the situation closely.
Pick a side!
