Pre-Production Copy Pictures!
almost 5 years ago – Thu, May 02, 2019 at 02:53:26 AM

The pre-production copy has arrived and it is looking beautiful! Get ready for some oooey, gooey pictures. TLDR: We had to make a few tweaks after seeing the PPC but we're still on schedule.

Pictures

Put on your witch hat and hold onto your boomstick 'cause we have pictures incoming! Keep in mind that the pre-production copy is of a much lower quality as it is digitally printed with some hand-made components, so there will be some rough edges in this version. That being said.... even this version looks incredible, so the final version will be sure to astound and amaze. 

We'll have more pictures in future updates as well, but those should satisfy your thirst for a bit.

Schedule

The PPC revealed some typos and some component updates that had to be made. We submitted updated files for them, the manufacturer already sent us a new digital proof for them, and we approved them. Some updated physical samples were also tweaked and are in the mail to us, scheduled to arrive early next week. We are in the middle of the Chinese Labor Day holiday right now so the plant has emptied out until Monday, but when workers come back, they'll be getting ready to put this baby into mass production. 

Looking a bit further ahead, the freight shipping phase should begin in late June or early July so that’s when credit cards will be charged for any BackerKit add-ons. We’re going to wait until the manufacturer gives us an estimated completion date before we estimate your delivery date, but we might be able to do that in the next update.

As always, we'll keep giving you mini updates on the main campaign page as we go.

-Clayton and Brian

Almost Done with Pre-Production Phase
about 5 years ago – Sat, Apr 06, 2019 at 12:18:57 AM

Greeting Constables!

We held back our urge to send a completely bogus update about some terrible catastrophe happening on this campaign as an April Fools joke..... but we figured you've had enough of those real updates that we don't want to get anyone too worked up about it. Don’t worry, things are still going smoothly and on schedule.

Status Update

We’re at a point where most of the work is not very exciting for you since it’s a lot of monotonous, behind-the-scenes work of moving images around by a few pixels and re-checking the same files over and over again, but we want to give an update at least once/month with the latest, no matter what.

We’ve gone back and forth with the manufacturer a few times making sure the print files fit the requirements for their machines and typos and size mismatches have been corrected. All of that work is done and they are now creating physical pre-production samples of all the components. They haven’t shipped those out to us yet but they expect to very soon. When we receive them, we’ll take lots of pictures, so you can look forward to those in the next update. 

Surveys are Closed

The BackerKit surveys are now closed and we’ve ordered all the copies we’re going to print so you can’t make any more changes to your order. If you’ve moved or will be moving in the next few months, you can still update your address using this link and logging in with your Kickstarter email address. We’ll leave that option open as long as possible.  We will charge your credit cards for BackerKit additions once we begin freight shipping in ~May.  

Countries

Since we don't have any fancy pictures to show you this time, we thought you might find it interesting to see from which countries our New Salem citizens are visiting. Here's a list of the country and the percentage of backers from it. Note: This list may not include all of our retailers and it might have some cancelled pledges in there, so it's not 100% accurate, but it's a good thumb in the wind.

• Australia 3.78%   
• Austria 0.61%
• Belgium 2.32%   
• Brazil 0.24%   
• Canada 6.34%   
• China 0.12%   
• Costa Rica 0.12%   
• Czech Republic 0.24%   
• Denmark 0.49%   
• Estonia 0.12%   
• Finland 0.61%   
• France 5.12%   
• Germany 5.12%   
• Greece 0.37%   
• Hong Kong 0.37%   
• Hungary 0.37%   
• Indonesia 0.24%   
• Ireland 0.12%   
• Israel 0.37%   
• Italy 1.59%   
• Japan 0.49%   
• Korea 0.37%   
• Latvia 0.12%   
• Luxembourg 0.12%   
• Malaysia 0.12%   
• Mexico 0.24%   
• Netherlands 1.34%   
• New Zealand 1.34%   
• Norway 0.37%   
• Peru 0.12%   
• Philippines 0.12%   
• Poland 0.49%   
• Portugal 0.37%   
• Puerto Rico 0.12%   
• Romania 0.12%   
• Saudi Arabia 0.12%   
• Singapore 0.49%   
• Spain 1.71%   
• Sweden 0.98%   
• Switzerland 0.24%   
• Taiwan 0.12%   
• Thailand 0.73%   
• United Kingdom 8.41%   
• United States 52.68%

The biggest surprise is that we usually have around 20% of backers from the United Kingdom but maybe Brexit is scaring them away this time. Canada is usually around 10% too so that's a bit lower than usual as well.

Well, thanks for tuning into another update. We’re continuing to comment with mini updates on the main page as progress is made so you can always check in there if you’re curious about what has been happening since the last update. And as always, you can feel free to send us a KS message, comment, or email [email protected] if you have any questions at all.

Until next time,

Clayton and Brian

Surveys Closing Soon
about 5 years ago – Fri, Mar 08, 2019 at 10:49:50 PM

Madam or Sir Constable,

We have been quite busy preparing New Salem for your arrival. We are working with the manufacturer to line up our print files with their printing machines, which is important, but excessively boring to describe ore read about so we won't go into too much detail. In this update, we will give you a 1 week warning for surveys closing and share the list of tasks that will takes us from where we are now to getting your reward in your hands.

Surveys Closing Soon

Almost everyone has completed their BackerKit survey, but if you haven't gotten around to it yet, you have 1 week left to do so before they are locked, which will happen after the sun sets on the 15th day of March. At that point, we will finalize our order quantities for the manufacturer and no more changes can be made to survey responses. We will charge your credit cards for BackerKit additions once we begin freight shipping in ~May. 

If you have misplaced your survey link or you setup an auto-delete rule in your inbox for all the BackerKit emails you're getting, you can also get to your survey with this link.

The Tasks Before Us

We strive to be extremely transparent throughout the journey from Kickstarter funding to your reward reaching your welcoming arms. With that in mind, in each update we send, you will see the following image turn more and more green as that special day gets closer. 

I know. It's long. But we've done this many, many times so we got this. Hopefully it brightens your day to see that the Design Preparation phase is complete! That means the game design is done, the illustrations and graphic design are done, and we sent the manufacturer all the print files. Then they took all those files, looked them over, and asked for some modifications to get the resolution and colors just right to fit their printers. We're in the process of updating everything as they have requested, after which they can start creating color and physical samples for us to approve. Hopefully by the next update, we will have gotten some samples and we can let ya know how they're lookin'.

As we mentioned previously, we're going to send an update about once per month as we go, or sooner if we have exciting news to share like pretty pictures or Game of Thrones spoilers. :-0 As always, feel free to send us a KS message, comment, or you can email [email protected] if you have any questions.

Watch out for dragons and white walkers,

Clayton and Brian

Surveys Now Available and a Meeple Mixup
about 5 years ago – Thu, Feb 14, 2019 at 01:46:03 AM

Greetings Constables! 

We hope you're getting ready for a LOVE-ly Valentine's Day! This update contains details about the survey, card sizes for you sleevers out there, and a slight change for the All the Things backers.

Surveys Going Out

Your BackerKit surveys will be going out within the next 48 hours! Let us know if you have trouble accessing it. If you don’t see the email with subject "Response Needed -- Get your reward for New Salem 2nd Edition" within the next 48 hours, you should be able to get to it right here if you log-in with your Kickstarter email address.

YOU MUST FILL OUT THE BACKERKIT SURVEY TO RECEIVE YOUR REWARD. It will be open for 1 month, until March 15th. (you can thank @ThisIsDavin for convincing us to give you a little more time) Don’t forget to add your custom poker sleeves!

Retailers: You can fill out the BackerKit surveys as if you are not getting a reward or ignore it (although if you ignore it, you’ll get some annoying emails reminding you to fill it out). If you did not receive an email or Kickstarter message asking for an estimate, you’re not on our retailer list, which means you need to get on it by sending a Kickstarter message to us or an email to [email protected].

The Meeple Mix-Up for All the Things Backers

As we setup the BackerKit surveys and looked at the inventory of everything we have to see how much we can make available, we realized we messed up on something that will affect the All the Things backers, but don’t worry, we believe it will actually work out in your favor. We discovered we are a little short on one item: The Custom Barker’s Row Meeple Pack. This pack is an extra set of meeples, identical to the 4 sets that are already in the game.

Since we’re short on those, we could certainly manufacture more for you, but that would be expensive and we figure you would rather have us make more of the New Salem ones instead. So rather than giving you 1 set of custom New Salem meeples and 1 extra set of original meeples (the original plan), we’re going to give you 2 sets of New Salem meeples to go with the 4 sets of original meeples that are already in the game (the new plan). It will give you much more variety that way. But if anyone really wants only 1 set of New Salem meeples and the 5th set of original Barker’s Row meeples for some strange reason, just let us know and we will make it happen for you. Since a picture is worth a thousand words:

Sorry for the change, everyone. We take delivering everything we promised (or more) very seriously, but we hope everyone feels this is better anyway.

Sleeve/Card Counts and Sizes

In the comments, Chuck Norris asked about what size the cards are so he can buy some sleeves. We figured we might as well just share this information here for the benefit of everyone. We’ll explain based on your pledge level because it's a bit different for each:

For All the Things backers, every card you get will come with a custom sleeve to go with it. You do NOT need to worry about sleeves AT ALL.

For all Deluxe backers, you will get 10 tarot-sized Character cards (70mmx120mm). However, every deluxe pledge comes with 12 custom tarot sleeves for them so you do not need to worry about buying more sleeves for those. Please read the next paragraph about the rest of your cards.

For everyone who is NOT an All-the-Things-backer, your 189 poker-sized cards (63x88mm) will NOT have any sleeves. In the pledge manager, you will be able to add on 200 custom sleeves for $17 USD. A good set of 200 non-custom sleeves would be about that price, so we figure you can't really pass up so you don’t have to worry about it and it will all just come in the same box.

OrcCon

For those in the Los Angeles area, Brian will be at Strategicon's OrcCon this weekend demo'ing a bunch of our games, including a prototype of New Salem 2nd Edition! Please look in the event book for those event times and come say hi and/or accuse him of being a witch!

We’re going to leave it at that for now so you can jump into your surveys. In the next update, likely in a few weeks, we’ll go into more detail about the schedule.

Thanks all!

Clayton and Brian

We Did It!
about 5 years ago – Thu, Jan 31, 2019 at 10:22:35 PM

Well Constables,

Here we are, almost 1000 backers and an over-funded campaign. For those of you who backed the first attempt at this campaign, you believed in us enough to come back and we love you for that. For those of you who gave us your advice on what to change in the second round, you showed us the way and we thank you for that. For all of you who are counting on us to deliver to you this experience, we are committing to seeing it through with transparency along the way, and you can hold us to that.

Schedule

So here's the plan.  

•  Now: Kickstarter will charge your cards now for your campaign pledges. If it doesn't go through you have a few days to correct it.
•  Next Week: We’ll be submitting print files to the manufacturer next week. They are starting Chinese New Year so it will likely take a little longer than usual for them to look them over and let is know what needs to be tweaked to fit their machines. This process may take over a month before all their requested corrections have been made.
•  Feb: BackerKit surveys will go out in the next week or two so we know how many of each item to make. You'll keep it open for about 2 weeks so you can add your sleeves and such.
•  March: The samples will begin coming in, which could go quickly if they all look good, or could take a lot of back and forth before we ensure this game is perfect.
•  April: We will likely still be finishing up the sample approval process around this time and then hopefully starting the manufacturing as well.
•  May: This will be the core month for manufacturing. Once they start printing, it will likely take about 2 months before they finish.
•  June: Manufacturing will be finishing up and freight shipping begins. This will take about 7 weeks before all of our warehouses have their copies.
•  July: All warehouses should have the games in this month and they'll be received and sorted by the fulfillment centers. This is when your card will be charged for any BackerKit things you purchased.
•  August: Fulfillment begins! Games will begin to arrive at your door, well before your Halloween festivities.

This schedule has a bit of buffer in it, but if something major goes awry, this could slip, but we'll keep you updated if that happens. We've done this many, many times before so we have this under control. We don't take your trust in us lightly. We know you are investing in us and we won't let you down.

Pledge Changes

We have already had a bunch of requests for changes to pledges and those who missed the campaign. In the past, we used to do a bunch of things behind the scenes to help everyone out, but it has led to a lot of problems and orders slipping through the cracks of a very complex fulfillment process so there aren't many changes we can make now. The BackerKit survey will be pretty flexible, so you'll be able to move things around there.

If you hear of any friends who missed out and want a copy, they can pick up the standard version of New Salem here in the pre-order system. It's important to us to keep things fair for everyone too, and being rigid on our change policy helps with that.

Feel free to reach out to us via Kickstater message or via email at [email protected] if you have any questions. Our next update will be in about 2 weeks when the BackerKit surveys are about to be sent.

Until then, thanks again everyone, you're the best,

-Clayton and Brian