|
|
|
|
| |
| |
Hi everyone!
I'm in "recovery mode" this week after hosting (and surviving!) our Fall Weekend at the Warehouse this past weekend. It was a blast, as usual! We had 90+ gamers there, along with a half dozen designers showing off their newest games, plus tons of open gaming and Mike Lam's Down in Flames Aces event and Doubles Tournament! The tournament was fun again this year. Samantha and I did our best to defend our title, advancing to the finals, but Chris Janiec and Chris Lefevre shot our dreams "Down in Flames" as it were, and claimed the championship. Congratulations guys!
I want to publicly thank our office ladies and all of our warehouse team for doing such a great job prepping for and supporting the event. Weekends that run as smoothly as this one did don't happen by accident; our team members did a great job of making sure everyone had snacks, pizza, working restrooms, table space, the games they wanted to buy, and most of all, a fun time all weekend. So thanks to Letitia and Elizabeth and all of our office/warehouse team for making this another terrific Weekend at the Warehouse!
Map Issues Causing a Game Delay. OK, I'm going to lead with the bad news. I was prepping this update Tuesday night when I got an update from Tony informing me that we have big trouble with the maps in Commands & Colors: Napoleonics Expansion 6: Epic Napoleonics. We saw and approved the proofs as usual from our printers, but somehow wires got crossed and the printers shipped us full boxed expansions that were missing one of the maps and had the other printed incorrectly. So we have the entire lot of several thousand boxes in the warehouse with bad or missing maps, and that's a big mess at the moment. Tony is working with the printers to get the maps reprinted and reshipped, but it's going to take a while for everything to be right. Our best estimate right now is that this will delay shipping of the expansion until December. We're really sorry for the delay, and will keep you guys updated as we get more details and know what the reshipping schedule looks like.
Systems Transition Progress. The good news is that all the systems transition work we've been doing in the background hasn't impacted the ship schedule much, if at all, this fall. That's a welcome relief. In fact, tomorrow we begin shipping P500 orders for the two "Late October" games: 1846 and Conquest of Paradise, 2nd Edition, along with the mounted map for CoP. So, except for the printing issue with the C&C Nappy game, our fall print schedule is in pretty good shape so far, despite all the transition craziness going on in the background.
As for the transition itself, I'll just say that we're making good progress. We have a new website prepped that is a few weeks from being ready to go live. We also have new agreements with UPS that are going to help our shipping costs, and a new distributor website on the way for Tony. So on the sales and customer interaction end of things, we've made a lot of progress. We still have quite a bit of work to do on the backend side, with warehouse systems and training for the office and warehouse folks, but that's slotted for late October/early November, so hopefully by mid-November or so we'll have everything ready to transition. Rachel and I are currently updating both our current website and the new one, so once we flip the switch, we should be totally up to speed on the content front.
Yearly Sale. I announced last time that we were delaying our yearly sale from October to November, and that's still the plan. I'm just not ready to commit to dates until i know when the new system will be ready to go live. At that point, we'll want to use it for about a week to make sure it's all working as intended before we take on the massive volume of the yearly sale.
New Systems and Your Data. As we get closer to launching the new systems, I'll be giving you all more detail on what you can expect from the new systems and what we'll need you guys to do as we get nearer to bringing the new software online. One thing I know now, as a heads-up, is that everyone will need to re-register with our new website to access your account and re-input your credit card #s into our new system - because we can't transfer encrypted passwords or encrypted card #s for customer accounts from our existing website - but your old account information and order history and P500 orders will still be there. We'll get you specific information on that when we have the system ready.
Digital Game News.
Twilight Struggle. The sales and player feedback for Playdek's digital versions of Twilight Struggle (currently for Mac, PC, and iPad) continue to do very well for us! We're excited to hear from our friends at Playdek that they are now testing the Android version of the game, with an eye toward releasing it before Christmas. This should help significantly broaden the network of Twilight Struggle players and continue to bring new players to the Twilight Struggle experience.
Commands & Colors. We aren't quite ready to release details yet, but look for an announcement over the coming weeks about upcoming digital versions of Commands & Colors Ancients and Commands & Colors Napoleonics! We've found an experienced digital team to license and code those games and contracts are in place. They'll be in charge of release timing, but it's our hope that they'll have the first product to your digital devices during the summer of 2017. More in the upcoming Press Release....
New P500s. Back to boardgames and P500. We had SIX new P500 game additions last month, so we're taking a break from new game additions this time (we do already have several lined up for November!). What we are adding today are some new Mounted Map options - one for each of the three games in the Fast Action Battles (FAB) series and two mounted maps for ConsimPress' Designer Edition of The Russian Campaign. We only need 200 or so orders for each of these items to get them printed, so order away if you'd like one. See the P500 section below for ordering links.
That's it from me for this time.
Now on to the rest of the news.
Enjoy the games!
- Gene
----------
Strategy Help in Labyrinth: The Awakening
Labyrinth: The Awakening has been out for over a month now, so far to rave reviews. For those of you who'd like a little help with winning strategy, designer Trevor Bender has penned a basic strategy primer article in InsideGMT. Check it out and Enjoy!
----------
New Hexasim Game in the Warehouse
We now have about 100 copies of Hexasim's
By Shot, Shock, and Faith in our warehouse and available for sale. Get them while they last, first come-first served. Here's a link to the order page, where you can also find more game details:
-----------
The Player's Aid
Some of you already know about The Player's Aid website. For the rest of you, I encourage you to check it out at theplayersaid.com. It's chock full of in-depth Interviews, Strategy articles, AARs, and Reviews, and a ton of the content is about our games and the guys who design them. Here are some examples of recent articles:
And there's a bunch more really high-quality content. I think you guys will find the site both interesting and useful. Here's the site link. Enjoy!
----------
The Panzer Pusher Website
For you guys who already play or are interested in learning about either of Jim Day's armor series' - Panzer or MBT, check out Fernando Sola's site that is dedicated to support of both of these games series. In addition to cool AARs and detailed content, check out the Scenarios and Maps sections for some new custom scenarios and maps for your games! Here's the site link. Enjoy!
--------
PBEM Wilderness War Tournament
The 5th PBeM Tournament for Wilderness War will begin on or about October 28. All games will be played via ACTS and the tournament should take 18-24 months to complete. The format will be Swiss Elim with four preliminary Swiss rounds to advance eight players to elimination rounds. The details can be found at
http://wildernesswar2016.weebly.com/
If you wish to play, please send an email to the GM: keithwixson@paulhastings.com.
We are officially a go. You may sign up at any time by sending me an email. By 10/28 you must be a BPA member.
--------------
This Month in InsideGMT!
We had a bevy of cool new articles this month in InsideGMT. Here are links to this month's articles:
B&T BiWeekly: Developer's Introduction
And, in case you missed them, here are links to our previous month's InsideGMT articles:
As always, I invite you guys to head over to
www.insidegmt.com, check out the articles, leave us your comments, and tell us what else you'd like to see us do to make
InsideGMT even better!
-------------
San Diego Historical Games Convention
The November San Diego Historical Games Convention (November 11-13, 2016) is now open for registration! This year brings a new venue utilizing the 5,200 square foot Shriner's Hall and sharing a parking lot with the Convention Hotel. This years special guest will be Mark Herman. Come join us in San Diego where it's 70 degrees in November!
http://www.sdhist.com/
-----------------------
GMT Weekend at the Warehouse April 20-23, 2017
We had a great time last weekend at our Fall Weekend at the Warehouse. We had about 90 gamers in attendance, playing a huge variety of new games. I want to especially thank our office and warehouse folks, who work long hours setting up and taking down the event, and especially for their time and effort over the four days to make sure everything runs smoothly and that everyone has a good time.
We've established the dates for our Spring 2017 Weekend.
It will be held April 20-23, 2017, so mark your calendars now! As always, we'll spend the better part of 3 1/2 days, often long into the night, playing your favorite GMT (and non-GMT, if you'd prefer) games. This is mostly an open gaming event, although we do have tournaments from time to time.
The hotel has already blocked rooms for us, so feel free to go ahead and make reservations whenever you are ready.
If you'd like to attend, just call or chat with our office ladies and they'll reserve your spot.
-------------------------
Keep up with GMT Online
Virtually every day, we announce new information or show off upcoming products or give you a peek under the hood of our new designs in our various online sites and forums. For you guys looking to keep up with us online, here's where you can find us. Drop in and start a conversation!
-------------------------
That's it for the news bytes for this time.
Here's what you'll find in the rest of today's update:
- Charge and Shipping Update
- Production Outlook
- P500s
- Project Updates
- P500 Reprint Update
- Website File Additions
Thanks, as always, for your support of GMT!
Enjoy the games!
Gene
|
|
Charging and Shipping Schedule
Shipping
:
We begin shipping tomorrow, October 21st, for the following items:
NOTE: We've had a big problem with map printing on
We have to get them reprinted, and that's going to take over a month. We'll keep you up to date and will ship it as soon as we get the maps reprinted and in the warehouse.
Charging
We'll begin charging for the following Early November P500 releases this Monday, October 24th:
We'll start charging for the remainder of the Mid-Late November releases approximately November 10.
|
|
Tentative Production Schedule
Here's our most current Tentative Production Schedule. It's still possible that our systems and warehouse transition could cause us some delay issues in the near-term schedule, but we only see one change at this time in the late 2016 shipments - the "have to reprint the maps" delay on
C&C Napoleonics Expansion 6 that we mentioned above. For 2017, both
and
have moved up in the schedule this time. Remember, games listed for 2Q and 3Q 2017 could move around quite a lot over the coming months, as many of these have testing still to be completed. Our experience tells us that some testing phases will finish more quickly than we anticipate; others will not.
Games with a ** following their entry are currently at the printer (we're a little more certain about scheduling on these).
October 21, 2016
Early November, 2016
Mid-Late November, 2016
December, 2016
(Getting new maps printed)
January, 2017
February, 2017
March, 2017
2Q, 2017
|
|
Project Updates
In this section, we'll be passing along updated status on a variety of projects, generally direct from the designers or developers. We have only a single update this time. Before we get to that, we have one art update: here's a peek at the map for Illusions of Glory:
----------
We have been really busy with developing Pendragon this past month:
- new release of the Vassal module being very near wider release (two outstanding bugs only)
- publication of the 2nd Volume of the Pendragon Chronicles in InsideGMT, focusing on Raiding, while the next volume on Counter-Raider Warfare should be in the capable hands of Rachel by the time you read this
- continuing work on the new art for the Event cards
- map artist having started work on the map (and like for the cards art, we are lucky to have a most experienced and recognized artist who has already delivered some awesome COIN maps)
- last but not least, Oerjan Ariander is now firmly involved in the development of the bots with Volko, and I must say I am simply amazed by his brilliance: I'm really blessed with a Dream Team to develop Pendragon!
Cheers,
Marc GR
|
|
P500 Reprint News and Tracking
Here's the current status of all the games on our P500 reprint list. Please help us determine what to print by pre-ordering any of these that interest you (you can click on the name link below to go to the P500 reprint page). Thanks for your help!
Here's the current P500 Reprint list - with current order totals and a +/- order growth since last month:
Talon: - 133 Orders (+27)
|
New Game Support Files, Vassal/Cyberboard, and Sneak Peeks
Here are new support files we've added to our website since our last update. Enjoy!
Game Support:
Vassal/Cyberboard/ZunTzu:
|
|
Sincerely,
Your Friends at GMT Games
www.gmtgames.com
Toll Free Order and Support Line: 800-523-6111
E-mail: gmtoffice@gmtgames.com |
|
|
