Great Week So Far

Sorry I've not blogged for a few days, I've been pretty busy.

It's been a really good week so far. Board and Bits an online shop in the US have picked up It's Alive! and are now offering it for pre-order. The two US distributors I'm in contact with both want to see a finished copy before they'll place an order so it'll be probably a couple of months after I get the boxes that it reaches widespread distribution in the US: a week for them to receive the sample, a week or two for them to make up their minds, two weeks to ship their order, two weeks in customs then another week for them to ship to shops. Getting one of the big US online shops to pick it up now is great, it means that US customers can get it without paying international shipping pretty much as soon as it's available.

This was followed by the German distributors (who operate throughout Europe) expressing an interest in thirty cases. They've not placed an order yet, but hopefully that's pretty close. They at least have seen (and played) a Limited Edition copy, so they know what they're getting into.

On the Carpe Astra front there's good news too. The third playtest copy has finally arrived in the US (over a week after the other one I sent to the US). I've also started getting some feedback from the copy I sent to Germany. Michael took it on holiday with him and has just returned. He played it once according the rules and thought he'd got something wrong (that's what comes of first draft rules - clear as mud!) so he played it again differently. He preferred the second (wrong) version. So I played a couple of solo games of his version and it's very different but I quite liked it. I played it twice (official version and Michael's version) on Tuesday night at a playtesting session I was holding and both versions worked. One of my playtesters preferred the new version, one preferred the old. I've asked my playtesters in the US to try out both versions and let me know which version they prefer.