Monday, March 25

Regular Cadence

It’s the end of March and the end of the first quarter of the year this week. I have a number of tasks I do monthly and a few I do every quarter, so in addition to shipping the 13 copies of FlickFleet I finished on the weekend I’ll be doing a Kickstarter update (monthly), financial reporting to Paul (monthly and quarterly), sending out an email newsletter (quarterly) and a board report to our board of advisers (quarterly).

It’ll be a busy week, but we’ve had a great few months and I’m looking forward to sharing that with the various groups of people who receive those messages.

As with many startups we got off to a slow start, racking up costs associated with FlickFleet development and the Kickstarter without any sales to offset them. Now that we have started shipping (and are ahead of schedule :-) ) things are looking much more positive!

I've also run out of cut ships now, so after I've posted last week's games I'll just be building up boxes until Paul and I meet up, then I can give them to him so he can start shipping too.

Monday, March 18

Now With Added Colour!

I had a really busy week at work last week and The Toddler had a cold and hence slept even worse than usual, but I still managed to get 13 copies in the post (the last of the Uprising Heroes and a prize for the design a scenario competition I held last year). On the weekend I made another 12 copies (the first of the Reinforcements tier - due in June). That leaves me with another 12 games’ worth of bits that I got from Paul on our weekend away recently. Once I’ve finished those (hopefully this week) I’ll be building up boxes again for our next exchange of pieces.

I’ve got three more weeks of crafting and then I’m away for a week’s holiday with the whole of my family (16 of us) during which I imagine we’ll play some games of FlickFleet.

At the moment I’m focusing on trying to get as many made and shipped as possible before we move house in the next 2-3 months. 

Meanwhile over on the Kickstarter page a couple of people have asked if it's possible to colour the etching on the Deluxe ships so the names are more legible from a distance. Paul's been experimenting and come up with these results:

Colourful Dreadnought!

He drew in the line with a Sharpie pen and then quickly wiped off the excess with a WD-40 soaked paper towel!

Monday, March 11

Uprising Heroes Complete!

The first deluxe tier in our FlickFleet Kickstarter was set for delivery in March 2019. The Kickstarter completed on the 8th Dec and we didn’t get the funds until the 21st (by which time I was already on Christmas holiday!). We didn’t start ordering things until early January and the laser cutter wasn’t fully operational until early February, so it was always going to be tight, but I’m delighted to say that I finished the last of the 52 copies we needed to make last night (Paul is way ahead of me!) and I’ll be posting them all this week - with two weeks to spare before the end of the month I’m very hopeful that they’ll all arrive on time.

The last few copies of the first tier of rewards

We also been getting people sharing pictures of their received copies on twitter and Facebook and even some pictures of it in play at Airecon this weekend :-)

It feels great to be making and shipping copies on time and also to see it out the wild with people enjoying it.

I’ll be sending out the next Kickstarter survey this week and hope to start shipping the next tier of rewards (due in June) next week. I should be able to do about thirty of those before running out of laser cut bits at which point I’ll have to meet up with Paul again to get some more.

I’ve also been thinking about what's next after FlickFleet fulfilment completes. I’ve a couple of game ideas that meet the Eurydice criteria (fast, fun and unique) but they all require a decent chunk of work before they are ready (if ever).

Plenty to keep me busy!

Monday, March 4

FlickFleet in Flight!

As I mentioned last week, we’re now shipping FlickFleet. On Saturday Paul posted 28 of the 30 copies he’s done (he’s hand-delivering the last two to friends) and over the weekend I made another 11 copies of my bits and added the bits Paul gave me last weekend to them and I’ll be posting those during my lunch breaks this week.

Paul’s postage piles!

The first and last groups of games were always going to be the tightest - the first because we had to order everything and get the laser cutter set up and running properly; the last because there’s well over 100 of them. I’m delighted that we’re on track still - so many Kickstarters deliver late, to be making all the games by hand and still hitting our deadlines is a real achievement, and it’ll set us up nicely for future Kickstarters - we’ll have a reputation for trustworthiness in terms of delivery that can only be earned by coming through on your promises.

The next challenge will be that we’re moving house in the next few months which will obviously be disruptive - I want to get as many copies shipped before the move as possible to minimise the disruption. Back to the crafting board!