A Meeting of Minds

Paul and I live about 100 miles apart, he lives in York (where we used to live) and me in Newcastle.

We meet up every couple of months or so for a nice family weekend together and some gaming and Eurydice scheming.

This weekend was one of those. We had a lovely time all hanging out together and Paul taught me three new games (Montana, Fabled Fruit and Century Golem Edition) all of which I really enjoyed. We also spent a decent chunk of time thinking about FlickFleet scenarios, the next FlickFleet release and we had an idea over Sunday breakfast for a new (very different!) game set in the FlickFleet universe that we spent all day Sunday fleshing out in between eating, reading stories to the kids and soft play.

Paul and I being apart is not usually a big problem for Eurydice (most of the stuff can be done via WhatsApp and meeting every couple of months), but we’re in one of the times when it does. The deluxe copies of FlickFleet and the expansion from our second Kickstarter need to be signed by both of us. Those boxes arrive at Paul’s this week (hopefully Thursday), so I can’t do my signatures before then. Paul has everything ready to put in the first 130 or so boxes but can’t post them until I’ve signed them.

So I’ve taken this Friday (my last day in my current job) off and I’ll be travelling down to his house on Thursday after work to spend Thursday evening and Friday frantically signing boxes! Once that’s done we can start fulfilling the Kickstarter at a decent pace.

I’m also hoping to knock up a first cut of our new idea to try out on Thursday evening once we get bored of box signing!

Paul's garage mid construction!

Almost Ready!

Things are starting to move now on the second Kickstarter fulfilment. Last week I made a couple of outstanding website orders and all the Alpha Wing pledges that hadn’t upgraded to a different level in the Pledge manager and I’ve been posting those in my lunch breaks.

I’ve also been catching up on the bookkeeping and trying to collate the Gamefound orders with the Kickstarter backers. Due to an error on my part we didn’t load Kickstarter backers chosen rewards into Gamefound so we have the late pledges and ~90% of people with a Gamefound order and then a bunch of people who haven’t completed the pledge manager so I’ve got to track them down in Kickstarter instead (and chase them for their shipping address). I’m trying to build a single spreadsheet that contains all the information to make fulfilment as straightforward as possible.

The manufacturing orders I whinged about last week are sorting themselves out - the missing acrylic (plus a couple more sheets I needed to order due to another mistake of mine :-( ) arrived on Friday and the missing wooden bits were restocked at our supplier last Friday too and are shipping today. The boxes are due to arrive on Monday 27th and then it's just a case of cutting the bits, bagging them and shipping them.

I was hoping to spend the last day of my current job (31st) going down to York to help Paul with the boxing of bits and to sign all the deluxe boxes, but he's travelling to a convention that day, so we'll need to do that another day instead.

Exciting times!

The Course of True Love...

You know where I’m going with this!

The orders for the FlickFleet fulfilment are not running smooth. Half of the wooden bits order have arrived, they are out of stock of the rest and will send it on when it arrives from their supplier. Annoyingly the bits they've run out of are the ones we’ve run out of too, so we can’t make any more full game sets until they get here.

The acrylic arrived last week. Or at least some of it did. Despite asking them to arrange delivery with Paul (he needed to be in at home to receive it), they didn’t - just emailing me an hour(!) before it was due to arrive at Paul’s. I quickly told him and he raced home from work and it arrived a couple of hours later. When it did arrive, three of the colours were missing. We got on the phone and they were very apologetic and said it would be delivered next morning. It was, but it was only then that Paul double checked and the previous day’s delivery was missing 8 grey sheets (of 155) and 88 red sheets out of 185 (nearly half!). Needless to say we’re chasing that at the moment. And the clear sheets are too small. Not a happy customer.

However, the boxes order is going ok. The proofs are arriving today and assuming they are fine they will be printed next week. Once we’ve got those we can start shipping the sets we’ve got made up.

Paul and I met up yesterday to swap bits. Last year he was cutting the 1st edition box labels and greyboard so I’ve taken all of that plus a decent number of bagged up games so that I can keep fulfilling website/retail orders using the 1st edition leftovers. I've collected the 2nd edition and expansion rules and dashboards from the printers in Newcastle, so I handed all of that over along with some shipping boxes.

This year Paul is taking on all of the construction and shipping in addition to the laser-cutting (thankfully it's a lot easier this year as the dashboards are pre-cut and the boxes made for us). I will continue to do the website, accounts, social media/marketing and graphic design.

Just to prove it's not all going badly, here's a look at some bits coming off the laser-cutter:

The fluorescent objective tokens

All Change

Happy New Year everyone! I hope all had a good winter break/Christmas.

Last week was both quiet and busy. We had four website orders, but I need to meet Paul and get some bits before I can fulfill all of them. I proofed and placed the order for the expansion printing (rules and dashboards) which I’ll collect on Friday and the box proofs are on the way.

There was a problem with the wooden bits order (only half of it arrived) but I hope that will be resolved soon. We’re almost at the point where we can start fulfilling the Kickstarter rewards...

In other news I restarted the Newcastle Playtest group which I co-founded but have been unable to attend for over a year due to FlickFleet crafting and work travel. That’s tomorrow! I’m really looking forward to it. Over the weekend I’ve been making a prototype for another space-themed dexterity game that I’ll be taking along to try out. It’s very early days on this one, so we’ll see how much work it needs. Probably loads.

In yet otherer news I handed in my notice at work last Thursday. I’m going to a new job, still in Newcastle city centre so I can still walk to work and it should include less travel, certainly in the short term, so that’s another bonus. It’s going to be a wrench, I’ve been with my present employer for 8.5 years and have worked there three times over the last 19 years. I’ve known a lot of my colleagues for 19 years and consider several of them my closest friends. Fortunately the new job is with a former sister company, so I’ve known a lot of them for 19 years too!