Grafting

Paul makes all the FlickFleet games himself.

On a laser-cutter in his garage.

But that’s not all of it.

He sorts and packs the dashboards.

He counts and bags all the wooden bits.

Then the right ships in with them.

Then boxes everything.

Then parcels, addresses and ships all the orders.

It’s an enormous amount of work.

Especially when we have a crowdfunding campaign to fulfil.

Hundreds of orders.

All more or less at once.

My wife had friends round for her and the girls this weekend.

So I went to York.

And lent a hand.

For 24 hours only.

But we bagged hundreds of ships.

100 copies of FlickFleet.

And most of 100 copies of the new expansion.

And we managed to get a couple of games of Battle of Hoth in too :)

In other news, the Exodus campaign finishes tomorrow!

Last chance to back.

Retail-ish

We're back from Tabletop Scotland.

Where we had a good weekend.

Sales started very slow.

But ended strong, so a good weekend overall.

And we picked up another retail stockist for FlickFleet.

Mighty Minis in Whitburn, West Lothian, Scotland. 

Our first Scottish retailer.

We recently picked up one in Northern Ireland too: Roast & Roll, in Banbridge. 

And another in England, The Rogue Trader Warehouse in County Durham.

We make the games ourselves.

In Paul's garage.

We have neither the volume nor the margins to get into distribution.

Just a few direct sales to shops in the UK.

The new ones add to the few we've been working in previous years.

Travelling Man in Newcastle, York, Leeds and Manchester.

Roll It! in Scarborough where I did a demo day last year.

Bridge Command in London, a starship simulator.

Plus Farplace Games and Gloucester Geek Society who help us cover conventions we can't reach.

Small scale, but growing!

Back, Briefly

It's been a whirlwind few days.

First my father-in-law and his partner visited us for a few days.

Then we went off to the Lake District for a end of holiday weekend with friends.

Now The Wife is in Dublin for a week.

Then she gets back and Paul arrives and we're off to Tabletop Scotland in Edinburgh.

We're on stand C1-02!

We'll be running our FlickFleet competition for the first and last hour of each day, and demos the rest of the time.

While The Wife is away, I'll spend by evenings and possibly lunch breaks finishing off the Exodus from Reynoldsworld campaign page.

There's just over a week to go before it launches.

It, like our other print and play games, is tariff-free for our American fans, despite the recent changes :)

Tariffs

In a lot of ways we’re lucky.

We make FlickFleet in Paul’s garage.

In York. In the UK.

So it’s not getting hit by the made in China tariffs introduced in the US.

The UK was fairly quick to strike a trade deal.

And we got 10%.

But we’ve benefited a lot from De Minimis.

The exception for orders under $800.

Half our orders go to the US.

Half!

The De Minimis rules were due to end.

In July 2027.

We had a couple of years to formulate a plan.

A few weeks ago that changed. 

It’s now next weekend.

All our orders to the US will get hit by a 10% tariff.

And whatever charge the courier feels like passing on for the hassle.

Or maybe even a higher flat rate fee?

We’ve stopped advertising to the US.

It’s going to have a huge effect on us.

For the moment we’re recommending US customers contact us about folding their orders in with the crowdfunding rewards we’re shipping in bulk towards the end of October.

Preview

Our next campaign, for our 4th print at home roll & write game is now in preview.

Exodus from Reynoldsworld

Exodus is a 1-6 player roll and write that takes 15-30 minutes to play.

You're a starship captain, saving the population of a planet under threat from an approaching alien armada.

In the first half of the game you build a ship. Do you go for fast and sleek? Or slow and capacious?

Then you set out on the dangerous journey from Reynoldsworld to one of six nearby habitable worlds.

There's a big bonus for forming the first colony, plus arriving first at any of the six planets gets you another bonus, so watch where your opponents are heading.

After dropping off your cargo of colonists and supplies to get them started, you can return to Reynoldsworld for more, or head straight on to another nearby world to try to get there ahead of your competitors.

Will you end the game as the saviour of Reynoldsworld, or will they just name a park after you?

Follow the campaign to be notified when it launches in September.

While I've been focussing on Exodus, Paul has been busy too.

We've now started shipping the playmats from the Box of Xeno Flicks 1 campaign, and we're receiving the final materials for the campaign early this week, so manufacturing can begin in earnest shortly too.

Busy, busy!

Next

This weekend I’ve started work on the Gamefound campaign for our next print at home roll and write game.

It’s called Exodus From Reynoldsworld.

You have to save the population of a planet.

Under threat of an alien armada.

Build a ship.

Do you go small and fast? Or slow and capacious?

Over-index on engines and fuel to go faster?

Or cram in as many people as possible?

Build shields to protect your cargo?

Or accept the inevitable attrition of a dangerous crossing?

Once you built your ship, choose a destination.

Try to get there first and get the founding bonus?

It feels a little like Galaxy Trucker.

Coming to Gamefound next month I hope, assuming I can get the page finished in time.

Finished. Not Finished. Finished Again?

I've spent the last week in a treehouse in the woods.

And on bikes and beaches.

And enjoying pretty towns and villages.

And fresh seafood.

And working on Exodus again.

It was finished.

I'd done the graphic design.

And the final rulebook.

I took some blank sheets with me to work on some ideas for extra sheets.

And a few ordinary sheets too.

I had an idea.

Tried it out a few times.

It's an improvement.

Now I need to update everything with the changes.

Is it done now?