Yeah, the shipping for my last Button Shy order was a bit of a shock. I ended up using a forwarding service, but their costs had gone up loads as well, so I don’t think it made much difference. I should really head down the print-and-play route. I don’t have a (working) printer, but I’m confident I could still find a more cost-effective solution. Heck, buying a printer would probably be a cost-effective solution.
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Came here to post/comment on this.
I have CoB deluxe and am waiting for Puerto Rico deluxe. For PR I backed at the lowest level as I don’t need ship minis or 3d goods. I’m still baffled at how Awaken Realms can deliver a deluxe Puerto Rico for 2/3 the cost that Asmadi can deliver Innovation. And half of what Loneshark took for a very standard implementation of Lords of Vegas. No I will NOT shut up about this for the foreseeable future and YES I did make the decision myself to back each of these.
I’m a bit torn. Awaken Realms does generally good work. I have E I K Wm Fr A B C, plus Farmers of the Moor. Folded space. The only real additional deck I’d want is G, though it’d give me warm fuzzies to have ALLTHEDECKZORZ. I would like to have all those decks without the verbiage / card back disconnect between the original and revised.
However, I really like the wooden discs for workers, wheat, and vegetables. It’s so clean on the table. They stack so effortlessly. I’ve already been very averse to farmer meeples. Klemens Franz, are they going to overwrite his art? It’s very distinct and Agricola is inseparable from it. I’m also not sure I’d want animinis rather than animeeples. Agricola looks very right on the table.
I do think I want an Agricola Complete, maybe with upgrades like embossed boards to hold the fences in place and top of the line cardboard. I don’t think I want the Awaken Realms treatment.
Definitely a wait and see situation.
Also, this. In case you wanted to save your family from starving, winter, AND zombies all at the same time. I don’t know how fast they spun this up, there was a comment in the Agricola board about turning Gric into a co-op, followed by one about yeah, and we’re all protecting our farms from a zombie apocalypse… and now we have Agricola Dead Harvest.
(I’m assuming the comments were sarcastic and this was already in flight.)
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The cost of living and, therefore, labor is about half as much in Poland as it is in Massachusetts, US or Seattle, US.
And, unless things have changed, there is actually boardgame manufacturing happening in Poland. Honestly, Awaken Realms is really poised well in the industry – I just wish they didn’t insist on filling all their products with plastics. However, that said, I’m sure their Kickstarter spectacles are paying the bills.
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This. I shouldn’t have forgotten it. More than the cost of living in the designer’s/publisher’s locale is the time to delivery. A tight house like Allplay or Awaken Realms can run a campaign, design, and deliver in less than a year and then work on the next one - each game only needs to cover overhead for a fixed number of months.
A house like Asmadi or Loneshark that takes over a year, and isn’t running multiple campaigns, needs to allocate all their salaries and overhead over a significant period of time to the project.
I’d stopped thinking about that!
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Also I am pretty sure Awaken Realms is much bigger - and does bigger print runs - than either Asmadi or Lone Shark.
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Fromage seems to have been very popular, new KS for the standalone expansion set in Italy:
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/roadtoinfamy/formaggio
Prices seems decent for the US too (kickstarter boardgames are now simply impossible for the UK because all shipping is £100 and/or a year, but for the US $39 is very reasonable).
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Inis Big Box on the way, along with a new expansion called “Nemed”.
(Although it looks like they mean Nemeton, sacred grove, and not Macha’s husband Nemed).
https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/matagot/inis-big-box-featuring-nemed-expansion
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From what i read, they changed the production so it is incompatible with existing copies.
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Is backwards compatibility needed for a “Big Box” edition of any game?
If the “Big Box” did not include expansions* released for the original game, is to truly a “Big Box” edition?
'* Promos are tricky because while I would want them included in a “Big Box” edition, I can understand why they wouldn’t be.
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I think it means that they wont release the Nemed exp by itself.
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Carcassonne has had numerous big box editions. Maybe the first one included all the then available expansions, but none of the others did.
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A box which contained all of the Carcassonne would be quite the thing.
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I’ve just taken the plunge with my first crowdfunding pledge, being most intrigued by the “solarpunk” narrative ttrpg Why We Fight which looks like it could be most prescient for the years ahead.
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Avoiding the whole politics of the situation. I’ve just recieved the second update on a Kickstarter where they are handling the tariffs to import from China to the US by covering the costs themselves and recouping via raised US retail prices. So if I understand this correctly the US is gonna face the tariffs on games, and for these kickstarters additional increased retail prices to cover the US Kickstarter backers tariffs.
Anyone else seen other kickstarters taking this approach?
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Restoration Games’ latest KS update for the TMNT Unmatched Adventures game mentions that they’re expecting to cover the tariff, which as of the time of writing was 20%. They are not intending to charge backers any extra. Whether they intend to try to make up the costs at retail with their remaining inventory is not mentioned, but I would consider it likely.
Just hope the tariffs are either lower or gone by the time it matters. Or maybe the cause of the tariffs…
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I had one kickstarter that was already fully paid for through the pledge manager, including the shipping cost that was added later, reopen the pledge manager to add a fee to all US orders. It was just under $2 that they added which, as they pointed out, is not that much to add to one order but could be a big problem for the company to cover for thousands of orders.
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The Old Kings Crown said similar today
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As far as I can tell, it’s 20% of manufacturing costs, not 20% of MSRP.
In many cases, manufacturing costs can be 10%-20% of MSRP (for production volumes greater than 10000, higher otherwise).
So the tariff on a $80 game could be $3.20 (20% of 20%).
That’s a ton of money when you’re importing thousands of games on a pre-tariff budget- but hopefully manageable on future projects (because they’ll just raise the price of the pledges)
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With the caveat that these tariffs have been highly arbitrary and enacted on little to no notice, so if they stay stable, easy to just build into pricing (still a problem on a bunch of stuff that’s already very inflated from the pandemic days, but a solution for the company at least). But it doesn’t seem like they will stay stable.
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I’ve been following the LOTR: The Confrontation campaign. I’m fortunate to have the old deluxe edition though it’s pretty worn.
These guys just don’t seem to know what they are doing.
Compare to Ethnos 1e - I agree the overall design is atrocious but the Howe art itself is pretty good. All the art they are revealing is just… mezzanine. I think the young kids would say “mid.”
Every update has people panning it in the comments. The balrog looks completely unterrifying. They reveal the new character stands with bombast and everyone says - those are going to fall over. You need to fix the base. And the critics look right.
Anyway, a lot of trepidation over this one. I’d like a nice upgrade but this likely isn’t it. And the fan base / publisher disconnect doesn’t bode well for how the whole thing pans out.
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