Hello Grand Festival Backers!

Today is all about Gloomhaven fulfillment updates and the rollout of U.S. tariff surcharges. Important information below for all our backers, but especially our American audience. We also have a brief update from Danielle on the RPG with a quick look at a “Factions” page.

Just as a reminder, we’ve launched our Cephalofair.com/Gloomhaven page, which will serve as your primary game resource repository with features like:

- How-to-Play Video (Gaming Rules! w/ Paul Grogan)

- Rulebook 

- Official FAQ

- Puzzle Book Help Guide (SPOILERS!)

- Crossover Character Sheets (Frosthaven & Jaws of the Lion)

- Unlock Envelope Contents List (SPOILERS!)

Still have questions? 

After checking the above rulebook and FAQ, consider dropping a question over in our official BoardGameGeek FAQ or Reddit r/gloomhaven FAQ threads! 

Big shout out to William (@dwarf74), Cephalofair's official "Keeper of the FAQ", who will be bravely relaying all your uncertainties across our various design team members, replying, and adding to our FAQ over time.

So let’s get into it!

-U.S. TARIFF SURCHARGES-

With our first containers fully imported, we’re now feeling more confident about our assessed, and to-be assessed, additional tax charges on U.S. orders.

As of today, we are implementing the following charges to U.S. pledges, which will need to be PAID via Backerkit Pledge Manager prior to your order being queued for fulfillment:

- Gloomhaven: $15/copy
- Class Upgrade Kit: $10/copy
- Gloomhaven (Retail Backer): $10/copy

The above are flat fees that will be charged to any “Wave 3 - Gloomhaven” cart containing any of the above SKUs on a per unit basis. As a reminder, these U.S. tariff surcharges are a result of new import taxes on board games under the most recent U.S. administration’s trade policy and are out of our control. We greatly appreciate your assistance with these new taxes, as paying them is fundamental to the success of this project as a whole and our ability to fulfill our commitments to you.

We will be running your Pledge Manager payment method automatically on Monday (July 7th) and again on Friday (July 11th) so that we can clear as many orders as possible for fulfillment beginning Monday (July 15th). No action is specifically required, unless you need to update your payment method.

If your card on file is declined, you will receive an email notification from Backerkit about the failed attempt alongside instructions to update your payment method. You can manually re-attempt your payment method, or wait for us to attempt to clear it again on Friday (July 11th).

NOTE: Any failed payments after Friday (July 11th) will result in your order not being queued for fulfillment, and you will need to contact us directly at [email protected] for fulfillment of your order. Failure to contact Cephalofair within a timely manner may result in additional charges, additional refund fees, and/ or loss of pledge as we are assessed monthly storage fees on all unshipped products and cannot hold onto incomplete orders indefinitely.

-GLOOMHAVEN FREIGHT & FULFILLMENT-

SUPPORT REMINDER: A friendly reminder that we are NOT ABLE to individually check fulfillment status or ETA for orders until AFTER FULFILLMENT HAS BEEN COMPLETED (Which we will confirm in our updates). 

Requests sent to our support inbox prior to our signal of “FULFILLMENT COMPLETE” will likely go unanswered and will slow down our response times on other and more urgent support requests. 

Thank you for your patience and understanding! :)

We’ve seen some confusion about how to retrieve/redeem your Forteller Audio Narration redemption codes, so wanted to provide some clearer instructions. Thank you to BoardGameGeek user Kobe S. for bringing attention to this and providing the following steps:

- on Backerkit, click on the avatar icon in the upper right corner

- go to ‘Your pledges & surveys’

- click on ‘Your surveys’ in the upper menu

- click on Gloomhaven Grand Festival

- scroll down to the link ‘Get your digital downloads’

- click the button ‘get your digital downloads’

- copy the Forteller key
- finally, redeem that code in the Forteller app at:
https://fortellergames.com/

Pledges have finally arrived at our partner VFI and our project has been added to their fulfillment queue. Orders are being scheduled and shipped in bulk by region for distribution and end point fulfillment, so we should finally have further completion progress by next update!

All pledges and backerkit preorders that did not have FoldedSpace(FS) items have fully shipped! If you ordered Gloomhaven and FS accessories, your FS items will ship separately. If you ordered only FS + Gloomhaven Accessories (including the Class Upgrade Kit) your order will ship once FS items arrive. Canadian FoldedSpace items are estimated to hit port in about three weeks.

Fulfillment complete! Please note that some items may still be in transit. If you have not received any type of tracking information at this time, please contact [email protected].

Pledges arrived at Spiral Galaxy last Thursday! Address confirmation emails have been deployed (check your email!), and fulfillment is scheduled to start before the end of the week!

PLEASE READ ABOVE “U.S. TARIFF SURCHARGE” SECTION ABOVE IF YOU HAVEN’T YET

The first 2 containers have arrived and cleared customs, we’re expecting them to arrive at our fulfillment warehouse on Friday, July 11th, with orders to start the following week.

The EVER FOCUS ship has three more containers and is scheduled to hit port on July 7th and ONE SWAN is bringing up the rear with about half a container scheduled to arrive at port on Aug 1st. 

As a reminder, we’ve been booking freight as it’s become available from China to the U.S..The surge in the tariff situation has meant needing to book multiple container ships as they have become available, but we can now confidently say everything is on the water and moving towards our U.S. warehouse for fulfillment. 

Both containers arrived in port (Hamburg) over the weekend. Once they clear customs, it will be a few days until it arrives at Fulfillment Europe and will be placed into the fulfillment queue!

And now here is Danielle with a brief look at “Factions” in Gloomhaven the RPG:

“We're still working hard on the layout and design aspects. Last week was curating the faction spreads. Here's an example of how they look using the Keepers of the Great Oak. We've been striving to balance lore and mechanics, giving you a clean spread with fun information to read, but easy to reference mechanical information. This is happening on all chapters, so while it seems like it's taking us a long time, this part is effectively the last finishing touches made to ensure the game has the best presentation for readability and accessibility.” - Danielle

Price here with this week’s update. We’ve got lots of important project updates for you this week on Gloomhaven ocean & land freight, Miniatures of Gloomhaven progress, RPG, and unfortunately continued U.S. tariff impacts.

Let’s jump in. 

-GLOOMHAVEN FREIGHT & FULFILLMENT-

100% of our Gloomhaven ocean freight has shipped! Please see below for an updated Grand Festival project tracker and individual regional freight/fulfillment updates.

Also, please note that Forteller Audio Narration is on target to be distributed via Backerkit pledge manager as we get closer to regional fulfillments We’re also working on making “live” some support FAQ infrastructure and video tutorials for those of you stepping into Gloomhaven for the first time, or returning from your time “away”! More info on all of this in our next update(s)!

You don’t have a vessel as we have a truck(s) incoming to our fulfillment partner VFI from our factory. We’ve got a bit of time until delivery and I’m waiting on some updates from our partners but we’ll report back as soon as we have more from both partners. 

Your vessel, the YM MUTUALITY has arrived at port in Vancouver! We’re currently awaiting an update on ETA to our fulfillment center Universal in Toronto, but anticipate land freight to take approximately 1-2 weeks once it’s been confirmed to have left the port yard. 

Your vessel, the PUSAN C, is currently expected to arrive at port in Melbourne around June 9th according to our docking pre-alert! Yesterday we paid our deposit payment with our fulfillment partner, Aetherworks, and are currently being placed into their fulfillment queue as soon as possible once it arrives. 

Your vessel, the HMM HOPE, is continuing its journey and should be rounding the corner on South Africa any day now. We understand the ETA to currently be near the end of June at which point it will land freight to our fulfillment partner Spiral Galaxy. We’ll provide more updates when we have them but are lining up everything we can to keep things timely once it hits port!

Your ships, the ONE FUTURE &  EVER FOCUS, are both on water and starting their journeys about a week or so apart. These ships will ultimately be heading to our fulfillment partner, Ware2Go, in Nashville Tennessee. We don’t currently have an exact ETA to our warehouse at this point but will of course keep our U.S. backers updated in the weeks to come. We have some updates on the pending/anticipated U.S. tariff surcharges later in this update, so please make sure to read that. 

Your vessel, the COSCO FORTUNE, recently rounded the corner on South Africa and is projected to port in Europe around the end of June. We’re working with our fulfillment partner, Fulfillment Europe, to have things lined up to be inserted into their queue and keep things as timely as possible. Pending no major changes to U.S. tariff policy, orders to Mexico are currently planned to ship from Fulfillment Europe. This is something we’ve done in past campaigns and have no problem doing again to help avoid unnecessary U.S. tariff surcharges on your orders. 

We’ve got an updated Miniatures project tracker for you today. While internal reprioritizations led to some delays over the last several weeks, we’re back to making standard progress on digital modification approvals, red wax approvals, and polyurethane (PU) sample approvals. Check out some of my favorite recent samples received from our factory below!
















-GLOOMHAVEN: RPG-
I was just sent an exciting page spread this morning by our own Danielle (RPG Project Manager/Developer) and Layne (Graphic Designer) that we wanted to share with you! Progress continues on shaping and perfecting the “guts” of the book. I know Isaac recently provided some insights to the curation being done now that it’s “all together” so things are getting put through the usability/digestibility “machine” that is Layne Huber’s excellent eye for layout & presentation. Arch Anderson (Art Manager) has done a great job working with the ever-talented Francesca Baerald on the page accents you see here too. 

Last update I’d indicated we would be calculating and putting for U.S. tariff surcharges. While I’d hoped to spend last week doing this, we were hit with a number of breaking news updates, vendor price increases, and new potential surcharges from our freight companies as well that required our attention. While unexpected, it’s sadly not surprising. These updates all required our attention primarily so we could make sure IF we have to charge you for U.S. tariffs, it will be in confidence and ONLY ONCE.

The First Curveball:
On May 28, 2025, the Court of International Trade ruled that the reciprocal and fentanyl tariffs issued under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act are unlawful. This court, made up of Reagan, Obama, and Trump appointed judges ruled unanimously against the tariffs stating “trade deficit” was not a valid reason to declare a “National Emergency” and that these powers rest by default in the hands of Congress.  To quote, “"The court does not pass upon the wisdom or likely effectiveness of the President's use of tariffs as leverage….That use is impermissible not because it is unwise or ineffective, but because [federal law] does not allow it." The judges also ordered the Trump administration to issue new orders reflecting the permanent injunction within 10 days.

The Second Curveball:
As we’ve been conditioned to expect from this administration, The US government filed a motion to stay the order pending an appeal. AKA, they are appealing and in the meantime continuing to collect tariffs until rejected by higher courts (appeals court and/or Supreme Court).

Obviously, we don’t want to charge a U.S. tariff surcharge if we aren’t truly being charged ourselves, so we pumped the brakes to wait and see what the rest of the week would bring. Within 24 hours, we were essentially right back where we started at a known 30% tariff tax for the time being.  

The Third Curveball:

We were notified that some of the import/customs partners we’ve traditionally used for clearing our products upon entry and handling duties for us have begun implementing new tariff processing surcharges themselves due to the surge in import duties impacting their cash flows. 

Basically, just as we’re finding ourselves needing to pass along these new taxes to you, existing logistical partners are also running into various situations in which their cost of business are increasing dramatically, cash flows are becoming tighter, and risk factors heightened, so to offset that, additional charges are being levied on our cost of doing business too.

We do believe we have ways to circumnavigate these payment pass-throughs ourselves though, but it’s going to take some more manual processing from us—frustratingly taking more of our time and effort we’d rather be putting into other aspects of our obligations to you.

To summarize: Given we have several weeks ahead on the water, we’re taking some more time to confirm what our true import costs are looking like so we can make sure we’re not overcharging, undercharging, or putting you through more annoying steps than absolutely necessary. We’ll likely have more confident information to share by next update, if not sooner.

 

-TARIFF IMPACTS & CEPHALOFAIRS ACTIVE EFFORTS-

We’ve been doing our absolute best to be transparent with our audience and community here about what tariffs mean to our project timelines, production challenges, and company resource hurdles. For this reason, I feel it’s important to share some hard decisions we’ve had to make recently as well as some proactive steps we’re taking to help advocate not just for our organization but this industry we love as a whole.

Last month we let our staff know we’d be concluding some re-forcasting of the year ahead, and even into next year, as we realize that without confidence in trade policy we may be looking at further delays on top of our own existing project creative/production delays (of which we acknowledge and take ownership of those parts we are ourselves responsible).

Last week we came to the conclusion of that new forecasting and determined that a few steps were in our best interest to uphold our existing obligations. Those obligations being first and foremost to:

#1) Our Backers. You have invested in us and our creative vision. We have a fiduciary responsibility to you to make sure we’re protecting your pledges and in position to produce/fulfill as soon as the landscape permits us to move forward.

#2) Our Staff & Creative Contractors. We are blessed to work with incredibly talented individuals that help us put together our wildest dreams, and it takes dedicated individuals with hundreds of hours under the belt of product understanding, awareness, and insights to build further upon the foundations we’ve already created. We want them to have confidence we’re positioning ourselves in the best place for long-term employment and growth. 

With these things in mind, and the fact that the core of our production/import capabilities have largely been brought to a standstill for 70% of our market for the last financial quarter—we communicated some hard decisions last week to our team resulting in one full-time job elimination and multiple temporary 50% furloughs (Of which I am first and foremost included in, effective last month). These reductions in salary/work hours will be in effect for the foreseeable future until we have confidence in our ability to resume standard and catch up to more timely operations. As Cephalofair’s COO my reduction is in salary only, as my commitment to you is still 110%+ of my time and effort as we navigate these waters together.

I want to make absolutely clear, we have confidence in Cephalofair’s organizational standing and future, but want to be able to look back and know we took EVERY step at our disposal to keep our promises to you. Steps taken not sooner than needed, and not later than would jeopardize that confidence.

NOTE: These furloughs impact more background operational/sales based team members as we recognize we still have outstanding product development/production obligations that require our full-time attention in those areas to see RPG/Miniatures through. As well as community support needs as we head into our next round of fulfillment. Please have faith we are not taking any eyes off the ball, but rather shoring up on overhead where it makes most sense and is most advisable by our financial specialists.

We deeply regret the position we find ourselves in amidst this trade war and to our staff, both dismissed and temporarily setback, we apologize and thank you immensely for your professionalism, understanding, and dedication to our outstanding projects. And while it may not be necessary, I do feel compelled to share that we had several Cephalofair employees be the first to raise their hand and offer to “be the first in line” should our situation require it. While ultimately our decisioning came down to our most obvious income disruptions and greatest business needs- having had the pleasure of working for each of these phenomenal employees for several years now I’m genuinely not surprised and thank them for their compassion for each other and support for our organization as a whole. We hope, and will be working our absolute hardest, to ensure these reductions are for as little time as possible and will prioritize getting staff back to full-time first and foremost. 

-SO WHAT ELSE IS CEPHALOFAIR DOING?-

Local Advocacy (Politics Warning, Ye Who Enter)

We try very hard not to make politics a center post of what we do, we’re game makers, toy makers, and inventors after all. But I am also a firm believer that in business and in life, politics will find you even if you don’t go looking for it. So when appropriate, I choose to engage rather than disengage. I volunteer locally, am a member of our local chamber of commerce, and try my best to attend local small business/governance related meetings when relevant to my needs and interests.

Last week I spent upwards of an hour in my local Congressman’s district office (Kevin Kiley, CA-R). Not with him, unfortunately, but with his district representative and district director. To be frank, I was deeply frustrated and disheartened by how little the office had prepared for our meeting, how few actual answers or pieces of advice they brought to the table, and how uninformed they were with even the most basic level of comprehension around small business economics and trade/manufacturing logistics. Instead of getting an official stance on the existing tariffs, or advice on how we should be navigating this trade policy, or for how long- we were simply told Congressman Kiley was unwilling to make comment at this time. It wasn’t clear what they believed to be the leading strategy behind the tariff negotiations, or the end goal, nor why the Executive office isn’t working with the majority held house and senate to pass legitimate and lawful trade policies rather than the courts.  

Nonetheless, I hope the insights I was able to provide and my offers to be a resource should they desire to represent small/medium enterprises in the future encourages them to consider greater action at some point.

Cephalofair is going to Washington D.C. (Obviously, politics)

Next week I will be heading to D.C. at the invitation of The Game Manufacturer’s Association (GAMA) in joint effort with The Toy Association to do some industry advocacy on capitol hill. While you’re not going to see me in front of any important looking congressional hearings or anything like that (to my knowledge!), it is our hope to be taking as many meetings as possible with elected legislators to directly convey the hurt our industry, our organization, and our customers are/will be feeling under this continued volatile trade policy. We will be spending a few full days in House and Senate office buildings as a cohort of twenty or so toy & game professionals from all different backgrounds who care deeply about what we do, the communities we build, and deep seated desire to “get back to business”. Please wish us all confidence, patience, and clarity as we do something we’ve not had to before (and honestly find a little uncomfortable having to do), especially when we’d much rather be spending our full time making amazing games and works of art.



Super Secret Stuff (NOT POLITICS! HUZZAH!)

Sooo…..let’s sandwich some of these less fun updates with positivity, optimism, and excitement for the future!

We’ve been asked numerous times by very generous backers how they can contribute/donate/support Cephalofair in smaller ways to help navigate the current uncertainty ahead. While we’re in a confident position to execute on those obligations without this level of direct financial support, we’re always keen to give our community more ways to engage in the “World of Gloomhaven”! Amidst the disruption of the last couple of months, we’ve not just navigated the lows, but actively looked for opportunities to pivot resources (where responsible) into vetting projects/ideas/etc outside our normal peripheral that may be executable even under these uncertain times.

One of the few things we DO have confidence and ability to execute on at this time is game development, design, and the ability to plan for things in the future that we hope you’re all really going to enjoy.

Some of these are more future proofing our publishing position and most certainly won’t be our focus until our outstanding obligations are fulfilled (RPG/Miniatures), but some smaller things in our “back pocket” maaaay just sneak their way onto your radar sooner than we intended.

And that’s all I can really say about that for now, so I’m going to “tie a bow” on it before I say any more!

END OF UPDATE!

That’s “it” for this week, if you’re still here with me and reading this thank you genuinely for your interest, understanding, and support. We’ll be back in two weeks with your next update. 

Price Johnson here with an update primarily for our U.S. Backers of Gloomhaven 2nd Edition and those interested in U.S. tariff impact. Please be sure to read through today's Q&A in its entirety as there are multiple important pieces of information including information on incoming U.S. tariff surcharges. 

International orders are still on water/road and heading smoothly towards their respective fulfillment warehouses. (I will have the boat names for CA & AU/NZ shortly, and will promptly update this comment with them)

Thanks to the hard work of our Cephalofair team and logistics partners, all U.S. backer orders for Gloomhaven (2nd Edition) have been booked for ocean freight starting this week—in fact the first containers are heading towards Shanghai's port TONIGHT!
 



I can’t stress enough how overwhelming and time consuming the last two weeks have been as we continue navigating a 7th tariff pricing adjustment over the course of just 3 months. A huge THANK YOU to the entirety of the Cephalofair Team who have continued working hard to pivot operations, priorities, and resource considerations as we focus on how to best (and quickly) get your orders to you. And of course another THANK YOU to our incredibly supportive community who have been patient and encouraging all the while.

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

-Some Q&A on U.S. Gloomhaven 2nd Edition Orders & Tariff Surcharges:

Q. What’s the abridged update on the current tariff situation?

There is a 90 day reduction in the tariff rates from 145% → 30% until August 10th. While different interpretations of this deadline are circulating, we’re being advised to most confidently benefit from the reduced rate, the goods may need to be customs-declared by around August 10th, which actually means getting booked and on the water well sooner than that.


Q. What happens after the 90 day tariff reduction?

At this point, we honestly don’t know what to expect from this administration and can’t make any assumptions, but are building multiple contingencies for our rest-of-year business and operations in the event tariffs raise, remain at 30%, or are removed entirely (a best case scenario despite the damage done already). Trump has previously stated he thinks 80% "seems right", so it’s hard to know. 

This is the 7th tariff pricing adjustment we’ve had to navigate in just the last 3 months alone, so we hope you can understand how difficult that is to continue pivoting our business models around. We’ll of course keep all backers posted on this subject as we proceed and finalize development on our outstanding projects and approach manufacturing readiness.


Q. But U.S. freight IS booked right?  RIGHT?

We booked freight immediately following the U.S. tariff reduction from 145% to 30% went into effect, taking the soonest available options, which are scheduled for pickup from our factory on the 21st and 25th (ocean freight channels are spiking in price while being limited in supply as most China → US shipments had ceased entirely).

Additionally, Folded Space addons have also been scheduled and begin their journey this week as well.


Q. A tariff reduction is good, right? 30% is less than 145%!

Absolutely. But it’s still 30% higher than our industry has seen in over a decade, and more than we collected from U.S. Backers. There is one thing repeated by each of our industry vendors that remains a throughline: this is an unprecedented and impossible trade policy to navigate in terms of freight, accounting, manufacturing, etc. While this sentiment doesn’t make the situation necessarily easier to navigate, it tells us we’re far from the only industry being impacted and there is an unpredictable amount of chaos that’s been thrown at us all this year. That’s not an excuse for anything, that’s just the reality of the current situation. 

To summarize: All U.S. orders now cost an additional 30% to produce, eliminating critical margins and necessitating additional tax costs for U.S. orders.

Q. What can U.S. Backers expect a 30% tariff to mean on their orders?

Our goal is as little as possible, but that will be assessed more confidently when product is secured on boats and our tariff rate is “locked in” (pending any unexpected changes this week). The reality is this is really no different than import/sales VAT/GST we collect for international backer orders so we’d need to for U.S. orders as well now that tariffs apply. As this is calculated on “cost of goods” rather than your purchase price, this will NOT be +30% more than you paid, but much less.

Even with a U.S. tariff surcharge, the reality is Cephalofair is still anticipating subsidizing several price increases inflicted by tariffs (as well as operating on delayed/loss revenue due to the disruption). These include, but are not limited to: increased freight costs, port congestion fees/forced yard storage fees, broker fees, extended warehousing fees, etc.


Q. How does the Backerkit U.S. Tariff Surcharge Work?

U.S. Backers & Backerkit Preorders can expect to see a new tax line (similar to shipping & taxes) with the calculated amount once the final impact is assessed (a combination of tariffs, sales tax requirements, Backerkit pledge management fees, and card processing fees). This will coalesce into a flat fee calculated across a few select products that pose the most detrimental cost impact to the project as a whole.

Sample Visual:



Q. Is sales tax charged/collected on U.S. tariff surcharges?

Yes, we have been advised that U.S. sales tax is applicable on U.S. tariff surcharges. This sales tax will vary by state based on this year's tax rates and be included in your Backerkit charge.


Q. When will the Backerkit U.S. Tariff Surcharge go into effect?

We will provide an update in the coming week(s) once this amount is validated, and provide at minimum a 1-2 week notice before your card on file is charged.


Q. Is payment of this fee required before my order is fulfilled?

Yes. Any pledges with outstanding balances on shipping, taxes, and/or tariff surcharges will be held until outstanding amounts are resolved. At that point your order will be cleared for shipping with our fulfillment warehouse once it is in their possession.


Q. Which products contribute to the U.S. tariff fee on Wave 3 - Gloomhaven (Second Edition)?

- Gloomhaven (Second Edition)
- Gloomhaven (Second Edition) Upgrade Kits
- FoldedSpace Inserts
- FoldedSpace Map Tile Organizers

Q. When is U.S.A. fulfillment scheduled to begin?

Currently, if all goes according to plan the soonest U.S. pledges will hit U.S. ports would be ~June 28th. Once we are confidently on the water, we will be finalizing estimated receiving times and readiness/availability of our fulfillment partner to provide you with our planned fulfillment kickoff dates. There are several factors that will keep this in flux such as ocean conditions, port/yard congestion, and delivery timing to our warehouse. We will continue providing updates as we make progress.


Q. Are U.S. orders locked?

As U.S. orders have been pre-packaged at our factory for fulfillment, we are currently unable to make individual product changes to your orders and they are “locked” in that sense.


Q. Can I still request a refund?

As always and per our campaign terms, we still offer pledge refunds (less a 10% processing/restocking fee). Please contact us at [email protected].

A few important reminders:

- Refunds are not a “now or never” situation, don’t feel you must make this decision immediately. You can cancel your pledge up until we start US fulfillment.

- Our hope is the U.S. tariff surcharge is close to/less than the 10% refund/processing fee, so you may wish to hold for more information.

- Pledge items were sold at discounts and many of these products may be seeing price increases on top of their previously marketing MSRP’s if tariffs persist.

- In the current state of U.S. tariffs, we can’t speak fully yet to the immediate future of retail/distribution availability of Gloomhaven 2nd Edition products (beyond U.S. Retail Backer orders still en route). While we have produced additional originally intended for U.S. distribution and retail, we can’t guarantee what that availability and final pricing will look like at this time and with trade policy negotiations still unfolding.

These are reminders we give in full transparency and good faith, not to instill “fear of missing out”. Please contact us if you require a refund at [email protected]. 

Q. Are U.S. Retailer Backer orders also impacted by tariff surcharges?

Yes, we will be needing to make an assessment on tariff impact here, especially at the wholesale pricing we offered during crowdfunding. We will be communicating this fee to retail partners directly due to these higher volume orders, and will collaborate to collect those additional surcharges directly as we know this has a more immediate cash-flow impact on your business. 

All other requirements above apply, including surcharge payment prior to fulfillment. 

-Q&A END-

~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~~

That’s our big update for today, we’ll be back in two weeks with more regular “creative” project updates including Miniatures of Gloomhaven and the RPG, and even sooner with the next update for U.S. Backers in regards to tariff surcharges. 

Thank you all for your patience as this has dominated a large amount of our bandwidth and operations on the U.S. side - we look forward to getting back to more enjoyable topics that impact all backers and outstanding projects. Fingers crossed this 90 day tariff reduction leads to some longer term relief and stability on the “other side”. 

Have a great week!

Good day! I (Isaac) am back in the update chair for some brief news on the projects.

We're going to start right off with fulfillment on Gloomhaven, which I know is on everyone's mind. EU, UK, CA, and NZ/AU were successfully loaded onto container ships on April 29. We have ship info on the UK (HMM HOPE) and EU (COSCO FORTUNE) and will have the others next time. In addition, we expect to ship copies to VFI for Asia fulfillment on Monday.

The plan is still to save the US copies until last to give us as much time as possible to make an informed decision, so we won't have any more information on that until at least the next update. Sorry for the uncertainty here, but that is just the nature of shipping to the US at the moment, unfortunately.

No real progress on miniatures this week, so nothing new to inform you about here, unfortunately. Moving on!

From Danielle:
There isn’t a ton to update here. We’re still rocking along with our internal review. A couple of things the review showed us is that it needs more art and holy cow, this thing is over 400 pages! So, we’ve been working on slimming entries down, refocusing presenting material in a visually appealing way, and ensuring we’re only putting the most important parts into the core rulebook. This kind of thing takes time, but is well worth it. And don’t worry, we aren’t throwing any slimmed material away. Instead, we’re saving it for supplements that should start rolling forward shortly after this beast gets sent off to the printer.

Unfortunately, doing this work means I don’t have a ton of new information to share or things to show you, because a small tweak here or there might make the difference of a page, but it’s only exciting to maybe 2 people.

                               

In other news, we'll be out at PAX East this weekend in booth 12115, so stop on by to say "Hi" if you're in the area.

Last week, the team all got together for our yearly development retreat, "Gloomcabin", which was a lot of fun and incredibly productive. Obviously, we're focused on finishing up our current slate of projects for this campaign, but we're also very excited about what's coming next!

And that's it for this week. We're going to continue to see how shipping out Gloomhaven and the US tariff situation develops, and we'll have more news for you next time. Catch you then!