Today’s project update will touch base on several aspects of our last major update “Tariffs & Tabletop” which if you haven’t, we’d invite and recommend reading HERE. 

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Hello Everyone,

This is Price Johnson back again this week to provide some project and industry-wide updates. Apologies to all of our international backers, as we know EVERYONE is tired of talking about U.S. tariffs at this point - but the reality is they impact our entire project so feel it important to keep you all informed. 

(Mini Update: Due to a delay between our manufacturer and freight forwarding company, containers for EU/UK/Asia we NOT picked up yet as previously estimated. We’re being told dates are being resecured now with an estimated pickup by the first week of May - now to include also AU and NZ. Confirmations and next wave shipments will be communicated in the May 6th update. We have no update on U.S. copies at this time, but will keep U.S. backers posted as we approach what would be our target ship date as to what options we have.)

FIRST, THANK YOU!

I want to start by first and foremost thanking our backer community IMMENSELY for their gracious understanding, support, encouragement, and thoughtful questions posed after our last update regarding U.S. tariff policy and the state of the board game industry. Lots of good questions and conversations that kept me well up until the early morning, feeling both energized by your support and eager to help communicate/educate what tariffs mean for board games.

I can’t emphasize how stressful the last month or two has been for us internally at Cephalofair, as well as each of our peers across the publishing space. Retailers, distributors, publishers, designers, artists, writers — everyone across our space is currently impacted in one shape or form and are sharing their stories on a daily basis. More time in the last two weeks has unfortunately been spent on strategy, consulting, legal, public awareness, political advocacy, and operational pivoting than we’d like, I’ll tell you that for free.

Some of those recent industry stories include:

We are very fortunate to work in an industry as collaborative as tabletop games, and continue finding inspiration in each other as professional peers and in our governing associations of GAMA and The Toy Association which both continue putting hard work into public awareness, political lobbying, and broad industry updates as tariff policy continues to evolve.



Q. So what are we seeing right now in the U.S.?

Well, U.S. tariffs are still a combined total of 145% on all non-exempt products sourced from China, so not much has changed on that front. An AP News article tonight suggests a tide may be turning as the U.S. Treasure Secretary suggests "trade war with China is not ‘sustainable’", but we can't count our chickens before they hatch as this administration has been far to unpredictable. 

Freight is actually fairly affordable, as you can imagine the U.S. has seen a significant drop in demand coming this way from China. This is nice, but not even close to cover a +145% increase on our costs.

Publishers are exploring several options including but not limited to:

-Storing product in China, importing to the U.S. only when absolutely necessary.

-Storing product in Canada, waiting for U.S. tariffs to be removed (Still counts as China import).

-Pausing all sales in the U.S.A. and focusing on international markets.

-Cancelling planned production runs.

-Doubling down on development and building out their future publish ready catalogues.

-Shuttering their business and operations to protect financial investments, and buy time.

-Downsizing, furloughing, or terminating staff

-Exploring alternative warehousing options like bonded warehouses which, while costly, avoid delay immediate tariff ramifications. 

-Canceling/Delaying new crowdfunding projects

-Implementing tariff surcharges on shipments/projects/retail orders

-Etc.

Q. Any other trouble on the horizon?

Well, other than even higher tariffs there are a few things Cephalofair and others in our industry may be anticipating and doing out best to navigate even in the event that we see tariff reversal or reduction:

-Retailers with limited stock around the holidays, their most critical time of year.
-Surge demand and pricing on freight container availability.
-Backlog of containers at ports and in warehouses (like our 25 containers worth of products in China now).
-Backlog of fulfillment centers available for crowdfunding project fulfillment, leading to delays.
-Surge demand on our normal manufactures from multiple clients resuming production at once.
-Tighter cashflows due to multiple product restocking needs at once.
-Etc.

That being said, a complete reversal is most ideal and still the absolute end goal, at least as it pertains to our industry.

Q. What are we doing on Gloomhaven 2nd Edition?

Right now, the game is completed and we are proceeding with international shipments first. Once all non-U.S. copies have shipped, we will assess the tariff landscape and make the most financially responsible decision to make sure we are both A) Protecting your investment in GH: RPG and Miniatures, and B) Not having to charge U.S. Backers more than absolutely necessary.

I’ll be honest - us producing ANYTHING new at this point is a gamble and poses cash flow challenges as long as we know our primary market (U.S. ~60-70%) is not viable for the tentative future. So development and pre-production continues, in an attempt to make most of this downtime and elevate this product as much as possible. We are leaning into continued and additional development, graphic design, artwork, and packaging options. To be clear, more work IS needed regardless of tariffs, but their existence incentivizes us to continue spending more time with it than rushing it out the door, for sure. Ultimately our project/product pricing was factored and dependent on producing U.S. stock, so we will have to wait and see what the landscape looks like for now.

Q.What are we doing on Miniatures of Gloomhaven?

As with the Gloomhaven: RPG, pre-production continues! We are still actively reviewing, revising, and approving final miniature samples with the hope that by the time we are ready to go full-scale into production on our steel molds that we will be able to go into mass production with some level of confidence we won’t be facing 145% tariffs. Ultimately our project/product pricing was factored and dependent on producing U.S. stock, so we will have to wait and see what the landscape looks like for now. 

Q. You know, if you’d stuck to your timelines, you’d have shipped ahead of tariffs.

Okay, so this one is not a question. But we’ve seen it repeated a few times and want to acknowledge that timelines on our creative visions have always been a weak point for Cephalofair when we embark on a project. This is something we own, and is a reality for a multitude of reasons (not excuses) from expanded product scope, world events, production delays, underestimations, growing pains, mistakes, etc. 

Ultimately, we are proud to maintain a 100% fulfillment rate on our projects and want to express that we’re our biggest critic and want to continue making improvements in this area. While we don’t have a crowdfunding project planned now or anytime in the foreseeable future, this is an area that will take a leading focus for our design, development, and project management teams. 

But we understand the criticism and, trust me, I wish we’d have been in position to ship even a month earlier than we have found ourselves. We look forward to making improvements for you in the future and understand that may take some proving on our part. 

We at Cephalofair really appreciate anyone’s desire to help navigate these uncertain times, and take all suggestions in good faith. That being said, we want to enthusiastically assure our backers that we are (unfortunately) spending the majority of our time (outside of strictly creative teams/contractors) navigating any/all options to us at this time and restructuring operations where we can.

Currently we are consulting with a) legal teams, b) customs brokers, c) freight forwarders, d) multiple factories, e) the majority of our industry peers (yet to ship, and already shipped), f) other industries of trade, etc.

I would STRONGLY advise backers, upcoming publishers/creators/designers, and others facing devastating cost increases to be leery of any “easy fixes” or “one size fits all” narratives they may come across by asking for receipts, looking for evidence of proven methods and track records, and scrutinizing incentives they may have for offering said solutions. It makes sense to double check your homework. Some of us are on our third and fourth check. Personally, I can’t blame a single one of our peers for taking conservative and precautionary steps to fortify their businesses, rather than rolling the dice on an untested game theory.

Regardless, the fact that these overnight changes in trade policy consistently come communicated in the form of tweets, Truth Social posts, and candid press comments, while leaving wide room for interpretation, miscalculations, and confusion should be testament to how ineffective and harmful this administration’s actions are on small and medium size businesses, many of whom are one or two world events away from troubled waters and are still recovering from the last one.

WELL. While we’re still working on doing everything and anything we can to get Gloomhaven physically to you, we are excited to share that it would appear that GLOOMHAVEN: DIGITAL (PC) is currently INCLUDED FREE on Amazon Prime Gaming through June 18th, 2025.

This is not our doing (Twin Sails handles sales/marketing of the digital game), or specifically anything to do with tariffs, but if you haven’t checked out the PC version of the original game now might be a great time while awaiting the new physical second edition!

Our team is currently on its way to our annual “Gloomcabin” development retreat where we are planning to spend some time in person on the above mentioned projects (and possibly get our hands on some exciting new ones…) and we will be largely out of the office through this time next week.

(Retreat = Vacation rental or cabin and a week of home cooking from yours truly)

As a fully remote company, we lack a common office so this is the one time a year we get to come together as a team and work together in person playtesting, brainstorming, and planning for current and upcoming projects. It’s also the time we get to celebrate our hardworking staff with some afterhours home cooked meals, games, and festivities.

While admittedly a less than desirable time for our industry and selves, one of the few things we can make sure we’re continuing to do is doubling down on development and planning for happier/easier times. 

We’ve got a few surprises up our sleeves and announcements to make when things begin to return to normal, but trust that our focus remains on our outstanding obligations to you on these projects.

I’ll be keeping up daily on news and changes to policy through next week even at “Gloomcabin”, but we’ll assess where things look upon our return and continue pushing forward and adapting to each obstacle. Updating you along the way.

Wrapping Up

With that, we’ll be back in two weeks with our next update and confirmation of first container shipments of Gloomhaven. Thank you again for your support and patience as we continue tweaking our initiatives. 

Reminder: if you’re tired of tariffs impacting the hobby you love, please consider contacting your local elected representative and tell them how they can best represent your interests, whatever they are:

https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative

Today’s project update is dedicated to bringing awareness to the tariff crisis happening right now in the tabletop games industry.

(Mini Update: Wave 3-Gloomhaven(2E) factory freight pickups begin this week for Asia, UK, and EU!)

While this is not intended to be a politically partisan post, tariffs are implemented by elected politicians (constitutionally by Congress, but in this case by emergency claims and Executive Order of the President) so it will inevitably be political in nature, but from the agnostic perspective of a small business operator.

Regular updates will resume in 2 weeks, but we felt it necessary to explain the landscape as we march towards unknown and hard decisions across our entire company, slate of projects, and our personal lives.

Thank you for your time, understanding, and support over all these years. We intend to fight like hell and utilize every tool at our disposal to maintain our obligations to our backers, our employees, and our families.

Right now, that future is being made incredibly unpredictable.

Our next steps are uncertain and being forced to change daily.
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Hello Everyone,

This is Price Johnson, COO of Cephalofair Games. I asked the team to let me take lead on this week’s update so I can give all our incredibly passionate and patient backers an update on the situation currently unfolding in the tabletop games industry.

Speaking bluntly, our industry, our jobs, and our projects are under attack by volatile, and self-inflicted, U.S. trade policy. Our manufacturing costs in the last two months have seen an increase of 104% due to U.S. tariffs.

(See below for a more thorough explanation of how tariffs work.)

The impact that 104% tariffs will have on our industry, and our company, are nothing short of devastating and are already having immediate consequences that will be felt knowingly and unknowingly by everyone who enjoys this industry - from the hobbyist, the retail store owner, the publisher, and ultimately our communities.

But don’t just take my word for it. 
Here is what the industry, and our peers, have been feeling as well:

Q. What is happening?

The U.S. has imposed blanket tariffs (meaning broad & general, not strategically targeted goods) on ALL imports from a multitude of international countries - most notably in our situation: China, where the majority of the tabletop games industry manufacture our games.

This is leading to mass and widescale manufacturing, pricing, and inventory concerns as most products have had their profit margins all but eliminated.


Q. What is an import tariff?

An import tariff is a tax on businesses bringing goods into a country, - in our case, the United States. It is charged against the cost of goods of our product (AKA how much we pay our manufacturer for the final product). This means it has a DIRECT impact on our costs as a U.S. Business, how much we have to charge customers, retailers, distributors, etc.


Q. What tariffs have been put on board games?

Prior to this administration = 0% on board games

A Brief Timeline:
February 1st = 0% → 10% tariffs (link)
March 4th = 10% → 20% (link)
April 2nd = 20% → 54% (link)
April 7th = We are being TOLD 54% may increase to 104% (link)
April 8th = 54% → 104% (link)

Bringing this home: from the time Gloomhaven went into production our cost of goods has risen 104%.

For example, if a game costs $10 to produce, that company must pay the U.S. government an invoice for $10.40 on top, meaning the cost is now really $20.40 total.

“Yeah but the game is still $50, so you have lots of profit to work with”

Not really, no. To make games viable for nationwide distribution in retail stores (where most of our sales occur) publishers traditionally need to apply a x5 to x7 multiplier to our cost of goods to make wholesale pricing discounts viable and still provide us with a razor thin margin in which to cover additional costs and overhead such as freight, warehousing, staffing, product development, designer royalties, reprints, etc.

So that $50 game is really, typically, being sold at wholesale for $20, meaning a profit margin is gone.

If 54% or 104% tariffs hold and we don’t see reverse steps taken, this will all but eliminate our wholesale business as we know it today leading to some incredibly hard and scary choices to make.

P.S. Gloomhaven & Frosthaven cost considerably more than $10 to manufacture...





Q. Why is this a problem?

1. Domestic manufacturing does not exist for the products we make. Nor do many of the materials. I wish they were. I like having my product when it’s ready and not having to depend on a 30-45 day buffer between manufacturing and ocean freight.  

The reality is that China has been our industry’s gold standard for quality for decades, and continues leading the way in innovative new processes, materials, and capabilities. I’ve visited our facilities in person. I meet with our teams multiple times per year.  We can bid a project with well over two dozen reputable and specialized board game manufacturers internationally on a new project. We don’t have anything that resembles that level of availability, competition, or experience here in the United States that could support our products, let alone those of our entire industry. 

2. Suddenly punishing foreign manufacturing before standing a roadmap or solutions for building domestic options is backwards and will not lead to anything close to overnight manufacturing options. Especially when machinery, materials, raw goods, would all be subject to 104% import taxes as well. The cost has literally never been higher for a company/entity to consider such investments. 

3. Publishers must know their definitive costs in order to calculate retail pricing. When tariffs are in flux, our pricing is in flux. Meaning we cannot responsibly produce, market, and sell our games. If we do, we’re having to plan and mitigate around unknown cost increases, and that comes at a cost to ourselves and our customers.

4. Publishers who have already raised funds via crowdfunding did not account for tariffs. These were not in place, nor was there any guidance ahead of the last few months as to what tariffs might look like. I can guarantee none of my publishing peers anticipated anything close to the 104% implemented this week.

5. Board games that ARE capable of being made ARE going to get more expensive.

6. Your favorite publishers will be canceling, delaying, or stalling exciting projects.

7. Many publishers/retailers will close their doors due to financial insolvency. Many others will have to make hard staffing choices, furloughs, layoffs, etc.





Q. Doesn’t China pay the tariffs?

No. We do. The U.S. business who produces internationally and imports for domestic sales. We don’t import into China, so China raising their tariff rates against the U.S. are effectively meaningless for our business operations.

We have approximately $1.2M in product produced and awaiting shipment from China currently. The United States generally accounts for ~60-65% of our business. If we shipped what we'd normally be allocating to the U.S. - we'd be looking at a U.S. tax bill of ~$800k+ once it lands at port and before we even start making any new sales (slower sales, at new higher prices.


Q. What does this mean for Gloomhaven: Grand Festival Projects?

Honestly, we’re still analyzing this and it will take us some more time to solve fully.

We do know this is already meaning some really hard decisions for Cephalofair in terms of release schedules, fulfillment timelines, project costs, staffing considerations, conventions, contracts, budgets, and more.

As you are likely aware, there are three Cephalofair projects due for fulfillment. One of which (Gloomhaven) has already been mass manufactured and was due to start shipping this week, and two of which are in pre-production and development (RPG & Miniatures).

2025 has yet to provide us with a stable and known playing field for what lies ahead. It is hard to “plan a journey” when the “price of travel” keeps going up monthly, weekly, daily, without warning and without much perceived rationale. 

Ultimately, we take our obligation of delivering on crowdfunding projects very seriously and have a track record of delivering (development delays aside) 100% of our projects to date. Currently, our top priority is to uphold that promise and track record by protecting your backer investment to the best of our abilities - fighting as hard as we can against obstacles, interference, and sometimes the occasional global pandemic or trade war.
 

Q. What can YOU do to help?

Contact your elected officials:
https://www.house.gov/representatives/find-your-representative
https://www.congress.gov/members/find-your-member

Support your favorite publishers, favorite local game stores, and creators however you can. 

Understand that indie publishers, first time publishers, and crowdfunding publishers (like us) that funded prior to tariffs are hurting the most, and have the most difficult path forward.


~THANK YOU FOR YOUR SUPPORT & UNDERSTANDING~

On behalf of the entire Cephalofair Team, and so so many of our publishing peers:

Thank you for the opportunity to shed light on this giant obstacle in front of tabletop at this time. Our backers - YOU - helped build this company, our games, and continue to make this industry thrive as a whole. We appreciate your patience and understanding as we pull together as an industry to weather this storm.

We'll be back in two weeks with regular project updates and next steps being taken - until then be well and enjoy some games!

Price Johnson
Chief Operating Officer
Cephalofair Games

Good day! We've got plenty to update you on across all projects, so let's get to it!

Getting all the production issues squared away with the manufacturer took longer than we would have liked, but at this point, we are satisfied with what we have seen and have given the go-ahead to get everything assembled and shipped out, which is great news! The factory is crunching the numbers on when we'll be able to get everything on the water as we speak, so we don't have dates yet, but we'll keep you informed when we do!

Over the last month we've seen significantly more back-and-forth with our miniature factory as we make some serious progress through pre-production, especially on the Gloomhaven and Frosthaven summon sets, which saw the most momentum. We really appreciate their increased focus and are doing our absolute best to capitalize on that focus, replying quickly and thoroughly.

Speaking of summonable creatures, these summon miniatures are so full of character and variety. It's exciting to think about how summons started as generic tokens, eventually got standees in Frosthaven and the new re-release of Gloomhaven, and now they’ll be miniatures!

And check out that Elder Drake, one of our very few multi-hex miniatures!

From Danielle:

Hello mercenaries! The past couple of weeks the team has been pouring through the RPG book’s layout and leaving comments about anything from art, design, visual impact, readability, and content. The goal is to catch anything at this stage that might need further clarification, a graphic to go along with it to enhance understanding, or reorganization to present the material in the best way possible. It’s an exciting time for me, as it means we’ve hit a pretty important milestone of first proof. This stage is sometimes deceiving. You think the book is almost done, but really, there’s a lot of little design tweaks that can take some time to implement. They may seem small, or even insignificant if I were to enumerate them here, but they make a huge impact on the final product and are worth doing.

That said, this stage of the project doesn’t always have flashy images or cool things to show you, so instead I’m going to share a snippet of setting text to tide you over. This does come in the form of a layout image so you can see how some of the design elements are coming together.

                                        

In other news, Frosthaven Digital was announced last week, in case you missed it. Snapshot Games has been working on this for more than two years, and I'm excited to see it come to fruition.  They've made a faithful port of the board game that looks great and plays snappy!



It'll be going into early access soon and you can wishlist it here.

We're very happy to have Gloomhaven moving again, and we have some more important updates coming down the pipe. Things are moving, so I'll catch you next time with the latest news!

Good day! We're going to have a small update today. Basically, we are in the middle of a lot of things with squaring away the Gloomhaven re-production, proofing the RPG book, and approving miniatures for the miniatures project, and don't really have any more solid news on any of them.

We're very busy behind the scenes, but, yeah, we need to take a pass on this week's update. We'll have more substantial news to report in the future, so until then, stay cool, and I'll catch you next time!

Good day! Thank you for all your RPG questions following the last update! Danielle has compiled a list of questions and answers for you to read through below.

Other than that, we've got minor updates on Gloomhaven production and miniatures for. A lot of the team is out at GAMA, so it's a bit of a slow week, but let's get to it!

We continue to work with our manufacturing partners to improve the quality of the game’s components. We’ve been consistently in contact with the factory to determine solutions for the problems we’ve seen. The folks at the factory have been working as quickly as they can to offer and test potential solutions. At the moment we are not able to share an updated timeline, but we expect we’ll be able to soon.

We have begun our review of a new batch of physical miniature proofs. We can’t wait to finish an in-depth review of them and share our findings with you! Look for this in the next update.

From Danielle:

Thanks for asking questions after the last update. I’ve tried my best to answer each question and provide any additional information that I felt was pertinent to help with context. I aggregated some of the similar questions, so I don’t always have the exact questions from each person. If I somehow missed your question, let us know!

What kind of resources will be available for GMs, and how beginner friendly is the game to GM?
(This question was not phrased this way exactly, but I figured this is the gist of the question, and it’s better to answer this than each specific inline question.)

We’ve tried hard to create an easy to understand and approachable set of chapters for the GM. I’ll admit the game has quite a bit of complexity tied into it, and familiarity with the board game does give you a bit of a leg up, but it might prove to set some expectations that we can’t meet.

We’ve tried to break everything out by situation (combat vs. social vs. environmental or puzzles) and give strong guidelines on how to utilize these elements individually and together. We have a strong GM chapter that guides you through planning encounters, and a bestiary full of monsters each with stats at all campaign levels (just like in the board game). Because antagonists work similarly to the player’s mercenaries, but controlled by the GM, we don’t have ability decks for them. We have provided a list of actions you can choose for them along with the initiatives you can use them at, and the GM chooses how fast they act while the players are choosing which Skills they are using each round. Everything you need to know about each antagonist is provided in the book, and because you’re unlikely to be using them at more than a single campaign level, it should be easy to jot down their stats and pertinent abilities when preparing for your encounter. As for health or status trackers, you can easily use your board game components, pen and paper, or any other tracking system that works best for you.

Where the GM chapter gives a lot of broad advice, the introductory adventure gives lots of detailed information about how to set up scenes, what is going on in each situation, how NPCs will react, and where to go next depending on what the mercenaries do. We also provide some GM notes and advice on how to keep the action moving along if the players get stumped.

Everything you need to know about Gloomhaven, its relevant history, and details that you might have missed from playing the board game are covered in the RPG. If you weren’t aware before, the Gloomhaven RPG is filled with Gloomhaven 2e spoilers! We did choose a “canon” ending for the Gloomhaven scenario, the events of which happened about 6 months in game time before the setting of the RPG. We expanded the lore from the board games, taking into account lore established through our other board games (such as Jaws of the Lion, Frosthaven, and even Buttons & Bugs). We also give brief coverage to locations beyond Gloomhaven, such as the valrath lands to the south, and the continent to the east, where the orchids and quatryls hail from.

We are conscientious that powerful items available for purchase early in a campaign can make a game feel unbalanced. In an RPG, there’s no reason shops in Gloomhaven wouldn’t have rarer items available immediately, but that doesn’t mean lower level mercenaries can purchase them. We use a combination of item cost, item rarity, and the mercenary company’s level to help mitigate what can or cannot be purchased, rather than using a prosperity level.

We don’t really want to limit ancestry or class choices to players. Ancestries make perfect sense to mix and match, or have an entire party composed of a single ancestry. For classes, that becomes a little less straightforward. There are 16 different classes available and they all fulfill a different niche and use case. Having two people playing the same class could easily lead to spotlight stealing or one player feeling second class compared to their counterpart. While you can absolutely do it, we suggest that if you do make two characters with the same class, that you make a second character of a different class and never have both characters of the same class go on the same missions together.

This was a series of specific questions, but I think it’s best to answer it all at once. We plan to sell as many individual components as make sense for players to pick up for their games. That said, the deluxe version of the game will have its own cool little (as if anything we make is little) storage box for all the cards and decks, and you’ll be getting one of everything and enough modifier cards for 1 GM and 4 players. But everything else will come packaged likely in tuck boxes (but it’s still too early to know for sure). We plan to sell modifier card decks, class ability cards and perks bundled together, and some combination of ancestry cards. We’re still working on how to bundle all these things together for both ease of access and to not have 100-million SKUs floating around for retailers to track down.

Beyond that, we do have plans for game supplements that will be forthcoming once we get the RPG out into the world. I can’t be too specific about what those will look like, but we want to support the RPG as a line, not just a one-and-done novelty.

We’re still working on what this will look like in specific, but we do plan to have some guidelines for community created content, community provided webtools, etc. Our priorities are the books and starter set, but rest assured that we will have more information in coming updates about community tools.

                                                 

And that's about it for what we have to share now, so I'll catch you next time!