Good day! I need to jump right in with the bad news here: last week, we made the hard decision to cancel ocean freight on Gloomhaven due to newly presenting production issues. We were all very excited to see our first round of printing start shipping, and we sent advanced copies to our team, some creators, and our partners, only to find significant component problems when we opened our boxes.

What are the production errors? We saw warped map boards and scenario trackers, along with poorly injected and assembled miniatures. None of this met our quality standards or had presented itself in samples or pre-production copies received ahead of mass production. 

Obviously, this came as a huge shock to us, especially as ocean freight had already begun on multiple containers. However, once we verified that it wasn’t just one or two boxes with these issues, we recognized that halting further shipping and returning the product to the production facility was the only reasonable solution.

As Lunar New Year is tomorrow, facilities are already shut down for the holiday. We’re in conversation with the facility manager, who is fully invested in correcting these issues. They have both acknowledged the errors and  committed to providing us with replacement product. That being said, we won’t be able to reprint the game until workers return in mid-February.

We won’t approve another mass production run until we are certain we’ve discovered the root cause of the issues and solved them. So what does this mean for you? It means a delay of a couple of months. We aren’t sure exactly how long it will end up being, but be assured that we and our production facility are determined to solve this problem quickly and efficiently.

Making this decision was genuinely heartbreaking, but we firmly believe it was ultimately the best call.

So that's the news on the Gloomhaven front. We're also going to skip over updates on miniatures. We did have some progress there, but haven't been able to fully process it yet with big issues taking priority. So that leaves us with an RPG update below.

We do have some good news on the RPG front, so this update isn’t all bad. Layout is moving along smoothly, all art is turned in and approved, and graphic design on new icons for a few RPG-specific use cases are moving along quickly. We’re still on track for getting the RPG to proofing by the end of this week or early next week. I don’t want to make any promises, but I'm crossing my fingers that we’ll be able to send out a preview PDF in February to all of you.

This part of RPG production always feels like directed chaos. The pages look like a mess, headers are scattered everywhere, we only have placeholder images, and yet, somehow, we are close to done with the book. That last bit takes a ton of effort, but it isn’t so bad. We’ve gone through and edited the text for readability, and it might look a mess, but a quick find and replace will shape it up in no time. Here’s a spread to show you what I’m talking about:

While these updates have been focused on the book, we’re also hard at work designing the RPG cards and other physical components, so that those of you who backed for the deluxe box aren’t going to have to wait. (Which is, honestly, most of you.)

And here’s some more art from the core rulebook:

                                         

And that is all we have for the moment. We're sorry the news isn’t good, and it certainly isn’t news we’re happy with, but we'll hopefully have better news to come as we work with the factory on where to go from here. Catch you next time!

Good day! We've got lots of good news for you today, but the main thing is that we have been assured we will be able to ship the consumer backer and pre-order copies of Gloomhaven out of China before the Lunar New Year.

In the coming weeks, we'll be putting together delivery schedules for all the different regions and start shipping updates again as the games start to move, but the first thing we wanted to do is communicate a cut-off date for address changes. With the games shipping out of China at the end of the month, we expect that, in general, they will be arriving at fulfillment centers in March for fulfillment around April. So with that in mind, we'd like all address changes for wave three to be communicated by February 28th. So if you need to change your shipping address from what is currently on file in Backerkit, simply email [email protected] with your backer ID or Backerkit email address along with your new mailing address, and the sooner you can do that, the better! In addition, any remaining preorders or partial payments due in the pledge manager will be processed on January 31st.

Not much more to communicate here than what is above. The factory is assembling all the components now to make sure backer copies get shipped out by the end of the month.

Also, here is an assembly video we received from the factory that may be of some interest:

This week saw a standard delivery of new digital modifications and red wax samples for our review. We also approved on 14 new polyurethane (PU) samples that are all looking quite lovely. We're really proud of how the group of Lurker enemies are coming along and hope you are too. Because Lurkers and Demons play such pivotal roles in Gloomhaven and Frosthaven we wanted to make sure these models in particular felt extra dynamic, and as such, budget a little bit more on the production side for these to be multiple piece sculpts. What this means is rather than the miniature being plastic injected molded as a single miniature, various parts of the sculpt are molded individually and later glued together during assembly. And while this isn't necessary or reasonable across the entirety of a project like Miniatures of Gloomhaven, it was important to us to identify models like Lurkers that deserved that extra bit of production love. We hope it shows!

We’re still hammering away at layout, but it’s coming along nicely. We’ve been working hard to incorporate playtester feedback into the documents, then update the current layout flow with the new text and moving art/design elements around as necessary to match the new placement of the text. I could go into all the technical details, but the long and short of it is that I’ve cleared my plate for the next two weeks to do this work and we’re hoping to have everything in its final place/state by the end of the month. We still have a few smaller details to nail down once that’s done, such as proofing (a once-over by someone other than the people who have been staring at it for months) and then an index. I’ve already got our indexer primed and ready to go with the text materials and our style guide so they can identify important terms to seek out and give us page numbers for. But that’s the very last thing we’ll do, as any change in the text during proofing could change a page number in one place and mess the whole index up!

Speaking of playtest feedback, we’ve updated some of the book text language to marry the book’s text with the cards in a way that I think will be more intuitive and friendlier on both new players and people who are intimately familiar with the board game. There’s always a lot going on in each individual Gloomhaven action, and we want to ensure the best understanding possible. 

So the text will look something like this:

And some full-page art by Ed Bourelle:


                                         

In other news, we are excited to share with you that Cephalofair is officially bringing on two more full-time staff! These are two people who have been working with us for a long time and are now having their roles expanded.

First is Danielle Lauzon Harper, the project lead on the RPG, who is now a full-time project manager for Cephalofair. Danielle has done such a great job managing the RPG, she was the obvious first choice when we decided we needed a full-time project manager for all our current and future projects. This should keep things running along smoothly as we work on getting the rest of these waves finished!

And second is Layne Huber, who has been doing contract graphic design work for us now since we launched the Backerkit campaign, and who is now being brought on as our graphic design lead. Layne has been instrumental in getting Gloomhaven out the door and is now hard at work on the cards for the RPG. Having him full-time means we'll get everything else out the door faster, which is always good!

On behalf of the entire Cephalofair Team, happy Lunar New Year to all our international and celebrating backers and manufacturing partners!

We've been working with many of our manufacturing partners for upwards of almost 10 years now, which is incredible to think about. We know the hard work it has taken to get backer copies produced ahead of the nearly month-long holiday in China and are so appreciative for them and their expertise. We wish our partners a prosperous new year and ample quality time with friends and family in the month ahead. Gong Xi Fa Cai!

And that's all the news we have. Catch you next time!

Good day! I hope you had some happy holidays! We all enjoyed our festivities and are now back at our desks to continue to work toward getting everything across the finish line in the new year.

We've got progress reports on all outstanding projects, so let's get to it!

We spent a lot of time over the holidays continuing to work with the factory to make sure backer copies get out of the factory before the Lunar New Year. By all accounts, we are still on track with this, which is great news. Arch did some final physical proofing of components that needed color correction after the previous physical proofs, and we have started receiving some encouraging photos from the production line as everything goes full steam ahead.





We'll have more definitive confirmation next update as to whether we'll get everything shipped out on time, but we are confident everything should continue as expected.

In addition to a handful of new digital modifications and red wax samples, we also received received 38 polyurethane (PU) samples for previously approved models. The Cephalofair team is very pleased indeed with the quality we're seeing from our manufacture and it's exciting to have so many production ready miniatures in our hands! Seeing them side by side and first hand, we really think these miniatures will elevate whichever Gloomhaven campaign you're playing, or even better BLOW OPEN the amount of character and enemy model options for your Gloomhaven RPG campaigns!

Depicted below are a box of those latest samples, and a sampling of the notorious Gloomhaven demons next to an outnumbered City Guard.

From Danielle:

Happy New Year Mercenaries!

I have a couple of updates for you today. They are small, but definitely moving us toward a finished product on a timeline I’m happy with. Before I do that, I want to do a small “year in review” for the development of this project. While many of y’all might be familiar with board game creation, timelines, and production, RPG production is a completely different animal. It requires more people, more time, and larger (though certainly not more) art pieces. So without further ado, here’s a small snapshot of the RPG’s production cycle:

That brings us to now. 

I’ve got all but 2 pieces of art in and ready to go. Those two pieces are moving along, and the artist has been in contact with me regularly. We’ve got most of the book flowed for layout, and now I’m down to implementing the tiny corrections necessary to get it into printable standard. We should hopefully have a proof PDF soon, and shortly after that, we can send it to our printer.

                                       

There's nothing much else to update you on this time as we settle into the new year. Next update, we'll be back to the regular Tuesday schedule, meaning it will drop on Jan. 14. Catch you then!

Good day! We are all back from PAXU, where we had a great time and we were also very productive, shoring things up with Gloomhaven and planning our next year. You can read more about that below, so let's get to it!

Reviewing the physical proofs, we did find some issues that needed addressing (mostly color correction and assembly stuff), so we've adjusted the files one last time and should be giving the factory a go ahead to start printing on all files within the next day.

A lot of effort went into this game at every stage, and it is super exciting to finally see it through! From here, our window to the Lunar New Year is small, but it looks like it is still possible to get all copies needed for fulfillment out before it closes. We'll keep you updated if anything changes on that.

Gloomhaven mercenary miniatures are in mass production for wave 3 backer copies of Gloomhaven. These were the first components approved and put into production/assembly ahead of the game shipping. We've been focusing on getting Gloomhaven out the door, but we still kept progress across a couple of other miniature SKUs and are working with our manufacturer to hopefully expedite their sample submission process in the New Year to see more of the results we're hoping for. Also, many congratulations to our production manager on the factory side, Anson, who recently returned from his wedding and honeymoon!

From Danielle:

Season's Greetings Mercenaries! First, let me wish you a very happy holiday. No matter what you celebrate this month, it sure is a time for travel, visiting family and friends, and playing some cool games. I was able to engage in each of those three seasonal activities the other week at PAX Unplugged. We ran a bunch of tables of the Gloomhaven RPG, connected on some important internal Cephalofair business, and looked forward to next year and what we're going to be doing with future RPG projects. While we haven't settled on any specifics yet (we still have to do the final push on the core), we're eager to explore the lore and intricacies of the Septhonic Plane.

At each convention I've gone to this year, I've made minor adjustments in how I run sessions, what parts I emphasize, and how we explain gameplay to players. B and I took some time to go through some of our internal playtester feedback prior to PAXU, and tried to brainstorm small, but effective, changes we could make and test at our last show before we go to print. At this point, based on feedback and player responses, I'm confident in the system and how it runs. The changes between the boardgame and the RPG feel subtle at first, but make a huge impact on the pacing and narrative elements of the game. We were able to sit down and explain some of those changes to fans as they came by our RPG room, and the ease with which folks grasped not only the changes, but what the changes were intended to facilitate left me feeling really good. (Which is great, because we shouldn't be making huge changes at this point in creation anyway.) Most of the feedback we've gotten simply requires clarifying text, a few more cross-references to make important rules easy to find, and a table or two to make complex information easier to parse.





                                         

In other news, the Frosthaven community-driven campaign is over! I had a great time with this, and I think the scenarios turned out really well. The last scenario is a huge boss fight, so enjoy that. And it's not too late to start playing it if you're interested. You can no longer participate in the polls, but you can still play through the story, all of which you can find here (thanks to Any2Cards for compiling it all in one place).

And thanks to everyone who came out to PAXU to play the RPG and Gloomhaven and Buttons & Bugs! We had a great time with all of you, and I thought I'd share a few pictures.











At the show, we were selling B&B promo packs (seen above) that included the four bonus scenarios we released at different conventions over this last year. You can now also pick this up for $5 in our webstore here!

And that's all I've got. Since our next update falls on New Year's Eve, we're going to push it back until Thursday, Jan. 2, so I'll catch you in the new year and happy holidays!