On Shipping and DLCs. Also, pictures!
almost 5 years ago – Wed, Jan 29, 2020 at 04:00:29 PM

Urbi et Orbi!

Pax vobiscum! Mike is here. 

Specimen #1 arrived, and it looks awesome. Still not flawless as we wanted, but let's be honest - it's pretty close to it.  

Time trickles way too slow these weeks, making us feel kind of like St Louis's army at Damietta: sad, tired, besieged, aching for the news of hope to come from far beyond, with the only substantial difference is that we still don't have dysentery in our camp.  On our last mile to Heaven, we've gathered all possible calendar obstacles and delays:  Christmas, New Year, Orthodox Christmas, and now, eventually, Chinese New Year. Each time, we had yet another person on the other end of the wire, saying, "Yes, it's all done. But let's get back to it after the holidays!" on literally every milestone during the last two months, and all we had to say was just "Well, happy holidays then! Merry Christmas, Happy New Year, Христос ся рождає - славімо Його and 春节快乐！ Let's get back after the holiday."

What will we get back to after this last one?  On February 3rd, our heathen comrades will return to work. On that very day, our precious cargo will be picked up from the manufacturer's warehouse, brought to the Shanghai seaport, stacked into two maritime containers, and eventually loaded on two cargo ships bound for Koper, Slovenia, and Oakland, California. We will share the shipping trackers with you as soon as we have them.

All these merchant chores and botherations were no doubt troublesome, but it was not them that held me so preoccupied these last two months. All this time, we were working on our first mini-campaign add-on, "De Sorori Regis" (of King's Sister). 

"Baldwin IV, the Leper King of Jerusalem, died in 1185, and the kingdom was left to his nephew Baldwin V. The following year he died, and his mother Princess Sybilla, sister of Baldwin IV, crowned herself queen and her husband, Guy of Lusignan, king. Soon, one of Sybilla's knights, Raynald of Châtillon, raided a luxurious caravan that Rabi'a Khatun, the Saladin's sister, was traveling with from Egypt to Syria, and had its travelers thrown in prison thereby breaking a truce between the Kingdom of Jerusalem and Saladin. Saladin demanded that the prisoners and their cargo be released. The newly crowned King Guy appealed to Raynald to give in to Saladin's demands, but Raynald refused to follow the king's orders..."

But we're working not only on this one campaign but the full storytelling mode. Think of it as a sort of narrative-driven "fairy chess" game where players compete in consecutive custom-tailored missions with pre-set of units, switching roles and sides following by scenario, struggling to win the resources and Divine support for the final battle. We'll try to recreate all those historical anecdotes and tidbits we all enjoy so much. And the best part about it is that it all comes as DLC. No more print proofs that stuck on customs, nor shipping, no VAT, no expensive materials. Eventually, I'll stop being a game merchant and return to where I belong, a game designer and art historian (sobs and blows his nose in a stack of misfiled custom declarations). 

Anyhow, "King's Sister" will be the pilot issue, and we, as always, will anticipate all feedback, suggestions, and inspirations from you guys. Generally, there is an immense collective creative potential in this campaign builder thing, so we'll do our best to deliver it asap, but it will take some more released campaigns to see how it all works before we'll come up with the campaign builder rules for you. 

OK, that's pretty much it for now, my fair knights! Here's your long-anticipated dessert: unboxing and some photos of your shining treasure that is just a few days away from starting it's travel to you. 

Here it is, our precious 4 kg / 9 lbs baby. What's inside it that makes it so hefty?

The complexity and severity of  this rulebook outweighted all other assets, combined. And yet it have patches amendments to come after you'll evaluate it and play it.

One of our worst repetitive nightmares is that we've missed or misspelled one of your noble names on the board back. Please forgive us if we really did so despite all precautions taken.

Four Crusader Armies and the Saracens. Gilded on both sides, 2.5 mm thick and delightfully heavy

Depicting 4 poor quarters, 4 average and 4 rich ones, each City Quarter token carries unique artwork.

Stretch Units are Siege Engines, Greek Fire and unique Hero tokens, featuring historical figures like Richard Lionheart or El Cid.

Here's some close-ups:

Kickstarter compresses photos ruthlessly, so there are high res images, just in case if you're interested: close-ups and GIFs.

And now, I believe, we could call it an update. Thank you for your patience and compassion, O Noble Congregation! Stay awesome, keep safe and recycle! We'll come back next week with shipping news.

Deus Lo Vult!

Update #100, The Only Update You Were Really Waiting For All This Time!
about 5 years ago – Wed, Nov 27, 2019 at 02:14:15 AM

Urbi et Orbi!

Pax vobiscum, O beloved brethren of mine! Blessings upon all your households! Mike is here.

Today is a special day. First of all, on this very day, November 27th, in 1095 AD, the motto "Deus Lo Vult" sounded on Council of Clermont for the first time ever, thus marking the dawn of Crusades Era. 

"When Pope Urban had said these and very many similar things in his urbane discourse, he so influenced to one purpose the desires of all who were present, that they cried out, 'It is the will of God! It is the will of God!' When the venerable Roman pontiff heard that, with eyes uplifted to heaven he gave thanks to God and, with his hand commanding silence, said: Most beloved brethren, today is manifest in you what the Lord says in the Gospel, "Where two or three are gathered together in my name there am I in the midst of them." Unless the Lord God had been present in your spirits, all of you would not have uttered the same cry. For, although the cry issued from numerous mouths, yet the origin of the cry was one. Therefore I say to you that God, who implanted this in your breasts, has drawn it forth from you. Let this then be your war-cry in combats, because this word is given to you by God. When an armed attack is made upon the enemy, let this one cry be raised by all the soldiers of God: It is the will of God! It is the will of God! (Robert the Monk: Historia Hierosolymitana. in (RHC, Occ III.))

These words are still echoing in ages, and today we'll shout and scream and roar all along with them because today our Gilded Crusade did finally came to reality! So let's not drown out these words in further vain chatter, but instead, will silently admire its golden light that shines upon us through the darkness of countless years! 

It's finishing being printed and will be handed over to the lamination and assembly line while you read this. When done, all boxes will be put in two containers, one will sail to the New World, while another will be bound for good ol' Europe. Then the local fulfillers will take care of it and bring it to your doorsteps.

We'll announce the exact shipping date when we'll have it. Meanwhile, we invite you to join us in our prayers to St Nicholas the Wonderworker,  the saint patron of all sailors and maritime merchants and ask for the fair wind and gentle waves for vessels that carry our crusaders! 

Deus Lo Vult! 

Specimen Zero Review!
about 5 years ago – Wed, Oct 09, 2019 at 02:03:32 AM

Urbi et Orbi!

Pax Vobiscum! Mike is here, with the most anticipated updates.  As many of you already know, our Sample Box, a.k.a. Specimen Zero, arrived along with the offset print proof sheets. These were opulent but not perfect; thus, we had to rearrange background textures and patterns and then make another sample print, and this last one was eventually considered to be perfect enough for mass production. Unfortunately, we've got into Chinese National Holiday with this order, so everyone on that side had a full week off, making it unable for us to have the updates on this in time. But now we got it all, so let's take a look for yourselves:

These above are cold foil industrial print proofs. That is how all your units, amenities, camps, box and game board will actually appear. Also, we've been asked repeatedly about this, so I guess I should note this once again: this Gilded Box is what each one of you will get, not the Glory Boxers only! 

Now, about Specimen Zero. Let's have a closer look here:

The first thing I'd like to remind now is that this one is DIGITALLY PRINTED and MANUALLY ASSEMBLED, which means it is but a prototype to present the actual box's size, weight, and inventory - but not the actual look of the game (because this is what print proofs were made for). Since there's no such thing as a digital foil, all assets elements to be guilded, were printed for Specimen Zero on a regular paper with neon orange color to show where the foil will be. Also, you could notice some tokens in this prototype have some cut-out biases due to manual punchboard creation (humans are no match to robots, apparently). But these are the Specimen Zero specific flaws, and they won't affect your Gilded Boxes quality, so please worry not, O Noble Congregation!

First, we'll look at the box itself. It is 300x300x65 mm (around 12x12x2,5 inches), and its weight (with all the addons included) is 3.90 kg or 6.6 lbs. It is gilded all around and has a book-like cover with two magnetic locks on one side. The only sad part about this box is that we had to drop the plastic organizer because it simply won't fit in with all the assets, and if we'll make boxes an inch deeper to fix this issue then we won't fit into 20' shipping container with all our shipping stock. We'll put ziplock bags there for you to keep the tokens separated, though. 

BTW, the separate delivery from Shanghai to Kyiv for this parcel cost us $80, so the bulk container shipment plan totally was the right one!

Now, the Unit tokens and the Camp cards. There are 124 tokens in a Base Game (and yet another 114 in addons altogether), and a Camp Card for each army. All these are foiled and gilded on both sides; they have pleasant substantial weight and convenient 2,5 mm thickness for easy pickup. 

The next thing is the game board. It is the 3 mm thick, 560x840 mm (or 22" x 33", if you like) six-fold piece,  also gilded on both sides, with the battlefield and the purgatory on one side and colorful collective portrait on other. 

Also, there are our Advanced Game Assets - the Amenities and the Divine Will cards. These could frankly be called "the mission builder," for they allow you to build kinda historically correct campaign set-ups  by adding the "god's will acts" such as heat, cold, storms, epidemics and so on. Certain trigger events could activate these disasters, or you can go directly by the schedule, i.e., use Heat, Cold, Rain, and Storm cards in rounds to imitate the seasonal weather changes that affect the warfare. Or,  you could apply the Sanitation Rule, which starts the Plague or Cholera outbreak when too many units are crowded inside the Camp, and so on. We'll plan to start publishing various Crusades campaigns in DLC pdf format soon, and you're welcome to share your ideas on what you'd like to see first!

These cards are 65x100mm, printed on a fine texturized designer paper, with golden and silver prints on both front and back sides. Also, they all will have a gilded edges like these:

Last but not least, here comes the main asset and goal of every war ever fought on this Earth - THE GOLD. Each game box will hold a treasure of 36 extremely shiny Saracenic coins that are exact replicas of a golden dinar from the XI century, defaced with the word "LO" in the center of each one. 

All these are being signed to production while you read this update,  so we could expect the printing and assembling to be done in 30 days or so.  We'll keep you updated, just as usually. We also plan to have a game night this Sunday, but, alas, Kickstarter dropped the KS Live feature so we can't stream it here. First we were thinking of Facebook Live, but it seems many of our noble knights are not presented in that truly blasphemous place. So, if you have a better idea than FB Live please let us know, or we'll just do it there. 

What else is here to say? European VAT is almost fully collected (please hurry those who didn't do it yet), while USA VAT just does not exist (and we hope the Orange King will not apply his anti-Chinese custom fee for board games before we'll deliver). All other countries residents will have their boxes delivered separately from either US or EU fulfillers hubs, so they should pay their local fees and taxes on their own (if applicable), just as usually. 

Divine Blessings upon all of you, O Noble Congregation! Stay awesome, eat vegetables and love each other! 

Rejoice ye! The Specimen #0 is to be shipped!
over 5 years ago – Wed, Sep 04, 2019 at 11:06:29 PM

O Noble Congregation!

Sorry for being silent for so long, but eventually here are the most anticipated news from fair Shanghai where we lay our scene: behold the Specimen #0, which is to be shipped to us tomorrow! Prepare for the upcoming unboxing and review update! Deus Lo Vult!

Thank you all for your support, and see ya in the next update, Knights!

Rendering Unto Caesar The Things That Are Caesar's: EU VAT Step By Step How-To
over 5 years ago – Tue, Aug 13, 2019 at 02:09:55 AM

Urbi et Orbi!

Mike is here, with a promiced detailed step-by-step instructions on how exactly we're supposed to render unto Caesar the things that are Caesar's or, in other words, to pay those ill-fated EU Value-Added Tax money. In fact, there are two such instructions: one for Early Backers and another for Late Backers. 

For the EARLY BACKERS (KICKSTARTER ORDERS) it goes like this:

1. Go to backerkit.com

2. Select «I’m backer» and log in with an email you've used when making your order:

3. Select "Deus lo Vult - The Blalblabla" from a list of your projects

4. Click on  «Edit Add-ons» when prompted:

5. This must take you to the Add-On List. There you have to select ONE EU VAT 20% FOR CORE GAME BOX per each Core Game Box you're own, and ONE EU VAT20% FOR ADD-ON per each your add-on (unless you had them free with your Glory Box). Like, if you got 2 Core Boxes and 3 Add-Ons, you have to end up with 2 of  Core Game Box EU VAT 20% for and 3 of Add-on EU VAT in your Shopping Cart.

6. See your balance at a top right changed. Now you're good to click "Next"

7. Next, you have to confirm your address. Go for it!

8. Then, you'll find yourself on a final confirmation page. You'll be invited to put in your card details, or use PayPal.

 9. That's it! Just click «Place My Order» and enjoy being fabulous!

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If you're with our LATE BACKERS (which means you've got your stuff via BackerKit after 18 AUG 2018), your drill will be a bit different.

Alas, BackerKit functionality doesn't allow backers to change any of preorder store page, thus you'll see this when you open your order:

This is how you should pay your EU VAT here:

1. Proceed to the preorders page (https://deuslovult.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders)

2.There you have to select ONE EU VAT 20% FOR CORE GAME BOX per each Core Game Box you're own, and ONE EU VAT20% FOR ADD-ON per each add-on (unless you had them free with your Glory Box). Like, if you got 2 Core Boxes and 3 Add-Ons, you have to end up with 2 of  Core Game Box EU VAT 20% for and 3 of Add-on EU VAT in your Shopping Cart.

3. Click the Shopping Cart in a top right corner: 

4. There will be a pop-up window prompting you to checkout: 

5. Enter the very same email you've used here to make an order. This is important, because we'll merge your orders in one using this id.

6. Then, you'll find yourself on a checkout page. You'll be invited to put in your card details, or use PayPal:

This must be it, but if, for any reason, none of this two ways worked for you, or you still have any questions please feel free to contact us via Kickstarter PM. We'll do our best to serve you in a best way possible!

Deus Lo Vult!