Deus lo Vult – The Board Game of Rampage, Betrayal and Agony

On Notre Dame de Paris Disaster
about 5 years ago – Fri, Apr 19, 2019 at 01:00:29 AM

Urbi et Orbi!

Mike is here, just to say a little about Notre Dame de Paris Cathedral fire. 

As you all know, we have a tip jar on our BackerKit page. Thanks to your generosity, it held some two hundred silver pieces and more, and we give it all to the reconstruction, and we call you out to follow us there - but in our usual ways! 

Not only we emptied our alms jar on BackerKit, but we also put there yet another one !

The alms you drop there during the next 12 days would be transferred to Friends of Notre-Dame de Paris (we'll present you the payment report), and you no doubt will go to Heaven after doing so (please don't ruin it by doing the nasty stuff again, though). More than that - as if the heaven bliss per se is not good enough for such a beneficent congregation -  we've decided to put a little memory there for you (and, most probably, it's the last exclusive extra asset we add - our punchboard print files are  done and we won't mess with them anymore), so behold ye:

If we find a $1000 in our Alm Jar, we'll add this exclusive DV Card to all Core Game Boxes: 

Turrim (The Tower)

This card negates the effects of all good Divine Will Cards (Mirabile, Indulgentia, Liturgia, etc.) Being drawn, it stays active in the game until the end, unless...

...unless we find $2000 in alms in that jar! In this case, we'll add another exclusive DV card to all Core Game Boxes:

Turrim (the Tower) 

There are millions and billions of euros raised for the restoration already, but it's not about the companies and governments doing their part. It's about us, humble crusaders, paying our toll to the vanishing beauty of old we all adore so much and which we try to save and pass it further to eternity.

6 Let him that is taught in the word communicate unto him that teacheth in all good things.

7 Be not deceived; God is not mocked: for whatsoever a man soweth, that shall he also reap.

8 For he that soweth to his flesh shall of the flesh reap corruption; but he that soweth to the Spirit shall of the Spirit reap life everlasting.

9 And let us not be weary in well doing: for in due season we shall reap, if we faint not.

10 As we have therefore opportunity, let us do good unto all men, especially unto them who are of the household of faith.

(Galatians, 6:6 - 6:10 )

Non nobis, Domine, non nobis, sed Nomini Tuo da Gloriam!

Deus Lo Vult!

On Progress and Delays
about 5 years ago – Wed, Apr 03, 2019 at 12:22:12 AM

Well, hello there, O Noble Congregation! 

Mike is here, with his monthly report and repentance. 

I've promised you the delivery in March, but now it's pretty obvious that we've failed the deadline, woe is me! But please don't rush for torches and pitchforks and let me show you the big picture of month that passed.

First thing first, we're done with tokens pre-print processing, all 492 token faces, which gives about  2+ square meters wide blanket, densely packed with 40mm high figures and miniature ornaments. Considering there are six color channels, we can say that our designer crawled through full 12 square meters (or 130 sq feet, if you like) of very elaborate artwork. No wonder that first two pre-press designers we hired have resigned in panic after first few days of work and a dozen more rejected the job right after being introduced to the full scope of work:

Second thing second, we're done with your most noble mugshots, O generous Glory Box Owners. Apparently, we weren't able to fulfill all your wishes (no claymores and katanas for you, sorry), but we hope you'd like the result. If you want to get your personal token image (for user pic, or tattoo or something), just reach out to me via FB page, and I'll gladly send it to you!

 
Third thing third, we're almost done the hardest part of this festering sore of my conscience: the Game Manual. Design is ready for nearly all pages, the English text is being sent to an Editor and soon it will be out for the volunteer translation. Please take a look, and maybe you'll be able to excuse us at least a little bit for being such slowpokes. We just can't throw some cheap wall-of-text white papers in there, so it all ended up like this:

Hell's thing hell, the Game Board is ready. We've fully re-built Ye Olde Good Purgatory. After all, it's the place where you'll be spending A LOT of time, so it must be super nice and cozy. We hope you'll love it:
 

 

    By the way, speaking of Hell - it was literally the place I dwelled through the last month, and the reason is the DELIVERY COST. 

I remember when we've announced our $19 shipping fee...  

 
        ...and this number caused such many rumbles and lamentations I had to publish a special bull "On Godless Delivery Prices," saying "we'll do our best to find a solution cheaper than that and reimburse the difference with some exclusive assets." Lol, Mike from the past, you're so funny!

       How naive and ignorant we all were, crying for that nineteen bucks. Well, now we've got all the cost simulations done, and here we are. Behold ye,  for I'll give you something to cry about. For reals:
 

 "Your product's dimensional weight (in pounds): 4.0 lbs.
Your product's actual weight (in pounds): 7 lbs.
Per Unit Cost from China to Region 1: $35 to $52
China / Macau, Japan, Vietnam, Malaysia, Taiwan, Singapore, Thailand, India, Australia
Per Unit Cost from China to Region 2: $46 to $69
Cambodia, Laos, Philippines
Per Unit Cost from China to Region 3: $56 to $84
Western Europe, U.S., Canada, Mexico, New Zealand, South Korea, Indonesia, Brunei
Per Unit Cost from China to Region 4: $86 to $129
The Middle East, Eastern Europe, South & Central America, Caribbean, Portugal, Finland, Greece, Sri Lanka, Bangladesh"

- "What the bloody hell, maybe we should find another fulfiller, who will offer more reasonable price! I should lurk more!", said Mike, and wrote more letters to a bunch of other Chinese fulfillers.
    And these were for the answers:
 

over and over again....

          Apparently, direct shipment turned out to be totally unacceptable. The last thing I ever wanted to announce is "Sorry guys; you have to pay three times the game price more, just to have it delivered," so I've prayed for the guidance and kept on searching, and soon the Lord sent me his rectangular, bluish, hollow angel: meet 20'GP Container!

    Funny thing, but if we put all Americas-bound orders in a single 20' General Purpose Container and send it to the US-based fulfiller's door,  the money side looks like this:

Price Breakdown
          FREIGHT (US)$1,836.00
          CONGESTION / PSS / LSF (US)$20.00
          COMMUNICATION FEE (US)  $10.00
          CUSTOMS CLEARANCE (CN)  $53.95
          TRUCKING (US)  $865.58
          CHASSIS RENTAL (US)$66.00
          INSURANCE (US)  $102.18
          ENS FEE (US)  $35.00
          AMS (US)  $50.00
          Customs clearance and ISF 10+2 (US)$225.00

TOTAL $3,263.71

   Thus, $3,261.71 for 552 Americans (and 52 Canadians) breaks down to $5 container delivery cost per unit, and then the fulfiller fee will be $10-$20 plus some $2-3 Pick/Pack and other fees, totaling with $17 - $27 effective cost - which is pretty close to that uneducated guess we made last year. Yes, it's still not exactly $19 - but we grew almost twice in weight since then, and this price is waay out of our league now.

       The same thing is with European orders. We're in the middle of the chaffer with local fulfillers, but the whole picture looks just about the same, mostly adding $5-$20 of delivery fees. We'll come back with a final numbers in a little while. I believe we'll be able to get to the final agreement with the contractors this or next week, and then we'll be ready to start printing (we won't be allowed to store our boxes at the factory, so first we have to specify fulfillers address to send boxes to, right from the factory floor). 

       I'm very sorry, O my Crusaderious Brethren, for not meeting the release deadline. Just like in real Crusades, human ignorance,  sicknesses, and misery took their toll. We're working hard all the time, but, alas, we're weaker and slower and dumber than we've thought of ourselves - and all these imperfections are two or three months of delay worth, most probably: the game will be sent to production in April, printed till the end of May, then travel for 2-3 weeks by sea, and, finally, 3-5 days of local delivery, and let the God help us on this last charge towards the Kingdom of Heaven!
 

Deus Lo Vult! 

Disgusting Man and Bouhurt Trainer: Bonus Units Highlight
about 5 years ago – Sat, Mar 02, 2019 at 12:37:28 AM

Today is the first day of the spring, a good day to send seasonal greetings to everyone who made it through the winter and pay respects to those who didn't.  Also, today we'd love to say our thanks to those who were the first to believe in Deus Lo Vult, promoting our game on a very early stage when it was merely a gloomy promise, giving it the vital energy of publicity, making the living blood of your likes and shares running through its veins and encouraging us to go on with our holy quest. To their eternal glory and commemoration, as a sign of our gratitude, we add two unique extra Kickstarter-exclusive souvenir tokens: the Bouhourt Teacher (to F&F add-on pack) and the Disgusting Man (to Core Game Box). 

Just like "Personal Issues" stretch goal tokens, these two employ ridiculous mechanics that have nothing to do with the proper game balance! Thus, consider yourselves warned. 

Bouhourt Teacher is a tribute token, to honor Mr Karl Smit, the bouhurt fighter for the Johannesburg chapter of BHSA (Battle Heritage South Africa), who runs "Medieval Life and Combat Studies" facebook page from Alberton, South Africa and gives some hefty shield bashes! 

Discard one gold coin back to the bank and flip Bouhurt Trainer token to allow your unit to perform a shield bash, attacking enemy with his "shield" edge instead of "skull" edge.

Disgusting Man is a token to glorify his namesake, disgustingmen.com, and personally, Alexander Kanygin who made the first interview with us, going ahead of BBC themselves with that news! Good job, Alex! Enjoy your unit.

Disgusting Man is so disgusting and loathsome that he's not allowed to any camp on the game board. All units in the band he is adjoined to are unable to enter the tent, without passing this purulent abomination to someone else.

The Disgusting Man is a unique refugee unit. It can be controlled by any player during any phase of their turn, just like regular Refugee units. He also could be insta-killed the same way, and his killer will also get to the purgatory. 

Kyiv-Shanghai-Jerusalem: On Production Progress
about 5 years ago – Tue, Feb 26, 2019 at 12:00:32 AM

Urbi et Orbi!

Mike is here, back from 20,000 km journey in one piece (well, I still caught that Shangai flu despite all precautions taken). Now here I am, rheumy, runny and sneezy, but yet feeling very happy about the progress this travel brought upon. 

The first thing to say: the manufacturing facilities of DoFine Games have exceeded our expectations. These guys have amazing showroom and portfolio, very imposing production line, and friendly team of professionals, eager to go wherever it takes to find the ideal solution for our complicated case and solicitous of our needs before their own comfort and profits. It’s an honor and pleasure to collaborate with such a fantastic crew!

But the first thing we’ve learned from our newly-gained production expertise was “for in much wisdom is much vexation and he who increases knowledge increases sorrow.” It became apparent that, despite our idea of production looks terrific, it’s doomed to be short-lived beauty. Golden paint gets off at friction, leaving traces on other assets and losing its shine very fast, and not even offset varnish is able to protect it. Lamination could be the answer, but in this case, we lose all the shine, for metallic paints will look dull beneath it.

However, after few days of research and experiments we’ve managed to find the only possible winning solution for this case: to print all the tokens and the game board on a bright glossy metallic foil. Thus, the paint layer goes atop of the foil, all over the surface except for “metallic” areas which going to have unprinted clearances displaying the bright shining foil layer from underneath. We’ll put a UV-varnish on top of it, and then we’ll cover everything with a matte protective lamination layer just a few µm thick! 

Alas, this elegant and fine-crafting decision sends us few weeks back in time in terms of print files preparation, for we need to change the very principles of it: first, we used four CMYK Channels for regular inks and three Pantone Spot Channels for metals -  but now we have to “cut” the metal parts out of each CMYK channel/layer instead. 

Divine Will Cards were resized to fit the 65x100 protector sleeve size. I've decided what kind of leaf gold goes on the edges. This one goes:

Coins. It turns out they not only affect the price with their production costs, but they’re the most substantial asset in the box too, pushing us behind our shipping weight limits. We’re trying to find a way to keep them solid and metallic, but it might end up either with extra shipping fees or with metal-like plastic substitutes, for there are simply no other assets to discard or redesign to get us more free weight. I'll keep you updated on this topic, the moment of truth is pretty close!

Generally, it's the only thing that still makes us feel so sinking-hearted: the upcoming weight calculation update. Boy, we're hefty. It ain't the Monopoly money on 80 g/m paper, you know - it's 2mm greyboard sandwiched between two 175 g/m foil sheets (add glue, add lamination, add paint and varnish, and no, we can't use 1 mm greyboard for core, because it'll be pressed very hard repeatedly during laminations and printing, ending up with about a half of original thickness). So we pray this $19 fee to be a bit more than enough for at least some of shipments so we could be able to re-distribute it to have everyone covered (can't believe it looked such a cheeky price just six months ago!). Anyhow, we expect the final weight figures calculation later this week, so stay tuned!

Box. We want to redesign it in a way to make it look like a real medieval manuscript, with cover and pages and locks. Here’s the idea of how it’s going to look like:

Game Board and its back art piece will also be made of shiny foil with the colorful overprint and protective matte lamination: 

BTW, we’re still working on that back art piece, including Glory Box portraits, and we’re quite surprised to see a dozen of those are still missing. I mean, come on, guys, you’ve paid your gold to get your mugshot into this game, and now you’re about to lose that chance. We’ll still put your initials on your units’ background and show your name on the back, but if you don't send us your portraits during, like, next week or two, you’ll go crusading while wearing some stranger's face instead of your own.  Consider yourselves duly warned!

Long story short, it's gonna take a few more weeks for our designer to re-assembly the print files and rearrange the box design while Alex and Young Mike finishing the congregation backpiece and manual art, but it looks like we have all the chances we need to send the game to print in late March. That's where we are, O Glorious Congregation! Our Jerusalem is nigh. Even though our rearguard is still raising dust on a horizon behind our backs, we can clearly see the shine of the City of God in front of us! 

Buckle up, O Holy Warriors, for our next stop is "Sent to Production!" 

Deus Lo Vult!

First Color Proof Is Ready!
about 5 years ago – Tue, Feb 12, 2019 at 01:08:53 AM

Urbi et Orbi! Mike is here.

Behold ye: here lies the Great Divide between pre-production and production stages of The Gilded Crusade: our first industrial color proof prints!