Good day! I hope you are all doing well. We are in for a bit of a shorter update this month, as expected, with both our RPG and Miniature factories just now returning from the Lunar New Year break,  We have re-engaged with both factories this week and will briefly summarize below the current and next steps!

We’ve just heard back from our Miniature factory that they have returned to office and are eager to pick up where we left off! Price and our production team are actually currently in Kentucky attending GAMA (Game Manufacturer’s Association) and met with our factory team to align on next steps and set expectations that mold production is kicking off to high gear ASAP. Good conversations were had and clear goals set for packaging, production, and our intended involvement in quality assurance. We really look forward to providing you insights, photos, and video of the mass production process once it’s formally underway.

Our internal production team has been spending the entirety of this Lunar New Year window making sure all final efforts on the RPG book are accounted for and underway for a quick kick-off with our factory. As mentioned above, Price (& Arch, & Layne) flew out early to Kentucky for a full week of in-person co-working and collaboration on the project to make sure that continued conversations with our manufacturers will be productive and effective.

Tomorrow, they have a scheduled meeting with our factory to make sure all formalities are out of the way, contracts are signed, deposits are made, and pre-press is ready to begin.

Barring any emergencies, we anticipate this is the month we will finally begin pre-press and begin reviewing/approving digital proofs!

One of the fun last steps of the project this window has allowed us time to finalize direction for our own deck of Gloomhaven playing cards! These will not only serve as a fully functional set of playing cards, but include beautiful artwork from Alexander Eilichev & Dat Phan, as well as optional graphical elements that will support Gloomhaven: RPG gameplay should you choose to use them instead of the Deluxe Card Set. (Although, ANY standard deck of 52 cards + Jokers will work!)

This deck of Gloomhaven: Playing cards will be available both with the RPG pledge manager and later on www.cephalofair.com.

This month I am giving a huge shout-out to Youtuber UcGXanathos21, who posts videos of him playing Frosthaven and Gloomhaven digital at very hard difficulty. Most impressive to me is his recent video with the world record speedrun for completing Gloomhaven Digital on +2 difficulty. You know how it took you and your group over a year to play through Gloomhaven? This guy did it in an hour and 21 minutes, and, just to reiterate, he did it on +2 difficulty.

I know how much time and dedication goes into perfecting a speed run—way, way, way more than what you see in the actual video—so stuff like this completely blows me away. If nothing else, at least watch the first two scenarios (or the Slave Pens at 1:07:15, which is just wild) and marvel at the expertise.

And that is the update for you. Like I said, we’ll have much more for you next  month once we get into molding on the miniatures and proofing on the RPG. Catch you then!

Good day! I hope you’ve had a good month, because we’ve been hard at work moving this project closer to completion! We don’t have any big updates or reveals for you this time around, but are happy to share our usual progress reports on where things are.

Let’s get to it!

On the miniatures front, we saw completion of Gloomhaven and Gloomhaven: Summons pre-production steps, pushing those SKUs into mold ready status! Only a few models remain on the Frosthaven & Frosthaven: Summons front, but the required revisions are known and in progress with our factory so we anticipate completion there any day now.

As our factory heads into their Lunar New Year break, we have been taking parallel steps with them to make sure we're set up for success to officially begin/continue molding across all SKUs on their return.

One of these necessary steps was the production of white wax samples of every miniature in their full quantities (I.e. groups of x4, x6, x10, etc) for the physical layout configuration of the vac trays in which these models will be packaged.

Another step has been auditing our final production quantities, product dimensions, and mold counts to validate our final production costs on the complete project. While we worked closely with our factory to price these products back at their inception, several variables are dependent on us reaching this final phase were we know the final parts-per-model, molds per projects, packaging dimensions, tray+lid quantities, etc. (This doesn't impact the price tag applied to this project, but has impacts on final retail and distribution pricing.)

We recognize this project has taken significantly more time than intended and estimated, and that a timeline for delivery is something we owe our backers, and we intend to shore up our final production timelines upon their return from their Lunar New Year break. There have been multiple surprises and lessons learned along the way, and challenges working with a new-to-us manufacturer and their workflow requirements, and for all the above we take full ownership.

Given the scale of this project, and the number of multi-piece models that will require sub-assembly, there are still a few too many variables in front of us to calculate our tentative fulfillment window, but we feel confident we're close to doing that with our factory partner and are putting pressure on them to help us make those commitments.

Things continue to move along at a good pace on the RPG. At this point, we are out of the trenches on page-to-page tinkering on the book. We’ve implemented all changes from the latest editing pass and are finishing up the final art integration, which was a gigantic lift from Arch. By the end of the week we will begin finalizing all page referencing efforts, which includes the table of contents and index.

We have also been finishing up graphic design on all other outstanding components of the deluxe box, such as the box itself, character sheets, and modifier cards.

All in all, if everything goes well getting the final quote from the manufacturer, we are still on track to start proofing and production on the other side of the Lunar New Year, which is very exciting. Once we can get into that, we can start getting you more concrete timeline information on the pledge manager opening and fulfillment windows.

This month I wanted to give a shout-out to Reddit user mremm3000 for their truly amazing MagHex scenario builds. I can’t imagine the work that goes into printing, painting, and assembling all of these layouts, but as they say in their post, the hobby “easily becomes a never-ending story.” I wish them all the good will in their continued endeavors, and know that we are all very impressed!

And that’s what we have for February. Have a great month, and we’ll catch you again in March!