Things remain on track for (a) having games available for sale at the San Diego HistCon Night Market on Saturday, November 7 and (b) shipping to everyone else during November.
If you backed the game and you'll be at SDHC, I can hand-deliver your copy without any shipping costs. (The same goes for people in the Oakland, CA area who are able to come to the Tabletop Library for fulfillment.) I have not yet set up the pledge manager, but as soon as I can, I will, and there will be a "pick up in person" option with $0 shipping.
As for the hiccups, these are both on me, but when the final artwork for the player boards got submitted, we accidentally sent in a version that omitted the +1VP consolation prizes for players who fail to qualify for a progress token, either because they came in last place in a 3p or 4p, or because they came in 2nd place but only have 1st place progress tokens left to take. These were originally intended to punch out of the aerodrome just like the progress tokens, but now they will come as a separate sheet of tokens, usable across players (so they'll be black rather than the players' colors).
This then required a substantial rewrite of the rules (it made it a little easier since now "token on the Aerodrome" and "progress token" are perfect synonyms, no need to say "not including the +1VP tokens" all the time). As it happens, sadly, the rulebooks had already been printed, so $360 dollars later, everything's fixed!
(In truth, I had found a lot of little annoying typos as well, so I was planing to print an errata sheet so the cost of the full reprint at least is offset by not needing to sent out errata, and in truth, it'll make me happier that the rules don't have "Armitice" or "nd" hidden as evil Easter eggs.)
I don't want to jinx anything, but the schedule remains good for the deliverables promised, and right now 75 of the 120 games are spoken for. I will have 30 for sale in San Diego, though of course if they sell out, I will be able to offer those customers a chance to buy for fulfillment with Backers. It feels like I will end up with a couple of dozen copies when the spoken-for sales are done, and can sell them myself in ones and two over 2027. But if you know someone who would like this, do be aware it's a limited print run, so [insert effort to generate FOMO here].
I greatly appreciate everyone's interest in the game and cannot wait for folks to be playing this on their kitchen tables and at game nights everywhere.
As a side note and unsolicited endorsement, when I was a teen, I played a ton of a game called Ace of Aces - I got my copy circa 1983 and still have all of the game-books. Aces of Aces is this amazing set of booklets that allow two players to simulate a dogfight. My favorite of the books was the "Handy Rotary" series, which featured planes with Wankel engines (like the Sopwith Camel and Fokker Dreidecke - see them in action here! NOTE those are WW ONE German uniforms, not WW TWO!!!)
). The Wankel engine spins to improve cooling of the engine, and a side effect is that it creates a lot of torque, making the plane tug to the right if not held in check. Pilots would turn this bug into a feature that allowed them to make a very sharp U-turn to the right (in the direction of the torque) and so these planes had a 180 option that none of the other planes could do.
The second from the right maneuver is a 180 courtesy of the Wankel (rotary) engine's rightward torque.
I mention this only because a nifty new version is being released with color illustrations (the old ones were just pencil sketches) and I think the campaign is about to close. Many of you who backed Skybirds may have Ace of Aces in your collection already, so simply upgrading to color might not excite you, but if you are into WWI aviation and don't have Aces of Aces, I highly recommend it. You can play it almost anywhere -- we used to play in line waiting to get into events, etc., and it's truly fun.
An old-school Handy Rotary book
Here's a link to that campaign. I get nothing from this rec other than the joy of helping other aviation buffs find more joy. Tell 'em AndyHRE sent you (and they'll say who? but tell 'em anyway)
(and yes, I did decided to get a pretty color version but just of the Handy Rotary, since that's my favorite. the other ones in monochrome/pencil sketch are fine)
After flirting with Launchlab for my production (and discovering the transportation from their factory in China ot the US was going to destroy me), I was able to connect with Steve Jones of Blue Panther, the only US-based hobbyist game manufacturer that I'm aware of. Blue Panther makes all of the Hollandspeile games sold in the US, as well as some others. You can check them out here: https://www.bluepantherllc.com/.
Steve has been great to work with. He sent over photos of his pre-mass production test run and it looks great.
Here's a close-up on the cards.
Artistically, we removed the card's black border as compared to the version on BGA, and I think it looks really cool.
Blue Panther is making a lot of the games for the SDHC Night Market, so he's very aware of the time sensitivity of the project and has promised me they'll be done in time for my promised mid-November shipment. And even better, Blue Panther has offered very competitive pricing on fulfillment. So if you live outside of the Bay Area, you will probably receive your copy of the game sent direct from the manufacturer, based in Tennessee.
Once I get my hands on an actual copy of the game, I will take more photos, but I hope this gets you all excited as it has gotten me.
Hello Skybirds backers. I wanted to pop in to say how thankful I am for your support. This is a weird crowdfunding, in that I tossed it online as a sort of an aferthought to a limited print run I am running for the San Diego History Convention (SDHC) in November. It's about $1/game cheaper to print 100 copies than 50, so it seemed smart just to gauge demand for the larger print run. I can save another 50 cents per copy if we hit 200, but I am not going to get crazy just yet.
Just over 50 copies have been ordered via this website. Normally that might not seem like a crazy large number, but given my modest expectations for the game, this is fantastic. I am in the process of getting the game spec'd with Launch Tabletop's Launch Lab [they are very exacting about the artwork so it takes two or three submissions for each item until we get it right] and so I hope to get the copies ordered before the crowdfunding campaign even finishes. So assuming I manage to navigate the artwork process, I will have these in hand when I collect your payments, and shipping should ensue soon thereafter.
In other news, the online implementation is about to move from Alpha to Beta on BGA. The advantage of Beta is that anyone with a (free) BGA account can play Skybirds once its in Beta, whereas for Alpha, it requires a player to have played 50 different games (or a special invite from me -- which all of you are entitled to, just ask!). Which means that I expect there will be more people playing online very soon, and I'd encourage you all to give the game a spin. Need a BGA account? Here's a link: https://boardgamearena.com/?sp=3ld8.
I'll try not to spam you but if somehow we hit 75 copies, I might not be able to resist another excited email. Otherwise, if there is an update for BGA or the artwork submissions, I'll let you know once there's enough news to move the dial.
