4th Edition Update

4th Edition Launch Update 4th Edition Launch Update
with John-Paul

Let me begin by saying thank you to all, stores and gamers alike, who made the launch weekend such a wonderful success. It was the first time in our history so many events were run by so many stores and clubs around the world on the same day, and the feedback from everybody has been overwhelmingly positive. Now, with so many moving parts, there were some areas that did not quite go as planned. We have been hit by a few delays on some items. So today I am going to try and cover as many of these pending issues as possible, and clarify some other topics that still need answers.

Rulebooks for Australia and New Zealand
Let’s start with Australia and New Zealand. Due to a sea freight with the free books being delayed in arriving, and a subsequent emergency air freight did not have enough to cover all the stores, so we absolutely did not have enough free books in Australasia in time for the launch weekend. A second batch was air-freighted as soon as we discovered there was going to be a shortage; it arrived today (16 March 2017), and the delayed sea shipment with the full amount again will dock shortly. So there will be no shortage of books to go around. We offer our apologies to those of you who went to a store this weekend and left empty-handed, but rest assured the store will be getting more very soon and ultimately you will not miss out. We should have been aware of this before the weekend and let you know, and that is entirely on us.

4th Edition Launch Update
4th Edition Launch Update 4th Edition Launch Update

Free Books
This leads into a question that has come up again; how and when you can get the free books. Although we have just had a great launch weekend, in which we hoped as many people as possible would go into their store, the free copies of the books are with stores until they hand them all out. As long as your local store still has copies left, you can go in and collect yours – so please check with them directly. If they run out or you can’t visit a store, drop us a line ([email protected]), as we have books set aside for this very reason. But no matter how you do it, this offer was never just for the launch weekend, but until all the copies have been handed out.

Terrain
There were delays in the arrival of our China-made desert terrain, the Dunes and Escarpments. They are in transit by sea at the moment. We will be able to confirm their actual arrival date when the shipment it closer to arriving. We have enough to fill all current orders, so nobody who has an order in for these will miss out. Getting things on the water before Chinese New Year is always a challenge.

4th Edition Launch Update
4th Edition Launch Update

Pre-orders
Some confusion has arisen about pre-orders and how they are handled, as expectations and the system are not always quite in the same place. When you place a pre-order, you are now offered a choice:

● to ship the order 100% in one go, which means it will wait till the last thing on the list comes out;
● or ship it in waves, which may mean additional cost.

Even when your order qualifies for free shipping, this applies — so one order will be free if you choose to ship in one go. But if, for example, you ordered all the German releases for the next four months, you will either receive multiple shipments or you will get a very big box at the end of June. 

But you won’t get one shipment straight away including the stock with later scheduled release dates.

We will do a better job of making this clear in future, and we are sorry for people who were expecting boxes this past weekend that did not arrive – this shows that the details of how their order was to be shipped were not communicated effectively enough.

El Alamein Dice
A few hundred of these sets in the USA have got different dice in them. These dice are the larger ones with symbols on them that we used to sell back in the past. We had to improvise to complete the full run due to the extra demand, and this was a much better outcome than not shipping all the orders. It was just for this run and if you want to swap them for the smaller no-symbol 12mm versions, just drop [email protected] a line and we will do that for you.

4th Edition Launch Update
4th Edition Launch Update

Gaming Mat
This has been delayed coming to market as the supplier has seriously let us down on the delivery. A new supplier has been found and we will have more details soon on exactly when they will arrive with us.

Website
As many of you might have noticed the weekend had quite a bit of content going up. This combined with a new look last week created some of those frustrating, where did that link go and other gremlins that seem to happen when you add or change anything before a really important weekend. The site crashed at one point due to heavy traffic but was back up quickly. We are still making a few changes to the look and feel of the online store and hover menu but the 'Store Tree' has been restored after some late night bug fixing by the team at FourthMedia.

4th Edition Launch Update
4th Edition Launch Update

Forum
Given all the speculation and questions before the launch weekend and the issues raised, the bulk of which I hope we have now answered, we will be doing a prune of the forum threads this week to tidy things up. With the rules out in the world now, new topics should be created to discuss that. The last few months of free and frank speculative opinion can now be replaced with what you think about what the game is really like now that you have it in your hands.

Local Gaming Store
A new forum rule we will be adding to the list is a simple one about your LGS. In too many instances when you are talking about stores – whether it be praise or raising an issue – we have no idea who the store is without following up and asking you directly. In future, if you are referring to a store in any way on the site, for good or bad reasons, we want to know who they are specifically. The shop who sold out his stock on Wednesday before the weekend, or sold their demo kit, need a call from us just like the ones that do a great job when you praise their activities. So please make sure to always include the name of the store when you post about your LGS.

Thanks
Lastly, let me say that despite how tired I know all the teams are after the long, busy weekend, it has been great to get such a response from so many of you. We put a huge amount of passion and time into new projects and a new edition of the rules is the granddaddy of them all. Now the rules and the first few books are out, you have a few more things still to see – Command Cards, to name just one. We are delighted to have received so much positive feedback, and even some of the more sceptical now seem to have changed their minds. So we could not be happier with the result. Thank you for your ongoing support.

~ John-Paul.