New Promo cards and License Announcements
about 6 years ago – Fri, Mar 23, 2018 at 12:14:53 AM

Fellow Mercenaries,

as part of our promotional activities with our new licensees (see announcements below), we have created a completely new set of 4 Mercenaries, and we wouldn't want to launch these without giving you the chance to complete your set and get them included in your Kickstarter fulfillment.

New Promo card set

This group of 4 Mercenaries introduces multi-color dice contributions, making the Mercenaries very versatile and powerful in the Dice Pool generation phase. The set with 4 new unique illustrations comes with a cardboard mini punch board for the respective Assignment tokens. 

So what about Monster backers? Can you get the wooden tokens, too? Yes, we have you covered, we will put the wooden tokens for these Mercenaries in all Monster boxes, whether you order the Promo cards or not.

How can I get the Promo cards?

We have kept the backerkit pre-order store open, please access HERE and create a NEW survey, unfortunately backerkit doesn't allow to reopen your existing survey after it was locked down. Please fill in the survey with the same email address that you used for your original pledge, so that we can later match your new survey with the existing one and send everything in a single shipment.

The offer will only be open for 4 days until March 26th, sorry, after that we will have to close the PM to export data.

Second Gate Games (SGG) and VFI Asia announce License Deal for Greater China

We are proud to announce that VFI Asia, our fulfillment partner for the Asian region, will publish a Chinese retail version of Monster Lands. The games will be published under the publishing umbrella of Games Warehouse and Mr. Dexker. 

This will create presence for the game in a quickly growing board game market. As a special treat for all our Chinese and Taiwanese backers, VFI and SGG are adding the Chinese rulebook to all pledges that go into these markets, at no extra charge. You can access a digital version here.

SGG and REXhry announce License Deal for the Czech Republic and Slovakia

We are equally proud to announce that REXhry, the renowned Czech publisher, will take a Czech version of Monster Lands to market.

The Czech Republic is a hotspot for gaming in Europe, and being present there with a completely translated version fills us with joy. You can access the Czech rulebook here. It will be added to all backer shipments to the Czech Republic and Slovakia free of charge.

Pre-production update

The last weeks have been frantic preparation and exchange of artwork files and now we seem to be all set. In fact, production of dice and wooden tokens is already starting. The next weeks will be an exchange of pre-production samples and color proofs, so there is still a lot to do, but we are on the road and everything is running smoothly.

We wish you all a great start into spring (or into autumn, should you be in the Southern Hemisphere)!

Second Gate Games

Progress update
about 6 years ago – Fri, Mar 02, 2018 at 01:02:53 AM

Fellow Mercenaries,

as we are entering March, it is time for another update, we have been very busy on various fronts and are excited to share the following.

Heat Transfer Dice

A month ago we showed you the amazing work by LongPack on the engraved strength, magic, persuasion and ammunition dice. At that point in time, we didn't show you the heat transfer dice (monster & solo mode), because we weren't quite happy with the results of those particular production samples yet. So we went back through more iterations with LongPack and can now proudly show you another AWESOME set of production samples. 

See on the left the first iteration we made, and on the right the final version, you will understand how happy we are with the improvement. In the process we slightly changed the color coding of the Monster dice, making them more crisp.

Late Pledge phase over & pre-production starting

Today we have collected all your order information from backerkit and will now place our firm order with the manufacturer and enter the pre-production phase. At the office we have had frantic days of putting all the artwork files together, which is a major task considering our more than 150 cards, more than 300 tokens, custom dice and rulebooks and boxes in 4 languages. A special thanks to all the volunteers who have been helping with translation and proof-reading.

Distribution and Licensing deals

We have signed and are in the process of signing various local distribution and licensing deals for the game. This is great news, guaranteeing that Monster Lands will be played on many tables worldwide. However, there is still a LOT of work to be done in that field, so if you have any suggestion for your particular country, contacts to distributors or publishers, please let us know.

Worldwide Monster Lands Footprint

Speaking of distribution, we made a map of all the delivery addresses of the Monster Lands Kickstarter edition. No worries, no personal address data are disclosed, we only went down to post code level. This is the result, play around with this google map to find yourself, to see how many fellow mercenaries you might have around you, to see how our game goes into the most remote corners of the globe. The colors represent different countries.

 

The first Monsters are already delivered

Did you happen to order one or various glass monsters, made by Jenefer Ham? Then you are in luck, because they have already hatched and are on their way to you, should be arriving any day now. At least one lucky backer (@luis grijalba shared his excitement in the comments section) already holds the pieces of art in hand. If you ordered one and don't receive it by next Friday, let us know. 

Jenefer went out of the way and created these beautiful metal crates for backers of sets of 4/5 monsters, and pouches for backers of single monsters. Thank you, Jenefer!

Box dimension slightly increased

Another of the topics we have been working on with LongPack is the box and its inlay. The objective of our inlay is to keep the Expansion box in place, so that it can be shipped inside the core box, but be taken out as an independent unit should you wish to do so. Well, the "problem" we faced is that you unlocked SO MANY stretch goals that our original box didn't fit all the content anymore, we had to make it slightly wider and higher. The new box is now 305mm x 305mm x 80mm.

The new box now fits all material, including the Expansion box, both before and after punching the cardboard material (don't let the photo fool you with regards to tokens and prints, these are "white-sample placeholders).

A read for a lazy afternoon

Want to read about our campaign from a creator point of view? See this article by Tompet Games which features an interview with questions about the whys and hows of our campaign.

THANK YOU

Finally, we want to thank all of you for making the pledge manager phase so easy, you did extremely well, we only have about 25 people who still haven't answered. And we added 108.000 euros funding, which makes for happy production! You rock!

Cheers,

Second Gate Games

Rules, rules, rules...
about 6 years ago – Tue, Feb 06, 2018 at 12:41:34 AM

Fellow Mercenaries, 

one of the KS exclusive stretch goal contents of this campaign is a rules summary printed out and added to your box, something rather unusual to be provided by a publisher. 

For those of you who like to have a short overview where you can see everything at a glance, we have saved you the work of doing a summary yourself or waiting for a good one to appear on BGG... it is already done, by none other than the Esoteric Order of Gamers, who are well-known among those who love rules summaries. Have a look at it here.

  

Not sure what a rules summary is good for? Why do we offer one when we have invested so much time and effort in the regular rulebook? Well, the rules summary does not replace the rulebook, it serves a different purpose. Use it AFTER you have learnt the rules through the rulebook, as a reference during gameplay, or to refresh your mind in your following games. 

Speaking of the core rulebook, we also have news: the core game rulebook is ready for print in English, French, German, and Spanish. Additionally, the versions in Chinese, Portuguese, Italian, Dutch, and Polish are progressing very nicely, although these won't be printed, unless we sign licensing agreements with publishers in these language regions.

Thank you SO MUCH to all the volunteers who have helped in translating and proof-reading these, you absolutely rock!!!

All running smoothly towards having the product with you end September.

Happy reading!

Second Gate Games

Torching Sunday
about 6 years ago – Sun, Feb 04, 2018 at 11:15:00 PM

Fellow Mercenaries,

a slightly different Rahdo Runs Through... this video was meant for just those of you who pledged for the glass monsters, but it is so interesting that we thought everyone should have the chance to see it. A "making of", showing how Jenefer Ham, Rahdo's wife, torches the glass monsters. With a special THANK YOU! to all of the adoptive parents who have pledged for one monster or a full set of it.

Enjoy the rest of your Sunday!

Second Gate Games & Jenefer Ham

PS: still wanting to get a glass monster, but your survey is already closed? Just open a new pledge here, the Monsters will be sent separate from the game anyway, they will already reach their adoptive parents in spring.

Stretch Goal unlocked... Rules & New Free Content for the Expansion!
about 6 years ago – Wed, Jan 31, 2018 at 04:33:54 PM

Fellow Mercenaries,

first of all THANK YOU for helping in voting for Monster Lands on BGG. We came in behind expansions for Scythe, 7th Continent, and Terraforming Mars, but all these brands are already established, so we can proudly claim to be the most anticipated NEW euro game. 

This means that you have unlocked yet another KS exclusive stretch goal, the Provost's Loan.

But it doesn't stop here. We also inform you that we are adding new free content to the expansion. Having finished our development process of the 5th player expansion, we came to the conclusion that we need the following elements which will be added to all expansions: 5 SECOND GATE CARDS and 5 AFFINITY LINK TOKENS.

These elements were necessary to balance the game at 5p, while still maintaining the game play true to the 1-4p version, with minimum changes. We love how it worked out in play tests and invite you to see the rules pages of the expansion rules here (English version only, other language translations starting now). Forgotten to add the expansion to your pledge? Don't worry, send us a mail to [email protected] and we will sort you out.

Enjoy!

Second Gate Games

PS: We locked down and charged 2,551 backers yesterday, for 124 backers the credit card bounced (please advise your bank to accept the charge, in case you got a "failed payment" message), and 173 backers haven't checked out their survey yet.

PS2: the Provost's Loan and Affinity Link tokens will be cardboard for both Leader and Monster versions.