Meeple shipping: one down, two to go
over 5 years ago – Tue, Oct 23, 2018 at 07:10:19 PM

Hello Meeple Friends,

Shipping has commenced! Here's the update for each territory.

Australia and Asia-Pacific: Meeples away

Yesterday we got all of the meeples for Australia and Asia Pacific backers parcelled up, and we took them to the post office today. They should arrive soon!

Here you can see my two thumbs up, not that meeples have thumbs. It was a great joy to be able to pack these up for you all. We hope you like them as much as we do.

USA and Canada: In the queue

The meeples have cleared customs in the US, and been counted into the Ship Naked warehouse. We are waiting on news when fulfilment will start.

We were warned that October would be a busy month, but we hope the shipping starts soon.

EU: Headaches and new plans

We've hit a stumbling block for our EU backers. We had planned to use our great friends at Kixto UK who have sent out our last two campaigns, and who gave us due warning that regulation changes since then required us to apply for registration as an Importer of Record with the UK Government. Kixto have been really excellent.

However, we've hit a series of snags with our application, and the most recent phone call we learned that our application was in fact cancelled due to lack of information, and we have to reapply (!), which will add another 4 weeks. We're still pursuing that, but as a contingency we are talking to some colleagues in France about taking over the fulfilment. It's Essen Spiel this weekend, so everyone over there is busy as you can imagine, but we hope to have it resolved next week.

Bag colours

When we chose the bag colours, rather than go for straight primaries we went for elegant dark colours. They look really classy, but in hindsight, we have to say that the blue velvet is a bit too dark, so much so that it is a little too close to the black velvet. 

However, the blue cord stands out, and we didn't think it was worth being fussy and holding up the whole shipment again. (Whereas fixing the actual meeples was totally worth the wait, they look amazing.)

You'll find that inside the velvet bag, each meeple has its own little ziplock bag. We recommend storing them this way.

PAX AUS

This weekend is PAX AUS, and we'll be there with our full booth. Come and say hello!

We're looking forwards to it, but a bit heart broken that the meeples will not be on our stand. Even though all local Australian backers will be getting their meeples in the next few days, we feel we can't have them on sale until our US and EU friends have them too. After all, you're the people who made them happen.

Cheers,

Mark, Andre, Penny & Jackson

Meeples away!
over 5 years ago – Mon, Oct 08, 2018 at 09:03:28 AM

Hullo meeple friends,

Your meeples are ready!

Here is a photo of a full set from the final corrected production. We think they look swell.

Up in the air

The meeples are now all packed and sorted into the shipments ready for our three fulfilment locations. We're now in the process of arranging export to:

• Campaign Coins (hey, that's us): Asia-Pacific
• Ship Naked: USA & Canada
  
• Kixto: Europe
  

We expect the meeples will arrive in Australia and the US around 15 October. We'll update you then on what the anticipated time is to package and send them out. Ship Naked have told us that they have a lot of shipments going out in October, so that may slow down dispatch.

We have a slight delay for Europe. We are waiting for the UK Government to approve our application to be an Importer of Record. This is a new procedure for us, as it was not a requirement for our last campaign in 2016. We are following it up now.

Hopefully all will go well. We'll let you know the shipping date to you when we can.

Epic D20 Coins Kickstarter

While our production crew were finishing the meeples (and then having a well earned holiday), we launched our Epic D20 Coins Kickstarter. We gave you a preview of these a few updates ago. They are already fully funded and racking up stretch goals. If you play any D20 roleplaying games, these are great to use as reroll tokens, or just a cool keepsake. We're incredibly proud of how they have turned out. If you like what you see, jump on in.

That's all

Thanks everyone! You've all been incredibly kind as we fixed up our less photogenic meeples. This has all taken longer than we hoped, but we're happy to say there will be meeples on your gaming tables in time for the holidays. When we have more concrete shipping information, we'll let you know.

Best,

Mark, Andre, Penny & Jackson

Revised meeples, revised ship date
over 5 years ago – Thu, Sep 20, 2018 at 10:08:30 PM

Hullo meeple friends,

We've corrected our errant meeples, and have new samples that look exactly as they should: bright, vibrant and happy.

The antique finish is lighter now, so the translucent enamel can really bring up the detail from below without being overwhelmed. We've also corrected the green enamel colour.

So that's a relief.

New completion date

Last time I reported a completion date of 18 September, and wrote at the time, "I suspect it will take a little longer".

It turns out that I had a detailed conversation with our project manager and failed to pick up that that was the date for the revised samples, not for the full production. I'm feeling especially dense about this, as I knew it felt too soon do make every single meeple all over again.

So, now that these production samples are locked in, the full batch are being finished, and will be ready on 10 October all going well. We lost an extra week there as we have two factory holidays coming up next week and the week after

We're sorry this is running so far over our delivery estimate, as we are not only disappointing you but also missing having these for sale at PAX AUS and Essen Spiel. But, better to get the meeples right before sending them off to their forever homes with you. We'll keep working on them.

They come in bags

We also have in hand finished versions of all of the velvet bags. Here's a line up photo! You can't see, but each bag has 8 meeples inside.

Next Kickstarter

We've set the date to launch our next Kickstarter. We really thought our meeples would be out the door by now, but us running the next Kickstarter does not impact on the meeple delivery time.

We're making Epic D20 Coins, new poker chip sized versions of our popular D20 coins, with super fine detail by artist Lynda Mills. The campaign launches on 1 October. If you play tabletop RPGs, these are really nice to use as reroll tokens. 

Thanks, and thanks

Before I go, I wanted to share a special thanks from our meeple artist Daniel Solis, as many of you bought him a coffee as the tip jar in BackerKit. We sent that through to him, and he replied "Thanks! This is the kindest KS add-on I've seen in any campaign." So well done you.

That's all for this update. We'll be back in touch in three weeks to let you know how the meeple completion is going. We'll share photos before they head off to fulfilment, and make sure they're as pretty as the samples.

Best,

Mark, Andre, Penny & Jackson

Meeples of regret
over 5 years ago – Sun, Sep 09, 2018 at 10:48:28 PM

Hello meeple friends,

We are so humbled by your incredibly kind response to our production delay. I mean, we knew that people who like meeples are good people, but you people are really good people. Thank you.

This short update is to ask you to check your address, and show you another comparison photo, and to answer a common question.

Meeple line up

  
This photo shows you a head to head comparison of all the meeples.

As these meeples are game pieces, it's important that everyone can immediately look at them on the board and say "Those are mine". This is why we need to make sure that only the black meeple looks dark.

Here's the rundown:

• Yellow Daisies: The production meeples are shiny and golden. These have turned out better, and we're super happy, as we had to remake this one a few times.
• Fuji: Looks just as good, but now more more aqua.
• Blue Water: We love the ripples on the final production.
• Black Skulls: These are now proper black, without the purplish tint.
• Purple Stars: I think you can see how bad these are.
• Green Bamboo: The production green was okay, it's just nowhere near the beautiful green pop we like.
• Red Hearts: Actually, in this photo the darker version looks okay, but when a bunch of them are lined up together, the dark ones just don't have the beautiful red quality that we got in the first samples. When the light hits the proper red, it glows; the dark red does not have that quality.

 
Can I adopt an unwanted meeple?

Many of you have asked if you can buy our reject meeples. That's sweet of you, as they certainly are in need of love.

But, alas, if they don't pass our quality check, we don't release them. It keeps things consistent out there in the world, so that everything we release looks exactly as we designed them to be. Thanks for the offer.

King's Ransom coins are ready

In all the meeple discussion, we forgot to say that the King's Ransom Board Game Coin Sets are ready, and have been for weeks. One less thing to worry about!

Address lockdown imminent

While we're waiting for the meeples to get their sparkle on, we will get everything ready for shipping. So, we will shortly lock down the addresses in BackerKit. If you have changed address since May, or are likely to in the near future, please update your details.

If we send to the address you provided and you're not there any more, we may need to respectfully ask you to pay the postage again, so let's avoid that together.

Another Kickstarter coming soon

As the meeples reach the end of production, we are prepping our next Kickstarter, a special deluxe coin we've made for the RPG crowd. Launching this new Kickstarter will not impact on the completion and delivery of the meeples, as they are at such different stages in their production cycle. (If you're a roleplayer too, we'll be previewing these new coins on our social media in the next few days. They're quite fancy.)

Thanks everyone. We'll keep meepling!

Best,

Mark, Andre, Penny & Jackson

Meeple complications
over 5 years ago – Fri, Sep 07, 2018 at 01:57:45 AM

Hello Meeple friends,

This was going to be a great update: "We have finished the production! They're on the way! Break out the meeple champagne!"

But, before we sent them to you, we did a final inspection:

Alas, some of the final meeples just aren't as good as the ones we promised you, so we are remaking them.
 

When will you get your meeples?

The current production estimate is that we will be finished the corrections on 18 September. That date assumes that all goes well, and I suspect it may take a little longer.

We will want to check them all again, which will take a few more days. If they pass the beauty test, they will be packed up and should arrive at our fulfilment partners in the first week of October.
 

Which meeples are good?

All of the shiny ones look brilliant. Blue Water is the best since the very first prototype. The new Yellow Daisy positively glows. Black Skull is black like your heart, and we fixed the slight purple effect that the translucent enamel was causing. And, Fuji looks glorious, and a very distinct aqua, making it look different than the Blue.

 
Which meeples are... not good?

Many of the meeples that have antique plating have turned out too dark.

When we make antique plating we like it to have some depth and shadow, it makes our coins look great. But, if it's too dark, then the translucent enamel brings all those shadows through. And the result looks like, well, like this.

In all of the photos below, we are showing you the original samples (the ones you backed), intermingled with the ones we need to fix. We'll tell you in the captions which are samples, so that you can see how far off the mark some of these are.

The purple turned out the worst. A large number of them are near black.

 
The green are okay, it's just the wrong shade of green. These look like jade, but we
promised you bamboo. So, we are doing them again.

 
Finally, the red meeples are also too dark. They actually look kind of distinguished, but we wanted them to be more like Valentine's Day, and less like Vampire's Day. Most of all, they don't look like what we showed you, and that simply won't do.

 
We are really sorry about this

We hate taking more time than we promised.

But, what would be worse would be send you meeples that don't look like the ones you backed. We want to send you bright, candy, happy meeples, and we'll keep making them until they are.

We will update you in two weeks on the meeple makeover.

Best,

Mark, Andre, Penny & Jackson