Enigma Finished Printing & New Campaign
about 1 month ago
– Mon, Oct 21, 2024 at 07:32:23 AM
Enigma Printing Wrapping Up!
The Enigma books, stickers, and posters are all done printing! We've been waiting for a confirmed booking for ocean freight, which we now have:
This is a less-than-container-load (LCL) shipment. Our goods will be in a shipping container combined with others. This takes longer in transit than full containers, because the mixed-content container will be opened up in Los Angeles and then the pallets inside will be sent off to their final destinations all over the country. As usual, these projected dates should be taken with a grain of salt, but the ETA at this moment is for it to arrive at our warehouse on December 2nd.
Also, the Grogar and Steampunk D20 plushies are finishing with mass production now, and should be ready to ship to us soon. We've almost managed to catch up to the books!
Our New Campaign: Ars Magica Definitive Edition RPG
The masterfully reimagined and expanded opus of the legendary 5th Edition of Ars Magica!
Drawing upon decades of gameplay, this luxurious 600+ page volume compiles the best material published since the game's original release. The text and art are meticulously updated, in an exquisite leatherette hardcover with intricate gold foil. This tome is a treasure for collectors and magi alike. Step into Ars Magica's world of myth and magic with the Definitive Edition.
Enigma: Look-Alike Grogars & Dream Travel Covers
3 months ago
– Fri, Sep 06, 2024 at 11:19:26 AM
Look-Alike Grogars!
On the plushie front, things are moving fast! Our new vendor has already provided us with pictures of their prototypes next to the original manufacturer's prototypes. They're looking great with not even minor tweaks needed. Can you tell which is which? Even I have a hard time!
These new physical samples are on their way to us for approval now. So, it turns out we’ve made as much progress on plushies since our last update, as we had in the past year before! LOL!
Dream Travel Covers
Mass production of the Enigma books, stickers, and posters is finished! But our printer flagged an issue that they decided they need to fix.
The Dream Travel book covers, produced at a subcontractor, have a faded color compared to our approved proofs. It's noticeable in the mass production samples, so now we're waiting for an updated timeline on when the reprint of those covers will be done and all the books and extras can be shipped to us. We expect that will be just a couple weeks.
No. 1: The current mass production sample; No. 2: Digital printing sample; No. 3: New printing sheet without matte lamination; No. 4: New printing sheet with matte lamination
Thanks for your patience, and for your support!
Michelle Nephew Atlas Games Co-Owner Enigma Producer
Enigma Production News
4 months ago
– Tue, Jul 30, 2024 at 11:24:42 AM
Book Updates
Mass production on ALL the books, stickers, and posters is happening NOW! Everything looked excellent in our digital proofs. And when we got the physical proofs, we were incredibly pleased! We immediately sent you a photo, then approved almost everything. There was just one issue we noticed …
Cryptid Hunt's interior was darker than we'd expected. This is called "dot gain," and it's a normal part of the printing process that we account for in our graphic design. But because this is a puzzle gamebook, we were worried the heavy dot gain we were seeing could make it harder for readers to parse the clues. As much as we wanted to get everything printing ASAP, after talking about it we knew we had to rework it.
So we sent new, lightened files for the whole book, went through the digital proof process again, and just got a second physical proof from our printer. That's approved now, and we received word that manufacturing is underway and will be finished in just a few weeks! We expect all the paper products to arrive together at our warehouse a month after that, so we're looking at the end of September, most likely.
Plushie Updates
This is where we've taken a wrong turn, I'm afraid. We're going to need to split shipping, and send you the plushies after the books, even though that costs us more. I'm going to try to breathe deeply now, as I explain the mess I've been dealing with …
We were SO THRILLED to find an exhibitor at the ASTRA trade show that was selling recycled plushies, and who referred us to her manufacturer. But what should have been a small project that took a few months, has dragged on to OVER A YEAR now. And we've finally hit our last straw with the manufacturer's SECOND cost increase, thrown at us as soon after we sent our downpayment to start production.
Here are the details, but you can skip the bullets to get to the happy ending!
Communication has been incredibly poor, with up to a month-long delay between emails, my emails being "lost" many times, and every new email from their sales rep deleting all the previous conversation making it hard to reference previous promises.
They never gave us a professional quotation document, with all of the specs laid out. It was just a price written in one of those emails. I also never received a complete purchase order document with all our expenses detailed. This meant I was constantly referring to informal emails with their sales rep to verify specs and costs, and even making my own bullet lists of specs to send to them in a strange role reversal.
The prototyping took over a year, which is unheard of. The Steampunk D20 was remade several times with very few changes despite my requests for improvements, resulting in unacceptable prototypes I wasn't able to approve, until the very end of the process.
We were working with this manufacturer on the referral from that ASTRA exhibitor we met, who then acted as their sales rep. But strangely, the manufacturer's name and all info about them was withheld from us until just a couple months ago. My requests for human rights certifications were ignored (this would be an ICTI Ethical Toy Program certification or similar). I was never given contact information or an address for the company, and I had to find emails for management myself online when things went bad.
Then, when the plushies were nearly ready to go to press, the manufacturer more than doubled our total project cost (a +131% increase), claiming that the gold thread was too expensive and requiring us to order twice as many as we needed. We compromised with them on the price in good faith, with a 25% total increase, only to have another price increase thrown at us immediately after we sent our downpayment …
As production was starting, I insisted on knowing the specifics on what kind of recycled materials were being used, so I could list it on the tag and legalese. At that point they finally admitted that they were using virgin materials. Their sales rep claimed she hadn't been aware of it, and said it had changed after they raised their price (the first time) to "maintain the costs for you." We have no clear documentation to that effect.
In the meantime, they totally missed our July deadline, which they'd known about for literally a year.
Their reply required us to pay that incredible +131% total increase from before, to go back to the 100% recycled materials we'd specified from the start. Their sales rep said our only two options were to "1) pay the difference and do recycled, 2) do regular now and recycled on the next big batch."
But we'd promised our backers the plushies would be 100% recycled! Plus, Atlas Games takes our environmental commitment seriously. So we chose a third option, which is to not work with them anymore.
When I sent an email asking them to make things right, their manager exacerbated the already-bad situation. We must pay for the virgin material they bought, they say, as well as the hundreds of dollars we've already spent for prototyping expenses.
Luckily, in the meantime our long-time partner manufacturer LongPack (high-quality printer of Magical Kitties Save the Day and many other games) had sent me an email announcing the expansion of their toy manufacturing department. I immediately replied asking about recycled materials, got an affirmative response and a detailed quotation within a couple days, then sent them our files right away.
LongPack's (well-documented) schedule in their quote looks like this:
Pre-production sample 2 weeks (NOT a year)
Mass Production 8-10 weeks
Shipping Prep 1 week
Overseas shipping 4 weeks
This means the plushies will be coming a few months later than the books, unfortunately. But I'm confident LongPack will do an excellent job, that the plushies WILL ACTUALLY BE 100% RECYCLED stuffing and fabric, and that you'll love them!
You made it to the end! This was practically therapy for me, it's so good to vent after so much frustration. So thanks for reading it all, and for your support even when things get tough. :)
Michelle Nephew Atlas Games Co-Owner & Enigma Producer
Pledge Management Coming Soon
5 months ago
– Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 12:22:36 PM
Hello, Enigma backers!
Pledge management in Backerkit will open soon, allowing you to provide shipping information, modify your pledge, select more add-ons (including a bunch of limited-quantity Gloom items that were not in the Kickstarter!), calculate shipping and VAT if applicable, and set up your payment method for any charges that are due.
We'll start with a "smoke test" to a limited number of backers, make sure things are configured correctly, before sending surveys to everyone.
VAT and GST Charges
Using Backerkit, we're able to charge VAT/GST in advance for all of our Canadian and most of our EU backers (there are a couple exceptions, such as Greece). We'll pay at the border and use a DDP service so your rewards arrive with no VAT charge or customs brokerage fee due on delivery. VAT and GST rates vary by country and, in Canada, by province.
VAT Rates and Books
Certain countries have a different VAT rate on books, even a 0% rate as in the UK. Unfortunately, there's not an easy way in Backerkit to manage all the permutations when some rewards are subject to VAT and others are not. We will manually adjust VAT on pledges before charging cards when necessary.
Example: If you pledged for the Ambiguous Archive tier and we're sending your rewards to the United Kingdom, zero VAT is due. The pledge manager will tell you that it needs to collect 20% VAT, but that's wrong. We'll edit your pledge so you're only charged the shipping, not the VAT.
Plushie Update
We just received our updated sample plushies, and we're beyond excited to give our manufacturer the okay to start the full production process!
Compared to past mock ups, the finalized Grogar plush has antennae that are more 3D and a larger brain. His "sutures" are on both the front and back of his arms and legs. And we upgraded to an even softer stuffing material.
The Steampunk D20 is now 7" in diameter instead of 6". For sewing purposes, the D20 needed to be slightly bigger. That means you'll get a LARGER D20 plush! We also needed to revise the gold borders on the edges so they clear the seams, which we think adds a really attractive detail. Lastly, we wanted to make sure the D20 actually rolls, and it does!
Thanks again for your support!
A First Look at Enigma Books and Plushies
6 months ago
– Wed, Jun 05, 2024 at 07:29:45 AM
Physical proofs are here!
We just received the first physical proofs for the Enigma books, art prints, stickers, and plushies! The next step is to carefully look through them and give the printer our final "okay," and then they'll start mass production! This means that we're one step closer to Enigma fulfillment for our Kickstarter backers. After that, we'll get Enigma ready for its official retail launch.
We're SO HAPPY with how they look … what do you think?
We can't wait to share more information with you, so stay tuned! Things are really starting to happen now!
