Rewards have begun shipping!
8 months ago – Sun, Sep 24, 2023 at 05:58:41 AM

Hello Splinters! 

As you may have heard, Kickstarter rewards have started shipping to backers! 

This update marks a momentous occasion for Civil Dawn Games, and the Splintered Lands product. Our game is officially available to the public, and people should start seeing their items arriving at their doorsteps in the very near future. 

Some logistics to clarify first. MOST of the Kickstarter backer's items have gone out, and I am working on updating the tracking in Backerkit. So if you didn't get a shipping notice from Pirate Ship, don't worry; you should have a tracking number email from Backerkit soon. There are a few stragglers remaining (people who haven't filled out their survey, or listed their items for Local Pickup and haven't gotten them yet)---no worries. If you haven't paid/filled out your Backerkit survey yet, feel free to shoot me a message and we will get it worked out. 

For dealers, LGS, and distribution, I will be reaching out in the near future (most likely next week) to finalize details and send out your orders!

"What's Next?!" 

Great question, I'm glad you asked. For starters, you can pick up any items you may have missed from the Kickstarter over at: https://www.civildawngames.com/s/shop

If you're now the proud owner of the Splintered Lands base game, we highly recommend you pick up a neoprene playmat set and the Founders' Pack booster. 🙂 

As for what we're working on next, we will be putting our noses to the grindstone, playtesting the first expansion to Splintered Lands: Hallowed Rites.

We want to give a HUGE thank you to all of the amazing artists who helped make this dream come true. Their work has been incredible, and we can't wait to see what amazing things we can accomplish together in the future! 

We also want to call out our incredible art director, Michael Ramanauskas. He has given his skills and abilities to this project time and time again, and without him we wouldn't be here. Thank you for all the long nights, the pain, and the suffering that you have undergone to make this project a reality. Jeff and I will forever be grateful. 

Lastly, we want to give a warm and heartfelt thank you to our family and friends. This has been a long process, and many nights have been had with us working long into the evening to make Splintered Lands a reality. Thank you for your love, support, and for being there with us. 

Thank you all, 

Steve & Jeff

Shipping Update and Timeline (A GenCon Retro)
9 months ago – Tue, Aug 08, 2023 at 09:22:09 AM

Well! 

GenCon has come and gone, and holy cow---we’re exhausted. The days leading up to GenCon, (especially the nonsense with the shipping delays) have been a wild ride, but we made it through, and it's time to slow down, digest, update you folks, and then keep moving forward!

Shipping Update 

To start, we want to provide an update on shipping out products to our Kickstarter backers. As I  said in our last big update, my (Steve’s) job is sending me out of the country until roughly the first week of September. Once I get home, I will have a lot to do on the business side of things for Civil Dawn. Jeff will be hard at work getting everything inventoried and accounted for while I’m gone, so it will mostly be paperwork/tax-related stuff I have to do. As soon as that is all squared away, we will be shipping. Our target right now is to have everything shipped by September 18th. That means packed and out the door with tracking numbers in hand. It will definitely be a bit of a stretch, but that is our goal. On that note, if you did not pick up your items at GenCon but you did select GenCon as your pickup location, please make sure you update your pledge to include shipping and handling so we know where to send your items. 

Use this link to update shipping details: https://splinteredlands.backerkit.com/sign_in

GenCon Retrospective 

GenCon was an absolute blast. Aside from the terror of the shipping issues (I give an explanation of those in the next section), the weekend was incredible. We got to meet with a few of our amazing backers---Doc, the Bear Sage even made an appearance in cosplay! It must be said, Jeff and I both got a bit emotional seeing someone show up in cosplay as a character for a game we created. We were thrilled beyond measure, and seeing that was certainly a highlight of our careers in game development. This leads us to again express our gratitude to all of our incredible artists. We were given several compliments over the weekend on the quality of the artwork in Splintered Lands, and that fact that people want to show up looking like the characters you’ve brought to life is a testament to your skill. Thank you, from the bottom of our hearts, for sharing your amazing talents with us. Along with the incredible Kickstarter backers that showed up, our table in the play hall was full of new players all Friday and Saturday long. All of our playtests sold out, and we even had to make room for more players than we expected. Next year, we will definitely need to grow a bit, and who knows, maybe we will have more events available!

The Big Story of Misinformation 

This next part is the full saga of shipping issues that we’ve mentioned in our recent posts. We’re not going to name names---the goal here is not to shame anyone, but to continue CDG's mission of transparency and openness, as well as to provide a cautionary tale for those thinking about moving into the world of independent game development. First, a little backstory. Our manufacturing partner was/is great. We were talking with them pretty much every week leading up to things, and when all was said and done, they had everything they needed well within time to get units to us, including potential delays, and we even paid a little extra for expedited shipping, just to be safe. We went into our timelines feeling really confident, so we put out to the masses that the finished Splintered Lands base game would arrive at Steve’s house on the 17th of July, and we planned to start shipping later that week. We also put out that we would be at GenCon and that Kickstarter backers could choose to pick up their pledges there to save on shipping. While waiting for the order, we were hard at work getting Hallowed Rites (the first expansion for Splintered Lands) prepped for an Alpha state that we could take to GenCon. We had announced that we wanted to have that available to demo as well, and things were looking solid for it to arrive on time. Again, we paid for expedited processing/shipping, just to be sure. Leading up to July 17th, everything was looking good. We were being told that our product had arrived in port within the timeframe we had planned. With that in mind, we contacted all our friends and family, and called in every favor we had to help us unload this truck that was set to arrive. Our plan was to store the items at one house, and fulfill the orders from another (due to available space and the presence of children/pets/etc.).

However, the shipping company told us that the road in front of one of our houses wouldn't support the delivery truck. So, we had the unfortunate need to unload the truck at one house, then pack it all back into our vehicles and drive it to the other persons house, and unload it all again. Given that it was 6000lbs of stuff, it was going to be a bunch of work. Well, as our previous update said, it was all for naught. July 17th came, and our items did not arrive. Jeff and I were distraught, and we were doing everything we could to get updates. When we did get updates, it was a nightmare. First, we were told that the delivery was just delayed a few days. So, we reconvened everyone for Wednesday, July 19th. Big shock---the truck didn't arrive then, either. Then we were told they would arrive on Friday the 21st before the end of the day. That didn't happen, either. We spent most of the weekend trying to get the courier to update us on what was really going on. We were then told that, for some reason, 2 of our 7 pallets had been put on a train, and would be in Chicago later that next week, and that the other 5 pallets had not left the port of LA yet. To make matters worse, we were told that the 2 pallets that went by train contained all of our playmats, so even if the 5 pallets arrived on time, we still wouldn't be able to fulfill Kickstarter pickup requests or have the premium mat for people to demo with.

So, it was still 2 or 3 days out, and that's just the drive time to get from LA to Chicago. More waiting, until Thursday the 27th rolled around. At this point, the courier had not provided any additional information. So, we made the call on Friday the 28th to update everyone on the current status, and that it wasn't looking good. Finally, on Sunday the 30th, just 3 days before we needed to leave for GenCon, we were told that 5 of the pallets were scheduled to arrive on Tuesday the 2nd, give or take a day. In other words---they had no idea. On top of that disheartening news, I had gotten a nebulous message from the shipper of the alpha copies for Hallowed Rites that they were "lost in shipping" at the moment, as they had shipped, but for some reason they were just stuck at the receiving facility. Tuesday night at 5:30pm, the night before we have to leave for GenCon, I got a call---5 of the 7 pallets were scheduled to arrive that night by 7:30pm. We get a truck, a single family member, and are waiting in my driveway. Mercifully, the truck showed up. We were thrilled that we would at least be able to bring the release version of Splintered Lands to GenCon, but we still had no word on the playmats. So, we set to work. We had to break the pallets all the way down, and load everything into several vehicles. This took us multiple trips and several hours.

As soon as we got it all moved, we started taking a quick tally of what we had. As luck would have it, we received roughly 8 boxes of playmats, causing our incredibly excited update at 12:30 in the morning on Wednesday the 2nd. We had playmats! We would be able to fulfill Kickstarter pickups at GenCon, and we would have everything we needed for our playtests to go smoothly! We spent the next few hours making sure to quality control what we had, and pack an SUV with as much inventory as we could. We got to bed that night after 3am, and I (Steve) woke up at 7:15 to take my son to his first day of the 3rd grade. Then, my phone rang. The last two pallets were arriving at 9am. I was excited, and exhausted. I got the last items unloaded into my garage, finished packing my suitcase for GenCon, waved goodbye to the family, and was on the road. At this point, we had everything except the Alpha copies of Hallowed rites, and the manufacturer still had no idea where they were.

I got to Indianapolis later that evening, got checked in to my hotel, and then immediately got a text saying that the Hallowed Rites Alpha copies had just been delivered to my house. Ugh. I sent my amazing wife a text at 12:10am asking her to overnight them if possible, and finally, I sleep. Thursday morning rolls around, and the delivery service tells us the best they can do is Saturday by 6pm. Of course, we were only running events on Fri/Sat, and our last event ended at 6:30pm. I told them to ship it anyway. On Friday, as luck would have it, about 45 minutes before our first event began, I was notified that the expansion was delivered to my hotel. I hopped into an Uber, and 30 minutes later I was unpacking alpha copies of Hallowed Rites. Due to the prompt help from my wonderful wife, and perhaps the world-shaking power of all our combined stress levels, we had everything---Splintered Lands, playmats, Founders’ Packs, dice, and the alpha copies of Hallowed Rites, all moments before we were set to showcase them to our fans for the first time, in their completed state.

In Conclusion

To say we are exhausted is an understatement. We realize that, in the grand scheme of things, these issues are small, but Jeff and I have poured our hearts and souls into Splintered Lands over the last 6 years, and to have us show up to this GenCon without product would have been devastating to our collective psyche. It’s important to both of us that the things we say we are going to do are the things we end up doing. In the end, we were able to fulfill our promises, and we have no intention of breaking that habit. As of this writing, we are still plugging away, and we look forward to reaching out soon with your tracking info. Keep your eyes open for that sometime mid/late September!  

Thank you,  

Jeff & Steve

We got our stuff in time for GenCon!
10 months ago – Tue, Aug 01, 2023 at 10:34:16 PM

Ahhh!

In a turn for the best! Our units arrived. It's 12:30am right now, and Jeff and I are currently going through boxes to get enough units to get to GenCon tomorrow.

So, if you said you wanted to pick up your Kickstarter order at GenCon, we will be there with it!

Come see us:
Friday - Hall B - Red 24 (1pm to 5:30pm)
Saturday - Hall B - Red 16 (10am to 5:30pm)

Just look for the Splintered Lands Banner!

Omg we are so happy!

#SplinteredLands #CivilDawn

Some frustrating news for Splintered Lands
10 months ago – Fri, Jul 28, 2023 at 09:47:10 AM

Hello Splinters,  

We were really hoping to have better news when we wrote this update (hence it has taken longer than usual), but unfortunately, we need to make a number of apologies during this post. 

As of our last update, the production run had been completed, and we had everything paid for and ready to go. The only thing we were waiting on was for the units to arrive. They had a scheduled arrival date of July 17th, which would have left us with plenty of time to inventory, quality check, and process everything needed so that everyone got their items on time.  

While waiting on these items, we continued to communicate with our freight manager/forwarder and they continued to tell us that things were right on schedule. With that in mind, we asked all of our local friends and family for help unloading the units from the shipping truck on the scheduled delivery date, and they graciously rearranged their schedules to help us out. We want to give a shoutout to those people, as they have been an amazing source of support.  

Monday, July 17th rolled around, and we hadn't gotten a call to schedule the delivery (they typically call 24 hours beforehand to make sure you will be there, and that the truck is good to go), so we got a bit worried. Our fears became reality when we finally got ahold of our freight forwarder and they told us that our shipment still hadn't left its port in CA yet.

You can imagine our frustration, as it's really problematic for the forwarder to just flat-out lie about something like this; yet, here we find ourselves.  

Over the next week, we were continually told things like, "it should be there Tuesday," "now it should be there Friday," and "the items have shipped, so they should be there Monday". Unfortunately, all of that was untrue as well. In fact, even as we type this update, we have no idea where the container carrying our product is or who is giving us factual information about it. 

We can see that supposedly our manufacturer shipped the items, and that they arrived in CA. Or at least, something resembling a bunch of heavy boxes in a shipping container arrived as such. However, we presently have no idea when they are going to be delivered, and GenCon looms in less than a week.  

Well, Jeff and I believe in doing the right thing above all, so we are going to continue to do our best to make it right.  

If you had previously selected "Pickup at GenCon" for your items during your Backerkit survey, that unfortunately won't be possible if we don't have them. However, we will be covering the cost of shipping and handling for those items, so there will be no additional charge for you. We apologize for the headache here, as we (of course) can't get your items to you until they arrive. 

For everyone else, it just means that we haven't been able to process and ship your items yet since we don't have them yet.  

This poses another problem---our timeline. My (Steve's) regular 9-5 job is sending me to Germany from Aug 16th thru Sept 3rd, and since I run our shipping operation, I won't be able to ship your items to you until I am back in the States.

As for GenCon, this means that the versions of the game we will have available to play might be the same Alpha copies we brought with us to GenCon 2022. We will be updating our events in the event manager to reflect this, so if you were registered for one of those and looking forward to playing the full and complete version, we completely understand if you plan to reschedule those events. 

With all that having been said, Jeff and I greatly appreciate your patience with us as we continue to do our best. 

Thank You,  

Steve & Jeff 

P.S. If by some crazy miracle, our items arrive before GenCon, we will work around the clock to get those items to GenCon for your enjoyment and pickup.

June Update and Manufacturing Status
11 months ago – Mon, Jun 12, 2023 at 07:49:07 AM

Greetings, Splinters!   

In our June update, we are excited to tell you that we have signed off on all digital and physical samples! 

The base game box is looking amazing! The magnet enclosures have that really nice snap to them, and they hold well. And the matte finish is just---chef's kiss---beautiful!   

We are also excited that there will be enough room in the base game box (if you remove the card insert) to hold all the planned expansions to Splintered Lands! The paper playmats that come with the base game and the rulebook will fit, but the premium neoprene playmats will not. Sorry---those things are big, and you really don't want to fold them.   

Speaking of the playmats, take a look at the sample packaging for those as well:  

We are pumped about these: they are high-quality neoprene, and they won't even break the bank! If you are picking up a copy of Splintered Lands, we definitely recommend the playmats. There's nothing like the feel of sliding premium cards across neoprene.  

Finally, you only have a few more days to get your pledge items all finished. If you haven't done so, head over to the BackerKit pledge manager link below and get your pledge items finished!

Link for Backerkit: https://splinteredlands.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Thank you all, 

Jeff & Steve