Shipping Update 2 (Your Questions Answered)
about 3 years ago – Fri, Mar 19, 2021 at 03:51:19 PM

Last update about the shipment estimates stirred up quite a bit of controversy so I wanted to set the record straight about a few things and hopefully set your minds and hearts at ease. I was going to do this as a Q&A where I answered the specific questions asked, but that would be more like treating the symptoms, rather than the disease itself. So I'm going to do this point-by-point to get to the core issues and hopefully that will not only help you all understand the situation better and answer the questions asked but also answer questions that are maybe lingering in the back of your mind.

The estimates listed are for 2-9 days, not 3-6 months.

We wanted to get something out to you guys asap because there was a lot of concern about the total lack of estimates. So the moment we locked in our rapid-fulfillment provider, we lead with it and that's what you're seeing. 

Why does this matter? Because, for those of you trying to compare this to Kickstarters you're used to and make sense of it, you can't. Those Kickstarters spell out in their timeline how their fulfillment works and there's a good reason you get your games a year or 2 later. Those games have to travel to all of their various countries by snail-paced cargo ships and get processed into their hubs before they all go out. In many cases, those ships make multiple stops along the way, or the cargo has to be processed from one hub to another before it's settled in and ready to get to you.  Just this process alone can take months to accomplish.

The only way around this is to ship directly to one fulfillment center and let them fulfill orders through their various contracts with international carriers. These costs will be cheaper than what you would be paying if you fulfilled the orders yourself, but they are still expensive. But it means your backers get the products they backed in a few weeks, rather than a few months to a year.

The trade off in going the route of cargo ships, of course, is a drastically reduced shipping cost, which is what you are seeing in those Kickstarters. It's why they can provide you with those low rates. But what you'll notice they can't provide you is anywhere near a reasonable delivery time.

"Big deal," you say? "I want a low cost shipping estimate. I don't care if it takes months to get to me. I'm used to that."

We hear you...

We are talking to regional fulfillment hubs to get those super low estimates you're used to.

Our objective is to have one company per region, so each company specializes in fulfilling to their territories and can get us the lowest possible rates for you.  This is what all of the big Kickstarters do. This is a process and it doesn't happen overnight. These companies are getting inundated with requests from campaigns like us every day. Most of them are in completely different time zones, so a conversation that might otherwise take only a few minutes now requires a few days to get through.

While I can't say who we are talking to just yet, I can tell you they are established hubs that manage big campaigns you probably have heard about (or even backed). Provided we can come to terms, you can rest assured, the rates for shipping from those hubs will be very close to what you're used to, if not dead on.

You will have an option to receive your starter set with your stretch goals and add-ons.

Quite a few of you have expressed interest in waiting on receiving your starter set until everything else has been produced so you can bundle it all together to save money. This is absolutely an option, aptly named "Hold Your Horses." Ultimately, however you want the product delivered to you will be made available. But if you already don't mind waiting months to get everything, just wait a few days for us to sort out the regional hub situation. If we can get that sorted out (and I believe strongly that it will be sorted out very soon), with that savings, you won't have to.

Shipping directly from the factory is an option.

Have you ever bought something from Aliexpress or Wish or any of those Chinese websites, and paid next to nothing for shipping and received your item 25-30 days later?

The questionable quality/accuracy of the product aside, we also have this option available to you.  It's called ePacket and just about every one of our products qualifies for it. We will have rates for delivering everything we produce directly from the factory to your doorstep. I imagine this price will fall somewhere in the middle of the current rapid-fulfillment shipping and the fulfillment hub shipping.

Either way, all of these options will have their pros and cons. But they'll all be made available for you to choose for yourself.

 Ride or Die members can bundle their new items for cheaper shipping.

It's the same principle as up above, but I understand nobody wants to assume anything. But this has been asked, so the answer is yes.

Basically, we will have a database of our Ride or Die members, what they are eligible for and what they have already received. As we roll out new products, all members will be notified (though if they're paying any attention to our various pages and websites, they'll already know). At any time, they can contact us as to when and how they would like to receive these products. 

If you are a Ride or Die member and you want to hold off until there are a few expansions that you can bundle, you can do that.

But consider that you can also simply have your products shipped directly from the factory, so the cost to ship the item may be so inexpensive it doesn't matter. Either way, it is entirely up to you how and when you want your expansions so the opportunity to save on shipping is pretty much limitless.

So here's the tl/dr:

• We're still working on our shipping options. 
• At the end of the day, there will be plenty of affordable options. 
• Many options will include estimates you are used to.

To all of our Ride or Die and diehard fans out there, thank you for your patience as we get all of this information out to you and thank you for your unwavering support! It's been a thrilling first half of the campaign and we're just getting started! 🤠

Did this answer your questions? Did it raise any others? Ask them in the comments below! Have you joined our Facebook Group or Discord server? Use the links to come on over!

If you like these updates and want to support our campaign, please consider leaving a comment and sharing this post with your friends, family and network. A little word-of-mouth goes a long way.

We've Got Your Shipping Estimates! (And Your Marching Orders)
about 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 17, 2021 at 12:41:01 PM

You may have noticed things have changed up a bit on the main page and - at first glance - some stuff may appear to be missing or removed. It's all there. I've just been listening to the feedback from everyone and took this opportunity, while updating the page, to re-organize and reprioritize the content. 

Speaking of updating...

It's been a bit silent here with the updates, but things have been very busy behind the scenes. I wanted to provide this update - or at least something leading up to it - all last weekend, but one thing we've learned through our journey from last Kickstarter to here is: don't show before you know. All too often, that leaves a vulnerable opening for something to go wrong and expectations to fall short and you're left trying to explain away the problem and regain the public's confidence that you just lost. When you have to pay for the same ground twice, the second time around often comes at a significant markup. 

It's a principle that has kept us and our supporters safe since we adopted it. But even following one's principles can have unintended consequences.

We never set out to hide or keep our shipping plan from you guys. We've always set out to be the most transparent we can be. We simply aren't accustomed to leading out with "estimates." It's a culture-shock to us. We like to deal in absolutes as best we can. 

Estimates aside, we always knew we were going to have affordable shipping options for you guys. That was the absolute of the matter. Never once did it cross our minds that anyone would pay twice the price - or even the same price - as their pledge just to get their game to them. Someone paying $120+ to get a $60 game? How does that even make sense? It just didn't even occur to us that this would remotely be a concern of anyone's. It certainly wasn't a concern of ours, because it wasn't anything we would remotely accept for you. The whole point of High Noon is to be accessible. That means it has to be affordable. If High Noon's shipping is unaffordable, High Noon unaffordable. Full stop.

So we knew we were going to partner with a fulfillment service provider that offered the best rates in the industry. Our pledge manager, BackerKit already has a laundry list of providers that integrate with their platform so the whole process will be seamless for you all. We were confident that, at the end of the day, our shipping costs would be affordable. The only problem was that shipping is one of those things that simply is an estimate until the time the item ships. So even the fulfillment companies couldn't give us absolutes for costs a month out from now. If they couldn't provide those absolutes to us, we couldn't provide them to you. And we don't show before we know.

After receiving the initial feedback from you all about your concerns over a lack of estimates, we realized we'd presumed a bit too much. We were asking you to trust us when we hadn't yet earned it. In doing so, we caused unnecessary anxiety and for that, I want to apologize. We're still here to earn your trust and we're going to earn your trust. But until we do, we've listened, we heard you loud and clear, and we've spent the last several days meeting with each of the fulfillment providers, going over what each brings to the table and comparing their platforms and - most importantly - their rates.

As of this writing, we've made the decision to go with Fulfillrite, a company rated #1 in fulfillment of Kickstarter campaigns. At the end of the day, not only was their platform solid, but they had the best rates - hands down - in the whole lot, by a lot.

Today, I sat down and spent several hours plugging in our various pledge levels into their platform to generate estimates for all of you and here is what we have come up with.

To my Aussie friends and those of you on that side of the world, we are currently wrapping up some talks with our logistics partners in China to see about having your pledges fulfilled directly from the factory as this should cut down on costs tremendously. As soon as we have those estimates, we'll have them published here. But I want to encourage you to take these quotes and compare them with similar campaigns of similar prices to get a guestimate for now. I think you'll find you have nothing to worry about, and I look forward to setting your mind at ease very soon.

What you'll immediately notice is this says add-ons not included. This is partially true. We budgeted some wiggle room in the packaging to make space for some add-ons. So some might be included at the end of the day. Keep in mind, these are still estimates and will ultimately depend on your final pledge, your chosen shipping method and where you live and will all be done with total transparency through the pledge manager. But this is pretty close to what you can expect.

So what's the takeaway?

It pays to go All-In.

As you can see, for the vast majority of you guys, that $40 shipping allowance included in the Everything & the Stove pledge is going to obliterate a lot of your shipping costs. I understand this doesn't apply to everyone reading this, but a lot of you were concerned that your all-in Everything & the Stove pledge would be catastrophic in shipping. Clearly, that isn't the case. Once again, you are getting an incredible deal and if you can afford it and you've been sitting on the sidelines waiting to see how the shipping situation pans out, now's the time to make the switch and go All-In.

And here's why...

At the time of this writing, we're sitting just south of $110,000. There are 254 backers in the Metal & Money pledge. A lot of folks were concerned the value just wasn't there to go All-In, yet...

But consider this: If everyone made the switch, from Metal & Money to All-In, that would put us at nearly $160,000, which would immediately unlock Father Franklin, Grizzly Greenwood, The Bandero Blondes and the Expansion Loot Decks. This also means everyone would be getting an additional unlocked Add-On absolutely free. Backers at lower levels would be able to add any one of these awesome expansions to their pledges, pushing us closer to the Backer's Choice expansion - which is an expansion decided by YOU the backers!

With this many unlocks, the value of the All-In is set-in concrete stone and an easier sell for newcomers who see what we've already achieved. It's a snowball of momentum.

If even just half made the switch, it's still an instant unlock of Father Franklin and the free add-on. And as many of you have already done the math, that also locks in the value.

We've thrown everything (& the stove) into this tier. Every asset in the pledge tiers. All of the STL files of the unlocks. All of the unlocked add-ons. A $40 shipping allowance. Free High Noon expansions for life.  And finally, rock-bottom shipping estimates. There simply is no other pledge in any other campaign that has this much value packed into the price tag. It's asking a lot and giving a whole lot more and we need you now, so we can blow this campaign out of the water. 

This message is aimed squarely at those of you who have been eyeballing the All-In Everything & the Stove pledge, waiting to see where things landed before you pulled the trigger. Here it is, all out in the open. Take the shot!

If you can't go All-In, that's totally fine. It's a big ticket item and not everybody can afford it. I would never advocate that you make a bad financial decision on account of my game. I couldn't have that on my conscience. But there is something you can do that costs absolutely nothing: 

 Tell absolutely everyone you know about this campaign. 

There is a LOT of noise out there. A lot of very stiff and impressive competition. A lot of competent developers vying for a finite amount of resources to make their campaigns possible. We aren't here to tear them down, but this is a competition. And we aim to win.

When you have people saying "Help! Which Kickstarter do I back?" Regardless of what they're asking about, tell them High Noon and give them a link to this campaign and tell them why they should back us. If it truly is a binary this-or-that option for them, and only one game gets the pledge, tell them why it should be High Noon.

Because, chances are, they simply haven't heard about us. We're still very small fish in this great big ocean. We don't have the clout. We don't have the budget. We put our money where our heart and soul was: the game. And this is what we have to show for it.

If you like what you see, back us a the highest possible level you can, and then tell the world about us. 

Your voice is as powerful as your pledge.

Have you joined our Facebook Group or Discord server? Use the links to come on over!

If you like these updates and want to support our campaign, please consider leaving a comment and sharing this post with your friends, family and network. A little word-of-mouth goes a long way.

But Let's Talk About High Noon's Minis (Picstravaganza!)
about 3 years ago – Sun, Mar 14, 2021 at 10:23:13 AM

The question of the quality of the minis vs their renders comes up a lot and - while I've posted images of them in the Facebook group - I realized that I haven't done diligence in sharing them here on the campaign page! Shame on me!

A little context for the minis is I wanted this game to be as accessible to the mass market as I could because High Noon is intended to be a gateway game to introduce people to board games in general. This meant that even the minis needed to be detailed enough to look nice on the table, but durable enough that they could be dropped by a clumsy child or squished under a bunch of things in a box, or even stepped on and everything would be OK. (Alright, maybe stepping on one is pushing it a bit. Don't try that one at home, kids.) So ultimately, we went with PVC.

Up until I received the QC sample, I was super nervous because up to then I'd been printing all of the minis in my Anycubic Photon and that puppy can really churn out the detail! I was super concerned that the quality would be lost somehow in the injection molding or something. I was also worried that paint might not stick well to the material.

So I painted one. Please note, I'm not a painter. I'm pretty bad at it compared to a great many minis painters out there. (maybe it shows)

Overall, I think the final minis turned out great and work well for the casual gamer and minis painter.

I ended up painting all of the minis and put them on the table to see what the game might look like.

I know I'm biased, but I think the Starter Set minis came out gorgeous and will look great - painted or not - on any game table.

Of course, I didn't stop there. Of course I painted all of the snazzy stretch goal posses as well 😉

You get the idea.

What did you think of this update? Do these minis pass your test?  Are you eager to take your own brush to a posse?  If so, which posse are you the most excited about painting? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think! Have you joined our Facebook Group or Discord server? Use the links to come on over!

If you like these updates and want to support our campaign, please consider leaving a comment and sharing this post with your friends, family and network. A little word-of-mouth goes a long way.

You Want a Timeline? You Got A Timeline (And a Rant)
about 3 years ago – Fri, Mar 12, 2021 at 08:27:37 PM

There's been a lot of commotion in the comments and my inbox about when certain posses are coming out, if they're going to make an appearance in this campaign and specifically when certain posses were planned for release.

Well, wonder no more! Here is the current line-up of upcoming posse expansions on the stretch goal timeline right after Henry "Grizzly" Greenwood.

As always, there will be write-ups on each one as they are unveiled in the Kickstarter so you'll get to see what makes each of them truly unique and what they add to the flavor of the game.

I can't wait to share these posses with you. But we need to get there first. And that starts with Father Franklin. You're absolutely going to love that expansion. And not just because of the wicked-cool minis that come with it.

And with that, it's time for a new segment I like to call...

Depending on how many backers I lose from this post, this may be the only HHHT I do 😅, but I'm going to soapbox for a minute here.  I know there is this growing trend of "minis-focused value" and frankly I think it's absolutely ruining board games. There's nothing wrong collecting minis to grow your custom armies for your RPG campaigns. Lord knows I'm a culprit with no room to talk. And I've met a lot of great people who collect minis just to paint them and display them. That's not what I'm talking about.

I'm seeing this alarming movement of direction in the game development industry where developers create boxes of miniatures and pretend it's a "game." They'll throw a few (or a metric ton of) rules on how to move them and throw dice on the board. I mean, yeah, I guess that's a game. But it's so surface-level, it's unsustainable. It's why a lot of those games never make it off the shelf after the first playthrough. They're not games. Can we please at least be honest about that? They're self-glorified "look at the cool minis I thought of." That's nice dude, but HeroForge.

It's fine. It's more than fine. 

It's even kind of cool and I back a lot of these projects for what they are, but not what they aren't. 

The Problem is: we are starting to forget that. 

The line between what is a game and what is a collection of miniatures and components crying out for an excuse to be used in a game is getting more blurred every day. And that wouldn't be a problem if people weren't complaining about it. But they are. Along with this growing trend of not-games, is a growing trend of conversations about whether or not there is a fatigue from all of the new games churning out. 

I maintain there isn't. There's a fatigue of not-games pretending to be games and nobody's willing to call them out for it.

Where's this ramble coming from? I'll admit I recently saw a comment on an unboxing video of High Noon where someone theorized the price of the game was based on the cost of the polystyrene game tiles (it isn't) because - from what they saw of the components (and only the components) - they believed the entire game was valued at an obscenely low price. 

Now, look, they're not the first to say something about the assets of the game. While the vast majority of people who have seen and touched the game love the quality of the assets, there's always going to be somebody who expects more or better and I respect that. It keeps us honest, reminds us we're not perfect and there's always room to improve.

This person's perceived value of High Noon's components themselves aside, what triggered me was the realization that this is where we've finally arrived in this industry and it's entirely why people are getting fatigued. We're valuing a game based solely on its components and giving zero credence to the actual gameplay. We're not looking for the game anymore. We're looking for the components and then complaining that we can't find any good games to play. It's a self-licking ice cream cone.

It's also completely unfair and why I don't really care for unboxing videos. How is someone going to say that a tactical combat game with arrangeable polystyrene game tiles, 14 detailed miniatures (10 of which are entirely unique), hundreds of colorful tokens and hundreds of cards with beautiful artwork is "a $35 game" but Ticket To Ride with it's 1 tiny miniature duplicated a hundred times, cards that aren't even standard scale and one cardboard game board is legitimately valued at $50? Sold over 8 million copies at that price. It's a fun game I can play with the kids, so I'll tell you what, I'm not going to argue about their price that over 8 million people (including myself) looked at and said, "yeah I'll pay that," if you don't argue about mine.

Heck, we just had a whole day of some guy blowing up the comments section because his perception of value was so outrageously low, he thought he should get all of the posses, their miniatures, their cards, their tokens, their packaging and - most importantly - their gameplay for free with the $52 pledge.

I had a guy want a free Starter Set because he "pledged" $1 on the last campaign and called me an "a-hole" for politely declining his request.

I knew this would be a challenge going into the creation of High Noon and that's why I created Father Franklin, boot propped defiantly on machine gun coffin, cloak blowing in the wind, mouth wide open in a battle-cry prayer. I knew that, regardless of how fun the game is to play and how versatile it is and how many times you can play it and enjoy a completely different experience every time, there's always going to be this huge swath of the market that's going to say "that's nice, but are the minis cool?"

So yeah. Father Franklin's minis are cool. They're slick and awesome. Don't take my word for it. Just ask ComicBook.com and WWG.

But the real value of Father Franklin is the same exact real value of each and every other posse in High Noon: Gameplay.

And in terms of gameplay, you don't have to take my word for that either. You can ask the nearly 200 members of the High Noon Discord group or the 1,500+ members of the Facebook Group that regularly play the game over and over and over again. 

Shoot, you can join the server and play the game with all of the posses and judge for yourself.

You're going to find that we have a rare opportunity here to launch a fun and replay-able game into the stratosphere and we have just over 20 days left to do it. Not just miniatures. An actual, legitimate, fully fleshed out, enjoyable game.

This wasn't meant as a downer post. It's just something I am very passionate about. I want to re-energize this industry and get people truly excited about playing games again. I don't have any delusions that I'm the only one doing this or that High Noon is the only game out there to achieve this. But I do believe High Noon does its part in this mission very well, and I am repeatedly humbled by the countless people who come to me to tell me how much fun they had playing my game and how they can't wait to play again.

We've completely decimated our goal at this point and we are going into the market with multiple expansions, so whether or not we go any higher than this, we've already won. All of us have.

But I'm not gonna lie. I want to achieve more! 😅 I want to climb higher! I want to unlock Father Franklin! And then I want to unlock Grizzly Greenwood! And then I want to unlock everything else, from the posses down to the Kenzo Envoy and and across the vast expanse of game tiles we have for forests and mountains and big cities and more! I want to roll out the whole caboodle!

Just throwing out a number here, but if we reached $500,000, we could do that. And, dagnabit, if Western Legends (a $75 game, by the way) could raise $568,000 with fewer assets and fewer stretch goal giveaways, by Jove, we can too! 😂

Now let's get out there and show the world that fun games still exist and there's still plenty of room and demand for them. Let's show the world what the High Noon Ride or Die posse is made of.  Let's get people talking about High Noon and let's take High Noon to high moon! 🤠

What did you think of this update? Are you ready for these stretch goals to unlock?  Are you All-In to take us to $500,000? Want more High Noon Hot Takes? If so, what would you like the next topic to be about? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think! Have you joined our Facebook Group or Discord server? Use the links to come on over!

If you like these updates and want to support our campaign, please consider leaving a comment and sharing this post with your friends, family and network. A little word-of-mouth goes a long way.

The Grey Ghosts Enter the Fray! (And a Holy One Walks Penitently Behind Them)
about 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 10, 2021 at 06:35:18 PM

Thanks to the unwavering support of our fans, and the steady growth of new backers, we reached the $105k milestone this morning and unlocked the Bloodcreek Bushwhackers which means all of you are getting 9 more Kickstarter Exclusive loot cards and the Bushwhacker posse has been added to the Optional Buy store for $25 (MSRP $30)! Of course, everyone in our Ride or Die posse at the All-In Everything & the Stove tier will be getting this expansion for free!

Behind the Bushwhackers walks a man with piety and pine box; the defrocked deacon of destruction: 

Father Franklin.

Once a devout apostle of the cloth, when the Vatican sold the land from under his abbey to the Royal Import Company who then slaughtered his flock, Father Franklin realized the corruption of the Church and took on a new mission of God: to cleanse the world of wickedness. Setting his sights toward the highest point of venality, the "Pinebox Priest" marches from chapel to chapel, baptizing the blasphemous with 7.62mm, and any other evildoers who stand in the way of his calling.

When not in prayer, Franklin is of little words, letting the deadly Madsen machine gun he carries in his casket do most of the talking. But the preacher's line he walks is razor thin, challenging the very boundaries of his own moral compass to do the Lord's work. While his righteous steps have lead him through plenty of valleys of deathly shadows, Franklin is not one to miss an opportunity to "acquire" items off their recently deceased - or thereabouts - proprietors, not without their Eucharist, of course.

Father Franklin is a 2 Miniature posse, where one miniature allows Franklin to move around the battlefield to position his other miniature, serving as his deployed machine gun mode.

While deployed, Franklin can use any card in his deck as an attack card and may play as many of these cards as he wants or has. He is the first posse to have a completely different line of sight, which is a wide cone of death starting with 2 tiles and spreading outwards, 10 spaces ahead, creating a terrifying kill-zone. 

While deployed, the Pine Box also serves as cover in front of him, providing an indomitable defense.

Father Franklin unlocks at $120,000 and we are making steady progress in that direction. If you are sitting on the fence about upgrading your pledge to All-In, consider that Franklin will also be included in that pledge if unlocked or when produced! It pays to Ride or Die!

What did you think of this update? Are you excited about adding the Bushwhackers to your pledge?  Are you ready to meet your maker or send your opponents to theirs? Leave a comment below and tell us what you think! Have you joined our Facebook Group or Discord server? Use the links to come on over!

If you like these updates and want to support our campaign, please consider leaving a comment and sharing this post with your friends, family and network. A little word-of-mouth goes a long way.