Good day! We are all back from PAXU, where we had a great time and we were also very productive, shoring things up with Gloomhaven and planning our next year. You can read more about that below, so let's get to it!

Reviewing the physical proofs, we did find some issues that needed addressing (mostly color correction and assembly stuff), so we've adjusted the files one last time and should be giving the factory a go ahead to start printing on all files within the next day.

A lot of effort went into this game at every stage, and it is super exciting to finally see it through! From here, our window to the Lunar New Year is small, but it looks like it is still possible to get all copies needed for fulfillment out before it closes. We'll keep you updated if anything changes on that.

Gloomhaven mercenary miniatures are in mass production for wave 3 backer copies of Gloomhaven. These were the first components approved and put into production/assembly ahead of the game shipping. We've been focusing on getting Gloomhaven out the door, but we still kept progress across a couple of other miniature SKUs and are working with our manufacturer to hopefully expedite their sample submission process in the New Year to see more of the results we're hoping for. Also, many congratulations to our production manager on the factory side, Anson, who recently returned from his wedding and honeymoon!

From Danielle:

Season's Greetings Mercenaries! First, let me wish you a very happy holiday. No matter what you celebrate this month, it sure is a time for travel, visiting family and friends, and playing some cool games. I was able to engage in each of those three seasonal activities the other week at PAX Unplugged. We ran a bunch of tables of the Gloomhaven RPG, connected on some important internal Cephalofair business, and looked forward to next year and what we're going to be doing with future RPG projects. While we haven't settled on any specifics yet (we still have to do the final push on the core), we're eager to explore the lore and intricacies of the Septhonic Plane.

At each convention I've gone to this year, I've made minor adjustments in how I run sessions, what parts I emphasize, and how we explain gameplay to players. B and I took some time to go through some of our internal playtester feedback prior to PAXU, and tried to brainstorm small, but effective, changes we could make and test at our last show before we go to print. At this point, based on feedback and player responses, I'm confident in the system and how it runs. The changes between the boardgame and the RPG feel subtle at first, but make a huge impact on the pacing and narrative elements of the game. We were able to sit down and explain some of those changes to fans as they came by our RPG room, and the ease with which folks grasped not only the changes, but what the changes were intended to facilitate left me feeling really good. (Which is great, because we shouldn't be making huge changes at this point in creation anyway.) Most of the feedback we've gotten simply requires clarifying text, a few more cross-references to make important rules easy to find, and a table or two to make complex information easier to parse.

                                         

In other news, the Frosthaven community-driven campaign is over! I had a great time with this, and I think the scenarios turned out really well. The last scenario is a huge boss fight, so enjoy that. And it's not too late to start playing it if you're interested. You can no longer participate in the polls, but you can still play through the story, all of which you can find here (thanks to Any2Cards for compiling it all in one place).

And thanks to everyone who came out to PAXU to play the RPG and Gloomhaven and Buttons & Bugs! We had a great time with all of you, and I thought I'd share a few pictures.

At the show, we were selling B&B promo packs (seen above) that included the four bonus scenarios we released at different conventions over this last year. You can now also pick this up for $5 in our webstore here!

And that's all I've got. Since our next update falls on New Year's Eve, we're going to push it back until Thursday, Jan. 2, so I'll catch you in the new year and happy holidays!