Good day! There's a lot of stuff to get through to today, so let's get right to it. I want to address the continuing issues we have with EU shipping, and also give you a rough timeline for where we are with the new edition of Gloomhaven.

But first, I want to let you know right up front that we are closing the wave 3 (Gloomhaven) pledge manager this Friday, June 7. What this means is that if you have made any changes to your pledge since the wave 1/2 pledge manager closed, you will have your card charged on the 7th. Then the pledge manager will be unavailable for a short time, but return for wave 4 (RPG) and 5 (miniatures) products. If you need to change anything in your order after the pledge manager closes, please contact [email protected].

Before going into region-by-region shipping, we do have unfortunate news about EU orders that contained Envelope X. We discovered a mistake on the inventory count we had on Envelope X in the EU. We thought we had enough product remaining from our last fulfillment, and then didn't discover this miscount until last week when we were notified that we did not have enough in stock to complete all orders. This means that we have 390 orders left to ship pending the arrival of Envelope X from the US. 

I am deeply sorry about this. I know shipping in the EU has been a significant struggle that has left a lot of you unhappy, and the string of apologies may be wearing thin. The realization of this error upsets me more than anybody, but the best thing to do now is correct this mistake as quickly as we can.

We have air freighted the missing copies of envelope X to the fulfillment center. These should arrive later this week, and Fulfillment Europe will be shipping out the remaining orders as soon as they arrive.

In order to prevent these types of issues in the future we’ll be doing the following on future waves:

And now here are the rest of your shipping updates:
US wave 1 and 2: COMPLETE.

EU/ROW: Other than the 390 orders mentioned above, we have 76 orders to Brazil that are just being prepared to ship now. This is due to the shipping laws requiring a backer CPF# being attached to the package. Our team contacted these backers directly to get this info, then these orders had to be added back into the queue with the new information. The affected backers in wave 1 and 2 will have their CPF# added to their info for future waves. If you are in Brazil and only have items in wave 3, 4, or 5 but have not added your CPF# to your address, please do so to avoid any delays in the future!

Asia: All hubs now have been shipped! You can track the progress of your region here: https://vfi.asia/hubs/ (The project is listed under Frosthaven.)

Okay, so now let's talk about Gloomhaven. We've been working hard over the past two weeks to get to a place where we can confidently communicate a timeline to you on when the new edition of Gloomhaven will be delivered, and while we were able to put something together, I have to admit it is still not as concrete as I would like. I need to emphasize that these are still estimations at this point, and that we will continue to work over the next few updates to firm up these estimations as much as possible.

With that said, here is our estimated timeline for project completion, but please also read all the caveats below:

The first two items on this list are what we feel most confident about. The creative process can take longer than anticipated, but there should be enough wiggle room in that estimate to get everything finished up.

From there, we are expecting a lengthy proofing process, based on our experience with Frosthaven. There are a lot of files, and we want to minimize mistakes. We'll likely go through multiple rounds of digital proofing and a round of physical proofing, which can take extra time.

And then from there, we're estimating two months for production, two months for freight, and two months for fulfillment, but I have to emphasize again these are all estimations. We're not going to get a confident timeline on production from the factory until all files are submitted, and we can't start booking freight until we establish that timeline, and we can't coordinate with our fulfillment partners until the timeline is more solid as well. So this is to provide you some updated expectations, and we'll be firming up these estimations in future updates as we hit our milestones.

There is also the matter of add-ons, as well. For add-ons we are manufacturing ourselves, like the removable stickers, work won't begin on those until the necessary files are completed for the base game, but with the shorter proofing and manufacturing process on these, we aren't expecting problems. We are also still coordinating with our partners for outside add-ons, like narration and inserts. We don't anticipate any speed bumps there, but will let you know if they arise.

The next thing to address here is, why is Gloomhaven so delayed from the original estimations? With a roughly estimated delivery of March, we're almost a year behind schedule, which is incredibly embarrassing. I'm not going to go into detail on every misstep that was made here, as I don't think that's productive. What I think it ultimately boils down to, however, is that a project manager was never assigned to the project after playtesting was completed, a blunder that I (Isaac) fully own. We had a lot of projects going on at once, and ended up without someone dedicated to making sure that this project moved along as efficiently as it needed to. The project is in a good place now, and moving forward, I'll be dedicating as much time as is needed to get it across the finish line.

I know I still owe you an update to the RPG timeline as well, which will happen soon. Rest assured it will be much more positive than the Gloomhaven timeline update, given Danielle's been running a tight ship this entire time. I'll see what I can put together for the next update.

In the meantime, you should check out Danielle's other major project, At the Gates, a high-fantasy RPG that has two days left on Backerkit!

In other news, some of our team are on the convention circuit right now! 

First we were at Phoenix Fan Fusion where we got to introduce Frosthaven and Buttons & Bugs to a bunch of people playing our games for the first time. Thanks to our amazing booth staff Adam, Moira, Kristina, and Travis for all your help!

                 

                 

Our next stop was across the pond at UK Games Expo. We got to see some familiar fans and meet a lot of new ones. Danielle was running the RPG, showing a sneak peek of the upcoming adventures to be had, and Buttons & Bugs was a big hit! We couldn’t have done it without our expert lead booth staff Esther and Julian, along with Chris E, John, Weston, Bill, and Wilting Moon. Huge thanks to you all for making UKGE a success!

We’ll be heading to Edmonton, AB in Canada next for Game Con Canada, June 14-16. If you’re interested in being part of our booth staff, we have a couple more positions available. You can sign up here!

And then in two weeks, we will be headed to Origins in Columbus, Ohio, June 19-23. We’ll be running multiple RPG demo slots with Lurking Fears and have a fun surprise planned at our booth. If you’d like to be part of the booth team let us know!

                                   

That's all there is to go over today. Remember that the wave 3 pledge manager is closing on Friday, and I'll catch you next time.