Thank You!

Hey, everyone. Wayne here.

Thank you so much, guys. Everyone who voted, thank you for making your opinions known. And thank you to those 78% of you who voted yes to allowing us to sell product at Gen Con. We really and truly appreciate it.

Things have been nuts around here the last week, but here are the highlights:

Sorting out BackerKit’s back end, making sure every item is properly set up in preparation for exporting the data and importing it into our shipping system.

Meeting with representatives from UPS, USPS, and Pitney Bowes, getting our shipping system updated and expanded to be able to handle the volume of all those Kickstarter rewards going out.

Buying TONS of boxes for shipping out all your goodies, starting in a couple of weeks. This was more complicated than you might think, since we haven’t even seen all of the products in person yet. Not to mention the variety of shipments we’ll have to deal with. An export of the data from BackerKit that sorts the shipments into groups of like items shows 2,456 different combinations! That’s a lot of things to consider when ordering ten thousand dollars worth of boxes.

And too much more to list. In fact, since it’s 10pm Saturday night and I’m only just now getting time to post this, I’m going to leave it there for now, and let the rest be covered by the following words from Palladium President and Publisher, Kevin Siembieda:

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My deep and heartfelt thank you to our Kickstarter backers for voting to let us take Robotech® RPG Tactics™ to sell at Gen Con. The overwhelming majority (78% who actually voted) voted yes. Thank you for your understanding and kindness. You and your support are very appreciated.

I have been showing around the ONE box of Robotech® RPG Tactics™ we have received from China and everyone goes wild over it. The game looks big, beefy and beautiful. We have the one game box, a couple of the expansion packs and a half dozen sprue samples of each mecha. Some of the sprue samples have been sent out to be painted, both as display pieces and for tabletop demos at Gen Con. The bulk of them have been sent out to Blue Table Painting. They are doing most of the painting and we appreciate their efforts. We’re working them like dogs, too, because we did not get the UEDF production samples until last week. Thanks guys, the paint jobs are looking great! Their comment about the sprues: “You can tell somebody put a lot of love into these models.” Yes indeed, a lot of people put a lot of love into them. We’re glad to hear that it shows in the final pieces.

I can’t express how rewarding it is that people go wild over this game and think the pieces look so good. Our China broker and factories are doing an excellent job on the final phase. Carmen Bellaire (co-author of the rules) just got to see it all the other day. He too was impressed. “Kev, I know it has been hell to get this game made, but the end product is really something. You should be really proud.” I think everyone involved can be proud of this finished product. I cannot wait until we can start shipping out product to our Kickstarter backers.

A NEW Robotech® RPG Tactics™ game piece may be made available via the Robotech® Academy Kickstarter!
Yes, you are reading that correctly. There could be one (or two?) NEW Robotech® mecha game pieces for Robotech® RPG Tactics™ made available in the Robotech® Academy Kickstarter! Harmony Gold contacted Palladium Books to see if we would mind if they released one (maybe two) 1/285 scale (6 mm) NEW MECHA from the anticipated Robotech® Academy animated pilot, as game pieces for Robotech® RPG Tactics™. We gave our blessing because we thought you guys and gals would dig it. This would be an official game piece (we would do up the stats and everything). I do not know if HG is planning to do this for certain or not.

Harmony Gold may announce at Comic Con International in San Diego this weekend, if they are going to add the new piece(s) or not, and if so, which new mecha they will manufacture and offer. They’ll also make the announcement on their Kickstarter page and via other means, as well as post images online.

What is Robotech® Academy? It’s Harmony Gold USA, Inc.’s proposed new venture to expand the Robotech® universe. And they are using Kickstarter to finish the pilot with the hopes of launching it as a new Robotech animated series. It is my understanding that concept work, a script, model sheets, new mecha designs and more are already done. Now they are looking to get the production of the pilot financed, at least in part, by Kickstarter. As a licensee of Harmony Gold, I like what I’m hearing about this new series, so check out this Kickstarter and get some cool, collectible swag in the process.

 Forar wrote:
Hell, for all we know, those two new "1/285 scale mecha" will be prototype Cyclones that'll be a whopping 7mm tall. The obvious assumption to make is that they'll be VT analogues of some kind, but this campaign and anything involved with it have long since lost the benefit of the doubt.

there a re a few different means of contact on the place I linked to. A webform, their mailing address, their fax number and two business numbers. I do not know what their policy is in regards to collect calls, but one of those methods of communications should suffice.

 Forar wrote:
Or a fax! I mean, who doesn't regularly fax things anymore?!

fruitlewps wrote:
Talking on the 2K+ different combos..

Does that include say for a Battlecry: 1 Boxed game, the separate "boxes" for all the addons that are part of Wave 1? (extra VTs, Pods, etc) Then any addons the person may have added after completion?

I know I got a Showdown, then also about $300 of addons, so my box is gonna be huge.

 Cypher-xv wrote:
I get the feeling that PB hasn't set up their plans for the international backers. I don't believe there thinking that far ahead. It'll be a miracle if wave two shows up before GC 2015.

Update #152 Aug 1 2014
That’s a lot of boxes

Hey, everyone. Wayne here.

I mentioned last week that we had ordered boxes for shipping the soon-to-arrive Robotech® RPG Tactics™ products to you guys, and those boxes arrived on Tuesday. And well... just look at them. (That's Alex, btw, and he's like 5'8".)



It certainly makes an impression, we think, about the scope of this whole thing, when just the flattened boxes to ship the goods in take up a whole semi-truck trailer themselves. And by the way, we expect to go through all of these just shipping Wave One.

A Few Questions Answered
Some of these have come up before, but folks are still asking, so...

What is our replacement part policy?
Like we would do with any or our products, if you get an item with a defective or missing part, just let us know (by phone at 734-721-2903 is quickest, but you can also email us at kickstarter@palladiumbooks.com, or just about any other method of contacting us will work), and we’ll send you a replacement part. We plan to put some images of each sprue on our website with the parts numbered to make it easier to communicate which part is missing or defective.

Shipping to the EU and VAT
Like we said way back during the Kickstarter funding period, we have made arrangements with a company who have a warehouse in the UK. We’re going to pack up all shipments going to Europe, palletize them, and ship them to their UK warehouse. They will then ship the individual packages to the European backers from there. We have been assured this will help the end recipient to avoid VAT and perhaps other Customs fees.

For other international customers, we’ll do what we can to ease the pain of taxes, duties and Customs fees. For one thing, we’ll be shipping via the U.S. Postal Service. We've had customers get surprised with high fees when we've used other carriers to ship internationally in the past, so we always use USPS to ship internationally.

What order will we be shipping in?
When we export backer data from the BackerKit system, it includes a unique ID number based on when that backer’s account was created in BackerKit. That order seems to coincide roughly with the order of when pledges were placed, perhaps affected by any delays in Amazon’s attempts to process the credit cards. Whatever the factors involved, all things being equal, orders will be processed roughly in order of the ID number.

However, in many cases, all things will not be equal. In order to make our shipping more efficient and avoid errors as much as possible, outgoing packages will be grouped into like orders as best we can. That means, for example, all packages containing just the main boxed game will be packed at the same time. Once those are done, we may do a group of all the packages with just the main box and a Battle Foam Bag, etc. Most of these groups will be small enough that the order we pack them in won’t matter much, because they’ll probably all go out on the same day.

Primarily, the order in which most packages will be shipped will depend on which products we have in stock, vs which ones we’re waiting for the next container to resupply us with.

One thing I can say for certain is that, despite what some have feared or suggested, we absolutely WILL NOT take into consideration a backer’s vote on the Gen Con poll, or critical comments, or anything of the sort. Anyone who thinks we’d do that just doesn't know us at all.

 Forar wrote:
Important points they can't or didn't bother to address:

1) did the ship with Container 1 arrive at port this week as was scheduled?

2) is Container 2 en route yet? Given the 2 week journey across the ocean and what will likely be 1-2 weeks through unloading, customs and transit to the warehouse, even with a generous 3 week trip, they really need to have that thing on the water if they want it there the week they return from Gencon.

Plus, y'know, a dozen other things that remain unknown/outstanding, not to mention wave two, but while 1 remains such an unknown, I guess that's likely to be par for the course.