A unique board game set in the ice age that combines worker placement and deck building in an innovative way.
To all our EU & UK tribe members.
We have just received some photos that we couldn't resist posting here too!!!! :D
The time has come!
On Monday the first KS pledges will be shipped.
Keep an eye out for the tracking email! ;)
Greetings tribe members,
This is our second weekly update regarding the EU shipment whereabouts and a new streaming link we created for the Soundtrack so you don’t have to download anything to your computer.
EU Fulfillment
We have good news regarding the EU containers. Yesterday, they were released from German customs, and today they arrived at Packman’s warehouse.
The good folks of Packman fulfillment were unloading cartons all day and from tomorrow the pick and pack process will begin.
In the next couple of days, the EU fulfillment will commence so keep an eye out for the tracking emails :)
Official Soundtrack Streaming Link
Some of you had issues downloading the official soundtrack. This is why we created a SoundCloud profile and uploaded the soundtrack as a private playlist.
The emails with the private streaming link were sent yesterday to all the eligible backers. If for any reason you cannot find the email please contact us at: [email protected] to send you the link. The only thing you have to do is to copy paste the link to any browser (on desktop, mobile, or tablet) and you are good to go :)
Organizing Big Box
We received some questions regarding the usage of the foam pieces inside the bid box. A dear backer ( SideGame LLC ) just shared this video that can be handy to all of you. Have a look:
What's Next
As always we will keep you updated on a weekly basis about the EU fulfillment. Stay tuned.
Have a nice day!
—Fantasia
The State of Fulfillment part III, future decisions, Official Soundtrack release date, and Essen Spiel reception
Greetings tribe members,
As promised today, we will share with you details regarding the state of fulfillment, some important decisions regarding our future KS campaigns, the release date for the official Endless Winter soundtrack (along with a 5-minute sample), and some photos and news from our presence at Essen Spiel.
The state of Fulfillment (#3)
US:
Yesterday, all the remaining packages were picked up by UPS. You should have received a tracking email by now.
If for any reason you cannot find the email, you should check your spam folder. If you still cannot find it, please email [email protected] and they'll get your tracking confirmation sorted.
We are totally aware that the fulfillment of Endless Winter for the US took longer than expected, and this was due to various reasons. Some of these reasons were not Gamerati’s fault (such as Covid-related matters), but we had a long call with them in order to address all the issues and fix them so we can be more efficient in the future. We are very pleased to work with them as the returned or damaged packages rate was close to zero.
CA:
Fulfillment is underway and backers are receiving their pledges. The last packages will be dispatched from the Canadian fulfillment center soon.
AU & NZ:
All the remaining packages have left the fulfillment center of VR Distribution. Expect the last pledges to arrive at your doorstep in the following days.
ASIA & ROW:
All the pledges have been dispatched from VFI’s distribution center except for the Japanese pledges, and they will be shipped out next week.
EU & UK:
The 4 containers are at the port of Hamburg and have been inspected by the authorities. We’ve been told that the first container was cleared but apparently we received another email yesterday informing us that all the containers need to be inspected.
The inspection will take place the following Monday or Tuesday. We have sent multiple emails informing them that they need to inspect the containers as soon as possible; but as you will probably expect, they are adamant about it and their excuse is “there are not enough trucks to accommodate us”.
Because we have the “privilege” to be inspected, we will pay around $4k additional costs on top of the freight costs and the extra delays.
If the inspection completes by Tuesday (as we’ve been told), the containers will be at Packman’s fulfillment center the next day.
In order to make up for this delay, Packman fulfillment will do their best to have the first packages leaving their warehouse as soon as two days after the arrival of the containers.
This is where we are at the moment. It's not a secret that Germany has given us a hard time so far, and we need to evaluate the whole situation for our next campaigns. We heard your suggestions, and from now on we plan to post an update on a weekly basis to keep you as informed as possible.
Important! : The future of Fantasia’s crowdfunding campaigns
In the last few days, we received a large number of comments asking us why our retail copies in some areas of Europe are already available before the KS copies arrived to our backers. At first, we tried to explain through our last update the series of unexpected events that led to this, then we tried to apologize in our comments, but you know what? We fully agree with you, and we need to take clear actions from now on regarding this matter. Kickstarter and other platforms face an existential crisis because of situations like this. Most of the time (like in our case), this doesn’t happen on purpose, but mostly because of how complex the situation of shipping has become. Still, there are measures we plan to follow in our next campaigns that will prevent this from happening again. So please, allow us to share them with you:
We believe that the listed measures will ensure a better overall experience for you. Thank you for still being here. Thank you for giving us a chance to learn from our mistakes and become better. We won’t let you down!
Endless Winter: Official Soundtrack
After months of working on the soundtrack, we are excited to announce that Friday, the 14th of October is the official release date.
All eligible backers will receive an email from Backerkit with the download link for the folder.
The folder will be in .zip format containing 8 tracks of original music and sound design (almost 2 and a half hours of content) to elevate your gaming experience.
We have never talked about our composers and sound engineers that were working on the soundtrack, so now is the best chance to do it.
Thanos Argyris
Thanos is the co-founder and the other half (along with Yoma) of Fantasia.
With a 15-year career of producing and composing for various Greek and European artists, Thanos (along with his band) has been nominated multiple times as the best pop and alternative act on the Greek national awards in 2011 - 2015.
Ammos Music
Ammos Music is an independent record label that has a songwriting, music composing, and production team.
Founded by George Boussounis and George Ginis, both counting many years of collaboration with mainstream names across Europe, the label serves alternative—or even somewhat obscure genres and artists—while extending its activities to film, theater, and other media.
George and George write songs and produce for their own bands and solo projects.
And last but not least. Here is a small preview of the soundtrack: Enjoy
Essen presence
Before we go, we would like to share some news and photos from Essen. We really had a great time there, and we can guarantee you that many people, reviewers, and publishers loved Endless Winter and Unconscious Mind. We were really pumped from their reactions and feedback for the games.
We even had the pleasure to have some special guests like the legendary designer Wolfgang Kramer, and the Dice Tower team who both shared some really flattering comments about Fantasia, but we prefer to keep them private. :)
Our tables were constantly occupied, and we managed to sell all of our copies (280 core retail boxes, 200 Ancestors expansions, 50 Rivers and Rafts expansions, and 50 Cave Paintings expansions). The 3 tiers provided were: 75-70€ for the Core Game, 95-90€ for the Core game with Ancestors expansion, and 130€ for a very limited number of the core game and the 3 expansions. No modules, promos, free expansions, resin pieces, soundtrack, playmats, or big boxes were available. Still, those were enough to cover all of our costs for a team of 10 people for 7 days:
We haven’t calculated the exact amount of profit we got, but if there is some, it won't be more than 1K. We might even have a small loss. We promised that we would aim to only cover the expenses of a great Essen presentation and this is exactly what we did. We believe we spread awareness for Fantasia and Pika Games titles and we really want to thank you for giving us this opportunity.
FAQ
Before we go, we would like to answer a couple of frequently asked questions:
What’s next?
As mentioned we will keep you updated about the current state of fulfillment on a weekly basis, so expect our next update soon. In the meantime, we are preparing non-stop for our next KS campaign of Unconscious Mind.
And that’s all for now! In the meantime…
Stay calm, and play board games! :)
—Fantasia
Dear tribe members,
We hope that we find you well and many of you are having fun with the game.
Lately, there were some concerns shared in the comments section that we tried to answer in detail; but since each reply deserves a thorough answer, we decided to provide this update.
Concern 1: What’s going on with Gameratti—Why haven't I received my game yet?
Unfortunately, the entire staff of Gameratti—except for one—are dealing with Covid. We promised to ask them for a new estimation and their reply was this:
“Our employees are all still out, but we've been training some part-time help and trying to move forward. We should have a better handle on our progress—and what your backers should expect—come Monday.”
We are sorry that this unfortunate situation has caused delays; but please keep in mind, our experience with Gameratti so far has included:
On the other hand, we cannot disregard the significant amount of anxiety experienced by our backers, and since you are at the top of our priority ladder, next time we have to consider setting more specific requirements/alternatives for a smoother fulfillment process.
Concern 2: Why will the EU retail copies be available at Essen before I receive my game?
As you might know, Endless Winter was scheduled to be delivered much earlier (not during Essen spiel); but because of our delays in development, the size of production, the number of languages for the campaign, covid, and many other things, we have asked forgiveness in previous updates, and the first delivery estimation for the game was late August/early September. At the same time, we had an agreement with the factory to store the retail copies for a couple of weeks, so the KS copies had a significant advance in freight.
Now it starts to become a bit more complex. Due to extra Covid delays in the factory, and a week of vacation we were not aware of, we missed another 2 valuable weeks (we informed you about them in our updates) and this pushed the delivery close to the end of September. We requested that the factory (many times) have backers receive their games before Essen, and they tried what was humanly possible on their part to achieve that.
At that point, everything seemed tight but doable to follow our plan, but then a new factor changed our plans… again. We realized that Essen was quite early this year, and if we would hold retail copies in the factory for 2 weeks, there was a chance that partners attending Essen wouldn’t be able to have them on time; and for some of them—especially Frosted Games—this was essential. Keeping in mind that a big part of the general delay was caused because of our development process, it felt unfair to cause this risk to our partners.
With an estimation of mid-September for our KS games to arrive in Hamburg, we gave the green light for all retail copies to ship earlier so they don’t miss the Essen dates. Even if a partner wouldn’t attend Essen, we wouldn’t make an exception and delay their copies. It seemed fair that all retail copies should leave the factory together.
And as you know, what happened next is that our KS copies became stuck unpredictably in the port until the 3rd of October (keeps changing all the time), and our goal to deliver all games to our backers first, failed. Because of that, we would not have KS copies available at Essen, so we airshiped some retail copies and expansions to sell in order to recover some of our lost costs.
We communicated with all of our partners to delay the retail distribution; but under that short notice, we understand why many of them just couldn’t do it.
We were really sorry about that, we promised to do better next time, and take more preemptive measures now that we know what to expect. For all other continents—more or less—we did fine. As soon as backers received their copies, retail copies were available too. It’s only the EU that gave us a hard time because of this unexpected strike in the port that delayed the fulfillment by 20 days.
In light of these recent events, we contacted Packman fulfillment urgently regarding the EU and UK fulfillment and asked them to share their procedure and see if they can speed up the process.
Once the containers reach them (after the customs clearance at the port of Hamburg) we will see the first packages leave their warehouse after only three days.
The delivery for countries in the EU is 3-7 days, depending on the country of delivery, and 10 days for the UK.
So there is a big possibility to see the first packages at your doorstep in the middle of October (fingers crossed that the customs and trucking procedure at Hamburg will not be further delayed).
Concern 3: Does Fantasia find it normal that retail copies reached the Europe market first?
We need a clear answer here, and it's a straightforward NO!
We don’t consider it normal that retail copies reach the market first, and we are really sad about that. Although we haven’t promised a month in advance on our Kickstarter or anything similar (just because we were newcomers and we were afraid we might fail to do it) that was exactly the plan. Asmodee in the USA, Canada, UK would bring copies to retail a month later, and the plan for all other regions was to have them available at least 2 weeks later, by storing the games for a couple of weeks in China. Keep in mind, factories cannot store games for a long time for many reasons, especially with this large volume of 38K retail copies.
We might have partially failed this time, but it’s important that we do better next time. Our clear position is that backers should get their game first, with many extra goodies in it, in order to make supporting a campaign worth it and have their support properly awarded. We are also backers and we know how it feels. For the moment, the only thing we can do is to share our apologies, and explain in detail why we failed partially on this one while trying to do the best for everyone.
Despite the size of this campaign, it’s still our first one. Keeping that in mind, we hope that it wasn’t that bad and you can give us a chance to be better next time on the shipping matter.
What’s next?
In our next update, we are going to share photos and news from our time during Essen Spiel. At the same time, we will let you know all about the soundtrack.
And that’s all for now! In the meantime…
Stay calm, and play board games! :)
—Fantasia
Essen Spiel news, Soundtrack, and the new official website of Fantasia.
Greetings tribe members,
In this update, we will focus on the current state of fulfillment, the digital soundtrack's release, and present our new official website to you.
The current stage of fulfillment
As you can see, many backers across the globe are receiving their packages.
We are ecstatic to read your early impressions and reviews about Endless Winter on BGG and various social media groups — winter will be endless indeed :)
USA
50% of the packages have been already shipped to the backers — the process until now was a little bit slow as half of the staff of Gamerati was out sick in the past two weeks — but kudos to them as they did their best to keep sending out packages. In the next 2 weeks we are hoping that every single package will be out for delivery; so, if you have not already received a notification from Gamerati for your package, expect to receive it very soon!
Canada
The container arrived at the Canadian warehouse on the 21st of September. The following days are prep days (pick and pack, printing labels), and the actual shipping to backers is expected to commence in the following week.
Australia/New Zealand
The container arrived at the Australian warehouse on the 19th of September. We should see the first pledges leave the warehouse on Monday, September 26th.
ASIA/ROTW
Packages are sent to the backers from various hubs across the continent (China, Singapore, Korea, Indonesia, India, Philippines, Vietnam, Malaysia, Thailand,
and the United Arab Emirates).
Europe/UK
Unfortunately, the vessel has an estimated time of arrival for October 3rd.
There is an 18-day difference from our initial ETA (we booked the containers with an ETA of September 15th). This unexpected delay is due to the union strikes at the port of Hamburg, and the huge line of ships that are waiting outside the port.
This is something no one could predict and there are not many things we can do about it.
The games will be trucked after the Essen fair to the EU and UK fulfillment center and the fulfillment is expected to begin in mid-October.
Essen
For this reason, the deluxe edition of the game won’t be available at Essen. All the games meant to be shipped to the fair are on the EU vessel. In order to have something to sell during the fair and cover some of our costs, we had to airship some retail units from our factory in China. Air shipping games is not great cost-wise, but it is what it is. No complaints or anything. This year we go to Essen mostly to have fun, celebrate our first delivered game, and get to know each other :)
Digital Soundtrack
The official soundtrack is very close to completion. Expect an email with the download link from Backerkit in the first two weeks of October.
The soundtrack consists of 8 tracks: 4 of them are orchestral pieces, and the other 4 are tracks explicitly designed for Endless Winter in order to elevate your gaming experience.
We will make an update specifically for the soundtrack, presenting the tracks in detail and the artists behind them.
Official Website
Last but not least, we would like to share with you the link to our official website:
https://fantasiaboardgames.com/
The truth is that we are still working on it, but we have decided to reveal it now since it is going to help us with customer service and replacement parts. So expect to have a better and richer experience with it along the way.
What’s next?
That’s all for now. We will be here waiting for more of your E.W. game stories, and of course, assist you with anything you might need in order to receive your game asap.
At the same time we will be preparing ourselves for Essen, and as we already said, come by to say hi. It’s our first time there, so any kind of support is welcome :)
And that’s all for now! In the meantime…
Stay calm, and play board games! :)
—Fantasia