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W. Eric Martin
United States
Apex
North Carolina
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• Nearly the entire print run of David Ausloos' Panic Station is sold out by both White Goblin Games and Stronghold Games, according to a press release from WGG, with those copies being claimed by preorders, retail stores and distributors. As a result, White Goblin and Stronghold will each have only one hundred copies of the game for sale at Spiel 2011. The game will be demoed throughout the fair for those not attending on Thursday who want to see what they missed.
• Designer Galen Ciscell notes on BGG that his Atlantis Rising is now scheduled for release in March 2012 from Z-Man Games and Filosofia. For more on the game, check out my interview with Ciscell on BGG News from June 2011 or his many designer notes on the game's BGG page.
• A few updates on the production status of Spiel 2011 releases, which I covered in some depth in this Oct. 2011 BGG News post:
—Henning Kröpke reports that both the German and English versions of Friedemann Friese's Freitag have been produced and are ready for Spiel. Production of Funkenschlag: Die ersten Funken and the Robots expansion for Power Grid is scheduled for Monday, October 17 – mere days before the opening of Spiel 2011.
–On Friday, Oct. 14, Jeroen Doumen from Splotter Spellen wrote to tell me: "The last components for the Antiquity reprint arrived today, so we'll have it ready for Essen." The game will sell for €75.
—Christian Hildenbrand with AMIGO Spiel says that the company is pretty much on track with its Spiel 2011 releases, partly because it spread its production schedule out over several months rather than trying to do everything at the last minute. "I already have nine of twelve produced games on my desk at AMIGO, and they look great – as always," he says. "The last three games will be produced the weekend before the fair. Our only problem this year has been some single parts that should have been delivered for finalizing the games at Ludo Fact (dice, glass pieces). Some of them have not been in time."
As for other production options, he says, "The quality of 'China-production' has approximated the German standard in the last years and we will produce two games for Nuremberg 2012 there – but bringing more and more production to the Far East is not one of our goals. We definitely prefer Germany and the working relationship with Ludo Fact."
—Ted Alspach at Bézier Games sent the following update on Friday, Oct. 14:
Quote: Thanks to Homeland Security, I just received my games last night (from China), after they were held up in customs for the past few weeks. Normally I get them several weeks before Spiel and can ship some to Germany or find other people to take some with them, but it's too late for that, so Bézier Games will have an incredibly limited quantity of all new releases. In particular, the AoS maps and new printing of Ultimate Werewolf (and the Night Terrors expansion) will likely be sold out within the first day or so (based on historical sales data). I will have "enough" copies of Artifacts, and a reasonable number of TieBreaker, but even those are limited (and it's too early to tell how well they'll sell). This year more than ever, if people want something, I'd encourage them to get it on Thursday. I'm just thankful I got them at all since I leave for Germany on Saturday. (There was a real risk of NO games at Spiel this year.)
• To contrast that dire news, Ted Alspach did have two more positive things to note. His Mutant Meeples – a puzzle-solving game along the lines of Ricochet Robots – will be available for testing at Spiel 2011 ahead of its expected release date in early 2012.
Second, Alspach is offering a "free upgrade" from any version of Werewolves of Miller's Hollow to his own Ultimate Werewolf: Compact Edition for the first one hundred people who bring a copy of Miller's Hollow to his booth at Spiel.
• Pegasus Spiele, which now handles production and marketing for eggertspiele, has released more details about three titles coming from the German publisher:
—Village, from Inka and Markus Brand, will be playable in a production-ready version at Spiel 2011, then released in a combined English/German version shortly after the convention.
—Die Speicherstadt: Kaispeicher, the much-awaited expansion for Stefan Feld's Die Speicherstadt, combines two smaller previously announced expansions into one box. Previously eggertspiele had announced a November 2011 release date for this title, but the press release from Pegasus did not include a date.
—Cuba, by Michael Rieneck and Stefan Stadler, will appear in a "new version", with no details on how the new version might differ from the old and which other publishers might release this new version. I'll pry for details at Spiel 2011, although I suspect that's when other partnership deals for co-publication might be made.
Update, Oct. 15: Marcin Szrama from Spiellust.net helpfully pointed out that the Pegasus website lists both the new version of Cuba and Kaispeicher as November 2011 releases on its website. I blame pre-Spiel brain fog for not checking the most obvious place first...
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