Thursday, June 20, 2002

by the Wunderland Toast Society

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• GinohnNews - Ginohn Split in Two :(
• The Ember Update: Moving III, Simplicity, more...
• Petra got her nails done again

With less than two weeks until Origins, getting ready for the convention is the main thing on our minds these days. For example, even when friends visiting from out of town drop in while on vacation, we put them to work. Here we see Dan Russett helping us build a giant Volcano board for our booth at Origins. Thanks for the help, Dan!

Other preparations (aside from the ever-soul-crushing work on our soon-to-be-finished-darnit website upgrade we call SuperFRED) include the following seven projects we're working with seven different printers to create:

• Nanofictionary (Carta Mundi): Already underway is the printing of my long-awaited fourth card game, and with luck we might have finished cardsheets at Origins we can cut up and use for the first ever tournament. The tuckbox (which we still have to design) and the rulebook (which we still have to finalize) will be printed in mid-July, and we are assured we'll have finished decks ready to sell at Gen-con. Whoo-hoo!
• In-Store Display (Oxford Innovations): We're extremely happy to say that, after months of haggling and re-design, our colorful in-store game display is finally at the printers! It's costing us a fortune (thanks again for the loan, Bob!) but it's going to be worth it... and although for awhile we feared we'd have to settle for an inferior version of the printing, instead it is going to look even finer than the prototype we were showing off at GTS. Alison put in many extra hours re-working the design for the third of several printers, but each time it got a little bit better... on the last revision, she added little fishies! Like our yard, our new display will have a water feature!
• Hypothermia #15 (TJ's Print Shop): If you've been following this site these last few weeks, you know we've been testing out a bunch of the latest Icehouse games, trying to decide which to feature in the next issue of our little newsletter, and at this point, it's all settled, the final drafts have been gone over by the proofreaders, and we'll be sending the finished files to TJ's in the next few days. (John even managed to write a Meltdown while on travel to the other coast!) Hypo-15 will contain 7 new games, and will be (I think) the most beautiful issue ever. If you attend Origins, we'll be giving them away there for free; after that, we'll be selling them at cost (i.e. $1) via our website.
• Nanofictionary Postcards (Postcard Power): Another thing we'll be giving away free at Origins is a new trio of postcards, which will look like this:

Since we didn't succeed in getting Nanofictionary ready in time for Origins, we decided to find a way to really promote the game at the con, and thereby encourage our fans to ask for it later at their local gamestore. We decided to do this with a set of postcards, each of which features a sampling of cards from the game along with the story I would tell using them. When taken together these three stories (entitled "Future Fire", "The Stolen Machine", and "The Ice Cream Disaster") do an excellent job of conveying what the game is all about, and since they feature some of the cards we've seen to be most popular, they are entertaining in and of themselves. Moreover, we'll be asking everything who visits our booth to fill out a little ballot, in which they'll vote for their favorite stories - awarding one with the 3 point grand prize, and one with the 1 point runner up - thus further showing everyone how the game works. And since it seems the timetable will permit this, we'll even be able to make this balloting meaningful: whichever story gets the most votes will be featured on the (still-to-be-finalized) tuckbox! If we have any of these postcards left after the summer trade shows, we'll be making them available in a packet in the Dollar Store.

• Origins Medallion Art (Tuxedo Graphics (aka Landru)): As awards for the tournaments in our Big Experiment, we'll be giving out colorful medallions as usual. Most of these will be made using the body of beautiful artwork we've gradually been amassing for a few years now, but as is traditional, there will be new designs for the (thirteenth!) annual Icehouse tournament, which were created this year by Ryan McGuire. Also, since there are a bunch of entirely new events this year, we've also had to come up with new artwork for those... Alison did most of these, including this beautiful new RAMbot of the Year" award, but Petra made this beautiful new artwork for the first ever Pikemen tournament. Thanks, Ryan, Alison, and Petra!

• Fluxx Promo Cards (Murray & Heister): As I've mentioned before, we'll also be giving out new Fluxx promo cards at Origins (a trio of New Rules); as usual, these are being printed by M&H, the same local printer who made a 9-up perforated card die for this purpose when they did the printing on the Chrononauts Beta edition two years ago. We're also making an IceTowers rules reference card, which we're pretty excited about. Like the postcards, these might become available here later on.
• Wooden Nickels (Old Time Wooden Nickel Co): One last thing that's already at the printers is the discount nickel we'll be giving out at the summer trade shows this year. This time around, it will be blue and worth $2 an in-person purchase of Playing with Pyramids.

What about you... have you played any games today?