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Hi everyone! I want to start off by thanking you all for your ongoing support of GMT Games. We had one of our best years ever in 2017. I know that we did a few things right to make that happen, and that our great groups of designers, developers, testers, and artists played a huge role in that, and I'm thankful for all the talent that they bring to the table on an ongoing basis. But at the end of the day, after everything we do, it's you, the customer, who buys our games and (hopefully) decides that you really like them. Many of you then tell your friends and fellow gamers about GMT or a particular game, and the process of growing a loyal customer following perpetuates. On the Quality Control side, when you guys see a problem or something that you'd like us to improve, you let us know, (almost always!) in a helpful manner, and you help us get better. I really appreciate all of you and the way you support us and promote our hobby. Truly, we could not make this company work without all of you and your support. So, please accept my heartfelt "Thank You!"
On the personal side, I've heard from some of you this month wondering if I'm okay, given my lessened online presence of late. I really appreciate your concern, and the answer is yes, I'm fine. But last month when I said the flu had come and gone didn't turn out to be exactly right. I definitely got better, but this year's flu just seems to keep coming back, especially the "low energy" part. So for much of the past month I've had a much lighter work schedule, allowing for a lot of rest to make sure I'm truly over it. As you might imagine, I've had to let a few things go during that time, and online presence was one of them (thanks to Rachel for covering so well on social media. For you CSW folks, sorry for the long absence. I'll be back soon.). For the past week or so, I've felt really good, and I'm back in the gym and working mostly full days. Of course, there's a mountain of work and communications to catch up on. So, please be patient with me while I tackle it. If I owe you an email or an update, I'll be on it soon. And for those of you who've had the misfortune to get this year's flu, please don't push yourself too soon!
OK, let's move on to this month's news.
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Three New Games Shipping Late this Week! We will begin shipping P500 orders of At Any Cost as well as the MBT expansions BAOR and FRG (both of these are boxed expansions) late this week. I anticipate that it'll take us 7-10 days to get them all shipped out. Enjoy!
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New P500 Additions. We have three new P500 additions this time.
First, for you most-patient 18xx fans, we have 1862: Railway Mania in the Eastern Counties, our 2nd 18xx series railroad management game, designed by Mike Hutton. I'm really happy that we can bring this game to market in a GMT format. My understanding is that only 800 copies were printed of the original game, so hopefully we can do our part in making this excellent game more widely available.
We also have Flashpoint: South China Sea, a new fast-playing strategy game from Harold Buchanan. I got to play this at our Weekend at the Warehouse in October, and I think you guys are really going to like it. It's another one of our "Lunchtime Games," (similar to Mark Herman's Fort Sumter, at least in terms of short playing time), designed to deliver a challenging strategy game experience that you can enjoy in 30-60 minutes.
Finally this month, we have
People Power: Insurgency in the Philippines, 1983-1986. This is COIN Series Volume XI, designed by Kenneth Tee. I played this with Ken and developer Eric Harvey last August, and was very impressed by the way this game immerses you in crisis in the Philippines in the mid-80s. I also really like that the game's terrain (two types, no LOCs) and some of the COIN systems are simplified at bit. So this one is going to make for a terrific entry-level game in the COIN series, while still providing an interesting and challenging strategic situation for veterans of the series.
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On the Horizon. Several of you told me you really liked this feature last month, so I'll continue with a brief tease as to what we have lining up for P500 addition in the coming few months. I anticipate that we willl have
- a new theatre-level naval game from Jerry White
- the first game in a new series from Volko Ruhnke
- a new operational wargame from Ted Raicer
- a new strategic naval game from Jeff Horger
- an expansion for one of our most popular games
- An enhanced edition of one of our sold-out wargames
- and likely a couple of surprise additions!
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New P500 Reprint Addition
. We're adding a very popular game to the P500 reprint list this time:
Sekigahara, 4th Printing. This game just keeps selling out! We are really happy that you guys are enjoying it. This new reprint edition will be identical to the 3rd printing, except that, as usual, we'll fix any known errata at the time we go to print.
Please click the link above to get more information or to place a P500 order.
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New Games from Europe.
We have Hexasim's newest game, Ligny: 1815, Last Eagles in the warehouse now, and available for sale. Check out the game page link - this one looks awesome! Get them while they last!
As a reminder from last month, we also now have the following five games in the warehouse. These are from Cerrigo, the company that used to be Vae Victis. As you'll see when you click the links below, they are continuing the quality and format of the Vae Victis ziplock games.
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26 Copies Remaining of Pocotaligo. I want to thank all of you who ordered
Pocotaligo last month. I really appreciate your help in finding good homes for the last 200 copies of this game. We've sold most of them now, with only 26 remaining on our shelves.
If you'd like to purchase a copy for $18 + shipping , just click the link below to order.
Pocotaligo
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Coming This Week in InsideGMT. Here's an update from Rachel on this week's upcoming InsideGMT articles:
Lots of new content coming to
InsideGMT this week! In case you missed it yesterday, we posted a new addition to Brian Reynolds' Play the Experts series.
This article includes an intro from Brian and Part 1 of his second Twilight Struggle "Play the Experts" game on YouTube. Tomorrow, we will have an article from Harold Buchanan introducing his newest design,
Flashpoint: South China Sea. The article is a great read so don't miss it! Later in the week, we will have another of David Waldorf's fantastic
Space Empires strategy articles, this time discussing fleet building. I invite you to visit
InsideGMT.com this week to check out these upcoming articles (and more!) from our team of excellent InsideGMT contributors. -Rachel B
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Update on the Systems Transition. Sometime during the coming week (we want to get a few days out from this update, when we always have lots of website traffic), our website will go down for a day or so, while we transition to the new site.
As I noted last month, when we're back live with the new website, this will be Step 1 in completing our Systems updates and transitions. Note that although the look and feel of the site will be different, you shouldn't have to do anything new when we roll it out. We are using the same customer and product databases, so hopefully it'll be a very stable transition experience, and your old password should work just fine.
I'll continue to keep you updated as we add new pieces over the coming weeks and months. At the end of this road, we expect to have massively improved many of our digital and physical processes, most especially our order processing and notification capabilities.
Thanks for your patience as we transition our systems.
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Welcome to Centerville 5-Minute Teaching Video. It's really gratifying to see the outstanding reviews and hear from so many of you who are enjoying our latest "Chad Jensen game," Welcome to Centerville. If you are still on the fence about this one, I'd suggest checking out this five-minute game overview from the guys at The Game Pit. This is not a review, but rather a brief and incredibly well-presented video overview of the game and its rules, which is great for seeing how all the systems fit together, or for just refreshing your rules memory before your next game. Thanks to Ronan and Sean at the Game Pit for creating this video. I hope you will check it out. I think you'll be impressed both with Chad's game design and with Sean and Ronan's skill at teaching you the game in five minutes. Enjoy!
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A Peek at the Rules for SpaceCorp. John, Chad, and Kai have posted playtest versions of the rules for SpaceCorp. As you can see, they are pretty polished already, as we prepare for a summer release. We hope you enjoy them, and that they will help you get ready to dive into what I think will be a blockbuster of a game this summer. Here are the links:
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Fields of Despair at West Point.
We always love it when we see the military using our games as teaching tools or strategy exercises. Recently, Kurt Keckley's design, Fields of Despair, was used in a West Point classroom. Here are a few pics of the class:
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Heavy Duty White Game Boxes and Blank Countersheets Available.
For you guys looking for extra boxes for component storage, we now have some 2" deep and 3" deep heavy duty (like the COIN games come in) white game boxes in stock. They're $6 + shipping (1 lb) and $8 + shipping(1 lb), respectively. Here are the links:
And for you guys who like to design your own games or extra counters, we now have several sizes of white blank countersheets available on the Parts and Accessories Page of our website. They are $3 per sheet, plus shipping. Links are below:
Space Empires 4X: Exploring Deep Space
Twilight Struggle Play the Experts #5: A Land War in Asia
And, in case you missed them, here are links to our previous month's InsideGMT articles:
Talon Tuesday Issue #33: Talon 1000 - State of the Fleet (Part 2)
Introducing All Bridges Burning: Red Revolt and White Guard in Finland, 1917-1918
Tokyo at Dawn #3: The Doolittle Raid: April 18th, 1942
FAB: Golan '73 Al-Owda Scenario and Additional Optional Rules
The Beasts of the Apocalypse
Replicator Tuesday Issue #34: Advanced Ship Development - Part Two, Curveballs
Tokyo at Dawn #4: The Doolittle Raid: April 19th, 1942
A Struggle Anew: Imperial Struggle and Its Older Cousin
Confrontation and Cooperation from the West (1989, #2)
Talon Tuesday Issue #35: Talon 1000 - New Empire War Map
Empire of the Sun: Erasmus Version 2.0 Goes to War
Death Valley: Rearguard Action at Winchester, Virginia, May 25th, 1862
Tokyo at Dawn #5: The Doolittle Raid Debriefing
Replicator Tuesday Issue #36: Advanced Ship Development, Part Three - Other Ships
Surviving the Apocalypse
As always, I invite you guys to head over to www.insidegmt.com, check out the articles, leave us your comments, and tell us what else you'd like to see us do to make InsideGMT even better!
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GMT East Convention: March 23-25, 2018
For you East Coast gamers, we have a GMT East game convention once a year at the White Plains Crowne Plaza in White Plains, NY. This is an open gaming event hosted by Andy Lewis, with assistance from David Fox, Alan Rothberg, and several other of our east coast friends. We invite you to attend and play a bunch of fun games with us!
We have a room block (Friday and Saturday nights) at the Crowne Plaza - group code is "GM1". Hotel room rates will be $129/night (reduced from last year's rate) for one king or two double beds.
Click the link below for hotel reservations:
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S
pring 2018 GMT Weekend at the Warehouse - April 26-29, 2018. We've established the dates for our Spring Weekend at the Warehouse for April 26-29, 2018. Come join us for 3 1/2 days of gaming fun!
For those new to the event, this is mostly an open gaming event, although we do have tournaments from time to time. We expect about 100 gamers to attend, and space is limited, so please get your reservation in to the office ladies (call, chat, or email) as soon as possible.
Click on the
GMT Weekend at the Warehouse page on InsideGMT for more details, as well as a list of designers attending.
There are several hotels within a few miles of our offices. The closest one, The Sequoia Inn, blocks rooms for our attendees at special rates. The hotel's reservation # is 559-582-0339. Tell them you want the "GMT Group Block"rate. They have already blocked rooms for us for April, so feel free to go ahead and make reservations whenever you are ready.
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Keep up with GMT Online. Virtually every day, we announce new information or show off upcoming products or give you a peek under the hood of our new designs in our various online sites and forums. For you guys looking to keep up with us online, here's where you can find us. Drop in and start a conversation!
GMT Games Website
InsideGMT blog
GMT Facebook Page
GMT's Twitter Feed
GMT on Instagram
GMT on BoardGame Geek
GMT YouTube Channel
GMT on Consimworld
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That's it for the news bytes from me for this time. Here's what you'll find in the rest of today's update:
- Charge and Shipping Update
- Production Outlook - P500s
- Project Updates and Sample Art
- P500 Reprint Update
- Website File Additions
Thanks, as always, for your support of GMT Games! Enjoy the games! -
Gene
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Charging and Shipping Schedule
Shipping
Charging
Our next P500 charge will be around March 5, when we'll begin charging for
Cataclysm (4 lbs) and
Fort Sumter (3 lbs).
For you guys calculating shipping charges for these games, I've included the weights we're using for shipping in parenthesis after each game title.
To avoid any delays in your game shipment, please make sure you've updated your charge cards on our website before we charge. If you use the "Pay by Check" P500 option, please send your checks in by the above dates. Thanks!
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Tentative Production Schedule
Here's our most current Tentative Production Schedule from Tony and Mark. Games with a ** following their entry are currently at the printer (we're a little more certain about scheduling on these).
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February 22, 2018
March, 2018
April, 2018
May, 2018
Summer, 2018
Coinfest:
Later in 2018
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P500s
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Project Updates and Sample Art
Sneak Peeks:
Here is some sample art for upcoming games, courtesy of Mark Simonitch and Charlie Kibler:
And here's a pic from Mark Herman of his home-built copy of Fort Sumter, using final art and wood pieces.
Design Updates:
In the previous update in January, I mentioned that I was able to have a bunch of playtesters look at the first draft of the card-based solitaire system for All Bridges Burning. The feedback I got from the guys was very encouraging: the system is fast playing but challenging, exactly they way we want it. It's great to know we're on the right track with the solo system. However, now we've got the base game to finish up before I can turn my full attention to finishing the solitaire system.
Speaking of the base game, testing has continued with the focus, on the one hand, upon finding out about possibly game balance breaking strategies. In the January update I talked about the "Senate rush to war" strategy. Well, in further testing it did indeed turn out that we needed to address this. There are plenty of options how to slow that faction down a notch and we're looking into finding the most elegant solution.
On the other hand, the testing efforts have focused upon whether the faction interaction patterns continue to persist across all the different ways the game can fold out across several plays. From the start, the Moderates --the non-violent faction in the game-- have proven to be tricky to get right here. This probably owes to their character as the only faction fighting a non-violent war whilst the Reds and the Senate mete it out in a more conventional war. Over the course of the past several months, we've continued to device and then test various dimensions in which the non-violent faction can continue to interact with the violent factions across the entire arch of the game. I've got to say, this kind of tweaking is time consuming, but oh-so much fun and very intellectually rewarding! - vez
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Another enactment of the Finnish Civil War rages on on my gaming table.
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P500 Reprint News and Tracking
Here's the current status of all the games on our P500 reprint list - with current order totals and a +/- order growth since last month.
Please help us determine what to print by pre-ordering any of these that interest you. Thanks for your help!
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New Game Support Files, Vassal Modules, New Reviews, Interviews, and Sneak Peeks
Here are new support files we've added to our website since our last update. Enjoy!
Game Support:
Reviews:
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Sincerely,
Your Friends at GMT Games
www.gmtgames.com
Toll Free Order and Support Line: 800-523-6111
E-mail: gmtoffice@gmtgames.com |
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