Kingdoms & Warfare is a 5th Edition supplement for managing kingdoms, playing organizations, and waging war. This page is for anyone who missed the campaign but still wants to back the Kingdoms & Warfare project; it includes all the non-exclusive products we successfully funded during our Kickstarter. Fulfillment will happen at the same time we ship out Kickstarter Backer rewards.
This post is for backers only. Please visit Kickstarter.com and log in to read.
Hi everyone, Anna here again with the latest news on fulfillment: current timeline, estimated fulfillment windows for domestic and international destinations, and how to review and update your shipping address.
The High Res PDF is Here!
Before I jump into that, though, I wanted to let you know that we've just uploaded a higher-res version of the Kingdoms & Warfare Resources PDF that we sent out last week. It's already on your BackerKit so you can find it there, or you can download it directly using this link:
https://mcdm.gg/K&W-ResourcesHiRes
We've also sent out the notification emails from BackerKit about the new K&W downloads today (since not everyone is subscribed to our backer updates or is in the MCDM Discord), so you might get 3-4 messages in your inbox. Sorry for the spam!
Current Fulfillment Estimates
USA - February 2022
Canada - February/March 2022
Rest of World - March/April 2022
EU - April 2022
Australia - April/May 2022
Our book printer was able to secure the materials needed to print the books, however — as we suspected —the text paper won't be in stock until January 2022, and our project is scheduled to hit the presses soon after that. Printing usually takes a month from start to finish for the number of books we've ordered, then they need to be packed up and transported to our warehouse. Once they arrive at the fulfillment center, they'll be unpacked, scanned into the inventory system, and prepped for shipping. Then things get really exciting! :D
US Fulfillment
We're currently on track to start shipping rewards to US customers in February 2022, though the exact window is still in flux. We're keeping a close eye on it and will let you know if that changes.
Canada, EU, and Australia Fulfillment
Once all the inventory is under the same roof, the warehouse team will start splitting up the inventory into pallets that need to be transported internationally so we can start shipping to folks in Canada, the EU, and Australia (as those are the regions we were able to secure "friendly" shipping for).
For our previous Kickstarter, it took 15-20 days for inventory to arrive at the Canada warehouse, and 30-45 days for the boats to arrive at the EU and Australia warehouses. Sometimes Customs can cause this to take longer, but we didn't have too much of an issue with that last time. Once it's all through Customs, it took about a week to get the inventory sorted and ready to ship, then the actual delivery time once it left the warehouse was around 7-14 days, which will likely be the case for this project too.
UK and Northern Ireland Fulfillment
For those of you in the UK (and Northern Ireland, we're pretty sure), unfortunately with Brexit we can't provide "friendly" shipping so there may be additional charges due before you can receive your rewards. Info from the UK government's website states that:
We'll work on getting more information on what you can do to get your rewards if you end up in a situation where your package is returned.
Our fulfillment partner, EasyShip, has also created a tool that gives you the option to pay your delivery fees up front so it's a smoother process to get your parcel through customs and to your front door, but we're going to get more information before pulling the trigger on that.
Rest of World Fulfillment (Includes UK and Northern Ireland)
If you aren't located in the US, Canada, the EU, or Australia, your package falls under the "Rest of World" category. These orders will be shipped out from the US fulfillment warehouse in New Jersey, and depending on which country you reside in there may be additional handling fees due at delivery.
Delivery times for Rest of World packages vary from country to country (as well as if you live in a metropolitan or rural area), but most will arrive 4-6 weeks after they ship. If your country has a particularly sticky customs clearance process, then it could take longer but it'd be unusual if you haven't received it after 8 weeks.
Review Your Shipping Address
As a reminder, you can still update your shipping address on Backerkit (the pledge manager) without needing to have us do it for you.
If you've moved recently or are planning to move in the next few months and have your new address or an interim address where you'd like your rewards sent to based on the delivery estimates listed above, click here to have an email sent to you with the link to your Backerkit profile so you can update your shipping address. If you get an error that your email isn't found, keep in mind it would've been the email you used for your Kickstarter account in early 2020 when we opened the pledge manager.
Once we get closer to sending the rewards out, we'll need to lock shipping addresses. If you need to update your address after that date, you'll have to send a message to our support inbox. Since we don't currently have a dedicated full-time support rep, please help us out by using the link above to verify your shipping address before we cross that deadline! :D
Early next week we'll be posting our manufacturing show & tell! We are super, super excited for this one because we have SO MANY production sample photos of the minis, warfare unit decks, GM screens, and t-shirts to share. We also have some pics of the digital proofs for pages in the Kingdoms & Warfare books.
As always, thank you for your support and kindness — see ya next week! :)
— Anna & the MCDM Crew
Hi everyone, hope you've been doing well since we last caught up! Anna here again with the latest news on Kingdoms & Warfare development :D
We've JUST released the next iteration of the Kingdoms & Warfare PDF — version 1.1! And we have a new Resources supplement to go along with it. We hope you find both of these useful for improving the utility of K&W at your table.
For those wondering, the hardcover books are also going to be using v1.1 so what you see in this updated PDF will also be in the book. The only thing the book doesn't have are the 6 pages in the back of the book (p314-319) that have the blank unit cards, blank party sheet, and full-page maps. This is because we needed to keep the book to 320pgs since our printer works in multiples of 8 for each "signature" (this article explains what a signature is, since I don't want to bore you with the details).
Kickstarter Backers
We use the pledge manager, BackerKit, to handle the distribution of all digital rewards. You can locate your downloads here:
https://mcdm.gg/K&W-DigitalRewards
You may need to log in to your BackerKit profile to get to this page. If that's the case, you'll see a place to enter the email address you used during the Kickstarter and send yourself an email with an access link. If you've updated your Kickstarter account email in the past two years, it's possible that BackerKit doesn't have this on file; in that case, you'll want to use the Kickstarter email that was tied to your account between October 2019 - February 2020.
BackerKit will also be sending out an email with the link to download these PDFs, but that can take awhile so if you don't feel like waiting you might have a better chance using the method above to get your PDFs more quickly.
MCDM Shop Customers
We use SendOwl to distribute our digital products. You can use this link to access the downloads available to you:
https://mcdm.gg/shop-downloads
Make sure to enter the same email you used for your order, as that's the one that SendOwl will recognize. SendOwl won't tell you if the email you submitted is valid, but if you don't see anything in your Inbox, Promotions, or Spam folder within 15 minutes, return to this page and try entering any alternate email addresses you may have used for your order.
Once you enter the email address associated with your order(s), you'll get an email for every order you made that includes a digital product.
You can also set up a SendOwl account using that email address if you'd like to access your MCDM Shop downloads in one place, instead of needing to send yourself emails. You can do that through this page:
https://mcdm.gg/sendowl-account
To complete the registration process, enter your email address and then click "Reset Password". You'll get an email with a link to set the password for your account, and once you're successfully logged in you should see all of your digital products.
In total, there are now 4 new PDFs available:
If you'd like a rundown of what's changed in v1.1, please check out the Change Log document put together by our senior contract tester, Spencer (aka Pesto Enthusiast)
https://mcdm.gg/K&W-v1.1ChangeLog
This companion supplement puts the book's unit cards and maps in one place. It also contains new material to enhance what’s already in Kingdoms & Warfare, including:
If you'd like to grab the Resources PDF right away, here are the direct download links:
Kingdoms & Warfare Resources v1.0 - Color (25MB)
Kingdoms & Warfare Resources v1.0 - Grayscale (10MB)
https://mcdm.gg/K&W-ResourcesB&W
After you've had a chance to check out the changes and new info in these PDFs, we'd love to hear what you think! Please join us in the MCDM Discord (https://mcdm.gg/discord) where you can access the Kingdoms & Warfare category channels using the Heden bot in #hide-show_managers. Click on the ⚔️ reaction.
Sometimes Heden's a bit slow, so if you don't get access immediately give him a few minutes to process it before trying again.
Next week we'll be jumping back into fulfillment news. We've collected the latest manufacturing estimates from our vendors on when we can expect our products to reach "Warehouse Prime" in New Jersey. Pulling from our experience fulfilling Strongholds & Followers as well as MCDM shop orders, we've put together some high-level estimates for when your physical rewards are likely to ship out of the warehouse based on what region you're in.
Stay tuned! :)
— Anna & the MCDM Crew
Hey folks, Anna here with that shipping update we promised in our last post. Until now, we had a few big questions for our manufacturing partners and now that we have their answers, we're ready to share the latest info with you VS just giving you our best guesses. Let's get right into it!
Current Fulfillment Schedule
The K&W books make up the biggest portion of our physical rewards. Unfortunately, the books are also the most impacted by the supply chain issues that Matt briefly mentioned in the previous backer update and in our recently posted MCDM Update video, which creates a domino effect on the entire campaign's fulfillment schedule.
The straight dope: After running into a book restock issue in late April (the normal turn-around for a reprint is 1 month, but that had unexpectedly shot up without warning). We started reaching out to other companies for book printing schedules, knowing that we were getting close to wrapping up the Kingdoms & Warfare PDF. After hearing back from the printer we used before plus a dozen or so companies over the course of a couple months, it became apparent that due to COVID almost every printing company has been slammed with issue after issue—the biggest one being that very few of them can order the amount of paper we need to print our books. If they could even take on our project, the schedules most of them sent back were close to 6 months before our books would arrive at the warehouse.
July came and the PDF released, and during this we were still nailing down the specifics with a new printer who was large enough that they have the capacity to order the materials we need to print the books. In mid-August, we signed our new quote and were introduced to our project specialist at the manufacturing facility, and this week we'll be sending them the PDF files and paying our production deposit to kick off the prepress process.
While their schedule was on the shorter side compared to the others we contacted, unfortunately the most optimistic timeline they could provide from prepress to warehouse delivery was ~4 months.
Getting this info from every printer we talked to was incredibly shocking and disappointing to hear, as we had assumed that we'd be able to start fulfilling physical rewards in Q3 of this year. However, due to the impact COVID has had on printer's being able to buy enough paper to manufacture books combined with the ongoing shipping crisis (which is expected to worsen as we approach the flu and holiday season), we're realizing that shipping the Kingdoms & Warfare products before the end of 2021 is becoming less and less likely.
We imagine many of you are feeling as gutted as we are that we aren't able to start sending out physical rewards as soon as we hoped, and are now looking at a January/February 2022 shipping date.
It's been a bitter pill to swallow since we've spent the last two years working so hard to improve our development processes and have managed to avoid most of the costly and time-consuming pitfalls we ran into with our first Kickstarter (jeez, that feels like a lifetime ago!). When we launched this campaign in October 2019, we were extremely confident that we'd be able to deliver on time and even made sure to give our schedule some breathing room in case there were unexpected challenges. But, y'know, a global pandemic and paper shortages were certainly not something we thought we'd need to take into scheduling considerations and, like you, we've been trying to roll with the punches as each week throws something new at us.
To say that we feel lucky to have such an understanding and supportive community would be an understatement. Your patience means so much to us as we continue to figure out this complicated puzzle. We’re doing everything we can to make sure your wait is worth it, and will keep you updated as we go.
What's the Status of the Hardcover Books Now?
We should be getting our first prepress proofs in September, and are really looking forward to seeing them ourselves and sharing them with you! We've just entered the prepress phase for the books, since we needed to lock in a printer who could:
One of the positive outcomes of us reaching out to so many printers is that our new printing partner is based in the US and they were able to meet all of our requirements! They've been fantastically communicative and have helped us understand the complications all printers are experiencing on a much deeper level than we would have otherwise. We have a dedicated team of experts who share over 80 years in the printing industry (as well as significant experience in making other tabletop books) and we're beyond excited to work together with them on the Kingdoms & Warfare hardcover books.
The Kingdoms & Warfare PDF is Available Now
If you missed our last update and the emails we sent out, we launched the Kingdoms & Warfare PDF in July! The positive reception we've received has been nothing short of overwhelming for all of us, and it's been wonderful to see the love and support you've sent to the writers, artists, editors, layout artist, and playtesters who contributed their expertise in its development.
We've also been hard at work with an accessibility editor in updating the PDF so it's fully screen-reader friendly, and creating a second high contrast (black & white) PDF. Those will be ready to share in the next couple weeks, and you'll get an email from Backerkit ([email protected]) when they're available to download, and if you're a shop customer who purchased the PDF, you'll get an email from SendOwl.
If you've completed your backer survey and your pledge is locked, you can download your PDF from your K&W Backerkit profile through this link: https://kingdoms-and-warfare.backerkit.com/backer/
If that link doesn't give you immediate access to your pledge, try putting the email you use for Kickstarter/Backerkit into this form and you should receive an email with a link to access your profile:
https://kingdoms-and-warfare.backerkit.com/
We've still been making forward progress despite the printing schedule setbacks! Here's some info about the other products that are in the manufacturing pipeline:
GM Screen
After fussing with the physical dimensions of the GM Screen, it's officially out of layout and the files have been sent to the printer! We've received some blank dummies to review that the materials being used met our quality standards (they did), and should be getting an updated one the first week of September which is supposed to match what the final product will look like. We're very excited to share pictures, but just want to make sure it passes our review in case we need to make more changes.
Minis
It turns out that everyone really likes the minis! We're having TrenchWorx produce a second run of our most popular ones so the warehouse is ready to rock-n-roll when fulfillment begins. Once those are sorted and put into their boxes, they'll be shipped over to the warehouse with all the Onyx Dragons (it's taking a bit longer to get those packaged— they're BIG).
While I find it interesting, this section can be skipped if you're not wanting any additional specifics on the supply chain issues or how it's affecting the analog game industry as a whole.
Widespread Impact on the Tabletop & Board Game Industry
It's not just MCDM that's been affected; every industry has felt the effects of increased production costs and if you're a fan of board games or have supported other Kickstarters with paper-based goods, you're probably seeing similar reports/updates or will in the near future—especially from smaller, independent publishers who can't risk bankruptcy by taking the print-on-demand route as it's extremely expensive. And if you consider that freight costs are 300%-600% higher than average with severely delayed deliveries (one company is even suing two of the world's largest freight companies, alleging price manipulation and collusion)... the supply chain crisis is impossible to ignore, and even more impossible for smaller businesses to work around. Even Hasbro announced in their Q2 earnings call that in order to maintain profit margins and keep up with rising production/transportation costs, they'll be increasing their product prices for the back half of 2021 (though it wasn't specified which products this would impact).
Printing Supply Chain Struggles
Due to raw material shortages (primarily lumber which then becomes paper pulp that is turned into text paper and hardcase boards) new restrictions were enforced earlier this year to limit the amount of paper products printers could order. This created a chain reaction which made it more difficult for printers to fulfill the orders they'd already taken in and drove up the prices of paper goods overall. A lot of smaller printing companies started selling off their machinery, supplies, and facilities to larger printers in hopes of riding out the supply chain issues, but most haven't survived. As a result, their clients were forced to move to the remaining printers who could produce their goods. That increased demand combined with limited manufacturing supplies and COVID's impact on production capacity has created huge order backlogs worldwide.
Once lockdown mandates were imposed, there was a huge increase in online sales. Of course, more online sales mean that more cardboard boxes are needed to deliver orders, and since almost all paper mills already produce cardboard they shifted their priorities away from making paper used for book printing to instead focus on producing more cardboard to meet demand and those priorities haven't shifted because, to put it bluntly, cardboard is where the money's at for them.
The volume of online sales is still persisting throughout 2021 and expected to increase due to the Delta variant and we'll likely see it shoot up once we hit flu season, Black Friday, Cyber Monday, and winter holidays.
Hey everybody, Matt here! We are VERY happy to let you know that that PDF for Kingdoms & Warfare is ready!! It’s over 300 pages of new rules, new monsters, items, an adventure that shows GMs how to use these rules. It’s...it’s a LOT, so there’s gonna be a lot to talk about :D
We strongly encourage folks who have questions about any of the rules to come by the MCDM Discord. There’s a whole category just for K&W with channels for Domains, Warfare, Monsters/Items, and the Adventure. Many of the testers are in there as well as me and James to answer folks’ questions.
Waves of emails with the download link have started going out to those who are due to receive the PDF, the standard book, the deluxe book, and/or the signed deluxe book. With this volume of emails getting sent out, it might take a couple days for them all to get delivered so we appreciate you being patient; we've pressed the big green button, now we just have to wait for the system to do its thing. Also check your spam folder or search your inbox for the following:
Subject: New Digital Content for MCDM's Kingdoms & Warfare Kickstarter on BackerKit
From: Matt Colville & MCDM Productions <[email protected]>
If you can't wait (and how could you??) you might be able to pick up your PDF directly from your Backerkit profile since we're sending it out through them this time as it's a lot more straightforward. And you can still redownload your PDF later on if you need to! But we've never done it this way before, so we're learning with you. Use this link to log in to your Backerkit profile, then you should be able to access your Digital Downloads tab and supposedly the Kingdoms & Warfare PDF will be waiting for you, hot off the digital presses!
Access your Backerkit profile page with the direct download link: https://kingdoms-and-warfare.backerkit.com/backer/
And if that link doesn't work, you can try this one and you might receive an email to get back in to your profile before the digital download notification comes through:
https://kingdoms-and-warfare.backerkit.com/
The book has two new rulesets in it: rules for Organizations and how they interact, otherwise known as Intrigue, and the new Warfare rules. We made a video explaining the Domain and Intrigue rules (look up!), and we’ll upload another video explaining Warfare soon.
But there’s a whole lot more to this Kickstarter than just the PDF! There's minis and a GM Screen and the Special Warfare Unit Deck and the BOOK and there’s a lot going on in those departments so let’s go over what we know.
STATUS: On the way to the warehouse!
As you can see the minis are boxed up (this is a lotta boxes!) and on the way to our fulfillment company’s warehouse. The folks at Trenchworx worked hard to get all this done! They not only create the prototypes, but they create the molds and then cast all the minis by hand and then package all the bits up for you in little (or big) boxes with packing inside to make sure your minis arrive safe wherever you might be.
STATUS: On the way to the warehouse!
The Special Warfare Unit Deck has been printed and is ALSO on the way to the fulfillment warehouse!
STATUS: Layout complete; sending off to the printers TODAY for prepress!
STATUS: Layout complete and ready for prepress!
A hardcover version of Kingdoms & Warfare is coming, but right now shipping and printing are a mess because of the pandemic. We've been working super hard on getting this all figured out, and next week we should have some more info to share. In the meantime as you wait for your PDF, you can check out the 20+ preview pages on the MCDM Shop.
We're also excited to share our final cover art with you, done by the incredible Gustavo Pelissari (whose work you may be familiar with from ARCADIA)!
That's it for now; we'll be back next week with more info about the books and have our fingers crossed that we can get everything nailed down ASAP. Thank you so much for your support, patience, and understanding throughout this process and while we navigated 2020's rough waters. We're incredibly lucky to have such a great community to weather the storm with.
Peace... out!