March 9th
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March 9th
How true . That's what happens with lack of sleep LOL. Please may I change it to June 4th please.
:beer:
March 19th Please!
Today is the last day to enter or change your date:beer:
Thanks Gunner.:beer:
This is all rather exciting isn't it... :drinks:
Is this where we all now settle down and watch the paint dry...! :bleh: :takecover: :sly:
I'm missing from the list on the first page... :please:
No problem! Just happy to have the honor of participating. :happy:
Well, so my date comes and goes. Who's still in the running?
And has there been any news at all? At least Star Wars Armada will be coming out this week, so I have something to be excited about.
Well I had suggested my birthday which was Saturday, so I'm also well out.
They were intended for B'day presents, but I got a new Kindle instead from my Good Lady.
Bligh.
Last update was 3/13. Ares said they were unloaded from the ship, but waiting for a train.
Perhaps they haven't been loaded on a train yet, since Ares hasn't said anything.
Apparently once they catch a train, it will take 10 days to get to Chicago, presumably a more few days to reach their midwest fulfillment center, then they will take some amount of time for their often-disappointing warehouse guys to get their act in gear, and then time to ship out to the Anchorage and all of us
Second half of April seems to be about the earliest we can possibly hope for.
David Manley's guess (October 1, year unspecified) looks better all the time :wink:
So were still going. Any hints from Ares?
Actually, call it if we really get lucky 5 days on a hotshot intermodal to Chicago, if we're REAL lucky connecting in via the Indiana Harbor Belt rather than the Belt Railway of Chicago for transfer via truck to Fort Wayne which only means another 2 days, grand total a week from container on-load--there don't seem to be a lot of rail intermodal facilities in the tri-state area.
If they're going via BRC, expect another week tied up in their holding yards--"it takes longer to cross Chicago than the rest of the country" is a sad truth in the American railroad industry.
Right now, the rail unions are playing it pretty cool--they're up for negotiations this year, but not yet. The cynic in me says they're gonna put on a show of goodwill right now to get everything moving again, then spring the trap just in time to be the Grinches Who Stole Christmas...
I'm still here, sadly, my May 2nd looks more likely all the time! :sad:
Yep, that's the one.
Still hope for mid-April maybe... Ares posted a comment on KS:
Quote:
Originally Posted by Ares
That's great news:beer:. Now I have to wait and see when Keith gets his shipment.
Very good news, indeed. :thumbsup:
Oh, we were to guess when Keith get them, not when they reach the warehouse. Then I'm off by a few days... :wink:
From the Kickstarter mailinglist...Quote:
The container with HMS Victory and USS Constitution has finally reached the delivery hub of our freight forwarder in Chicago. This means that we are now confident that the delivery to our warehouse - and the shipment to you - is really close, a matter of days if not hours.
Well that's certainly good news. Question though, if I pre ordered directly from Ares (though I have never been a kickstarter myself), any idea when mine should be shipping comparatively?
Frankly at this point the only Victory I'm interested in is this one. Announced last year at Gen Con and in my hands in just over seven months. :happy:
Attachment 13860
Jim, that's also because FFG keeps their cards closer to the vest and announces later, if I read their business model right--we've been further inside the loop and seen more of the production cycle and its trials and tribulations.
It does not help that Ares is like a minnow in the shark-tank of China business... were it me, I'd be tempted to at least do preliminary research into costs of opening a line somewhere in Eastern Europe--the Czechs have long been considered prime breeding-ground for quality resin add-ons on display-only models, so I'd bet that whoever cuts tooling for Eduard or Valom or CMK would do just as well by Ares if they have the bandwidth and the price is right.
considering we're "in the bubble" it's funny that I'm still unclear on why it's taken so long to get V&C done. There was some vague noise about "not good enough quality" at one point, and I suppose the mast issues affected it in some unknown way, and then of course 3? months of shipping delay, but it's hard for me to really grasp the totality of it. Maybe they would be better served to release even MORE information, so we know what they are dealing with.
Worth recalling too that Ares didn't bring us "inside" on V&C out of the goodness of their heart, but rather to drive the KS. That's fine, and I think they are really quite lucky at how patient this KS crew seems to have been--I think a lot of other campaigns would be a lot noisier about the situation. But it's not like it was altruism...
On a related note, if I REALLY believed they were working hard on wave 3, I'd be a lot more sanguine about the long gap ahead (no, picking 4 models and leaking their types does not count as working hard). From the information they've given us, they've not really done anything with V&C except receive shipping delay notices for the last 6 months or so. And the next wave is expected "some time in 2016". So if they are taking a big long break from SGN, as appears to me to be the case, then I'm depressed. If there were some credible breadcrumbs offered that real things actually were happening to advance wave 3 (as some people seem to believe), I think I'd feel better about things. Even if the answer was: "the next step is to get pre-production masters from the factory, and it should have taken 1 month, but the factory is jerking us around and it's already been 2 months and we still don't know when we will get it" then I would have a better idea why the delay...
in short, maybe Ares is at the very worst spot on the "too much/too little" information curve.
I have to agree. A combination of indifference and ineptitude has left me very disappointed and disillusioned. They've run 5 successful KS projects (soon to be six) and one of those wasn't even related to gaming, so they do know their way around the industry and can plan accordingly even if they're a small gaming company. I just think they've decided SGN isn't ever going to be big enough for them to continue investing time and energy at a level that most gamers have come to expect. That's their choice of course, but I don't have years and years to wait for new minis, promised pdf's in lieu of minis and some real evidence that Ares cares for an IP I supported vigorously.
The other thing is, as a market... well, naval gaming has always been a sideshow next to air and land. Wizards of the Coast gave the War at Sea line the full Bastard Stepchild Treatment... the thing is, it looks like the market can support maybe one Sails release a year, and doing a new run from an existing sculpt takes most of the same bandwidth on the factory and shipping side as a whole new sculpt.
In a nutshell, their main moneymakers come first--WGF, WGS, Conan, War of the Ring, whatever new "marquee" boardgame is being featured that year--and then Sails gets part of whatever's left along with the rest of the boardgame catalog. They *HAVE* to come first, because they keep the cash flow coming in, and without that there's not enough liquidity to even consider branching out into new frontiers and uncharted seas.
There's a lot that I wish I could tell you from the inside... and there's also a lot that I wish they'd tell me, so I totally get your frustrations. :) Believe me, you guys should *see* some of the reamings I've fired off...
Well just thanks for the insights that you can give us DB. I'm sure that they are doing what they deem to be best for the market.
After all our hobby depends on it, but their jobs are on the line.
Rob.