Fulfilment information - time to lock addresses
over 2 years ago – Sat, Nov 06, 2021 at 02:26:52 AM

Good day moonstone hunters!

A lot of backers, quite rightly, have been asking for a progress update. Apologies for the delay. It's been an INCREDIBLY busy time, with furious final editing and proofreading and we wanted to make sure we had all the information from various suppliers on their progress before posting an update. 

And... the news is good!

To cut a long story short, everything is in production and expected to be delivered within the next couple of weeks so fulfilment will begin in November as planned! We will be sending out a reminder to double check your delivery addresses in about a week's time, after which, addresses will be locked so that packing lists can be produced and orders ticked off. If you need to change your address after this time then please contact us so that we can track your order and make any changes manually.

Please also be aware that fulfilment doesn't take place on a single day (we wish it did!). In the past it has taken approximately 3 months between the first order being dispatched and the last, so please be patient, even if you start to see other backers have received their items, this does not mean that you have been forgotten. We know it's agonising waiting for the post to arrive but rest assured all orders will be delivered. :)

We'll post another update soon with photos of the books and card decks once we have received them, but in the mean time, here's a few images of the production copies of our limited edition miniatures to whet your appetite!

Until next time, may your machinations be fruitful.

-GKG

Production update and bright futures
over 2 years ago – Sat, Sep 25, 2021 at 05:41:26 AM

Good day moonstone hunters,

Apologies for the slightly longer period between the last update and this one. We can assure you it's certainly not due to a lack of news!

Miniature production

With the exclusion of Voth & Homunculus, Kalista "Paroxysm" Edition and Jayda 1/24 Scale (see below!), all the resin miniatures for this Kickstarter have been delivered and are now being assembled into box sets!

But what about Voth, Kalista and Jayda you say? Well they have been 3D printed and are currently going through mould making as we speak.

The Arising Book

The Arising Book has been text-complete for some time but there has been some rules reviews, playtesting, narrative editing, photography and illustrations still to finalise before the book can be sent to print. We're pleased to say that photography and illustration is now complete. Here's a few more teasers spreads for you!

We've run through two additional 6-week play-tests of the campaign rules and are happy to say that the campaign rules are now signed-off and into the final proof-reading phase to ensure clarity of language. Likewise all new characters, campaign cards, upgrades and rules additions are signed off from a gameplay / balance perspective and are going through final text checks before print. The only outstanding area for play-testing testing now is the Story Scenarios which have been keeping our play-test teams busy for the past 6 weeks, having required a bit more work than expected to balance. We're hoping to be complete with all play-testing in 2-3 more weeks.

Tokens

Design work for the Premium Token Sets continues to go well with the Commonwealth faction set getting close to completion:

Bright future for Goblin King Games

The final news we want to leave you with isn't specifically related to production but we feel is still very exciting and worth sharing. You see, Goblin King Games is a very small company without any full time employees or dedicated business space currently. We've made it this far with an awful lot of evening and weekend working, some wonderful volunteers and a neighbour's garage for stock management and assembly! Well thanks to the success of this Kickstarter, and specifically the trust and support of YOU wonderful backers, we've been able to make some huge steps forward recently! From January 1st, Tom Greenway (Moonstone's creator) will be the first ever GKG full-time employee, and we are also able to offer part-time positions to a handful of our most dedicated volunteers. We have even secured a proper office space, assembly and storage facility on the beautiful Welsh/English boarder:

It's hard to put into words what a positive step this all is for us as a company and how excited everyone involved is. These changes should allow us to speed-up the design and delivery process enormously. In fact, next year as well as working on our next faction and expansion book for the Moonstone Skirmish game, this huge step up in person-power will allow us to develop the Roleplay and Boardgame versions of Moonstone that the team has been dying to work on for the past couple of years as well as capitalise on the huge surge in demand we've had recently from retailers and get our games on many more game-store shelves around the globe.

As always, to keep up to date with all the latest news join the Moonstone Players Group on Facebook or jump over to our Discord channel.

Until next time, may your future look as bright. :)

– GKG

Voth sculpt, Wooded Patch token art and production updates
over 2 years ago – Tue, Aug 17, 2021 at 01:18:32 PM

Good day moonstone hunters,

In this update we're very pleased to reveal the sculpts for the exclusive Voth & Homunculus miniatures!

We think you'll agree the sculptor has stayed very faithful to the concept art shared during the campaign. These printable files, along with Kalista, are now with our caster for 3D printing so we hope to be able to show physical copies very soon!

As promised, we've also taken another look at the designs for the Wooded Patch tokens. It's still a work in progress but I'm very happy with where we've ended up. Do let us know what you think in the comments below!

Work on the Commonwealth token set is also underway so we should have that to reveal in the next update hopefully.

Playtesting

Last week we concluded a final internal playtest of the campaign system which has been running since the end of the Kickstarter. I'm very pleased to say that it ran without any concerns. No balance issues with the rules or campaign cards at all cropped up this time and the only minor adjustment made was adding an extra option in the Machinations phase to encourage more excitement and deal making amongst players in-between game nights. We do have an external playtest group running another campaign currently to provide a fresh set of eyes but for the remaining few weeks allocated to playtesting internally we will turn our attention to the new story scenarios.

Pledge Manager & Late Backing

A huge thank you to the 487 Backers who have completed their pledge manager so far! If however you're reading this and you have not completed yours then we do need you to act now. Follow the unique link on the email from Backerkit that was sent last month or go here and enter your Kickstarter email address to get started. We will start locking people's pledge managers (apart from address which can be edited later if need be) in just over a week's time and charge cards on 31st August. If you miss this deadline it could delay the delivery of your pledge.

We have also picked up a few late backers via our pre-order page.  We will be shutting this down on 20 August so if you still have a friend who is on the fence about jumping in then they only have 5 days remaining to do so! Be a good friend and let them know! ;)

Print Production

We have had one setback since our last update. We were originally told by our printer that we should contact them 6-8 weeks before delivering the print ready PDF's to book our slot in the production schedule so that the print could begin as soon as our files were ready. However, when we contacted them to book the slot, we were told that as they are experiencing their busiest time of the year, they are no longer offering slot bookings in advance and we will join the print queue (currently 7 weeks) only after we submit the print ready PDFs. We had built in 4 weeks of contingency into our timelines but this news is a setback nonetheless. We are still aiming to begin fulfilment in November but it does put extra pressure on us to complete the print ready PDF's a few weeks earlier than we'd planned to keep on track.

Moonstone Tournaments

Since our last update there has been three officially sanctioned Moonstone tournaments run on consecutive weekends all around the UK. We've been absolutely delighted with the diversity of lists that players have come up with (we didn't see a single duplicate out of the 32 troupe lists submitted!)  and the win record between all of our factions couldn't be closer to be more equal so thats a great sign for a healthy competitive scene.

If you'll like to find out more about tournaments and perhaps find one to attend then be sure to join the Moonstone Player's Group on Facebook or our Discord Server.

Until next time,

– GKG

Backerkit 'smoke test' and a very exciting new add-on!
almost 3 years ago – Fri, Jul 23, 2021 at 03:59:52 AM

Good evening moonstone hunters,

Today we sent out the pledge manager to the first 5% of backers. This is known as a 'smoke test' and allows us to identify and iron out any issues on a small scale. We've done exactly the same on our previous Kickstarters and it has always gone without a hitch, so we anticipate sending out the remaining pledge manager invitation emails before the end of this week – look out for an email from Backerkit with your unique link in the next couple of days! There are a few more details about the pledge manager and some FAQ's at the bottom of this email but first we have an exciting announcement to make:

Diana Enraged painted by Sergio Calvo will go to one lucky backer!

We have decided to include one final add-on: a raffle ticket to win the actual miniature above, revealed originally during the campaign and painted by the legendary Sergio Calvo! Sergio's miniatures are incredibly sought after and valuable collectors' pieces and you can be in with a chance to own a piece of Moonstone history yourself for just £5. There are also 5x £30 and 15x £10 Gift Cards as runner-up prizes, redeemable on our web store. We will donate £1 from every ticket sale to our friendly local gaming store who are currently raising funds to install a stair lift and disabled toilet at their gaming space, which is a cause we very much would like to support.

More about the pledge manager and FAQ's

Closing date

The pledge manager will be open until the 31st of August. After this date you will not be able to make any changes and your cards will be charged for the balance due on postage and any additional add-ons selected in the pledge manager.

Changing pledge levels

If you want to change your pledge level then you can do so. On the very first screen you arrive at on Backerkit, before pressing ‘get started’, instead click on the ‘switch your pledge level’ link directly below the big 'get started' button.

Kickstarter add-ons

If you purchased add-ons on Kickstarter they have been added to your cart in the pledge manager already. You do not need to add the items again in the add-ons section. If an add-on imported from Kickstarter requires your selection (i.e. "Premium Troupe Box", "Standard Troupe Box" or "Monster Box") then you will see a follow-up question to confirm your choice after the add-ons section. If you need to remove an add-on imported from Kickstarter use the 'Need Help?' button and request a survey reset.

Getting help

If you need any help completing your survey then Backerkit has an excellent and highly responsive support team who can be reached from any page of the pledge manager by following the 'Need Help?' link at the top right of every page or via email at [email protected].

Late backing also available

If a friend missed out on the opportunity to back the Kickstarter itself then never fear - we are more than happy to accept late backers and introduce more people to the game. Late backers can order all the Kickstarter items via a pre-order page on Backerkit but only for a limited time! 

Until next time, may you be lucky enough to find a Moonstone growing in your cabbage patch, or an even more valuable painted Diana Enraged in your mailbox!

-GKG

Pledge manager incoming and Kalista sculpt reveal!
almost 3 years ago – Tue, Jul 13, 2021 at 02:36:51 AM

Good day moonstone hunters,

It's been a few weeks since the end of the campaign and so we wanted to drop you all a note on how things have been progressing.

The most important news, if not the most exciting, is that we have selected Backerkit as our pledge manager for this campaign. Backerkit offers more configuration options than the default pledge manager available from Kickstarter and we have been busy using it to build out all the SKUs, questionnaires and postage settings over the past couple of weeks. There has been a slight delay in finalising it all while the Goblin King recovers from a sickness (even Beaky Bobby's renowned remedies didn't seem to help - although they did produce some quite peculiar side effects) but we are working on the finishing touches and testing now. You can expect to receive an email from Backerkit very soon with your unique link to confirm all options, add-ons, complete your address, and settle balances. Once launched, the pledge manager will be open for approximately four weeks and it is essential that you complete it so that we know exactly what you want and where we need to send it!

We will send another of these Kickstarter update emails after the Backerkit pledge manager emails have been sent with support details should you encounter any problems completing your survey.

Kalista, Paroxysm Edition

We're very excited to reveal a WIP render of the backer-voted, Kalista "Paroxysm" limited edition sculpt!

You are not going to want to miss out on a copy (or two) of this one as she's sure to be an incredibly sought after miniature as new players discover the game.

Work on the Voth & Homunculus sculpts are also well underway, as are the revised designs for the the 50mm acrylic 'Wooded Patch' tokens and the Commonwealth faction premium token sets. Play-testing over the past couple of weeks has been focused on a few of the new scenarios as well as the rules for Voth & Homunculus. On the narrative side, character biographies have been the main focus for final edits and sign-off.

Until next time!

– GKG