Hi there,
we have finally managed to get a new sample of the box and we have a good news/bad news situation, but mostly good news.
Through some minor resizing and a lot of 3d Tetris, we managed to get the box size down from the initial GIANT to simply a BIG box version. That will allow us to a) get freight shipping down due to needing fewer palettes (as the weight is still the almost the same that unfortunately does not affect the end-consumer shipping) and b) allow you to not have to get an extra room somewhere just to store the box - it should now fit in your game shelf.
It is still the same height, as you can see.
But it we have optimized the inlays, made the enemy cards just a tiny bit smaller to fit into that and made the boards fit exactly next to each other, so we optimize space use.
So where is the bad news, you ask? Well, first of all in the new prints the factory changed its own settings and some of the boards ended up with a sleight yellowish tint. That is resolved by color correction on their end and should be fine for the production (we gave them reference samples for that).
The bigger issue is, that the box carton itself now has to bear more weight on a smaller area, meaning if you lift it up, you can feel the box bottom curve inward from the weight (that was more distributed in the larger box), so we need the cardboard to be stronger for the box. So the money we save from freight shipping goes into a sturdier box.
That in turn means the factory would have had to change the production line...and that did not happen before Chinese new Year, where EVERYTHING stops, as many of you know.
Where does that leave us? Well, the factory promised to begin producing the new boxes immediately after Chinese New Year, but we expect them to not be able to get that stuff on ships before some time March and that means delivery is likely to be May :(.
On the other hand, actually having the box in our hands feels great and we are happy with the improved quality of the material overall.
We will keep you posted of course on any news!
Please remember to finalize your surveys and pay the shipping cost, so we can send you the box when it arrives.
Use this link to get to your survey: https://app.crowdox.com/retrieve/1890003488/jagged-alliance-the-board-game
cheers
jan
