Statement from Ad Magic
over 7 years ago – Wed, Nov 16, 2016 at 02:20:58 PM

Thieves!

One of our friends at Ad Magic, Kat Mooney, has been with us from the very beginning. From the first moment we met Kat, we knew we had come to the right place. She has always been a fiery proponent of Master Thief, but has been fair and honest in her dealings with us. 

In light of the most recent kerfuffle we asked if she would mind taking a moment out of her busy schedule to provide an official statement about the misprinted cards. We greatly appreciate her accommodating us, and Ad Magic's continued efforts to take care of the problem.

We'll have more news very soon, stay tuned.

"

To all disheartened Kickstarter Backers:

It brings me great displeasure to see so many backers heartbroken with the most recent news from the Master Thief creators that they may not receive their games before the end of 2016. As an actual fan of this game, I feel terribly that many of you feel this way. However, perhaps I can provide some insight as to why manufacturing is taking longer than it was originally projected way back when the campaign was first launched.

My job here at Ad Magic is to turn my client's intangible ideas into actual, beautiful board games. I find extreme satisfaction in this job because as a board game lover, I am helping people like myself realize and achieve their dreams through the magic of manufacturing. However, this job is not as easy as it seems. It takes a lot of work to make someone's idea into a physical object. It takes a team of people to figure out how to design templates for intricate boxes and game trays, engineers to create custom dies for custom game pieces, freight experts to calculate how shipping thousands of pounds across the world's biggest ocean may cost and how long it may take, etc. The list of people that are required to make a game designer's dream come true can almost literally go on forever.

Master Thief required a lot of fine tune printing that most other card games do not require for their first edition print. UV spot coating had to be applied to the boxes, which requires not only one run through the press, but at least two or three times in order to achieve the perfect registration and high gloss that this game requires. Printing at a huge scale with precise accuracy is not always easy, and certainly not quick. These games also require a very special type of holofoil printing, while many of the cards needed SPOT holofoil printing, which not many other manufacturers can achieve, but we were able to do so with precision AND quality. Again, this process is not as quick as a standard CMYK offset printing, but requires sheets of paper stock to run through the press at the very least of 3 times in order to achieve vivid color on top of the holofoil printing. These are not excuses, but rather more of an inside look about how a game as beautiful as Master Thief is made with many different processes by many different hands, some of which are not exactly attractive as far as the passing of time goes.

Upon receiving the first pre-production samples, we all learned that we needed to tweak a few things in order to deliver to you a perfect game. Both Master Thief creators and myself were disappointed to see that the pre-production samples had a couple of errors on them, but that's the beauty of having the ability of creating samples of the game before the whole lot of them are manufactured. We were able to foresee any problems with the manufacturing first hand and came up with a plan to fix those errors. After a couple of weeks of talks with the plant, we finally were able to move forward with actual manufacturing. Many other manufacturers do not allows their client's to receive a pre-production sample, but rather they get a sample of their game after all of them have been printed and prepped for printing. We are thankful in that regard that we were able to lose some time in manufacturing if only that meant our end product would be perfect.

Unfortunately, as it happens with many first edition runs of any game ever made, there were some errors in the full scale manufactured run. This came as a huge blow not only to Jacob and Jake, but to myself as well as I was willing to personally pay for air shipping of the entire order of games so that their backers could have their games in their hands before the holiday season. However, we all agreed that it would not do any of you any good to receive a game that did not live up to its standards, so we decided to take the extra time to correct the printing issues on some of the cards instead of delivering a subpar product. It is terrible news to hear, but it would have been an even more terrible feeling to open a game that may have affected game play due to its printing issues. Turning an idea into a physical new object doesn't happen all at once, but can take many different attempts to make perfect. It does not help that these issues occurred during the busiest time of the year in the manufacturing world. However, the show must go on and so shall manufacturing an awesome game like Master Thief.

As the manufacturer of this game, I've been very upfront about how long items take to manufacture. I have never guaranteed a specific timeline for manufacturing, but instead I give a tentative timeline based our experiences with the plant depending on the time of year (holidays can make manufacturing a little slower). Our biggest concern at Ad Magic is to deliver quality projects, even if that is at the expense of some time. With many projects that are being printed for the very first time, there were hiccups but we are 100% willing to move forward and correct them. We apologize greatly for the extra time this has taken to manufacture. I am truly a fan of this game and have been waiting for it to become a reality since Jake and Jacob kindly stopped by our office over a year and a half ago to introduce themselves and to play their game with me. They are great people and I truly believe that Master Thief is one of the biggest up and coming games (and believe me, I see a whole ton of them come in and out of here). We will make up time lost by sending all you backers a truly awesome game that is not only beautiful to look at, but fun as hell to play.

Thank you for your patience and understanding.

-Kat at Ad Magic

"

Not So Great News
over 7 years ago – Mon, Nov 14, 2016 at 10:37:39 PM

Thieves,

Bad News

We have a problem. It's heartbreaking for us to come to you all with bad news today, but we had to make some calls this weekend after receiving our sample copy of the game. We'll just get right to it.

What Happened

The holofoil cards are so much more beautiful than we could have hoped for, but they seem to be causing an issue with the backs of the cards. All cards with the holofoil application are darker on the back. This variation is a very big problem, and made the core game, as printed, defective. 

The way the game (and expansions) are printed currently, it is easy for players to pick out face-down cards specifically, and cheat. This breaks the game entirely. 

As far as we can tell this was a simple mechanical error and it can be fixed.

So here's the deal. We did NOT want to send you defective games. So we are running the whole print again. 

Yes, this means we are delayed. 

This is painful because we were so close. Everything was lined up perfectly to be shipped for the holidays, and we had to pull the plug at the absolute last minute. The plant was about to load everything up within a few hours of us coming to this realization. We had to act quickly. 

What we are doing?

As you can imagine, there are a lot of emails and phone calls flying back and forth. We're pushing hard for the plant to reprint everything as soon and as quickly as possible. The great people at Ad Magic are not standing for this oversight on the plant's part, and we're going to get it right, together.

As this takes a lot of communication we will be manning the phones and the computers and will keep you in consistent update. Any news we receive, you will receive.

What does this mean for you?

It means we've missed Blackbox's deadline for guaranteed holiday shipping. Now, they are very sympathetic with our situation, and will continue to work with us to make it work, so we'll still be air shipping, and still be attempting to launch these games out as soon as we possibly can. We are diligently working to keep that promise and will fill you in as we know more, but we simply cannot guarantee it now.

Endnote

This is a big deal. It hit us hard. We wish we could tell you something else, but after seeing everything, we could not send out what we had.

We ended up keeping our Backerkit open and unlocked until further notice. We appreciate everyone's response to the last update to get your information corrected in our system. We are keeping this open in case any last minute adjustments need to be made by any of our backers. Again, we are doing everything we can to get these games to you.

Thank you for your understanding,

Jake Spencer and Jacob Parr

Backerkit Survey Lockdown
over 7 years ago – Thu, Nov 03, 2016 at 12:16:07 AM

Fellow Thieves!

The time has finally come to lockdown your Backerkit survey! The games are set to ship from the manufacturer, as detailed in our last update. We will keep everyone up to date on that progress anytime we receive new information. We're expecting Blackbox to be receiving the games in their respective warehouses between Nov. 10 and Nov. 14!

So, on to Backerkit..

Didn't I fill that out a long time ago?

Yes, yes you did. 

We know its been a long time coming, but with the swiftly approaching shipping dates we're ready to wrap up all of your Backerkit surveys

So what does this mean? Well, now is the time to finalize our fulfillment data on all of our backers and pre-orders. Before we do, of course, we'd like to be sure you're all set! There isn't much you have to do, really. Backerkit is going to make this very easy for you, and for us, and we are planning on locking down all information on...

What do we do?

You will be able to recover your original Backerkit survey here:

https://masterthief.backerkit.com/

Make sure your Backerkit Survey is completed so that we can lock and export your information. We're padlocking all orders on Friday, November 11th, at 11:59 PM EDT. We plan to export all orders the following day, Saturday November 12th at 8:00 AM EDT. 

Once your Backerkit information is locked you will no longer be able to make changes.

This includes adding content to your order and making adjustments to your address. What that means is if you need to update your address or add anything to your order you must do so before next Friday (November 11th). 

If you do not need to make changes, then simply sit back and relax. You're all set.

If you do need to make changes, but cannot access your Backerkit survey, you can reach out to us, and we'll be more than happy to send you your link.

Please message us here on Kickstarter or at [email protected].

DON'T GET LOCKED OUT!

 

Now what?

We're awaiting confirmation of the air freight shipment, and filling out a lot of forms in preparation for Blackbox's receiving end.

We're still in the bubble of guaranteed holiday shipping, and things will be moving quickly, so be sure to stay tuned!

Until then, enjoy this gif of a true Master Thief at work...

Happy Heisting
J+J

Freight Shipping
over 7 years ago – Mon, Oct 24, 2016 at 09:01:01 PM

Hello Thieves!

We have some fantastic news for you today. The past two weeks have been a roller coaster for us, but as of this morning, we have confirmed the shipping schedule for Master Thief.

What happened?

Production for Master Thief wrapped in China on September 29th. We were not notified right away, as the plant immediately had a week long holiday post production. We were informed at the beginning of last week that the boat form China would depart on October 29th, arriving at the Blackbox warehouses around December 12-15th. This was then followed by an email from Blackbox, telling us that we had to have all product to them by November 14th to guarantee shipping within 2016 for the holidays. So, we were going to be forced to delay (again) to January of 2017.

We wanted to believe...

What are you doing?

But wait! We were persistent, no stone was left unturned, because frankly, we're tired of constantly bringing bad news to our backers. So, we decided to explore the option of air freight.

We have pushed hard these last few days to coordinate the shipment schedules with all involved, decided that air freight was the best option for us. This expedites the delivery of the games immensely. This also presents a great opportunity. Provided the shipments arrive as quoted to the correct warehouses, Blackbox can now guarantee 2016 holiday delivery!!

Merry Christmas, crooks.

Timeline?

The shipments will reach their designated warehouses by November 10th! This is due in large part to the incredible help and generosity of Ad Magic and and, of course, our backers’ patience. 

Blackbox will then proceed to fulfill all Kickstarter rewards!

We are extremely grateful for your continued patience and support. We are fitting puzzle pieces together to get the games to you in as timely a fashion as we can. This was a big deal for us, and we're very excited to bring you the best news we could get out of this situation.

We'll be posting a day by day timeline soon, until then..

Happy Heisting.
J+J

Production Notes
over 7 years ago – Sat, Sep 03, 2016 at 12:47:48 AM

Hello all of you perfect, patient pilferers

Thank you for all the kind notes on the last update. We think the game turned out as beautiful as we could have ever hoped, and we're excited to see that this feeling is matched by our backers. 

Just wanted to drop a quick update to let you all know a few things about the current status of things since we shot the previous video.

Production Notes

As we said in our last update, we had already pointed out our changes and requests to AdMagic. Our contact there responded first thing Monday morning, and it looks like there will be no problem in achieving these! We expected they were easy adjustments, but it certainly feels great once that confirmation comes in.

We are GO for launch.

Product Shots

We're in the current process of updating our website, and the first step was to get some top-notch photos to use for our store, and beyond. We teamed up with local photographer Andrew Weber to get this rolling. We spent a few hours shooting, and are currently editing them down. We thought we'd share a peek into that, along with a few finished edits for those who are interested!

More updates to come soon, we're moving right along, and we'll let you know as soon as we get a more accurate shipping date. We hate the wide range we've been given, and we can't wait to zero in on an actual day.

Until then, as always

Happy Heisting

Jake & Jacob