by Klode
Hello!I still can’t believe it but the AOI boards will be printed!!!!
If everything goes well, the 4 AOI maps set should be available through the Geek Store around March/April 2013. That’s a great news I was eager to share with you!
BGG role won’t be limited to sell and distribute the boards through their store though. They’re also the main reason why printing the boards is possible given they will finance the production! With their important contribution, it is now possible to produce more boards (1000 units of each board), of a better quality and for a better price than what I had proposed before!
Boards will be the same size as the existing AOI boards and will be printed with my artwork as you can see on this thread.
I'm sorry if I haven't given many updates in the last few months. Things were moving forward slowly, but I couldn't give any update before I was sure all pieces of the puzzle would be in place.
Here are some additional information which will answer some of your questions:
Price:
I don’t know yet what will be the final price since I don’t have all the numbers (production costs, etc). BGG will communicate that information when it’s time. They should be less expensive than what I had proposed a few months ago (which was 20$/board) for a better quality board.
I don’t have any information regarding shipping costs either. I’m not concerned about US people given they should get a good price. I just hope people outside of North America will benefit a better overall cost (boards+ shipping) than what I could offer.
Preorders:
You were a little bit more than 100 people in 12 countries to preorder the boards and thank you a lot for that!! Since 1000 units of each board will be available and they shouldn’t be sold in a week, I don’t think you will have any problem to put your hand on a set. Having said that, we thought it might be less complicated to simply ask you to order the boards when they are available directly to the Geek Store instead of asking BGG people to manage a list of preorders. What I will do on my side is that I will keep you informed by email and through the BGG website about when the boards will be available.
I don’t know how many boards they produced for the first AOI expansion (Minnesota/Japan), but a year and a half after its release, it is still available. I don’t see any supply problem if you order the board in the first few weeks.
I hope this proposition will be ok for everybody.
And please, don’t think your preorder was useless. If BGG is interested to invest in the production of those boards, it’s probably because I’ve been able to get an interesting number of preoders without much advertising. I’m not sure the situation would have been the same if nobody would have preordered!
Pairing:
Pairing will be different than what I proposed before. Instead of having one 2-player set and one 3-5-players set, we will propose two 2-5 players sets (a 2-player map with a 3-5 players map on each set). Pairing will probably be :
Great Lakes (2p) / South Africa (3-5p) Belgium (2p) /USSR (3-5p).I know some people who are only interested by the 2 player boards will be disappointed. However, some other people asked me about a different pairing. There’s no perfect match that will please everybody, but I think it makes sense to offer a larger spectrum of players (2-5) on each set.
Rules:
Rules will only be available online. We took this decision to reduce a little bit the costs of production and because we know that everybody who will buy the boards will do it online. The other advantage I see is that I won’t be limited by space (to one page for example) to format the rules. I prefer to provide rules with contextual elements and examples with a nice layout than try to fit everything on a single page. I’m working on the final wording and layout of the rules. I will post them at the beginning of next year.
I'm sure I forgot to address many of your questions or concerns, so feel free to ask!
Finally, thank you very much to all of you for your confidence. I really hope you will enjoy playing this great game with the new boards!
I sent this update to everybody who have preordered the game by email as well. My message might be in your junk mail though...
K