Friday, April 9, 2010

It's just cool to order 8800 dice...

Production of Frontline General: Spearpoint 1943 is officially underway. I'm in pre-press on the artwork files and busy prepping them for print- even modifying the "final artwork" a bit based on some feedback- adding some Mark Mahaffey-supplied textures to the backgrounds of the various cards. One fairly easy component to take care of is the single non-custom component in the game- dice.

Most people probably don't put much thought into dice, but they're as important as the artwork, game mechanics, and box. The cost of the dice can really vary among suppliers based on what is available, what is popular, and other factors. I went with "good" dice for Spearpoint- a bit of a polished touch for the game- by "good" I mean a 'non-opaque' color, a standard size, and something that matches the card colors in the game.

In the game, the German cards are a (surprise) textured German gray color, and the US cards are a textured blue color. So for selecting dice, I wanted two D10 gray dice for the German player and two D10 blue dice for the US player. Talk about choices- there are hundreds of D10 dice out there in all styles and colors and a few different sizes.

I chose dice supplied by Chessex for this game (http://www.chessex.com/), one of the industry suppliers. Quite simply I got a better price from Chessex than other suppliers, and as a publisher, I have to shop around for good prices on components or I'm not doing my job. The savings get passed on in the form of a lower MSRP for customers.

I don't personally like opaque dice. Maybe I'm picky, but I wanted something a bit more stylish for the game. Opaques are certainly functional and would have done the job - maybe for a few pennies less - but I went with speckled dice instead. For the gray dice, I chose Chessex's Ninja style. The blue dice are also in the speckled line and are called Stealth. Both are pictured below:

Dice, like any component, are cheaper in quantity. To support the planned initial print run of the game, I had to order 8800 total dice - 4400 of each color. This supports the print run as well as potential overages.

They arrived at the printer the other day and I couldn't help but think, "It's just cool to order 8800 dice..."

Wednesday, April 7, 2010

Distribution in Germany + a second US distributor

Collins Epic Wargames is pleased to announce that Frontline General: Spearpoint 1943, Frontline General: San Pietro Infine, and other future games will now be distributed in Germany through UGG (http://www.ugg.de/).

In addition, our games were picked up by another US distributor, ACD Distribution ( http://www.acdd.com/) after discussions at the recent GAMA Trade Show 2010 in Las Vegas, NV. This is in addition to our current US distributor (Alliance Games) and our current Spanish distributor.

We're very excited to have our games carried by more retail stores across the globe and we greatly appreciate your demand for Frontline General: Spearpoint 1943 at your FLGS which is partially driving these accomplishments as a publisher. We hope that you look forward to seeing Frontline General: Spearpoint 1943 on the shelf in your FLGS and also hope that you will consider picking it up if you haven't already preordered! Release date is planned for sometime in May 2010!