An turn based combat adventure RPG with a unique combat system with no dice rolling ⚔️.
Latest Updates from Our Project:
Update #61 - Home Stretch
about 2 years ago
– Fri, Mar 01, 2024 at 05:31:54 AM
Hello everyone,
We hope you're all settled into 2024 now and are as excited as we are for the coming months! We don't have much to update you on at present, but what we do know, we have relayed below.
Fulfilment
EU Lane
Our product is still on the water and estimated to arrive in the UK on March 13th. Fingers crossed that there are no port delays, as we leave for a convention here in the UK on March 14th, so having the product with us there would be great. The fulfilment centre has informed us that our games will be catalogued and ready to ship out immediately. For EU fulfilment, we're estimating the end of March or early April. If we fulfil a little earlier, that's a nice bonus.
US Lane
Our product is still on the water and estimated to arrive in the US at the end of March. For US fulfilment, we're estimating early to mid-April.
Achievement Sheets
During the later stages of development of our Rulebook, we decided to remove the Achievement sheets from within it. We felt they would be better as printouts for those who want them. We have uploaded them to our Google Drive, for those who are interested, you can find them by CLICKING HERE or by clicking the Achievement images below. We recommend printing them out on regular A4 paper and cutting them across the dotted cut lines. If you have the collectors edition game, you will need both Achievement sheets.
Black and White version here if you want to save on printing ink. Click on the image below to access the file.
Tutorial Sheet
Since our tutorial sheet is arguably the most important piece of paper in the game box for the first 15 minutes, we have created a black and white version available to anyone with visual impairments or for those who prefer this version. CLICK HERE or on the image below to find the B/W version of our Tutorial Sheet. Please note that our game includes a coloured version of this tutorial sheet, so you do not need to print this out unless you prefer to use this particular version.
Community Engagement
We've had a few backers reach out to share their plans for when the game arrives, so we'd like to highlight some of that with you all in regards to our community and their activities.
Freehawks Discord Server: These folks have a large Dice Throne community and are also planning to support Heroes of the Shire. Players there will typically engage in games over webcam with occasional Tabletop Simulator (TTS) matches thrown in. Here's a link to their server for anyone interested: Freehawks Discord Server.
Discord Member TheNoblestKitten: TheNoblestKitten plans to write strategy articles spotlighting certain heroes, including their key spells and other heroes they synergise well with.
If you have some content planned and would like to share it with us, drop a comment below or send us a direct message.
Light & Shadow Teasers
As some of you may know, in our spare time, we've been slowly working on our newest installment of Heroes of the Shire, Light & Shadow. We don't want to give away too much yet since everything is still a work in progress, but here are a few teasers.
4th Spell Mastery Column: Need we say anymore....
6 New Conditions: Feared, Enlightened, Cursed, Untouchable, Exposed, Retribution.
New Hero: The longer this guy sticks around, the more pets that arrive with him each round. Has the ability to mount one of his pets, temporarily leaving his hero board and playing as the mounted pet card.
New Hero: One that can reverse the turn order, favouring those heroes with lower AGI values. If you're a Pokémon player, think Trick Room.
UK Exhibitions
We are excited to announce that we'll be attending the Airecon gaming exhibition this month, followed by the UK Games Expo (UKGE) in May/June. At these events, we'll be showcasing our game and finally offering it for sale to the general public. We will be doing away with our old prototypes and finally show casing the real product this year which we're excited for. If any of our wonderful backers are attending these conventions and would like to stop by to say hello and show support for our game, you're most welcome!
Board Game Retreat
In a previous business venture, i taught Yoga & Wellness, so i have had the luxury of visiting some wonderful venues across Europe and have organised many retreats before. I am planning to head back to one of these venues in 2025, but this time around with a group of board gamers instead! If any of our wonderful backers would be interested in joining us on a board games retreat, let us know! You can register your interest on this quick google form here: https://forms.gle/R892rRARuMD1P3i36.
The destination would be an amazing 5 star resort on the Greek Island of Amorgos and i can say from 3 visits there that it's truly one of the most amazing venues I've ever visited. Food/Accommodation would be included alongside local transportation, but not flights. We've already made contact with the venue and they are more than happy for board gamers to enjoy their epic views.
Until Next Time
The wait for Heroes of the Shire is coming to an end, we're closing in on the last hurdle now, which is backer fulfilment. We'll be back with another update as soon as we hear back from the fulfilment centres letting us know that the games have arrived with them safely. Thank you all for your patience and we're super excited for you to finally get your hands on our game. Your support has been heart-warming to say the least.
- Heroes of the Shire
Update #60 - Locking In Addresses & Charge Date To Be Brought Forward
about 2 years ago
– Fri, Jan 26, 2024 at 09:07:40 AM
Hi all,
Following up on our morning update, we mentioned locking in backer postal addresses and charging BackerKit accounts for the £5 payment on February 23rd. Unfortunately, our shipping partners have informed us that this timeline is too late, and they need our data urgently to arrange backer fulfillment. Some of our games are arriving in Asia and Australia earlier than the US/UK. Therefore, we apologise for any confusion we may have caused, but we need to move up the post address locking and £5 charge date to February 9th, which is two weeks from today.
Exciting times ahead as we start fulfilment :)
Please accept our apologies, trying to schedule these things isn't as easy as one would expect.
Best wishes, Heroes of the Shire
Update #59 - Games are inbound!
about 2 years ago
– Fri, Jan 26, 2024 at 04:39:12 AM
Hello everyone,
Reflecting on 2023, it was an incredible year for us – completing production, collaborating with the manufacturer, and seeing our product come to life, inching closer to the vision we had back in 2021. In today's update, we bring you some updated news and a recap of our recent developments.
Games Are On The Water
Exciting news – our games are being collected Jan 27th for the US and Jan 29th for the EU. Duration of these ocean journeys is around 6 weeks. In light of this, we'll be finalising backer postal addresses on February 23rd. If you require assistance in updating your address on BackerKit, please don't hesitate to contact us, and we'll do our utmost to help. Backers can independently edit their address; instructions on how to do so are provided below. For alterations involving a change of country or state in your postal address, kindly reach out, and an admin will facilitate the adjustment for you.
Editing Your Backerkit Address Or Card Details
Please refer to the screenshots below for step-by-step guidance on how to modify your address or card details. If you haven't updated your card details in the last 18 months, there's no action required. However, if your card details have changed during this period, we recommend updating your BackerKit card details for a seamless transaction process.
After clicking Edit Your Address, which should be in the top right corner, you'll be taken to another screen and from there you can see your pledge, your postal address and your card details. You can edit all of these from this screen. See example below of the card details section.
Any further questions or help required, please reach out and we'll do our best to assist you.
£5 Shipping Charge
The backerkit admin team has now added the additional £5 shipping charge to all appropriate accounts (excludes Canada). We will be charging all cards saved on file with Backerkit on February 23rd, the same day that we lock in backers postal addresses.
Heartfelt Response
After our latest update, we experienced a wave of sadness as we mentioned the additional £5 shipping charge. As anticipated, we received feedback from the upset and disappointed backers. However, what truly surprised us was the overwhelming positive and uplifting support we received from many of you, our community. Your encouragement and understanding have been a source of inspiration for our project. Here are a few heartening responses from our Discord community that we wanted to share.
Further Help
The reality is, even with the additional £5 charge, we still find ourselves approximately £15,000 short to cover our fulfilment bills. We do anticipate recovering around £9,000 through the sale of our remaining stock. Backers need not worry, as I am committed to personally injecting the remaining funds into the business to ensure the fulfilment costs are met and your games are not delayed any further. We had budgeted $40,000 for shipping/fulfilment based on our previous estimated, but our final estimated that we received a few days ago is now $62,500.
Originally, we were quoted a shipping price to Australia, we assumption that it would be shipped from the US hub. We incorporated a £1 mark up, as detailed in our previous update, and structured our pricing accordingly on the pledge manager. However, the recent revelation is that we need to freight ship from China to Australia, as well as from China to VFI Asia and then from the US to Canada, coupled with additional import and custom fees, has resulted in an unexpected $5,000 charge on our final estimated invoice from the fulfilment centre. This development has transpired since our last update, just when we thought shipping challenges couldn't get any more daunting for us. A mistake that we have now learnt the hard way.
While it's standard for game publishers to have a margin 5-6 times that of the manufacturing cost, we opted for a 4x margin on this project. Our intent was not to maximise profit on our first venture but rather to establish ourselves in the publishing space with our debut title. In hindsight, we acknowledge that a higher base price for our game would have been more prudent. Another mistake that we have learnt the hard way.
If anyone is in a secure financial situation and would like to alleviate some of the burden from myself, your support would be immensely appreciated. We only mention this because we've had several backers reach out and ask if they could help. The best way to support our project though costs nothing and is to share it far and wide! This free marketing will help us shift the last few hundred remaining games. We can also accept tips through the tip jar on the pledge manager (we lose 6% due to backerkit/stripe), we can accept donations via PayPal to [email protected]. However, what would work our best for our backers, to see something in return, is to help reduce our leftover stock count. Currently, we still have around 200 games left, along with the following add-ons:
Huntress Playmats x38
Berserker Playmats x30
Witch Doctor Sleeves x40
True Solo Mode x60
If anyone is interested in any of the above, just reach out to us and we can manually add these to your order. They would be billed on February 23rd, the same day as we charge the additional £5 and lock in backer postal addresses. Your understanding and support mean the world to us as we navigate these unforeseen challenges. Please don't feel the need to help further, as many of you have already been overwhelmingly awesome. We're just laying our cards out here for you guys, to be as transparent as possible so you can see that the struggle is real. Thank you for being part of our journey.
Game Pieces Laid Out
I had this wild idea of laying out all the game pieces on my living room floor to give you a glimpse of the abundance of content you'll find in our box. However, it turned out to occupy much more floor space than I initially anticipated! Check out the video for a sneak peek if you're interested in what's coming your way.
Board Game Retreat
In a previous business venture, i taught Yoga & Wellness, so i have had the luxury of visiting some wonderful venues across Europe and have organised many retreats before. I am planning to head back to one of these venues in 2025, but this time around with a group of board gamers instead! If any of our wonderful backers would be interested in joining us on a board games retreat, let us know! You can register your interest on this quick google form here: https://forms.gle/R892rRARuMD1P3i36.
The destination would be an amazing 5 star resort on the Greek Island of Amorgos and i can say from 3 visits there that it's truly one of the most amazing venues I've ever visited. Food/Accommodation would be included alongside local transportation, but not flights. We've already made contact with the venue and they are more than happy for board gamers to enjoy their epic views.
Until Next Time
The wait for Heroes of the Shire is coming to an end, we're closing in on the last hurdle now, which is fulfilment. We'll be back with another update as soon as we know dates for when the games will arrive at their hubs after the ocean journey and customs importation. Thank you all for your patience and understanding with our project.
- Heroes of the Shire
Update #58 - Freight Shipping Begins This Month
about 2 years ago
– Tue, Jan 16, 2024 at 07:06:32 AM
Hello everyone,
We trust you had a delightful holiday season if you celebrated! Today, we have a mix of good news and not-so-great news to share with you. Let's kick off with the exciting developments.
Good News
Our games have finished being printed over the holiday season, and are now being packed ready for our collection at the end of this month. The factory estimate our games will be ready for freight shipping on January 19th, and all our fulfilment companies have booked their collections with the factory. If all runs smoothly, we're hoping that our games will be out of China before the end of January, fingers crossed we should miss the Chinese New Year delays.
Pledge Manager - Locking In Your Address
Towards the end of the month if all goes well, our games will be transported from the warehouse in China on to 2 different ferries across the globe! Once this happens, we need to lock in backer addresses so we can send across our final pledge manager details to the fulfilment hubs, allowing them sufficient time prep everything before our games arrive. With this in mind, please double check your details on backerkits pledge manager and update your address if you need to. If you're struggling to see where your address is, ping us a message and we will be happy to help. Before we lock addresses, there will be an email sent out to everyone to remind them to do so anyway, this happens automatically by backerkit when we hit the lock addresses button on our end. After we lock address's, the only way to edit your address is to contact us with it.
Fulfilment ETA
With our games being collected this month, we're estimating the following for fulfilment:
- February/March for Asia backers using VFI - February/March for Australia/New Zealand backers using Aetherworks - End of March/Early April for US/Canada backers using QML - Mid April for EU backers using Spiral Galaxy - Rest of world backers will be shipped at the same time as US/Canada or the EU, depending on your geographic location.
As always, we will keep you updated along the process should anything change.
Not-So-Great News
Let's Talk About Shipping Costs & The Impact Of War
Fulfilling Prices Increasing
As many of you will know, shipping prices continue to rise year after year, so we did everything we could during the Kickstarter & Pledge Manager process to keep our shipping prices as low and competitive as possible. What most regions have paid, is the cost price to us plus £1 extra. That extra £1 was to cover a tiny amount of return labels or missing parcels that we will inevitably encounter during the shipping process.
What we've learnt now, is that this approach left us absolutely no room for price increases. For future projects, marking up the game and shipping a little more would save us a lot of hassle. Since we opened the pledge manager in March 2022, we have had 3 shipping increases from both the US and UK fulfilment companies. The first price increase we absorbed all of that ourselves and didn't mention it, the second price increase we absorbed almost all of that again (except for Canada who were charged extra). Now we have just received the 2024 price increase, which is our third price increase since the campaign finished. See below a screenshot of our estimated prices for US backers from 2022 to what they are now. Bare in mind this is our cost price, with no marks up.
In 2022 we were quoted $25.56 which is why we charged our backers £21/$26. In 2024 you can see the price of a 6kg game to the US now costs $30.41+$2.34= total $32.75. This increase of $7 multiplied by 800 backers is an increase of $5,600 just to the US alone. Please note that we had a recent increase to Canada, which would have also cost us another $2,400, so this would have been a total of $8,000 for us to ship games to the US/Canada alone. We only showed the US in the above screenshot as this is where a huge portion of our backers are located, but please note these increases have happened to every single country.
The Impact Of War
Many of you will be aware that there is a conflict going on in Israel at present, but how does that tie in to our project? Global supply chains are facing severe disruption as a result of the world's biggest shipping companies diverting journeys away from the Red Sea. Attacks by rebels in Yemen on commercial vessels have resulted in many firms deciding to avoid one of the world's busiest shipping lanes. Because of the attacks and the threat of future assaults, several of the world's largest shipping firms, including Mediterranean Shipping Company and Maersk, have diverted vessels away to a much longer route around Africa's Cape of Good Hope and then up the west side of the continent. This diversion means that the journey will take an additional 7-14 days and will cost us significantly more money. The War in Ukraine over the last couple of years has also lead to huge fuel spikes, which is also a big reason for why fulfilment companies have been increasing their costs more than usual. You can read more about the Red Sea crisis here in a BBC article: https://www.bbc.co.uk/news/business-67759593.
What Does All Of This Mean For Us?
On a less favourable note, we are encountering significant challenges due to the surging costs of shipping containers and the escalating prices of fulfilment. As a first-time publisher, we lack extensive upfront capital to navigate through such situations. Our reliance is on the incredible support and understanding of our backers.
It's important to note that this entire project was funded from personal savings, and currently, we are not projected to break even. Regrettably, we find ourselves in the position of needing to implement an additional charge of £5 to all backers (excluding those in Canada) to help offset the rising shipping costs. This amounts to approximately $6.37. Just to clarify to our backers in the EU, the final amount of £5 already includes taxes.
We sincerely apologise to all our backers for this unexpected development. In this challenging situation, we believe this decision is necessary. While we could consider leaving our games in China and await lower freight shipping prices, it is not a viable option for us, as we are committed to delivering your games without further delays.
We know that no matter how many times we apologise it will not soften the financial blow to our backers, however we hope this detailed explanation shows our dedication to the project and the love we have for all our community members.
How & When Will You Charge The £5?
We did this last quarter for those in Canada and it worked smoothly. Backerkit will create a £5 addon and behind the scenes apply it to all accounts (excluding Canada). Then, sometime in February we will charge all the cards on file for the £5 balance, taking them back to £0. We will give an exact date in our next update. Between now and then, we kindly ask you to ensure your cards details are correct on Backerkits pledge manager. If you have any issues with that, let us know and we can do our best to help.
Summary
Games have been printed and are being collected at the end of January
Fulfilment should begin in March/April for the majority of our backers
We're charging all our backers (excludes Canada) an additional £5 to help cover increasing shipping costs.
Until Next Time
The wait for Heroes of the Shire is coming to an end, we're closing in on the last hurdle now, which is fulfilment. Thank you all for your patience and understanding with our project. Once we have more information from the fulfilment companies, we'll be back with another update.
- Heroes of the Shire
Image of our master copy games received from the factory
Update #57 - Game Components Printed & Mass Production Samples arrived
over 2 years ago
– Thu, Dec 14, 2023 at 04:07:04 AM
Hi all,
Welcome back to our monthly update.
Firstly, we'd like to thank you all for your patience throughout 2023 as we finalised production and sent the game to the manufacturer for mass production. Exciting news arrived yesterday: we received the Mass Production copy of Heroes of the Shire, and it looks fantastic! Additionally, all our game components have been successfully printed. We're currently awaiting updates on child safety testing, the creation of cartons, finalising minor details, and other necessary tasks. Since sharing the pre-production sample with you, we've made a few minor tweaks, visible in the images below. We're now awaiting further instructions from the manufacturer and a completion date. As soon as we have more information, we'll keep you updated.
Mass Production Copy Received
We received our mass production copy of the game yesterday and meticulously checked for the changes we requested. Below is a brief summary of the alterations made to the physical copy over the last few months:
Paper bands have been added to several components to ensure they stay together during transit, enhancing the quality of the components upon receipt.
We enhanced the card quality on the spell masteries and warlock demon form boards, resulting in a notably improved quality and handheld experience! We're extremely happy that we did this, as the new thickness makes these components feel much better.
The count of wooden cubes has been increased by +2. Upon checking our mass production copy, we've confirmed this precise adjustment!
A subtle adjustment was made to the background colour of the rulebook, slightly darkening it. This change has significantly improved the contrast between blacks and whites, ensuring a more comfortable viewing and reading experience.
We switched the colour of one of the dice bags from black to red, facilitating quicker and easier identification of the villain player's pre-made dice bag during setup and pack-down.
We introduced curved corners to the punchboards, significantly improving their ease of removal from the box.
We initially designed all turn order tokens with a grey background. However, upon reviewing our master copy, we realised that the sheer quantity of tokens made locating specific ones challenging. Consequently, we've introduced a new red background to the token punch boards specifically for scenario turn order tokens. This adjustment aims to streamline players' experience by facilitating easier identification of components. Below, you can see the updated punchboard at the top, featuring the red background, while the older version with the grey background is displayed at the bottom for comparison.
The Kickstarter exclusive character is securely packaged with all her components enclosed, including the hero board, spell mastery board, and three weapon cards. Additionally, there's a barcode affixed to the exterior for identification.
We resolved an issue concerning the front-facing card of the battle pack, ensuring it is now positioned correctly with the barcode visible. To prevent potential scanning issues, both sides of the card now bear the barcode. This redundancy ensures that even if the factory places it incorrectly, the barcode remains scannable at the fulfilment hubs, preventing any additional costs for us.
- We've placed sticker barcodes on all the addons, as per the request from QML (US Fulfilment centre).
The custom die has been correctly positioned inside the True Solo Mode addon, rectifying the issue observed in the pre-production samples we received.
We've reduced the size of our logos and text on the playmats.
Child Safety Testing
Upon recommendation from our UK fulfilment centre, we've expedited the child safety testing process. The manufacturers have initiated this for us, and we anticipate receiving the results in the coming days or weeks.
UK Games Expo
We've secured our exhibition space for the UKGE scheduled from May 31st to June 2nd, 2024. If you're attending the convention, we'd love for you to drop by and say hello!
TTS Arena Drafting Tournament
Our drafting tournament over on TTS has been underway for a few weeks now, seeing teams battle it out in a 2vs2 drafting mode. This see's players taking it in turns to draft heroes (picking 2 at a time, keeping 1 and discarding the other), and then with the remaining heroes left, teams are then created by 1 player. The player not making the teams, gets 1st pick of their team, so it's in the interest of the player creating the teams to create counters and not put together the strongest heroes. With the teams created, players select a drafted team each and battle commences. We will post exact details of this format over on our website as soon as it launches, so you guys have an additional Arena mode to play with.
Until Next Time
The wait for Heroes of the Shire is coming to an end, we're closing in to the last few months now. Thank you all for your patience with our project. Once we have more information from the manufacturer, we'll be back with another update. For those of you that celebrate we hope you have an amazing Christmas time with friends and family!
