Update #51 - Print n Play files ready for fulfilment
almost 3 years ago – Sun, May 14, 2023 at 12:36:41 PM

Hi all,

Welcome to another Heroes of the Shire update. We've had a very busy few weeks, reworking some of our art for the manufacturer alongside prepping our Print n Play files. Our update this month will cover the completion of our Print n Play files, the shifting of our expected delivery date (physical backers) and adding left over stock to the pre-order store. See below for more detailed information.

Print n' Play Backers

Our manufacturer got back in touch with us after analysing our art files and wanted us to make some edits to what we had submitted, meaning we had to delay the production of our PnP Sheets, hence why they have not already been delivered. However, we've made those edits and resubmitted our artwork. We can now confirm that we have finished exporting all our print n Play sheets. We need to compile all our individually exported sheets together and do some test prints, alongside sending out to some folks for their approval. Once we're happy, we will deliver them to you, which should be sometime next week. We can confirm that there are 276 pages or 138 double sided pages. We've done our best to fit as much onto one sheet of paper as we could to ensure there is minimal paper wastage. We've put bleed on most of our pages and we've also numbered all of our sheets and labelled them front/back in case they get mixed up after being printed. Once we have delivered the PnP pledges, we will set aside a few days to make any digital corrections to the sheets if we need to (hopefully we don't need to!).

Expected Delivery Date (Physical Copies)

Many of you are eagerly awaiting your copy of Heroes of the Shire and we continue to thank you for your patience as we now unfold the final few steps of the production process. As it stands, we have been pushing the manufacturer for our physical master copy, and we have been told that this will arrive with us in early June. We're gutted about this, because it means attending the UK's largest games expo (UKGE) without our master copy that we planned to show off! What this means, is that we can 100% confirm that we will not be able to deliver physical pledges for June/July as we had hoped. When our master copy finally arrives, we will waste no time in inspecting it and giving the green light for mass production. From there, it's estimated 4-6 weeks to print the game, with our distribution partners collecting the games right away. Shipping time across the water is similar, 4-6 weeks. At this stage, we don't want to give you another month for our ETA and let you down again, as this is what we've done in the past. Instead, we feel it's more appropriate to keep everyone updated along the process as we have been doing, and give an accurate ETA once the games are on the water being sent to our distribution hubs.

Not Going to Retail till 2024

We've made the decision to not take Heroes of the Shire to retail/distribution this year (when released). Only retailers that backed during the KS campaign will have Heroes of the Shire stock.  We intend to take the game to retail sometime mid 2024, meaning you guys will certainly have you games way before anyone else!

Addons:

We've had many inquiries about our addons recently, so we thought we would add a section about them below. Please note that the pledge manager was closed some while ago, so if you would like to add anything to your pledge, please get in touch with us and we can do that manually for you. 

- True Solo Mode Addon £10

This addon is not only for solo mode players, but for anyone who would like the enemy monsters controlled by AI. Taking the game from it's standard 1vsMany mode to a true cooperative experience. The addon includes the following:

20 Action Cards(5 for each themed scenario). These action cards will be added to the action card decks inside the base game taking the total of 64 cards to 84. The solo mode action cards have better rewards on them and increase the chances of finding an ally on your journey. The found allies will then assist you on your adventures in scenario mode. Example below.

10 Ally Cards. Our base games contain 4 ally cards, so this addon includes an additional 10 that support the above action cards. These ally cards, like the 4 from the base games, can also be used in Arena mode. Example below.

50 Monster Cards (AI deck). Of these 50 cards, there are 3 types, defensive, aggressive and passive. There are 20 passive cards which form the monster deck. As you progress through a scenario, defensive and aggressive cards will get shuffled into the passive deck, expanding it over time. There are 15 defensive and 15 aggressive cards. Each time a boss takes a turn, instead of the Villain player deciding what to do, a card from the top of the monster deck is revealed and resolved. This deck can be used not only in solo mode, but to also take the game from it's 1vsMany mode to a true cooperative mode, great for 2 player games. Example of a defensive monster card below.

1 Monster Die. When trash mobs are summoned to battle, the monster die is rolled. The value of this die roll will determine which cards are shuffled into the passive monster deck. Mobs can be either aggressive or defensive. 

- Battle Pack £5

This little addon will grant players some additional pieces to use across all game modes, as shown below.

2 Ally Cards. The Warlock who has his Demon Form on the back of the card, alongside the Bard, are the 2 exclusive ally cards that are included in the battle pack. These can be used in both scenario mode and arena mode.

4 Legendary Loot Items. When creating Heroes of the Shire, we wanted to make legendary loot items really feel legendary, so we only included 4 within the base game. The battle pack adds an additional 4 items into the loot item deck to double your chances of finding one of these sought after battle pieces. 

4 Battle Maps. These battle maps, add global effects to Arena mode, which can slow down a game or speed up a game. These were created to allow players the opportunity to play any hero class with any hero build. Upon play testing back in 2020, we had a Healing Cleric vs a Tanking Druid 1v1 arena battle. This battle took almost 2hrs and was a drag! From this, the battle maps were born. 

- Playmats £14

Our playmats are designed to fit all components onto them for a single player, which include your hero, your spell mastery, your equipment board and ability cards. We originally included the guidelines, but we later removed them as we felt it ruined the stunning artwork. Both the Huntress and Berserker artwork are available. Once these are sold, we will not be reprinting these artworks, instead we will be creating new artworks for future playmats to include new heroes. 

- Sleeves £12

Our sleeves come in packs of 122. For the collectors edition of the game, which is what most backers pledged, 2 quantity of these sleeves would be required to sleeve all 200+ cards. We have 2 designs available for the sleeves, the Warlocks' Demon Form, and the Witch Doctor. 

To help us through the increased shipping and production costs, we've decided to add the left over stock  of colouring books and A4 art prints to our store, for backers of the game only. If this is something that you would like to add to your pledge, please get in touch and we can arrange that for you. Colouring Books are £12 and x4 Art Prints are £15.

Until Next Time

That's a wrap for us with this update. We're very sorry to not be able to deliver your games in the timespan we predicted, but we hope the wait will be worth it when your game arrives in a few more months time. As always, thank you for being here and patiently waiting. We'll be back soon with another update, hopefully that one will contain pictures and videos of our master copy :) Any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments or send us a private message.

Best wishes

- Heroes of the Shire

Update #50 - Awaiting Our Master Copy
almost 3 years ago – Tue, Apr 18, 2023 at 11:48:09 PM

Hi all,

We hope you're having a great year so far! It will inevitably get better when your Heroes of the Shire pledge gets fulfilled :) In this month's update, we'll dive into a few things that we've done behind the scenes over the last couple of months before sending our game to be manufactured. Once again, we thank you for your patience while we wait to hear back from our manufacturer about mass production of Heroes of the Shire.

Print & Play Files

We're excited to announce that we're now ready to begin preparing the PnP sheets. They should be ready in around 14 days, and we'll deliver them immediately once they're done.

Gameplay Updates

Over the past several months, we've made some gameplay changes, and graphical updates. We were a little to busy to include them in our previous update, so here are the highlights:

• We've adjusted some colours on the hero boards, with the Paladin now in turquoise, the Blood Mage in purple, and the Alchemist also in purple.
• The text on the back of all our player boards is now aligned to the right, with the artwork popping off the page.
• Whenever we refer to a hero ability on a spell mastery or hero board, we now use the same block colour as the hero ability.
• We've revamped the rules sheet from inside the true solo mode add.
• All of the elite trash mobs now have names. This is because some are used for quest cards (added via stretch goals). Naming only a few didn't make much sense since not all elite mobs are used for quest cards, and this way we can use the named mobs in future expansions.

Character Updates:

• The Alchemist's Rise of the Purge ability was changed to a new ability called Negate Upgrade, which encourages her to cast Negate by reducing the cooldown die of any ally's spell (including herself) by a value of 3.
• The Assassin's Splash of Blood spell was changed to add Lacerate instead of Bleed, making the spell twice as effective in most cases.
• The Bard's Joker ability was changed to grant her +2 HP regen for 3 turns when an enemy or ally is put to sleep, incentivizing her to use her sleeping spells. The Bard's Sing ability was renamed to Screech, and her Angry Voice ability was renamed to Flawless Vocals.
• The Berserker was given a second hero ability called Bloodthirst, which causes him to deal an additional 1 DMG to enemies that are bleeding. His Flex spell was also changed to turn his Cleave spell into an AOE and deal more damage, as it was considered weak compared to his other available options.
• The Blood Mage's background colour was changed from red to purple to improve contrast. 
• The Druid's Future Sight spell was changed from a single target to a multiple target spell, making it significantly more effective.
• The Dragon Knight's Sea of Flames spell had glowing removed from it and now deals burn damage three times, fitting with its name.
• The Huntress had her Sharpen Steel spell removed and was given a new spell called Serpent Strike, which allows her Snake pet to assist her when she attacks, meaning that she could call 2 pets to assist if her swordsmanship path is maxed out. 
• The Paladin's Stunning Strike spell was changed from a single target to an AOE target to make his Melee path more appealing compared to the other two.
• The Runesmith's Dampen Magic spell was reverted back to its original design, reducing incoming elemental DMG by 2 instead of 1.
• The Scholar's Incognito spell was renamed Celestial Ward and their Burning Desire spell from within the pyromancer spell mastery tree was buffed to make it more exciting to cast.
• The Shaman's Lava Eruption spell has been renamed Lava Spike and is now a melee attack instead of a ranged attack. The Combustion spell now grants +1 fire elemental damage for 3 turns, to better suit the name of the spell.
• The Warlock's Demon Form has had its immortality spell changed. The new version now gives the demon a bonus turn as they die, allowing them one final turn to defeat their enemy before being defeated themselves. The Warlock's main board saw a name change from Soul Shatter to Soul Strike, and the spell was changed from a ranged spell to a melee spell. The Warlock's Excessive Poison spell was changed to Excessive Fire because the Decimation spell mastery is intended to focus on fire and shadow rather than poison. This new ability grants a passive +1 fire damage to all allies.
• The Warrior's Defence Hold spell (on their Defence Stance card) has been changed to make it significantly easier to understand.
• The Witch Doctor's Zombie Cat has been revamped to better fit the archetype. The updated version now has 9 lives as a passive ability rather than a spell. This ability allows the Witch Doctor to place a taunt condition on the Zombie Cat after casting Undying Force and then allows them to revive the cat after casting Voodoo Worship.

Rulebook

Possibly the biggest challenge of this entire project has been the rulebook. Over the last few months we have amended the following to the rulebook:

• Added a components page
• Added a components checklist
• Added a sections on completing a scenario and completing a campaign
• Added a section on defeating a boss
• Added an example of a filled in save game sheet
• Added a glossary of terms
• Added in a casting restrictions section
• Added a small section on packing the game away
• Updated all the rulebook artwork to display the final game pieces
• Changed the wording of stickman to stick figure.
• Adjusted artwork across pages to better suit the empty spaces.
• Alphabetically arranged the conditions page
• Reworded many sections to make them as clear as possible
• Updated the quick reference on the back of the rulebook to include page numbers

Please see v10, the final edition of our Rulebook here. 

Note: We received the incorrect information from the manufacturer regarding the number of rulebook pages required, which resulted in us having two additional pages. Therefore, we have removed the Achievements section from the rulebook, as it was only added due to our mistaken belief that we had two spare pages. Instead, we will provide these as a free download on our website once it's up and running, allowing you to print them off at home.

Airecon

We attended the Airecon board game convention last month, which was supported by Watch It Played. There we demoed the game and had a table for passers by to sit down and play scenario mode. We had a great time at the event, bringing in lots of new pre-orders, with many new excited gamers keen to play Heroes of the Shire. 

Solo Mode on TTS

Last week we recorded several solo mode videos of our tabletop simulator demo. We will edit these together put them up on our YouTube over the coming weeks, soon as we've created our PnP sheets. We will also make the solo mode demo on TTS available to everyone very soon (few weeks). 

Colouring Books & Art Prints

We've finalised the colouring book design and the artwork to be used for our Art Prints. These items are included only in the Epic Pledge level. The Art Prints and Colouring Book will be manufactured here in the UK and sent out to fulfilment hubs early, ready to be packed with the games when they arrive. See the chosen artwork for the prints below. 

Keeping you updated

We'll always do our best to provide you with the most accurate and up to date information we receive from our partners, keeping you all updated with the process of where your games are. We'll do our best to get photos from the manufacturers and fulfilment partners to share. Once we have any more information, you'll be the first to know! Until then, we're estimated around July time this year. Thank you all for your patience and support, and we look forward to finally fulfilling your games very soon :) Any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments or send us a private message.

Best wishes,

- Heroes of the Shire

Update #49 - Order Placed
about 3 years ago – Wed, Mar 01, 2023 at 02:53:49 AM

Hi all,

We hope everyone's having a great start to 2023. 

We'll start our update off with some good news! We can confirm that we have placed our order with the manufacturer :) Our manufacturer has created titles such as Everdell, Dark Souls, Robinson Crusoe, Kingdomino, Grimm Forest, Raiders of the North Sea and Planet, just to name a few. So rest assured the quality of their games speaks for itself.  From here on, there will be many weeks of back and forth between us and them ensuring everything is exactly as intended. We're also waiting for our child safety testing to take place and for certificates to be issued. The manufacturer will also provide us a master copy of the game shortly, and when that arrives, expect lots of videos being posted to our social media channels. We've got several more weeks before mass production begins, and during that time we're doing more proof-reads to clean up any small errors we may have missed and ensure continuity across all game components. Once we're happy with the proof-reading, we'll begin to prepare our files for the Print & Play backers. 

Print & Play Files

To our print and play backers, if there's anything you might request in regards to how the PnP files are prepped, now is your opportunity to speak up. Please let us know in the comments. 

Colour Blindness

One of our backers reached out to remind us of the ongoing issues anyone with colour-blindness might face when playing board games. The biggest concern being our red and green icons, as those are very important to our game and the most effected colours for most people with some form of colour-blindness. Instead of removing the red and green colours, as we felt they were important, (green being associated with health and allies, and red being associated with danger and enemies) instead we decided to change the shape of our ally icon. This will help colour blind players identify an enemy target and an ally target without seeing the correct colours. It's taken us the best part of 2 days to sift through all of the individual files and update the icons, but we are extremely happy with the change. We feel it's simple and effective and hope you agree. See below an example hero board displaying the new green ally target icons. 

Tabletop Simulator - TTS

We have managed to get a small sample of our Arena mode (PvP) on Tabletop Simulator and have provided 6 heroes to sample, these being the Huntress, Paladin, Blood Mage, Berserker, Warrior and Shaman. We have not yet published the rulebook on TTS, so please familiarise yourself on how to play before using the app. Rulebook (v9.2 not final) can be found here. Over the coming months we will update TTS and provide a sample of both the scenario and solo mode experiences. Click here or on the image below for the TTS link.

Exhibitions

We're prepping marketing materials for the UKGE in June and Airecon in March, which are the 2 conventions/exhibitions we have planned so far this year. If you intend on visiting either of these, please come and find us to make yourself known, we love meeting our backers in person! We'll have 2 demo stations alongside a 4 person table to play our scenario mode on. 

Keeping you updated

Moving forward, much of the process will now be out of our hands, from manufacturing to fulfilment, however we'll always do our best to provide you with the most accurate and up to date information we receive from our partners. Our next few updates will be short and sweet, keeping you all updated with the process of where your games actually are. We'll do our best to get photos from the manufacturers and fulfilment partners to share. Once we have any more information on shipping from China to our fulfilment hubs we'll be able to give you a better ETA of when to expect your game. Until then, we're estimated around June/July time this year. Thank you all for your patience and support, and we look forward to finally fulfilling your games very soon :) Any questions, feel free to drop them in the comments or send us a private message. 

Best wishes,

- Heroes of the Shire

Update #48 - An exciting year ahead!
about 3 years ago – Sun, Jan 08, 2023 at 03:55:55 PM

Hello all,

Happy New Year! 

We hope everyone who celebrated during the holiday season had a great time. In our previous update we mentioned that we had around 70% of all files exported with the manufacturer. We can confirm that as of now we have 95% of them all complete, we're just finishing the rulebook and then we're finally complete! Once the rulebook is finished and exported, the game will be with the manufacturer for mass production :) 

Once this happens, we will keep you updated along the entire process, from the finishing of the printing, to the pallets being loaded onto ferry's and when the games arrive into countries at their fulfilment hubs. For those of you outside of the EU the chances are that your game will be fulfilled by our US partner Quartermaster Logistics (QML), for those in the UK/EU it will be Spiral Galaxy Games (we've visited their hub and we can confirm they're awesome). Similar to our last update, we don't have to much to show you or update you on as of now, but please see some topics of interest below.

Why have there been delays?

Several reasons. Shortly after the Kickstarter our delays were due to us touching up the game to take it from being good to great. With your patience we were able to update all of the files we wanted to, like some of the condition iconography, the clarity of our words, adding in all the stretch goals to the rulebook etc. We had to stress test the new exploration card deck that was added during the Kickstarter, as we listened to community feedback. More recently our delays have been in the logistics and planning stages of production, how we can print the games in the most effective way possible, i.e. not having duplicates in the collectors edition box from the combination of the other 2 boxes. This is our first title so we're by no means experts at this stage, but we are determined, passionate and strive to be professional in our approach. Most of the planning delays have been from us having the 3 boxes. Something we've learnt from and will plan significantly better in the future. If we had only the 1 or 2 boxes we'd have had a much easier ride during this stage, lesson learnt the hard way! 

Punchboards 

With a total of 12 punchboards (10 large & 2 small), we've had lots of planning to do. See 2 samples below of our punchboards. One is 'Punchboard v2 - ALL' for all our game boxes, while the other is 'Punchboard v3 - Fire & Ice' specific to the Fire & Ice game box and collectors, but not for the Earth & Water. 

Rulebook 

We're currently adding in a components page at the very front of the rulebook with a quantities chart so that players will be able to easily identify game pieces, not just by their artwork but also by the letters of code used in the bottom left corners of the cards. We've updated the save game sheet section of the rulebook to better explain how to save a playthrough. We've updated the section on the Wandering Merchant's shop. We've added a new section about what to do after completing a scenario. We've added in a section at the front of the rulebook on how to create 6 dice bags before playing. We've got a few more sections to update but we're almost there now and this is the last piece of the puzzle! Once the rulebook is complete and exported to the manufacturer, our order will be complete! See a preview of some updates and some of the newly added pages (still a WIP).

We won't keep you any longer by listing absolutely everything we've updated in the rulebook, but rest assured we've made and are still making the final improvements to the rulebook to ensure it meets our high standards. 

Battle Pack

We've also added a front card to the Battle Pack addon, alongside a quick 'how to play' section on the back of the card. Here's a sample.

Marketing & Pre-Orders

We have been so busy with production all of last year we've neglected our social media channels and marketing. While we've still been very active on Discord, if you've been following us on Instagram or Facebook, you'll know from the lack of posts that we've been quiet. Rest assured it's only because we've just been very focused on the task at hand, which was getting these files ready to for mass production. Moving forward we'll be running ads for pre-orders of Heroes of the Shire with the newly increased MSRP. When it comes to marketing, instead of sending the majority of our funds to Facebook (who lets face it, doesn't really need our money) we've decided to create some unique exclusive promo cards that will be usable in the game. As we get closer and closer to fulfilment, we will look to build more and more hype about our product. We've already have so many of you reach out to us individually telling us how hyped and excited you are for this product to hit your table. Some of you have even told us that this is your most anticipated game of the year, which brings us much joy as a first time game developer competing in a overcrowded space with many awesome publishers. Over the coming months we'll be looking out for backers sharing our social media posts, talking about us on BGG, tagging us in posts etc. And to those lucky few, we'll be sending out these exclusive promo cards we had made up. We only did a limited print run so once these beauties are gone, they're gone! They are fully playable with all version of the game.

We'll be back soon! 

As always, a huge thank you to everyone for your patience whilst we go through the process of exporting files for the manufacturers. Don't forget to come and see us at AIRECON in March or the UK GAMES EXPO in June where we will be exhibiting and showcasing Heroes of the Shire. We're excited to bring you all the finished project, until then, happy gaming and we'll be back soon.

- Heroes of the Shire.

Update #47 - Exporting Files for Manufacturing, almost there!
over 3 years ago – Tue, Nov 15, 2022 at 01:42:10 AM

Hello all,

We've still been flat out prepping and exporting game files for the manufacturer over the last few weeks. As we're exporting the files, we're giving them final touch ups and edits that we feel required. There's not much to update you on at this stage, apart from the exporting process is taking much longer than we anticipated. The game is looking in its best shape yet and aside from the slow progress, we're very happy with everything! We said in our previous update that the next time we touch base with you, we should have our order in with the manufacturer. Unfortunately that isn't the case right now, but we're very close. We have around 70% of the files exported and ready to go. Once again, we appreciate your patience at this time. Please see below some of the things we've been up to during the month of October.

Final Touch Ups As We Export Art Files

Our hero boards, spell masteries and boss sheets have gone through the same overhaul as our cards that we mentioned in the previous update. We have been cleaning up any loose ends that we may have missed during design. Some of our hero boards have changed colour, as the conversion from RGB/CMYK saw a few changes. Most notably the Paladin now has a green board and the Blood Mage a purple board. See a few examples of some changes below.

Tutorial Sheet

Like all of our components, the tutorial sheet has had it's overhaul and is looking much more detailed now, elaborating on more points to ensure nothing is left to chance. If you would like to download the updated tutorial sheet (2 pages), please click here or on the image below. 

Final Spell/Hero Updates

We made a few last minute changes to some hero spells that felt not very impactful. Most of the spells we've changed are ones we've made slightly stronger, to ensure that each hero has lots of great options to choose from so each hero plays non-linear. See below a few samples of these updates:

Alchemist - Potion Preparation ability, changed its name to Potion Safety and now grants 1 HP and a 1 HP shield instead of 2 HP.  Shields can be applied when a hero is at max HP, allowing the Alchemist to benefit from this even on turn 1.

Alchemist - Bounce Back ability, made stronger by reducing the amount of DMG needed in order to trigger protection.

Berserker - Shielded Attack used to grant +1 DEF when casting an attack spell. Changed the name to Substantial Attack and the ability now grants +2 DEF after attacking with an AOE spell. 

Blood Mage - Improved Demon ability that allowed the demon to deal an additional 1 DMG has been removed. This was because this play style wanted the Blood Mage to sacrifice the demon, which in turn felt like this ability wasn't very impactful. Instead it has been replaced by a new ability called Blood Shield which grants the Blood Mage protection for 3 turns after sacrificing a Blood Demon. 

Warlock - Colossal Health, which was the bottom spell mastery ability, has been removed and replaced with Demon Power. This new ability grants the Warlock an additional 10 HP upon transforming into a Demon (previously was an extra 50%) and then allows the Demon to cast a spell for turn. This change was not made for balance purposes, but to ensure the Warlock player transforming into a demon has fun doing so! Spending the turn transforming and then having to wait for the next round to cast another spell sometimes felt slow/flat, so we've fine tuned the ability above to resolve that. 

This list goes on... 

We've made lots more of these, but instead of us posting them all here (time consuming) if there's a hero in particular you want to know about, please ask in the comments and we can let you know that way. 

Scenario Difficulty Tile

We've created a scenario difficulty tile to be placed near the scenario hexes. This tile allows you to place a wooden cube on it, selecting the scenario difficulty. This tile will serve as a reference/reminder for how many explored hexes will require the removal of non-elite trash mobs from the trash mob deck. This is to increase the trash mob difficulty as heroes level up (leading to a higher chance of finding elite monsters). Details will be added to the rulebook.

Airecon 2023 /UKGE 2023

In other news, we will be exhibiting at Airecon in March and the UK Games Expo in June of next year. We've booked slightly larger stands for these conventions so we have more of a presence. Don't forget to come see us at either of the expos if you plan on attending.

PnP Backers

To all our Print and Play backers that have been patiently waiting for us to fulfil, we're almost there! As soon as our order has been accepted by the manufacturer, we will immediately begin on creating the PnP sheets and get those fulfilled. We will post an update once we've gone to manufacturing and then your reward/pledge will be fulfilled shortly after. 

Until Next Time

As always, a huge big thank you to everyone for their patience whilst we go through the process of exporting files for the manufacturers. We're trying our best to get this process completed ASAP as we want the game with you all! Not only that, our company is in debt until we can shift a large chunk of the excess stock, so with that in mind, we're working as fast as we can but at the same time not rushing too fast with the risk of jeopardising our hard work this far. We're excited to bring you all the finished project, until then, happy gaming and we'll be back soon.

- Heroes of the Shire.