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Tuesday, November 01, 2011

LOOKING AHEAD

Steve Cole writes:

Jean asked me to provide an update blog on the products we will be doing. It occurs to me that I've been remiss in communicating this with you all, partly because I have been buried in reviewing the ships and rules Mongoose sent me. (They wanted the cover art approved and still had that problem with weapons fire coming from strange places on a Klingon D7. I just sent them another reminder of what to fix.) The rulebook is doing to figuring out the final nits and gripes, and is scheduled to go to the printer by Friday the 14th. (I am already working on Captain's Log #44 but fortunately the ACTASF1 rulebook does not take a lot of checking at this point.)

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The first of the joint-venture products are scheduled to appear sometime around the end of November or the start of December. The exact date just depends on the production facilities, and of course, some of you will (by the vagaries of the distribution system) see them weeks before others do.

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The first round of releases will include the CALL TO ARMS STAR FLEET rulebook, a set of ship reference cards, and several packs of miniatures. The first batch will include the 2500 version of squadron boxes 1, 2, and 9 (and a box of cloaked Romulans, 9A). These squadron boxes have the same ship types as the existing 2400 squadron boxes. What I mean is that the 2400 version of Squadron Box One had a metal 1-3788 Fed DNG, BC, CA, CL, and FF. The 2500 version will have a resin 1-3200 Fed DNG, BC, CA, CL, and FF.

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They will also release Fed, Klingon, and Romulan Fleet Box sets (16 ships for $99.99). Those boxes don't match anything in the 2400 range. There will be a 2500 version of the Border Boxes, but that will be mail order only, 24 ships for $129.95 with the same ship types as the 2400 Border Boxes.

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Squadron Boxes 3-8 and 10-12 will appear over the subsequent few weeks, as fast as production allows. The content of those is the same ship types as the 2400 series squadron boxes.

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All of the Mongoose ships will be available in blister packs as individual ships (or in some cases more than one copy of a given ship). However, this is mostly a backup and special order system; I doubt that many stores will stock the individual blisters. (They should all be able to get them for you, and all of the boxes and blisters will be on both shopping carts.)

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I am asked fairly often if people should pre-order the stuff on the Mongoose site or wait until we put it on our cart. That's up to you. We get exactly the same amount of money both ways. You might get the first few ships a day or two faster from them, but after that, they should ship on the same day from both warehouses. One might suppose that it depends on what else you want. If you want Captain's Log #44, which won't be on the Mongoose cart, you might save a few dollars in shipping by ordering a combined order of ships, ACTASF1 rulebook, and CL#44 from us. It may depend more on where you live than anything else. The contract provides for simultaneous release of the products by both companies, but because of the short intense schedule, we've agreed that as soon as they land on the loading dock, they're going back out.

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Beyond the joint-venture products, we will have a number of our own releases, probably about the same point in time.

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Captain's Log #44 will of course be the main release. I'm personally writing a special story of Day One (the Klingon invasion of the Federation) and the issue will have the same cover art as ACTASF1. This issue will have all of the usual features, plus a new section on the joint-venture products done with Mongoose.

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I expect that we will also have Boosters #31, #32, and #33 available. The cards are ready to print but we are waiting for cover art.

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Steven Petrick has completed Module E3: Borak Star League and we will release that at the same time.

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As always, next year is a little murky, but it's starting to come into focus. As we are not going to Origins next year, we don't have to design the entire year around those releases but can space things out in a more rational pattern.

We will have Captain's Logs #45 and #46. These may (or may not) be bigger. (We've been discussing the idea of a larger format for some time now. If we go ahead with that, the cost will go up by whatever it takes to cover the extra pages.)

Star Fleet Battles
will get a new product or two, but we've yet to decide what they will be.

Starmada will get a new edition, plus Battleships Armada and perhaps another new book.

Star Fleet Marines and Federation Admiral will be done as fast as possible.

The next Federation & Empire product will be Civil Wars, but I'm not sure if it will come out in 2012 or 2013.

We have two Federation Commander products cooking, and one (or maybe both) will come out next year. One is a reinforcements pack with a few ships for every empire. The other is the first Borders of Madness product, with the first scouts, maulers, carriers, and escorts. Both will get done within the next 18 months, and maybe within 12 months. We will just have to see.

The Prime Directive line will expand into Mongoose Traveller, and we may take a shot at getting another empire book done.

The Mongoose joint-venture series will doubtless include one if not two major new releases, each comprising a book and a range of miniatures packs. Each ACTASF book will match some combination of Federation Commander products so we can do the corresponding Squadron Boxes.

I have a secret plan in the works to get an expansion out for our card game, Star Fleet Battle Force.

There are some other products that will appear that I am not prepared to reveal at this time.