Roller coaster of Life

The Essen Spiel starts the same way every year: you arrive in a busy hall filled with vans, forklifts and pallets. The aisles are filled with packing material and other trash. It takes several hours to get your booth ready, then a quick dinner and some sleep. The next morning is the “run and fight for your table” -competition in the novelty room. Every year over 1300 new board games are published, and most of them are presented in Essen Spiel. This year we presented Darwinning!, The Revised edition of Perdition’s Mouth and the Hideout expansion. My hands were shaking when I tried to set up all components for the press to wonder. I was sweating and cold at the same time. Once the novelty room set up was done, instead of staying at our booth, I went to see a doctor. The stubborn Spanish ‘flu was still making my life miserable.

The doctor’s appointment wasn’t as smooth and quick as in Spain. I had to fill up several forms: permission for saving my personal data and an affirmation that I haven’t arrived in Germany just to get medical care. They photocopied my passport and made me wait an hour. This time the doctor did speak English, and after listening to my lungs, he wrote a prescription for the same antibiotics I got already in Spain. In addition to that, he prescripted several herbal products and an extra dose of zinc and vitamin c. In Finland, you never get any prescription for herbal products. I bought all the stuff and hoped they would help me to survive hectic Essen Spiel.

Our booth was filled with players during Essen Spiel. 

Novelty Trashes

Lee is showing Dwarf prototype for I-Play-Red.

I know that the best medicine for a ‘flu is rest. But that was not possible to arrange. This year our booth with six tables was filled with gamers, all the time. All of a sudden it was already Saturday, and I remembered our games were still in the novelty room. I was supposed to pick them up on Friday evening. I soon learned I was not the only one who forgot the deadline. On Sunday, after closing time, I entered the novelty room with some other publishers. We found a massive pile of game components, tablecloths, roll-ups and brochures. Novelties were just waiting for a trash bin. I was lucky and found our games at the very front of the pile, some components were a bit crushed but mostly ok.

Novelties on their way to the trash bin...

The room had been locked and not used after Friday. Why the organisers had just to swipe everything to a huge pile of trash? Is it really that difficult to create some system to serve exhibitors with a bad memory? On the other hand, if so many publishers just do not care about the material they put out to novelty room and don’t bother to pick it up, perhaps they should pay some extra fee.  I felt awful when I left the room. I really hope Friedhelm Merz Verlag would do something to improve the practical arrangements of the novelty room in Essen Spiel. Not only for the benefit of small publishers with a lousy memory, but also for the environment.

Stop and Go Punishment

The Friday after Essen I was driving a German autobahn towards Leipzig. We had had a couple of relaxing days with a proper sauna at the Camping in Naumburg, which have become our second home during this year. All of a sudden the car started shaking, a lot. I thought a tire exploded and drove to an exit. On the ramp, the car just stopped. I tried to turn on the engine. Nothing.

The membership of The Automobile and Touring Club of Finland (ATCF) proved again to be worth every euro. The car was towed to VW repair store and our caravan to the other side of the street. Our not-invited travelling companion Mr Murphy had clearly thought to stop our tour by busting the car engine. How wrong was he! Already on the same evening, we had organised a rental car to pull the caravan. We created a Quickstarter fundraising campaign and asked for the help of the board gaming community. The community replied, and our campaign was funded within some hours.

Potato Peeling And Steaming Advocaat

30 tons of games arrived
after 6 days of waiting.

The following days were quite a rollercoaster, with events and emotions. Of course, we had allocated that time as vacation time. Instead of relaxing we ended up solving one problem after another. In addition to the car issue, we had 30 tons of games stuck in German customs, due to a missing hyphen in freight papers. When Kickstarter threatened to suspend our Quickstarter, and one promising car turned out to be a fraud, I sat by the kitchen table shedding tears and writing an update to campaign backers. I had to remind my self that I shouldn’t try to solve everything at once. A huge pile of potatoes can be peeled only one potato at a time.

It’s important to ask for help when you need it. We contacted all our German friends with the car issue. They offered translation help and searched Mobile.de and other car sales platforms. Most of these friends we have met for the first time on this tour. Like Sven and his family, who we learned to know during the hot summer, at a beach by a German lake. When we had promised a place for a night with sauna in Lapland to Sven and his friend on their tour to Nordkapp next summer, we didn’t know how important that connection would be. During this crisis, we found out he is the most amazing, good-hearted man in Germany. He promised to help us with the registration of the new car.

We also had unforgettable, good moments during those days. We visited a spa, Leine Bad. They had several saunas. Unlike in many other spa saunas, these were unisex and still, people were naked. The only difference for Finnish sauna was that people were not allowed to throw water on the stove. It was the saunameisters task. German saunameister is a profession, and throwing the water is a half an hour show. We were lucky to experience one of these shows. The guy poured to the stove some advocaat mixed in water and spread the löyly with a big fan. The seats were covered with red-faced, sweating and puffing Germans and some Finns, smiling widely and clearly enjoying themselves.

Our new car and caravan at our warehouse in Leipzig.

Anti-Stress Surprise

Väinö was teaching Perdition's Mouth
for boys his age in Spielwiesn.

Ten days after the engine suddenly died out, we bought a car, Mercedes Benz Vito with automatic gears and 4-wheel driving. It is always risky to buy a used car, but we were really out of options. We filled the van with our games and booth equipment and drove to Munich.

Spielwiesn turned out to be a great event with many visitors. Yet again, we were the only foreign exhibitor. Besides of boardgames and delicious snacks, the fair offered an exhibition of Lego constructions.

So many Legos, so neatly placed...

I was explaining the rules of Darwinning at our booth when a woman came with a surprise present. She had read about our problems from Spieleschmiede’s Facebook update and wanted to meet us and help us. She gave me a yellow “DDP” car and an Anti-Stress postcard. I shed some more tears, but now because of joy and sentiment. We are not alone on this tour. There is a whole community travelling with us.

30 Tons of Games

The Revised Edition of Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift is ready. Gameboards, scenario sheets, cards and rulebooks are printed. Heroes and enemies manufactured. Punchboards are waiting for punching. We have been working on the Revised Edition for over a year. Even if the product is ready, the work is not yet finished. The games need transporting. Let me clarify: the 30 tons of games we produced need transporting from one continent to three other continents. Quite a task for a micro-company...

Quality Time

Printproofs of Perdition's Mouth.

It has been quite challenging to keep to our production schedule while we have been on tour. The hard part has been nominating a delivery address for physical print proofs and production samples. You know, an address where we knew we would be within 2 weeks and stay there over 2 days. There haven’t been many places like that. When the production samples got stuck in German customs for 5 days due to a not-so-accurate packing list, it really made our life difficult. A company can get up to 5 production samples without any custom fees. We got one package, but of 10 different products. So 10 samples, because the packing list had only one line ”board game sample”. Tiny, but costly error.

Timo and I checked all the products in the heat of the German summer. It took some hours to go through all the different language versions of PM:RE, to see if they had the correct sheets and cards, count all the miniatures, check the UPC codes... We also checked the packing and functionality of the new insert. We found errors. It is always frustrating at this time of the production, when you really want give the green light and get things rolling. When you are running out of time on the agreed schedule. Even if we know it’s better to find them at this point and not when the first customer sends you a request for missing parts.

The quality is more important than the schedule. I believe all players are happier to get a decent game week or two later than originally assumed, than get a game on time but with flaws. Nevertheless, ironing out every small typo is virtually impossible. Something will be left in the final product and we know our fans will find those.

Carton, Pallet And Container

Darwinning! is much smaller game.
The whole European shipment was one pallet.

Once we were convinced the game box has all the components it is supposed to have, we allowed the manufacturer to proceed. We gave instructions of how many game boxes and items should go into a carton. I made an Excel spreadsheet with all pre-orders of each item and started to count how many cartons of each item we need in Europe, USA and Australia. Then we made a sales estimation for each area. Based on these numbers we provided packing instructions to the Chinese manufacturer and asked how many pallets to each location this would be.

There are different sizes for pallets. It took a while to establish an understanding with the Chinese of the correct – and cheapest – pallet size and height. Based on the numbers of pallets we got from China, Timo started to organise transportation. From China to Europe there are two alternatives: ocean freight or a train. The train is faster and not so much more expensive. We used it for PM:TG. We decided to transport a small part (just 4 tons!!) by train so we could have some games in Essen Spiel.

We quickly learned that we need full containers for shipping the remaining part of our games. You know, those colossal metal boxes you see in harbours. After Timo had found a freight company with a reasonable price for 20ft containers, the Chinese gave us new numbers. Their first calculations were off by 10 cubic meters! We would need a 40ft container for the European shipment. The taller 40ft container.

Hamburg harbour. Look at the amount of containers on that ship!

The Trade War

When you think this shipping task couldn’t get any more demanding, the War begins. And now I mean the trade war between China and USA. Board games have been free of any tariffs. But as you know, the situation with duties can change as fast as Mr Trump can tweet. Due to the war, shipping prices from China to the US have risen radically: A container from China to USA costs double the cost of the same container to any European port, or more. Everybody wants to get their products to the US before any new tariffs are introduced. The latest news also suggests that toys from China will have a tariff. At the moment, nobody knows whether this will also affect board games.

All we can do is ship our games and hope for the best. Typhoons, hurricanes, pirates and tariffs: stay away, Perdition’s Mouth is coming!

Perdition’s Mouth Gameplay on Youtube

Many PM reviews have been filmed. It is a really good game for filming as it has quite a lot of fantastic looking components. You can even find some playthroughs of the introductory scenario. Today, we can now offer you something even better than that.

HitPointsGaming is a team of game enthusiasts, that record their play of various games. They already finished three (full!) Kingdom Death campaigns and many others. We are happy they agreed to film a play of Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift gameplay as well. And this time we do not speak about the well known 1a scenario, they started the campaign the hard way. The quality of their recording and cut is way better than the overall Youtube standard. Just see yourself, right here!

What Goes Around, Comes Around

Many cars in Brussels
look like they have
met this guy...

Let’s make one thing clear: Brussels and cars are not meant to go together. Period. No amount of history, no international atmosphere, no golden decorations at the Grand Place can fix that. The heart of Europe is suffering from lousy cholesterol, blocked veins in the form of traffic jams. It’s filled with road construction, one-way streets, too few parking spaces and the worst driving culture I’ve ever seen. If you don’t believe me, go driving in Brussels. If you are still happy after three minutes, I’ll buy you a beer. The beer there is good.

From Dawn to Dust

Brussel Game Festival was a nice change from the normal conventions. It’s held outdoors, in the Cinquantenaire Park. The organisers provide small tents for booths and punters arrive at the place through a magnificent triumphal arch. That is, of course, if they know how to drive there…

We had our car packed ready, parking permission printed and coordinates for the car park. With the help of Google Maps navigation, we were driving to set up the booth. ”You have reached your destination” the navigator announced – when we were in a tunnel, under the park! After a lot of swearing, desperate zooming of the map, illegal parking and a phone call to the organisers, we finally managed to enter the park with our van.

Timo presented Darwinning! to  Boardgame Heaven.

The park seemed to be a lovely place for a gaming event until the wind got going. Fine dust from the paths of the park flew around and covered everything. Every now and then we had to chase treasure cards and brochures flying away. During the weekend we had several rain showers, during which we had to quickly collect presentation material together and move our tables further under the tent.

Our booth was full the whole weekend.

The Coffee Queue

Even though we had to empty our tent-booth every evening, the event was pretty smooth and pleasant to be part of. Except in the mornings. I need my morning coffee to wake up. Convention days are so exhausting that extra coffee is mandatory.

In the coffee queue. They tried to keep me happy, anyway...

We got food and drink coupons from the organisers. For beer, there were three tents with several beer taps. For coffee, only two machines, which made one cup at a time. A long time. It’s not a very effective way to serve exhibitors.

In Finland, the organiser would have made 50 litres of filtered coffee in a large container with a tap. Pouring a cup would have taken 2 seconds. Don't tell me about freshly ground beans and sophisticated flavour. At the fair, in the morning, people are not looking for a barista experience. They need caffeine. Whatever liquid form you serve it in, they are happy.

Touring Traditions

We stayed in Brussels at the same place we were at during our February visit: the youth hostel Aubergess des Jeunesse. If you ever want to torture yourself by going to Brussels with a caravan or a motorhome, I can recommend this place. The centre of Brussels is within walking distance.

Väinö came back from summer holiday and
started working right away. These players came
from Spain and we will meet them
later this year in Spanish conventions.

Getting out from Brussels turned out to be very difficult this time. The first route was under construction, and getting another option required three different satnav systems. And still, we took a wrong lane in a tunnel. But we decided to drive on, just to get out of the city. We didn’t have a clear plan about where to go for the next night. We have three weeks for a drive to Barcelona. Plenty can happen, many places could be visited.

All of a sudden, we noticed we were heading south, towards Luxembourg. You remember February when we accidentally ended up there… The only country during this tour where we didn’t stay overnight. So we decided to fix that and refresh our memories of Luxembourg. It’s good to have traditions: all roads to (and from) Brussels go via Luxembourg!

Did You Saw The Saw?

Olazábal and The Saw at UKGE.
Picture by I Play Red, thanks!

It was early morning. Olazábal was walking through corridors, alert, finger ready to pull the power button of her circular saw. She soon spotted a familiar, tall figure with grey hair. “It’s time to introduce The Saw to him..”, Olazábal thought. She approached the figure with determined steps. She pulled the trigger and The Saw started spinning with a hissing sound. “Remember me?” she asked, grinning and pointing at the guy, with The Saw. “OMG! What is that?” Rahdo asked with a surprised smile.

The Making of Olazábal

In Perdition’s Mouth one of the heroes, Olazábal, is a female dwarf. She has a circular saw, powered by steam, as a weapon. For almost a year I have been preparing an Olazábal costume. The clothes and the beard were the easy part. You might remember her from the Kickstarter video of Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift Revised Edition. The weapon was trickier to do.

These machines are
just so beautiful!

A box in our car has all kinds of cogwheels and pipes for the saw but I had lacked inspiration for building it. I found the inspiration in The Technical Museum in Brno, which had big, working, steam machines! The sunny days in Czechia gave me time to spray paint cogwheels, pressure meters and the shoulder pads I had bought from Modena Play. Of course, the lack of proper tools made the build a bit demanding and I ended up finishing the saw with duct tape (at least it was orange!).

SteampunkAndFantasy had the latex wrench.
They also had some nice steampunk corsets
- but unfortunately Olazábal does not wear one...

Pyrkon and its great variation of handcrafts provided me with the one missing part for the costume: a latex wrench. Olazábal was finally ready to enter the crowded corridors of the cult of board gamers at UKGE.

Network With Faces

Good business networks are something you really need in the board game industry. It is not enough that you have a great game idea, perhaps even new mechanics to present. You need good graphics, previews, reviews, retailers and, of course, the buyers. UKGE was an excellent place to build our network.

Rahdo listening the idea of Darwinning!
This time I was without the beard.

I really liked meeting Rahdo. He made a preview of Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift when it was first on Kickstarter. He was very happy to see how far we had got with the game. I asked if he would have time to learn about Darwinning!. He noticed my lunch fruits and answered: “Only if you give me a banana, I need something to eat.” So he got his banana, and learned that there is a humorous card game coming that he can soon review.

Giles Pound makes reviews, podcasts and blogs on his site, Both Sides of My Table. It is always nice to present games to people who really love gaming. It’s even better if you can provide them with something new. You can check here what Giles has to say about Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift!

Jamie Noble, the artist of
the original Olazábal art.

After UKGE we drove north, to meet Paul “Catweazel” Tunaley. We really like his learn-to-play videos. During a nice dinner of Indian food we had a good talk about board games and upcoming videos.

Tristan Hall has designed
new scenario for Olazábal
and her friends in PM:RE. 

Even though all reviewers are important for our business, really, I most enjoy meeting the players. The people who stop at the booth just to tell us “I’m your backer, I really like your  games”. They are the reason why we are in this business. It’s great to meet those happy faces.

Come And Meet Us!

“I dropped my pledge and I’ve been regretting that ever since. I came to fix my error.” A guy said to me at our booth, as he bought Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift. Yeah, that happens. If you have made such an error, or have missed our games and campaigns for other reasons, don’t worry! Our tour continues, just come and meet us!

Our current schedule for the next few months is:

Berlin Brettspiele Con, Germany 21.-22.7.

Brussels Game Festival, Belgium 24.-26.8.

Jokos, Spain 21.-23.9. (please don’t let it snow…)

Cordoba, Spain 11.-13.10.

Essen Spiel, Germany 25.-28.10.

Spielwiesn, Germany, 16.-18.11.
And some more...

Do send us a hint if you know a good convention!

Safe Sweating

Sylvia presenting PM:AR in Pyrkon.

“Our booth is behind the crib,” I told Tomasz ja Sylvia from For2players.  They carried our game boxes to the booth. We had 15 minutes to set everything up before the doors opened to the public. The baby in the crib at the neighbouring booth was playing happily, while his mother and other exhibitors and retailers were setting up their displays. 15 minutes was all we needed. Soon the aisle was filled with fantasy creatures, pokemon, warriors and happy people offering “free hugs” on their signs. Pyrkon, an amazing fantasy festival, had started.

The Other Rulebook

Our booth in UKGE was
nicely located close to
our PM:RE manufacturer.

Two weeks after Pyrkon we were carrying games to our booth in Birmingham, for UKGE. Our son was stopped at the door: no minors allowed! I was stunned and the memories of Nuremberg surfaced. I had re-read the exhibitors guide for UKGE just the night before to check set-up times and other instructions and hadn’t found any age limits.

It was in the other rulebook, the rules of the NEC, which I hadn’t read since in March. That one had the age limits and safety regulations. I was soon told that we were breaking several of them. The worst thing was that we were wearing sandals, due to the nice, sunny weather. It was mandatory to have shoes that cover your feet. Luckily we had managed to smuggle most of our stuff to the booth in our sandals, so we just left the exhibiting hall.

Saved by Rubber Boots

The problem was that the safety regulations of the erection phase extended to the area for the press preview. Väinö and I were supposed to present our games there within an hour for the large crows of press people. I managed to get permission for Väinö to enter, with proper shoes. All our other shoes were in our caravan at the camping site but the two of us had rubber boots in the car. So we put the rubber boots on and ran to set up our playing cards and flyers. I know that all the journalists didn’t have “proper shoes” when they walked around checking new games. Man, was I feeling safe sweating in the rubber boots behind our table!

UKGE during the time when sandals were ok.

At UKGE, any time other than the public opening times was considered “building and restocking time” = safety regulation time. So every morning our exhibitor son was forced to wait at the front gate for the convention to open and he had to leave the hall right after closing time.
I remembered the baby in his crib in Pyrkon. We are in the EU - even the British are for a while - and one easily thinks we have the same rules. This tour has taught us, though, that each country is different. Each organization is different. Each board game convention is different. In some countries people can work and be safe with fewer rules.

In Pyrkon we were allowed to camp in the fair area.
That was nice - but noisy because the fantasy parties lasted all night long.

Bloody Business

Something's bloody wrong here!

Something was bothering me, but I couldn’t find out what it was. We had received the first print proofs of Perdition’s Mouth: Abyssal Rift Revised Edition from the manufacturer, LongPack Games. The table was covered with big paper sheets and original maps of PM:AR. At first glance the print proofs of maps had looked fine. But just to be sure, I checked every square and compared those to the original maps. It was the map ”Small Nest” where the truth finally hit me: the blood on the floor was grey!

We hunted the missing blood colour for hours. Eventually we found out that one specific effect in a layer in Photoshop files acted differently in CS5 vs. CS5.5. The error could be fixed only with version CS5.5, and only one of our team members had that. Fortunately he had time to help. Making the maps requires several technical steps and it took us two days to fix everything. Still, it was a relief to find and fix the error before actual production.

Nostalgic Moments

We had busy May: development week in Vienna and then 3 conventions in 3 different countries. From Vienna we headed straight north, to Brno. There was a small gaming weekend in a local board game bar. One of our team members, David, lives in Brno, and it was great to meet him again. We had two extra hours before the event, and we used those in the Technical Museum. I could have stayed there the whole day after I found the computer with Bubble Bobble! Oh, what a nostalgic moment!

It was kind of nostalgic to hear the Finnish language, too. A Finnish couple stayed at the same camping place near Brno. They had a boy, a few years younger than ours, but also named Väinö. While the two Väinös were playing, we parents had time to compare traveling experiences and - because Finland is such a small country – to find common friends. The lady was Finnish sculptor Heli Ryhänen, she knew the artists of my home village and had taught my cousin.

Murphy Strikes Again

Many people thought our problems with car and caravan ended when there were none mentioned in latests blog entries. The three flat tyres we had in Italy just didn’t seem like news. Mr. Murphy obviously agreed and created new tricks when we entered Poland, on our way to Pyrkon.

Polish roads are narrow, curvy and bumpy. A bit more bumpy than other countries. So somewhere in the middle of a Polish country road, we heard a loud crash. We stopped and found our 6 meter long awning lying on the road side. It required some geometrical appraisal and strong muscles to get that thing in the caravan. We found out that the distance from the end of our bed to the kitchen window is exactly same as our awning.

My dearest friend, Google, was again helpful. I couldn’t believe my eyes when my search gave me a 24/7 caravan repair shop just 40 km away in the direction we were going. Well, they didn’t speak any English there. And Google navigation directed us to the wrong place. But after three phone calls (mixing English and German), one false address and navigation based on a Facebook page, we eventually found the repair shop on a suburban backyard. There was an Ukrainian worker, no common language. He understood the problem after seeing the muddy and scratched awning on the kitchen table and the empty holders outside the caravan. It was soon fixed and costed less than 30 euros.

So Family Multamäki beat Mr. Murphy again, fast and furious. Murphy made his revenge the next morning and ripped one mudguard off the caravan with the help of bushes at the campsite. But who needs mudguards, anyway.