Good day! It has been a while, but I (Isaac) am back in the update chair. I hope you all are doing well!

Today we’ve got your usual Gloomhaven fulfillment updates, along with some RPG spreads we’re very proud of. In addition, I know there has been some clamoring to get more information about how the miniatures project is coming along, so Price has put together an update for you on that as well. Let’s get to it!

LaserOx (all regions): All organizers have shipped! If you have any issues with your shipment or the LaserOx product specifically please contact [email protected].

Asia: Saudi Arabia and United Arab Emirates have shipped, and all shipments are proceeding as normal. Please be aware that it can take a couple weeks from Hub arrival for individual orders to arrive. You can always get the most up to date information at VFI’s hub page under the “Gloomhaven” section.

EU/RoW: Fulfillment continues! We have just under 1,000 shipments left which includes about 200 base game orders. Fulfillment Europe plans to have the majority shipped before the end of the week with the remainder shipping out Mon/Tues.

US: The last fulfillment shipment was received over the weekend! There are roughly 300 orders remaining that are expected to go out today/tomorrow, once those have shipped US fulfillment will be complete. We will update this post once that happens, then preorders from the Cephalofair website will start shipping by the end of the week. (Update: US fulfillment is now complete and fulfillment website orders is in process.) Note that any backers who have not paid the tariff fee have not had their order uploaded. If you still have a remaining balance please contact [email protected].

Canada: Folded Space pallets have arrived, and the remaining orders have started shipping! The estimate we received is that all pending orders will be shipped out by the end of the week.

UK: Fulfillment complete! Please note that some items may still be in transit, however if you have not received any type of tracking information at this time please contact [email protected].

AU/NZ: Fulfillment complete! Please note that some items may still be in transit, however if you have not received any type of tracking information at this time please contact [email protected].

We are continuing to make progress on the miniatures front. As we get closer and closer to final approval on everything, you can see that Jaws of the Lion has joined Forgotten Circles at 100% approvals, and both are awaiting mold production.

There has also been a lot of progress made on the summons fronts, and we are down to the last couple of batches of digital and red wax samples. We are expecting another round of digital, red wax, and PU samples incoming this week from our manufacturer so the progress can continue.

Greetings mercenaries! As we discussed last week, we’ve got an ancestry spread to share with you today. I’d also like to share how we went about solving what I felt was a bit of a tricky design. Ancestry Skills are an important part of a mercenary’s toolset, and you can see ancestry influence in the board game abilities for each of the classes. The design required ancestry Skills to function with every class, make each ancestry choice feel meaningful in a mechanical way, and show off an ancestry’s skills and culture without devolving to bioessentialism.

We felt the most important of these aspects was to make each ancestry feel mechanically representative of what the culture is about. In doing this, the Skills would be naturally distinct. Then we could tweak them for usefulness. Rather than just going through the board game abilities and trying to separate what part of it came from the class, and which came from the ancestry, we looked at what we knew about each ancestry and what would make sense for all mercenaries of that ancestry to have access to.

For example, most savvas have elemental cores. While the cragheart’s core is broken, they can still access Earth. Every savvas, regardless of chosen profession, has been trained to work with elements from the time they were created in the Copperneck Mountains. So of course, any savvas mercenary should be able to work with elements in a small way.

As you can see with the orchid spread, we took into account how orchids store their memories in crystals, both the process and the result. Their crystal growths are probably the most memorable orchid trait, and they use them and the rest of their physiology as tuning and vibration mechanisms. They use these vibrations to communicate, manipulate elements, sooth minds, and heal wounds. So of course, orchids have several healing abilities.

The last piece, combining any ancestry with any class, influenced how we represented those abilities on the Skills, at what level, and the pairings between primary and secondary actions. As each mercenary always has access to two of their ancestry Skills to pair with their class Skills, we wanted them to be able to act in a utilitarian manner. So, they might give a powerful attack earlier than you’d normally see, grant more conditions, or are clearly useful when mercenaries need to test their Attributes in combat. They can add versatility to classes that normally wouldn’t have a way to gain certain effects, like Shield or element manipulation.

I love all the ancestries and their intricacies, but I find the orchid mindset as one that I aspire to share. There’s so much to learn from the world, and the thought of living my life always expecting to find out something new, or gain a new understanding of something I already know is really compelling to me. Unfortunately, I feel I might be a bit too impulsive to truly identify with our orchid friends.

In other news, we’ve got a small crew headed out to PAX West this weekend, so if you’re in Seattle, be sure to stop by booth 4235 (2nd floor of the Summit Building). We’ll have demos of the mercenary packs, Gloomhaven, and Buttons & Bugs.

And finally, we’re interested in your feedback! As fulfillment on Gloomhaven winds down, we are considering slowing down updates to once a month as we work on finishing up the miniatures and RPG. We’d be interested to hear from you if you feel like this would be a welcome change, or whether you’d prefer these more frequent updates. So let us know!

And either way, we’ll be back in two weeks with more info on where we’re at. Catch you then!