Author Topic: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread  (Read 22101 times)

ColBosch

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #150 on: 01 November 2024, 12:44:01 »
Rereading the trilogy at the moment.

No she refers to hers as WidowMaker & Phelan's as LoneWolf.

And the Lone Wolf configuration is listed on the MUL, so disregard my previous musings. The Widowmaker LRM is canon and should be added to the MUL.
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Teejay75

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #151 on: 01 November 2024, 13:01:39 »
Episode 31
-Mercs Kickstarter update:  Items are still arriving at the hubs.  US/Canada/Non-hub ROW are at 19,300 shipped or label created so shipping will be very soon.  About 1,500 remain to ship. No additional update for international shipping.
-New/recent Releases
--The following should be on the store on Friday

---Force Manual Kurita
---Technical blueprints
Sweet! 1499 more and I'll get my address confirmation email! :grin:

FM Kurita and the blueprints are what I'm ordering!

Edit: That's both ordered from the CGL store. I really don't care about the pdf but they don't have the book on sale at Fortress yet and I'm expending all of my patience on the KS. Anyone know when the MAC force box will be hitting B&N? I'd like to get a preorder in on those.
« Last Edit: 01 November 2024, 13:10:33 by Teejay75 »

Lorcan Nagle

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #152 on: 01 November 2024, 13:40:01 »
Last update was that it hadn't arrived in the US yet
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #153 on: 01 November 2024, 13:45:00 »
I forget, what was in that box?
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ColBosch

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #154 on: 01 November 2024, 13:53:55 »
I forget, what was in that box?

New sculpts/variants of the Black Knight and Awesome, a jumping Starslayer, and the new Tian-Zong.
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #155 on: 01 November 2024, 14:35:20 »
And the Lone Wolf configuration is listed on the MUL, so disregard my previous musings. The Widowmaker LRM is canon and should be added to the MUL.

Sooo, interestingly enough, as I mentioned, I just read this book in the last week, and I noticed that the Sarna description does not at all match what is in the book.

Quote
Widowmaker LRM
The configuration of Dire Wolf piloted by Natasha Kerensky at her Trial of Position to test out as a MechWarrior. For long range combat, the ER PPCs are replaced by shoulder-mounted twin LRM-20 launchers with 24 racks, first half being Swarm LRMs and backed up by a Large Pulse Laser mounted in each arm. For close combat, the left torso carries three ER Medium Lasers in triangular configuration in the chest and the stubby LB 20-X AC with 10 cluster rounds underslung on the right torso. For when things gets dicey, a "fire and forget" SRM-6 one-shot launcher above cockpit, just aft of the hatch and only 20 double strength heat sinks. This configuration was just for her Trial of Position and not used again.[30] No record sheet or statistics have been provided for this configuration.

The above is from Sarna.

However, from the actual novel this is what we know.

1.  "Some" LRMs in both Shoulders. 
Nowhere does it say they are 20 Racks - And the Notation about Swarm is PHELAN'S mech, not Natasha's.

2.  No where does it say the ERPPCs are removed.  It specifically points out double over/under barrels on each arm but does NOT mention what type they are.
So they could have been PPCs, Larges, or Mediums,  we don't know.

3.  The Trio of Laser ports just says Torso, so we don't know that it is Left v/s the canon Windowmaker version of 2CT/1HD.

4.  The AutoCannon is not specified by Caliber, and we don't know its LBX at all since again the "CLUSTER" notation was Phelan asking about his mech, LoneWolf.

5.  The "Fire & Forget, Missile Pack in the Head, was ALSO Phelan's mech & is not Natashas.


I really don't know where the stats on Sarna are from.
I feel like that might be someone's "Fan" stats, since it specifically says no RS has ever been provided.

I'm going to try to make it match what data we get from the book & see what it comes out as.

I'll post over in the designs thread.
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #156 on: 02 November 2024, 20:34:03 »
deleted
« Last Edit: 02 November 2024, 21:06:06 by Tinyozora »

Blkbr2020

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #157 on: 04 November 2024, 13:42:06 »
I saw IKEO for December in one of the recaps. Any news on the novel that covers the same timeframe? The name is escaping me at the moment.

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #158 on: 04 November 2024, 18:31:00 »
I saw IKEO for December in one of the recaps. Any news on the novel that covers the same timeframe? The name is escaping me at the moment.

Trial of Birthright by Michael Ciaravella is the events from the Wolf point of view, they were talking about a summer release for it but that obviously never happened, no word on it since then.

Blood will Rise by Tom Leveen is the events from the Liao point of view, and was last listed as an April release
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #159 on: 05 November 2024, 01:10:16 »
Sooo, interestingly enough, as I mentioned, I just read this book in the last week, and I noticed that the Sarna description does not at all match what is in the book.

The above is from Sarna.

However, from the actual novel this is what we know.
[…]
I really don't know where the stats on Sarna are from.
I feel like that might be someone's "Fan" stats, since it specifically says no RS has ever been provided.

I'm going to try to make it match what data we get from the book & see what it comes out as.

I'll post over in the designs thread.
I appreciate your effort there.

Sarna is not gospel. It’s what a given editor - a regular BT fan like you and me - wrote, their best effort at accurately describing canon how they understood it to describe the subject of the article. As such, it can be grossly misleading or outright wrong. Always cite sources when writing; always check citations when reading.

As for the issue at hand, I've always been at a loss as to why individual Omni configurations are even worth mentioning, much less if they aren’t standard configurations. You don’t list individual cargo configurations for dump trucks, after all. But that’s just me being a certified Clan hater. ;)
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #160 on: 05 November 2024, 10:27:55 »
Last update was that it hadn't arrived in the US yet

Where did you hear this?  And was there an ETA?

My order is still being held up by two pairs of dice.

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #161 on: 05 November 2024, 11:39:05 »
Where did you hear this?  And was there an ETA?

My order is still being held up by two pairs of dice.

From the episode 30 transcript:

Quote
Any word on McCarron’s Armoured Cav forcepack?  It was originally slated for this month, as of two weeks ago it hadn’t arrived at PSI and Rem hasn’t gotten an update yet.
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #162 on: 06 November 2024, 18:53:44 »
Was there a Tuesday Newsday yesterday?

ColBosch

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #163 on: 06 November 2024, 19:12:31 »
Was there a Tuesday Newsday yesterday?

No.
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Lorcan Nagle

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #164 on: 12 November 2024, 17:31:19 »
Episode 32
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=zWPvJvfJbBQ
12th November 2024
Guest: Christopher Frye, Business Development Manager at Liya International

News

-Pax Unplugged - first weekend in December, CGL will be streaming
--2025 product announcements
--Schedule will be posted soon
-Grinder kits have arrived at the CGL warehouse.  800 copies are being sent to distributors, 200 set aside for demo team.
-New releases
--BattleTech
---Kurita T-shirt (reissue of the faction logo from Clan Invasion kickstarter)
---Founding of the Clans digital box set
---Support deck revised
---Technical blueprints
---Commander’s case
---Force Manual: Kurita
--November
---Shadowrun
----Tarnished Star
---BattleTech
----Hot Spots: Hinterlands
----Essentials, full retail release
-Shadowrun fiction Humble Bundle live at the moment


-Chris was hired by Liya to get new clients, sales and so on.  His role has expanded to include project management and communications. He speaks with prospective clients, mans the booth at shows, they prefer passive sales to active cold-calling and the like.
The Owner of Liya owned a factory in China, moved to the US and opened an office there while still running the factory remotely.  Chris was hired to be the sociable face of the company.
-He was in the military and got a sales job in Pepsi where he learned a lot of people skills.  He was in the Flames of War scene, friends of his were helping him with his CV and sent it to Battlefront as they planned to open a US office and they interviewed them to run it, he worked for Privateer Press after that, then E-figures distribution and then Liya which he loves.
-Chris was talking about how he knows about CGL’s projects a year in advance and he says there’ll be some very fun announcements coming up.
-The 4” Mad Cat was a gift from Liya, they did the tooling and everything as an apology for scheduling issues with the first Kickstarter, and presented one to Loren at a dinner meeting.  Loren decided at that point to include it in the Mercs Kickstarter.
-Liya USA is very much there to aid English-speaking clients to work with Chinese manufacturers.  All Chris’ project managers speak English and Mandarin.  They have partners to do a lot of other work like shirts, hats and such that aren’t in-house at Liya’s factory but they have the contacts and will manage the relationship.
-CGL was already a Liya customer before Chris joined.
-Loren decided to work on product design through COVID when a lot of other companies were entirely shut down.  Even though production and shipping wasn’t necessarily happening they were still working on design and the like.
-Loren will ring Chris up with an idea, which becomes a spec sheet that comes to their dedicated product manager that details what they want - say a forcepack with 4 minis, a tray, box, cards etc.  That gets costed, STLs get sent over, prototypes are made, tooling includes working out how to make the separate pieces assemble as seamless as possible. 
-Mini assembly, QC and boxing is detailed in their videos on YouTube.
-When asked about relative costings of minis, Chris talked about how a lot of companies have larger capital overhead like renting an office, getting people to come in and work and all that adds costs that need to be accounted for in the sales price. Using a third party factory means that the overhead and capital costs of the factory are spread among multiple clients, and being a private company means no need to provide dividends to shareholders, like a certain other games company based in the UK
-Talking about production partners for the Shadowrun scroll, they talked about the production process. Liya’s contracted with separate factories to get the fabric print, the endcaps for the scroll, the wooden boxes and so on.  These all came to Liya’s factory for final assembly and QC.  Liya handle the billing to the partners, component overstock to account for QC issues and all that, so Randall or Talon or Loren only has to talk to a single contact to manage all that.
-Rem asked about what happens if CGL approach with a product idea that ends up with too high a cost?  Loren is very adept at negotiating, either altering the product, or working out a better price by ordering more units or combining an order, or shelving it until they can better afford it.
-CGL projects Chris has been most excited for: He can’t talk about it until after PAX.  From what people know about, the Mercs Kickstarter, he talked about the vehicles and BattleArmour, and that they learned a lot about the BattleArmour especially.
-Non-CGL project Chris loved the most? A Wonder Woman model for Cryptozoic, models for Wētā, Jasko’s Street Fighter line. Seeing thousands of all the same painted components that become dozens of finished models.
-Chris is always appreciative of Loren being mindful of Liya’s production capacity, they’ll hold off on projects to make sure they don’t overwhelm Liya


Q&A
-What’s the most emotionally impacting project? They do all the trains for Ticket to Ride, Asmodee did a huge order for components during COVID at a point when very little work coming in and it really helped keep the company going.  From a relationship-building moment, the 4” Mad Cat really helped Liya and CGL.
-Would Liya make models of their injection-molding machines like Bandai do of the gundam ones?  If you pay them enough. They’d be more likely to do STLs.  Based on employee feedback they’ve added more machines with robot arms to avoid strain on employees removing parts from the machines.
-Will all the Gencon interviews be on YouTube before PAX?  No, capacity issues mean editing has been slow.  Tyler also had to upload some raw footage which has been done
-Any update on shipping salvage boxes for people who got vehicles? It’s still on Tyler’s to-do list, they’ll probably ship direct from PSI.
Is there any chance of unassembled mechs?  In hard plastic?  Hard plastic is a different product line, and CGL would have to feel they have a customer base for them.  It’s a Loren and Randall decision, but it’s outside the current product line.  The big question is whether the product would be good enough to restock over and over.
-Who chooses the music for the YouTube clips?  Chris does, it’s the same song and it’s free in his editing app.
-Any news on the 2nd Star League Forcepack and McCarron’s Armoured Cav?  They hit PSI yesterday.  They’re expecting a December 11th release date right now..
-Is it possible to do injected plastic in different colours?  That’s how the Grinder kits are done.  They default to grey because it shows detail well. When asked if they could do two colours on a single model?  Not with their current machines, they’d have to do two separate parts and attach them seamlessly.
-What about mech-scale DropShips? It’s a great idea, maybe someone will announce that in the future.

-Chris asked Rem how she got into CGL?  One of the writers joined her Shadowrun group, she later wanted to to a live play of their story. She was introduced to Jason Hardy and from there to Loren who asked her to do up a promo video for her project.  She did a kickstarter for it and at the end realised she could manage kickstarters for other people. One of their first contracts was managing Edgezone for CGL. She was pestering Loren to manage the Mercs campaign and he didn’t respond, then two weeks before the launch he was like “hey, want to manage the campaign?” From there she suggested she just do marketing because CGL was paying consulting rates at that point.

-Chris talked about how impressive Ross Thompson is at marketing and what a force of nature he is.  Rem said she wants to be him when she grows up.

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #165 on: 12 November 2024, 17:48:05 »
Is Liya the same company doing the manufacturing for Leviathans?
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #166 on: 12 November 2024, 17:59:51 »
Evidently Kurita shirts sold out instantly? This posted an hour ago and by the time I was done with work everything 2X and up was sold out.
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #167 on: 12 November 2024, 18:01:07 »
Is Liya the same company doing the manufacturing for Leviathans?

No, they said they passed on Leviathans in the stream.  I generally cut non-BattleTech content from the version I post here but there's a full transcript in my google doc here:

https://docs.google.com/document/d/1E95l6FE2pwkThGM0h32GI8UHKYThcxNBeqNnEXSLClw/edit?usp=sharing
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #168 on: 12 November 2024, 18:10:46 »
Is Liya the same company doing the manufacturing for Leviathans?

No. That was stated in the podcast

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #169 on: 12 November 2024, 18:21:44 »
Evidently Kurita shirts sold out instantly? This posted an hour ago and by the time I was done with work everything 2X and up was sold out.

The Kurita shirts were on the store since at least October 31st.
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ProfessorMRB

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #170 on: 12 November 2024, 18:27:16 »
Ah, I'd been checking periodically for (checks notes) almost three years now. That's what complacency gets me, I guess.
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #171 on: 12 November 2024, 19:37:03 »
-The 4” Mad Cat was a gift from Liya, they did the tooling and everything as an apology for scheduling issues with the first Kickstarter, and presented one to Loren at a dinner meeting.
I do not like this method of apology.  it gives me the heebie-jeebies.  There are ethical problems with this method of apology.  I also do not like the idea that sentiment from this apology was made into a material thing, and thrown at Kickstarter backers with the idea that everyone would like or at least accept the plastic for one reason or another.  I specifically have my reason above, and one other reason regarding another miniatures company who used to have an excellent relationship with Catalyst, justifying why my copy of that Timber Wolf is now plastic chips.





oh, and the tingly feels from shredding a wolfbot helped too
« Last Edit: 12 November 2024, 19:39:27 by Youngblood »

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #172 on: 14 November 2024, 18:44:15 »
Was there any update on the premium Wolverine or BattleMaster?  I know Ren sent out a ping a couple of weeks ago.

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #173 on: 19 November 2024, 11:32:49 »
Noticed this on today's Tuesday Newsday

Quote
ATTENTION: This episode will air 2 hours later than normal (6pm ET) due to a scheduled power outage in Rem's area.

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #174 on: 19 November 2024, 13:03:30 »
Could someone who is planning on attending please ask about Tales of the Bounty Hunter?
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Lorcan Nagle

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #175 on: 19 November 2024, 14:12:13 »
I've put that on the question list
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #176 on: 19 November 2024, 15:15:30 »
Thanks Lorcan!   :drinking01:
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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #177 on: 19 November 2024, 19:09:57 »
Episode 33
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ecH_PKASoe8
19th November 2024
Guest: Joshua Franklin, BattleTech developer, Hot Spots: Hinterlands developer

News:
-CGL “may be doing something special” for Black Friday, it will be announced via the mailing list and then via social media
-PAX Unplugged is coming up soon, a list of “fun stuff” to be shared is being compiled. A list of panels and games will be announced soon

-Hot Spots: Hinterlands street date is the 27th of November. It releases on the CGL store on Black Friday
-The first big thing Joshua wrote for BattleTech was the Alpha Strike rulebook. He’s been working on the MUL and other volunteer projects before this. 
-He hadn’t done any writing before this, he joked that his English instructors would be surprised that he was writing professionally in any capacity.
-He had decided to do his own compilation rulebook for Quickstrike, the Alpha Strike predecessor and when CGL decided to do a standalone rulebook for the game someone pointed out that he’d already basically done one.
-He’s been into BattleTech since the late 80s, he tended to swing between D&D and BattleTech and he’s been on the BattleTech end for a long time.
-Working on the MUL let him propose ideas that ended up in the Combat Manuals.  He was credited as an assistant developer but he says that was an overstatement.
-He then wrote Turning Points Vega (War of 3039)
-Ray then asked him to work on the new Tukayyid book that became part of the Kickstarter. That was his first full developer credit.
From there he worked on the Force Manuals and Hot Spots: Hinterlands
-He’s more of a rules writer but for Hinterlands he gave the hot spot writers guidelines on what elements to use and then approached other writers to do the fiction and fluff.
-His early games were very much in the scavenger 3rd succession war vein, the players would have to capture units if they wanted to upgrade for example.  That’s always been a favoured way to play and he often tries to capture that in his books
-A favourite session of his was an Alpha Strike event he ran for the Mercs Kickstarter launch party.  It was a similar vibe to the Grinder but scaled for Alpha Strike.  So he had 8 players running 2 mechs each, 4 objective tokens in the board and each player had a different thing to do with the tokens - one had to hold them, one destroy, one steal, one drop off supplies, etc. He loves when games provoke conversation between the players
-Rem mentioned a similar moment at Gamehole con where she joined a grinder an hour from the end, there had been no kills so she joined in an Atlas and put a bounty on herself to create that cinematic moment of the Atlas cresting a hilltop and all the other mechs turn as one.
-The core idea for the book came from Ray, to try and recreate the Chaos March vibe, that player-sized units could get involved and feel like they can make a difference. The cover image is a merc called the Sand Wyrm, a character you can recruit.  The whole idea with the Hatamoto-chi in a ghille suit is that they’ve been stuck on a planet for over a decade and they offer to work for you if you can get them off-world.
-The heart of the book is the thirteen hot spots, each is a different world in the Hinterlands with a conflict going on.  Each side in most of these worlds is hiring mercs, and the idea is that the games will be two player merc units fighting, one for each side.
-Some Hot Spots are player vs enemy, and in that case the player controlling the enemy side gets paid anyway, the idea is they have a quiet contract.
-There are even a couple of Hell’s Horses-centred Hot Spots, allowing a player to play as the Horses too.
-The first step in product development was working out the Hot Spot system. Everything down to determining maps, force composition and the like. Joshua then got some writers to trawl through Tamar Rising to find some conflicts where the end result wasn’t confirmed, and then figure out why there were fights on those worlds, who was hiring mercs and why.
-There’s a whole chapter on Almotacen, a planet the 21st Centauri Lancers liberated and realised they had to stay around to prevent the pirates from moving back in. They start a hiring hall and this is the home base for all the mercs in the campaign.  The book details a lot of notable personalities on-world, and the book presses on the moral issues the Lancers face.  There are no RPG-specific rules in the book but the idea is to have idea hooks for RPGs as well as narrative BattleTech play
-Bryan Young wrote the opening fiction, Stephen Toropov worked out the Almotacen stuff.
-Hot Spots: Hinterlands had a lot more prep work compared to Tukayyid, they had a better idea of what the format of the book would be ahead of time, as a result they feel that the playability is better.  Joshua feels that the results one can get out of Tukayyid are wilder than in Hinterlands.
-The relative lack of detail on the Hinterlands compared to Tukayyid meant they had a lot more creative freedom on what they could do.
-They had to rework some proposed scenarios to be more player-centric, removing special characters or units that would be quite powerful and would overpower the player’s units if they were on the table.
-The book contains six maps of the Hinterlands showing the changes in territory in 3-month jumps.
-Why should people buy Hot Spots: Hinterlands?  Because you have all these pretty miniatures and you should have interesting games to play with them
-The cover artist is Tan Ho Sim, he also did a lot of the interior art.
-Stephen Toropov will be on next week to talk more about Hinterlands

Q&A
-How long did it take to develop the book from start to end? About a year to work out the system, which was also used for the Mercs box.  Another year for the writing, editing, fact checking, art etc. And then the six-month wait for it to arrive with players.
-Any update on tales of the Bounty Hunter?  Still ongoing, hopefully out before the end of the year.
-Any update on McCarron’s Armoured Cav and Second Star League forcepacks? Randall basically got hit with what he described as every illness he dodged travelling hit him at once.  He’s been sick for 2 weeks and even had to visit an ER.  Rem and Randall sat down for a product planning session. At present the release schedule is
--November:
---Hot Spots hinterlands
---Essentials
--December
---McCarron’s Armoured Cavalry Assault Lance (B&N Exclusive)
--January
---Second Star League Assault Lance
---ilKhan’s Eyes Only
---Map Scale Union DropShip
---Map Scale Overlord DropShip
---Map-scale Overlord-C
---And Kickstarter items as per the most recent update
-Any timeframe for ilClan updates for the Force Manuals?  They’re caught up in a production bottleneck and will hopefully be quick once the bottleneck clears
-Any update on the graphic novel? Writing is ongoing, Eldon Cowgur is working on character art.
-Any update on Audiobooks?
--Double Blind just came out, they expect to release six more next year.
-Any update on the audiobooks for Kickstarter backers?  That’s still ongoing.
-There were queries around Big Kappa items
--Fiction releases?  At present it’s just ebooks but Rem and John feel they should get physical copies and are working on it. 
--Merc T-shirts? The production schedule on these has slowed as CGL has a lot of capital tied up in Mercs Kickstarter and they need to wait until sales come in.
--Will they still get the last Star league Forcepacks?  Unsure at this point
--McCarron’s Armoured Cav forcepack will be given to big Kappas.
--Will the Star league mug be on the list?  It should be.  Also Rem needs to ensure it and some other mug designs get added to the webstore.
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Fat Guy

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #178 on: 20 November 2024, 10:18:37 »
Well crap. IlKhan's Eyes Only is pushed back another month.   :sad:
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Weirdo

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Re: Tuesday Newsday transcript thread
« Reply #179 on: 20 November 2024, 10:53:16 »
Can't wait for that one. Tell me more about the Belter Resistance!
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