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 Last week I created a new Fluxx T-Shirt
design, and it's been getting such great reactions that we're
moving forward immediately with plans to produce it through a
T-shirt company called Pegasus Publishing.
Pegasus Publishing
specializes in a wide range of fan-oriented merchandise, like
Xena and Babylon-5 T-shirts and hats and mugs and such. They
also do gaming-related T-shirts, including several for Steve
Jackson Games and Knights of the Dinner Table, and when they
met us at GAMA, they said they'd add a Fluxx shirt to their line
just as soon as we figured out what the design should be. Which
is precisely what happened last week.
So, this week we're announcing the Fluxx
Zone T-shirt Pre-Order Special. In the next month or two,
these great new shirts will start showing up for sale in a wide
range of retail outlets including stores, convention vendors,
and this website. Naturally, they'll be 100% cotton, and yes,
they'll come in the full range of sizes (although the XXLs will
cost 2 bucks extra), with an actual retail price of $18.
However, if you order from us *right now* while we're placing
our initial order with Pegasus, we'll give you $2 off. We'll
be able to get our first batch of shirts a little cheaper, since
Scott won't have to warehouse them at all, so as a special bonus
for our regular readers, we're actually going to pass those savings
on to you. But you have to act now: this offer expires on
Wednesday! (And remember, your order won't ship out until
a few weeks from now, when we actually get the shirts, so don't
put anything else on the order that you can't be patient about
receiving.)
Of course, our on-going search
for funding continues to be a big topic on our minds. Last
week I put up some thoughts we'd been having about Product-Backed
Investments, and we got great reactions to that, too. There
definitely seem to be people out there who'd be interested in
such investments, and we've been having some interesting meetings
and email discussions. In particular, Meg
has become interested in helping us chart this course, and she's
been letting Billy spend extra time with Daddy this week while
working up a set of financial spreadsheets, which appear to make
the proposal sound. Under this model, the investor would technically
own all the product, we'd just store it for them and sell it
for them and pay them per unit every few months as they sold.
It wouldn't add to our official debt load, and the numbers seem
to work for both sides even if it takes us 5 years to sell off
the print run. So, it's exciting! This might actually be feasible.
Last week I also talked about the idea of printing Aquarius
overseas and said it was probably the first project we'd like
to fund this way. Actually, we've since realized that a different
print run is even more urgent: Paper
Icehouse. Kristin's got everything set up for printing a
medium sized run of Paper Icehouse sets, but even though the
old version is now sold out, we put this project on hold because
of our emerging cashflow crisis. We need $4K to commit to this
project right now: who's interested?
Other than that, we've just been plugging away as usual. We're
starting to ramp up to Origins, which is now the next big event
on our calendar, and we got a lot to do to get ready. (More on
that later.) Alison picked up some
more freelance teaching work, and we all got good check-ups from
the dentist. Plus, we've been playing a lot of Volcano...
I have to say, I've become pretty addicted to Kristin's
new game. It's got a lot going for it: it's a "pure"
Icehouse game (no equipment other than pyramids required) and
it's got a wonderfully small and efficient footprint, making
it great as a restaurant game (on Sunday we got stuck in the
no-service section of the IHOP but we didn't really mind because
the conversation was lively and we were able to play repeated
games of Volcano). But most of all, it's got great gameplay,
of exactly the sort I really favor: It's fast to learn, it's
fun to play, and it's entirely tactical (meaning you can't do
much long term strategizing, but must simply find the best move
possible in the given moment that is your turn). It's also a
great game for multi-taskers, since you don't have to pay any
attention when it's not your turn (in fact, we have a system
for keeping track of who's turn it is during slow games where
one player wanders off while the other person thinks: when you
take your turn, you point one of your captured pieces at the
opponent's pile of pieces, uprighting his similarly placed piece
afterwards, like punching a chess clock). Lastly, it's cool just
because it's the first pyramid game to actually *require* both
an Icehouse set and the Black Ice expansion. So if you've got
that combo, give Volcano a try - you'll lava it. (Ouch! Sorry,
I don't usually stoop to that sort of thing, but I just couldn't
resist.)
 Have
a great week!
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