And Another Thing!
about 7 years ago – Wed, Apr 05, 2017 at 11:17:59 PM

Greetings ball players!

In my haste to post about production progress, I completely forgot to tell all of you more exciting news - Bottom of the 9th is going digital! Handelabra Games – the producers of the awesome Sentinels of the Multiverse digital port – is now working on an implementation for Bottom of the 9th! I've seen the app in its current incarnation with my very own eyes, and it is slick. Handelabra estimates that they are about at the halfway point in production, but if you'd like to be kept up to date on that schedule you can head over to bot9digital.com and sign up for the newsletter. 

In the meantime, here's the teaser trailer to whet your digital tabletop appetites!

Almost Out of Training
about 7 years ago – Wed, Apr 05, 2017 at 07:45:40 PM

Greetings ball players!

Apologies for the delay in our usual update; my ISP pushed me back to the ‘80s for a couple of days. So I broke out my Tandy 1000 and dialed my modem into the local library BBS to bring you production news!

We’re at the end of prepress and the digital proofing process, and we should be receiving the pre-production copy (PPC) of Clubhouse soon. The PPC will allow us to proof the physical samples and make sure all the cards, rules, boxes and bits are in order before the games start rolling off the assembly line. We are at the point in the production process where we will be updating you as soon as we receive news or the factory wraps up each step before the games are on the boat to us from China.

In the meantime, we thought you’d all like to peruse the comprehensive rulebook. It’s a big one, and includes the latest revised rules for Bottom of the 9th, as well as all the rules for the Clubhouse Expansion.

 

We’ll be back soon to update you on physical production, and we’ll bring pics! Thanks again to all of you for your support and patience. We know it’s a longer wait than expected, but we are so excited to get all the goodies in Clubhouse in your hands. We’re confident that it will exceed expectations.

All the best,
Chris, Darrell, & Mike

This Clubhouse is Rocking
about 7 years ago – Wed, Mar 08, 2017 at 05:10:38 PM

Greetings ball players!

Well, we’re a day late for making our usual monthly production update, but at least there’s good news: All the files are complete and are fully in production with Panda! The next step will be reviewing the combined factory digital proofs - these are the final files with all the factory markings on them. This is the last chance for us to change anything. After that, physical proofs will be made and sent to us to make sure the final product is the way we want it and nothing is messed up in the manufacturing process. As soon as we have those proofs in hand we’ll post a ton of pics!

About that Box…

In other news, in our last update we posted pics of the new box and sleeve design. Many of you commented that you really liked the new designs, but a few of you were surprised that it had changed. We got a lot of feedback and took it all into consideration. While we do think that the new box design much better matches the original box and will have a better representation in retail, we also recognize that many of you loved the footlocker look. So we have decided to go back to the original footlocker design for the box sleeve. We are sorry that the designs came out of left field (pun intended) for many of you, but we hope that this compromise will make everyone happy in the end.

PAX East

If you’re planning on attending PAX East this weekend in Boston, stop by the Greater Than Games booth in the tabletop area, booth C-2625, and say hello! Chris and Mike will be there, and Mike will be running demos of Bottom of the 9th and the Clubhouse Expansion from 12-6 on Friday, Saturday, and Sunday.

That about wraps it up for this update. We’re very happy that everything is completely under production now, and we appreciate the patience. We’ll be back soon with more!

All the best,
Chris, Darrell, & Mike

7th Inning Stretch
about 7 years ago – Tue, Feb 07, 2017 at 09:15:35 PM

Greetings ball gamers!

We’re back with our usual First Tuesday update and this one finds us just on the edge of Chinese New Year. As for what that means for production, Panda Game Manufacturing has been on hiatus for about three weeks, so we have been prepping all files to make sure everything is set for when the factory returns to full production next week!

Absolutely everything for the base expansion is complete and ready (and, as mentioned before, all the wooden bits are already set). The rulebook has been sent out to several editors - both in-house and out - and we’re just making sure all the Ts have been crossed and the Is have been dotted.

As for the remainder of art, Adam has been working like mad to make sure we have everything in hand for the Pitchers and Hitters expansions. As of right now we only have four more portraits due from him, so we should be on track for all art to be complete by the start of production after Chinese New Year.

In terms of sneak peeks, here’s the final box design from Darrell so you’ll at least have something pretty to look at until our next update, which should see us well into production so we’re not terribly far off course in our timeline. We took backer comments into consideration and tried a different design that incorporates the original box design more. This will also look better on retail shelves. 

And here’s the updated box sleeve!

We’ll be sure to update you all constantly as we progress through production. Until then, thanks for the patience and support, and happy gaming!

All the best,

Chris, Darrell, & Mike

Happy New Year!
over 7 years ago – Tue, Jan 03, 2017 at 05:49:23 PM

Greetings ball gamers,

First off, we’d like to wish everyone a Happy New Year, and for those of you who celebrated the holiday season, we hope it was a merry one.

The past month has been a somewhat frustrating one for this project. As a few of you noted from our last update, we should have been farther along in our production cycle to meet the anticipated deadline. As of October we thought things were progressing well, and our biggest wait was for the card art. As some of you may know, Adam McIver accepted a full-time position as Design Director for Tasty Minstrel Games. While that is a great thing for Adam (and for TMG) - we congratulate him wholeheartedly - it cut into his existing art commitments. As such, we found that the backlog of art that we had expected much sooner was not getting accomplished. Faced with the prospect of further production delays, we put out a search for replacement artists. Unfortunately, we didn’t find a good fit. Fortunately, Adam realized the stress the art delay put on the project and renewed his commitment to finish the art. He has since been diligently working through the holidays to make up the difference.

You can see two of his latest contributions below.

While we are glad that we have been able to keep Adam and his excellent work for this project, we do want to apologize for the production delay. Because of the Chinese New Year celebration taking place for most of February, we won’t be able to rely on any production work from the factory during that time. We’re doing absolutely everything we can on this end to make sure Panda has the files in time to get through prepress and digital proofing before the break. We will be sure to keep you all updated as to a revised timeline once we have the final art in hand and have been able to talk it over with the factory.

Thanks again for your support and patience. Although it’s going to be a bit longer for Clubhouse to make it out to you, we know that it’s going to be the absolute best it can be when it gets there.

All the best,
Chris, Darrell, and Mike