https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/mafiaworks/necromansters-customizable-card-game/posts/4381073
Hello again, Creeps!
Caleb here. This one’s a doozey. It’s been incredibly difficult to structure this into anything even partly comprehensible, so I’m making this a Q and A of sorts. For those of you allergic to reading, the TL;DR of it all will be in bold.
What’s going on with the whole tariff situation?
It’s been a bit of an unusual time for table-top games in the US of A recently, to say the least. Crowdfunded projects like NecroMansters are generally between a rock and a hard place right now, having already collected the funds to make cool things for you for a very specific budget, then suddenly tariffs make it upwards of twice the cost to manufacture card and board games overseas.
To put this in necromancy terms, it’s tricky to make a full frankenstein with half the parts. This is completely unexpected and regrettably unavoidable at this stage, but we’ve made the most of it. More on that in a second.
What’s not going to be affected by tariffs?
Not much, unfortunately, but my publisher has worked nothing short of a miracle to ensure there’s consistency between the Kickstarter editions of the game’s Core Set and its subsequent expansions.Despite tariffs, card quality for Spare Parts and Team Mythic expansions will be consistent with the Kickstarter Edition of the Core Sets: higher quality Japanese Black Core cards. That means there’ll be no difference in feel between the regular game and the expansions for this special print run.
When we started this campaign last year, the expectation was always to have things printed in the US, and while we’re intending to have future expansions done in-house (with the hopes that players sleeve those cards to make up for any visible differences), it’s been a very big priority to me to have everything in these Kickstarter Editions stay consistent between each other, so I’m thrilled this quality is even a possibility. With everything currently underway with our manufacturers, Spare Parts and Team Mythic are both set to launch at Origins Game Fair this June, right on schedule, with shipping and fulfilment for these expansions expected shortly afterwards,and I’ll try to keep everyone up to date on all of that.
What is going to be affected by tariffs, then?
Ah, the not-so-good news. I’d just finished making these sweet mock-ups to show you folks, and suddenly tariffs make it prohibitively expensive to make ’em look like that in the first place.
As I touched on earlier, the cards within will still be unmistakably the same high quality as the cards in your NecroMansters Core Set Kickstarter Editions… but regrettably, we’ve had to make some changes to the packaging for both Spare Parts and Team Mythic, which will be done in-house, as illustrated below.
These changes aren’t ideal, but I’d like to assure you Speedrobo Games and I have been hard at work to get you the highest quality product attainable with the resources available to us.
It’s entirely by design that the Kickstarter Edition of NecroMansters has tons of extra room in the box to contain all your extra cards, too! So feel free to pop these all into that sleek long box once you’ve poured over all these new cards.
Speaking of new cards…
Enough nitty-gritty. Let’s see some exciting things, art boy!
If you simply can’t wait to see the expansions in person (or if you just want to start deck building before your cards arrive!) here’s the whole card list, updated with all the expansions! This includes the Make-A-Manster Cards, so be sure to check these out!
What the card list fails to include, however, is the variant cards that are in each pack of Spare Parts, like this Spectral card:
To help elaborate, let me share a little from the rarity breakdown on the back of the Spare Parts box:
The alt-art cards were made by Skellulite, Inkygoblin, Bunsquire, and Roque Romero. Working with these artists was absolutely fantastic and I couldn’t be happier with how these turned out! Go check these artists out!
Speaking of variants, I’ve got one more thing left to share. For NecroMansters players, there’s a special Shroudinger alt-art promo card illustrated by AcyFaust, creator of Splatterkins, available to the first 100 people who demo with us at Origins! And for Splatterkins players, I’ve done an alt-art card for the spooky critter Geist–so if you’re attending, make sure to stop by the Speedrobo Games booth and demo to snatch ’em!
That’s all for now. If you’ve got any questions, feel free to ask away below and either my publisher or I will address them as soon as we are able to. Until then, we’ll see you at Origins Game Fair in a little less than a month!
…and, as always, creep it real.
-Caleb