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Special Offers for those who have already ordered Total War!!!
Buy and you help to finish Total War.
As some of you may already know, the HMS/GRD warehouse/office was the subject of a fire in early August. The fire killed two people, injured 25 more, and severely damaged much of the upper floors of the building. You can read more about this on our website, starting at http://www.new.hmsgrd.com/?paged=3 starting with the HMS News 07 Aug 2012 entry. Fortunately the HMS facilities were on the bottom floor and thus suffered no fire damage, almost no smoke damage, and only slight water damage limited to the office area only. However, the fire also rendered the building unsafe and we were thus prohibited from recovering any of our material for several months as various state and local agencies decided what could be done. The final decision was that only a specially trained and licensed company would be allowed to recover our materials. The recovery has now been completed, but it was very expensive and essentially exhausted the funds we had set aside to complete the printing and then ship Total War. The purpose of this fire sale is to raise the money needed to print the final components and ship Total War.
For the current and final version of the Fire Sale see the HMSFireSaleFinal link under the HMS News – July 18, 20
Was wondering if I take the Total War pre-order offer and take the game in the white box, might I get the graphic box later when they are available? Or can I apply the $10 credit towards purchasing the graphic box? Thanks.
In Reply to Bill: The only original printed (graphic) Total War
boxes we have are all committed to games, there will be none for sale
individually. Because of the fire we ended up about 300 boxes short of
what is needed to cover the games already ordered by individuals like
yourself and to cover the minimum number of games we must sell to stores
to repay our investors (and stores by and large will not accept games in
plain white boxes). The reason we offered a $10 credit for agreeing to
accept your copy of the game in a plain white box was to try to get
enough people to agree to this that we can avoid reprinting game boxes.
But if fewer than 300 people accept the offer, we will be have to
reprint the box at some point. But even then there will be no extra
boxes for sale individually, every box will be committed to a game.
Several people have offered to pay their own S&H. Arthur/Gar, what do you estimate to be the S&H costs? Logistically, the easiest thing would be for people to send you a check for that expense right now to help re-capitalize.
I’m just a gamer like everyone else. I sent HMS/GRD a Christmas check. Please consider stepping up to send them a check to cover shipping and handling and, if you feel so disposed, more, to help them re-capitalize enough to finish TW and have a shot at store sales. As a community, we can help keep this game, company, and hobby alive. United we stand.
General: All the offers of support that have been made on the website are greatly appreciated..
IRE to Clint Brass: The check you sent was a magnificient gesture and we greatly appreciated it. But not everyone can or will want to do this. But anyone who purchases something from the fire sale list helps also.
IRE to John Hansen: Shipping costs vary tremendously depending on where the package is to go. There are so many factors going into this:
residential surcharges
extended residential surcharges
fuel surcharges
that US Post Office provides priority mail boxes for free (but you have to buy insurance), whereas UPS provides $100 insurance per package for free (but you have to provide your own box,
whether or not package will fit into a US Post Office flat-rate priority mail box – usually not for our stuff, but oddly enough ALWAYS for the very close in flat-rate Regional Rate Box
plus a multitude of factors for various countries overseas.
In general, comparing UPS Ground and US Post Office Priority Mail for each package, and factoring in box cost, insurance cost, residential surcharges (but not extended residential surcharges), and fuel surcharges, the costs to ship a copy of Total War vary as follows.
Via UPS Ground to 48 contiguous US States = $15
Via US Post Office priority mail to Alaska/Hawaii = $26
via US Post Office priority mail to Canada = $45
via US Post Office priority mail to Western Europe less UK = $60
via US Post Office priority mail to anywhere else outside US = $65
But getting money to ship Total War is not the immediate problem. We need to raise the money to print the Rules, OBs, and remaining charts. That is the first step before we reach the second step of shipping the game. Any monies sent to us for shipping would just have to be set aside to cover the shipping when we get to step 2 and couldn’t be used to accomplish step 1. You can help us get to step 2 by looking at the fire sale and if something there would be of use to you then placing an order with US.
I’ll try to send you something. If this were any other business venture, I would say we are all crazy. But this is a matter of the heart.
Remind me again, do you have a paypal account I can send s/h payment to? I am still mulling over getting taking the white box option. How long is $10 credit valid?
Found paypal info on fire sale pdf, so please disregard that part of previous message.
IRE to Bill in OK: The $10 credit for opting to take your previously-ordered copy of Total War in a plain white box is good until you use it.. It is essentially a no-expiration-date discount coupon that is added to your customer record and not erased until you apply it to a purchase with HMS. As a credit it can be applied to any purchase, but cannot be converted to cash. We’d prefer you use it to buy something from the fire sale list, but you can just leave it on account with us for as long as you like as well.
IRE to Gary Armitage: Thanks for the help!
Received my counters. Awesome job guys!!
Have you considered a fire sale option to deliever the rules, OBs, and remaining charts electronically? Reducing both shipping costs and production costs? I’d prefer to have the documents on my Kindle or Ipad anyway.
IRT Phil: Thanks!
IRT Richard: Yes we’ve considered an electronic option to deliver the rules, OBs, and charts. It doesn’t work out for us (at least now), for two reasons: 1) Our investors will not OK electronic delivery of these items until the physical boardgame is released – they see electronic delivery before physical release as potentially threatening their investment, and 2) the information in the OBs constitutes an enormous investment in time and money on our part and as part of our protection of our intellectual property we have a current company policy of never releasing the OBs electronically. However, we do release the rules and charts electronically (for download on this website), a couple of months after each game ships. So, the rules and charts for Total War will be available electronically eventually.
War of Resistance is now sold out.
We’ve added a couple of items to the fire sale (new flyer up shortly):
First to Fight Refit Kit = $30 + shipping (A=$5, B=$5, C=$10, D=$17, E=$17)
Balkan Front Refit Kit = $20 + shipping (A=$5, B=$5, C=$10, D=$17, E=$17)
If you order both refit kits, you pay only shipping cost for one refit kit.
No-folds maps of earlier Europa Games (limited #s available)
$4 per sheet + shipping (A=$10, B=$10, C=$15, D=$20, E=$20)
only pay shipping cost once no matter how many maps ordered
Maps that are available:
17A (Second Front) – Western France
23A (For Whom the Bell Tolls) – Portugal/West Spain
33 (For Whom the Bell Tolls) – Eastern Spain
18A (War in the Desert) – Libya
19A (War in the Desert) – Egypt
20A (War in the Desert) – Western Turkey/Syria/Palestne
21A (War in the Desert) – Eastern Turkey/North Iraq
24A (War in the Desert) – Tunisia, East Algeria
25A (War in the Desert) – Morocco, West Algeria
Received my counters Thursday and my maps Friday (the 21st.) Everything looks great, but right now the maps feel “too crowded”. Hopefully as I grow accustomed to them, that feeling will fade. I assume everything noted on the maps has some reason for being included and thus, are necessary.
Gar, Arthur, et. al.
It’s Christmas!
I must say, the counters I just received are as magnificent as the maps. Bravo!
Some history about me: I got into wargaming back when I was listening to Led Zeppelin, Jefferson Airplane, Traffic, CSN&Y, Dylan, Guthrie and the like. Avalon Hill’s PanzerBlitz, Blitzkrieg & Bismarck were my first ones. Drang started a whole new plateau of gaming.
Through the years I learned to take what I wanted and leave the rest. Often I would use a map from here, counters from there & my own charts and rules. Eventually I started to make my my own maps of the areas that were of interest to me. Now I use almost exclusively GDW/GRD/HMS counters, charts and rules (modified a little to incorporate some of my own thoughts).
Why? You guys are in a league of your own. The research & attention to detail are amazing. Each counter, even the ‘ants’, have stories to be told about them. Volumes actually.
To play your ‘games’ are lessons in history. A stack of forces maneuvering against another often get me to take pause … who were these guys? What was their real history? It often gets my MacBook Air open and searching for things like “442nd” or “203rd Sec”.
You have no idea how thrilled I am that I still have time to play the games that you … YOU … painstakingly commit your lives to.
Please pick up on what I am putting down: you guys are the best in the world at what you do.
That bears repeating: without a doubt, you guys are the best in the world at what you do.
So, 3+ weeks into the “fire sale”, how is it going? Getting enough sales for the rules/charts printing yet?
IRT Steve Miller: To date the fire sale has brought in about 60% of what is needed to finish printing the game. Sales have been fairly steady on a daily basis.
Do you know when the new flyer will be posted? I’ll order the refit kits once I have it.
IRT Lo Pan – Thanks for the endorsement. Glad you enjoy our games.
IRT Steve Miller – Whether or not all the information on the Total War maps is “necessary” depends on your definition of necessary. Very little of the informational stuff (names of rivers, lakes, cities, towns, mountain ranges, etc.) is strictly necessary to play the game, but very useful for some rules purposes (for example, a rule pertaining to Lake Ladoga ia easier to reference if the lake is named), and useful for a lot of people to follow accounts of campaign in books. And some information is on the maps for Grand Europa purposes (all the resource center stuff) and only used for victory point purposes in Total War. So, whether or not all the info on the maps is necessary or not is to some extent a matter of taste. The overwhelming number of comments we’ve had about this have been favorable. But I can understand how the increased amount of information on the maps can be seen in a less favorable light by those who favor a more minimalist approach.
IRT Michael: The new flyer should be up on Sunday. We received a lot of inquiries about game parts that are available and I’m still compiling that list and I need to verify everything against the warehouse inventory (which I should be able to do tomorrow – Saturday).
I will accept my game in a white box. Also how long will the sale las?t I would like to place an order but cant till end of month.
IRT Mark Ruggiero – The fire sale will last until we raise the money needed to finish the printing of Total War. We are currently at about 65% of the goal. I expect we’ll probably reach our goal right about the end of January. Contact me at arthurgoodwin@netscape.com and we can probably work something out before then.
Hi-
I did preorder TW in Sep 2011. Having not noticed what happend until now (problems with the printers + fire incident), I´d like to know when it will be complete?
Kind Regards
Kai
IRT to Kai Brinckmeier: Total War will be completed as soon as we can get it done. As explained on our website, the fire and cost to recover our material from the fire-damaged building essentially exhausted the money we had set aside to finish printing Total War and to ship the game. Until we replace this money we cannot complete the game. The fire sale is the main means we are accumulating the necessary money and we are about 65% of the way toward this goal. Exactly when we reach 100% of this goal and then begin the final printing is dependent on how the fire sale progresses. And, once we start printing, there is about 10 days to get the printing back from the printer + about another week to assemble/box the game for shipment. I personally think we reach our goal about the end of January and then be in place to start shipping about mid-February. But it may take longer. I’m sorry we can’t give a more definite time than that at present.
Happy New Year,
Thanks, I have received the original printed issues of the TEM Bundle Pack I ordered. I am totally thrilled and am like a kid in a candy store. I have not felt like this since my visit to The Sentry Box last June when I purchased WW, FWTBT and BF. I may have talked my wife into releasing funds for me to order TW upon receipt of my second box. I have been playing Europa off and on since 1979 and love the series – Looking forward to acquiring a copy of SF someday.
All the best to you Arthur, Gar and Jason – hope to be calling you soon.