{"id":558,"date":"2012-11-27T15:30:52","date_gmt":"2012-11-27T15:30:52","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.new.hmsgrd.com\/?p=558"},"modified":"2013-07-19T19:08:06","modified_gmt":"2013-07-19T19:08:06","slug":"hms-news-23-nov-2012","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/?p=558","title":{"rendered":"HMS News 23 Nov 2012"},"content":{"rendered":"

Early this week we picked up the last load of our material that could feasibly be recovered from the damaged building. An unexpected bonus was the research material that we hadn’t expected to be recovered. We were able to get most of the company’s research folders and notebooks, including Arthur’s draft Turning Point, First to Fight II, A Winter War II, and Bloody Eagles maps, OBs, and research notes. Much of this week has been a reorganization of the incoming boxes to make them fit into the newer, and much smaller, storage area. This meant opening and repacking 1200+ boxes into the 500+ that fit in the new storage, inventorying the contents, and restacking everything so that things are as accessible as possible without having to shift boxes again.<\/p>\n

We still have a number of boxes staged at a temporary site that need to be inventoried, but the results of the inventory so far show that the bulk of the Total War components were recovered undamaged. This included almost all the maps and most of the counter-sheets. We also recovered most of the older game and magazine inventory that was still in shrink-wrap and\/or sealed in boxes. The good news is that we will definitely have enough counter sets and maps for those who preordered. The counters and maps are the most expensive parts of Total War and it looks like we won\u2019t have to reprint any of these.<\/p>\n

Unfortunately we lost more than half of the Total War game boxes. Essentially we lost all the boxes that we had previously assembled and that were stacked up in the warehouse as some of our earlier photos showed. This was expected as each box top and box bottom had to be treated as a separate item making the total recovery cost significantly higher than just reprinting them. Still, it was very sad to see these being treated as trash in the end-of-process photographs provided by the recovery firm — you can see a couple of these photos below. We may have enough of the game boxes to cover the preorders but that should be determined shortly.
\nAlso, although we recovered most of the counters, we lost a few hundred sets of collated counter-sheets that we had not moved into sealed boxes before the fire. And, we lost all of our accumulated shipping supplies: boxes, mailers, packing peanuts, bubble-wrap, box tape, and shrink-wrap; and a lot of older games\/magazines that were not in sealed boxes at the time of the fire. Finally, a lot of equipment like desks, bookcases, etc was lost. We did, however, recover tables sufficient to put together the Total War assembly\/shipping line, plus the shrink-wrap machine itself.
\nRecovering our material cost much less than reprinting the Total War counters and maps, but it was still expensive. The cash reserve we had accumulated to complete the printing and shipping of Total War essentially went to pay for the recovery. To make that up, plus replace the lost shipping supplies, we will be holding a (what else) Fire Sale soon \u2013 check back here later this week for details. It will include all of our older games that are available and a special offer available only to those who had preordered Total War.<\/p>\n

As many of you know, when we established HMS we purposely accepted as our obligation the preorders that had been made prior to our purchase of the company, even though the previous owner had already spent those preorder funds. Most of you know about the lawsuit against the company and us personally that followed the purchase. The suit effectively halted publication for a number of years, saw the withdrawal of our planned operating capital and cost us almost $70,000.
\nPart of our new financing for Total War came from individuals who loaned the company money secured by interests in the game. These folks contractually have a say in what we do with the finished game. They naturally will not approve shipping of any games until we can show that they will be repaid. The business plan is to repay them with the sales to stores after the preorders were sent. That is still the plan and we will use the fire sale to raise the cash to complete the printing of the game and begin shipping of the game.<\/p>\n

Photo 1 of the aftermath – boxes everywhere!<\/a>
\nPhoto 2 – another area, with more boxes.<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Early this week we picked up the last load of our material that could feasibly be recovered from the damaged building. An unexpected bonus was the research material that we hadn’t expected to be recovered. We were able to get most of the company’s research folders and notebooks, including Arthur’s draft Turning Point, First to […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558"}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=558"}],"version-history":[{"count":7,"href":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":777,"href":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/558\/revisions\/777"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=558"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=558"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/www.hmsgrd.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=558"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}