Books unloading + Dehrilya's Lair almost done!
over 2 years ago – Sat, Dec 25, 2021 at 03:27:01 AM

Hello Dragonbonded!

First of all, we hope you and your loved ones are safe and healthy. From all the Draco team we want to wish you happy holidays! We are thankful for having you as part of the Draco family. We wish you all the very best for 2022, especially health and happiness. 

Today we want you to share news about the physical books fulfillment and another STL lair.

Physical Hardcover book

•  ASIA: China, Hong Kong, Macao, Japan, South Korea delivered. Parcels for other Asian countries are in-transit and should arrive soon.
•  UK: Cargo just arrived to BoardGameGuru warehouse, in queue for fulfillment starting early in January.
•  AUSTRALIA: Cargo in Aetherworks warehouse, in queue for fulfillment starting in the upcoming weeks.
•  NORTH AMERICA: The harbor is congested. The ship is waiting for its turn to unload the cargo. Our last update said they estimated December 27th for unloading the games.  The fulfillment process will begin the second week of January.
•  EUROPE & REST OF THE WORLD: This scenario is still the same as North America. Our partner estimates the cargo will be unloaded on December 30th and the customs process will begin.  If everything goes well, on January 10th, Happyshops will be sending the games from their warehouse to your homes.

STL Lairs

We are just missing 2 lairs from the Great Wyrms, how's your printing going?

Dehrilya's is the one we are finishing next and will become available in your libraries soon. We have partnered up with Black Magic Pixels and the results are delightful. Unfortunately, due to a personal situation, they needed to slow down a bit and the files are not ready yet to be fulfilled. Here's a preview of its progress! The second level is still missing but we are working on it! 

 What do you think? Kuxcoatl's lair is next (and the last one) so you can truly offer a legendary experience for your players with the adventures, plastic dragons and 3D-printed massive lairs.

Plastic Miniatures

Finally, after many revisions and adjustments, all the pieces have been approved along with their printed cards, their packaging and insert to hold your miniatures secure. Mass production is beginning and we expect to fulfill your miniatures during the first few months of the next year. We will provide a more detailed timeline once we get it from our manufacturer.

HAPPY HOLIDAYS!

On behalf of the entire team at Draco Studios: Thank you and Happy Holidays! We continue churning out content because we love what we do, but every day we remember that the most important part of our work is you! (because your support is what makes it possible).

Next year we have plans to support the community around Dragonbond including more free content. If you are subscribed to our newsletter, you might have seen this already but in case you haven't, you can subscribe and in the confirmation email you get access to some of the free content we released in 2021, including this special holiday bust of Ferellon Fulgen (new) for you to 3D print at home. 

Subscribe to our newsletter to get it (you can unsubscribe anytime).

Thank you for all your trust and support. We will be in touch next year with more news about the hardcover books' fulfillment, plastic miniature and the last STLs for the massive lairs.

Warm regards and happy holidays from everyone at Draco Studios!

Books arriving to fulfillment centers. Miniatures revisions
over 2 years ago – Fri, Nov 19, 2021 at 11:50:10 PM

Hello Dragonbonded! 

Time for an update regarding fulfillment and production starting with Great Wyrms of Drakha.

The book

As the shipping crisis situation in China continues, we decided to consolidate cargo and ship the hardcover books with another project Dodos Riding Dinos, and they will arrive with our fulfillment partners around the globe in the coming weeks. Fulfillment for backers who ordered just the book (without miniatures) will begin on December!

We'll be working with the following fulfillment centers:

•  USA and Canada – Gamerati: (Cargo expected to arrive by the end of next week and fulfillment in December)
•  UK – Boardgameguru: (Cargo expected to arrive by the end of next week and fulfillment in December)
•  Rest of Europe, Africa and SouthAmerica – Happyshops: (Cargo expected to arrive by the end of next week and fulfillment in December)
•  Mexico – The Test Table Games: (The books will arrive first to Gamerati and will be imported to Mexico afterwards, we do not know yet a final date but we expect the books to arrive by the end of December to Mexico)
•  Australia – Aetherworks: (Cargo arrived, Project in queue, fulfillment will begin in some weeks)
•  Asia – VFI:  (shipped already, should be arriving to backers within the next few days!)

If you did not include plastic miniatures in your order your address is already locked. Please send us an email to [email protected] with the subject "GWOD address change" if you need us to change your address. 

If you included plastic dragon miniatures you can still update your address in https://great-wyrms-of-drakha.backerkit.com/

The miniatures

Dragons will follow next year once the mass production is finished. These are highly detailed dragons and the factory had some challenges but we are delighted with the result and just waiting one final piece to approve (plastic inserts to securely hold your dragons). 

We received another round of samples from the dragons. We also received updated samples of the boxes and packaging. We are over the Red Moon with the quality! 

Surprise surprise, the ABS plastic column for Kuxcoatl was no longer needed! His wisdom guided the Panda team and he stands on his own. 

This week we are expecting to receive the plastic trays and we will have everything complete to proceed with mass production! 

  We are very sorry for the delay on these dragons but we promise the wait will be worthwhile and these dragons will stand proud in your collection. We can assure you that we will not rest until all our promises and your rewards have been fulfilled. Soon, you will hear from backers who received their books and we will be closer to the fulfillment of the plastic dragons.

Remember that the dragons belong to Drakha, the Red Moon orbiting Rhaava. Valerna, is the main continent where dragons raid once the Eye of Kadmos opens every 27 years, to feast on Vaala. As our Great Wyrms have different dragons belonging to their brood, we want to share with you this amazing art by Adam Wesierski of Rakzor, a dragon from the Exor brood. This dragon has an important role in the Dragonbond, Lords of Vaala board game and in the stories we are preparing for you all. 

This is it for now, we will share with you more updates regarding the plastic trays and how miniatures' mass production moves forward. 

Happy holidays! 

New timeline. Books finished, waiting for miniatures.
over 2 years ago – Wed, Sep 22, 2021 at 04:00:01 AM

Hello Dragonbonded!

First of all, I want to offer an apology for "ghosting" you all in the past weeks. Will and I went through a Covid situation with my mom, she was hospitalized for 4 weeks, and it has been the most challenging days in our work lives. We had to juggle between messages, emails, and calls for both, work and hospital. 

Thankfully, my mom is now at home recovering and we have regained peace of mind to focus again. Thanks again for your patience and for all your support! Hope everyone is staying safe! 

Let's go down to business! 

Kuxcoatl miniature fix

We have been talking with Panda regarding the plastic dragons and the updates they need to do to make them perfect. Kuxcoatl has been the most challenging one due to the balance on the tail but the factory finally found a solution that kept the majesty from the mini untouched. Instead of adding 2 or more supports, a segment of the tail will be done in ABS plastic. With the ABS plastic, it is possible that the green column disappears! 

Updated timeline (fulfillment delayed)

Production of books is finished. As you might recall we were exploring options to ship those first and the dragons second, but the container shortage in China caused freight costs to increase drastically. So in order for us to not charge more for shipping as other Kickstarter creators are doing (a position we respect and understand) we are back to the original plan and we have to wait for the miniatures to be finished. The factory tells us this will take 30 more days once they send the advance production copies for our approval (within the next few weeks). 

So the new timeline seems to be:

• September: Books finished. Miniatures molds finished.
• October: Advance production copies of the miniatures sent for our approval.
• November: Manufacture and assembly ends
• December: Freight shipping starts
• January: Fulfillment begins

We are very very sorry for this delay. The best part of Kickstarter is hearing when you receive your rewards and seeing pictures or stories of them, plus the feeling of having repaid your trust and excitement to help us create an incredible gaming experience. We want to fulfill these already, but we need to be mindful of finances to be able to keep expanding Dragonbond. We know this is not the first or the last Kickstarter delayed, but that doesn't make us feel any less sorry about giving this news. We are thankful for your understanding and patience.

Massive lairs STL update

Until today, 4 massive lairs (Rawraxxa, Aureus, Baastherox and Nixis) have been fulfilled via MMF and we are working hard to get Sivax, Dehrilya and Kuxcoatl ready for you before November starts!

Here's some progress of the Sivax's Lair - The Bismuth Vaults.  

And speaking of Sivax, take a look at this one painted by maxschwarzbich, who shared this amazing job in our Discord and told us that soon we will see pictures of the other Great Wyrms being 3D printed. 

Keep sharing with us your 3D printing models and paintings! We love seeing. 

Also, while production is on the works, our team is developing the visual guide of all realms and we are working in the lore, soon you will be able to immerse a bit more in the Dragonbond stories to discover the world and all the characters we develop for you! 

Here's a sneak peek from when Ferellon and Elyse met. 

Now you, how are the adventures going? Are you succeeding in Drakha? Let us know your experiences in the comment section! 

Once again, thank you all for your support and comprehension! 

Advance Mass Production copy of the book on its way!
over 2 years ago – Fri, Jul 30, 2021 at 01:51:35 PM

Hello Dragonbonded!

We have a very short update, but an important one nonetheless. Let's commence!

The advance mass production copy from the Great Wyrms of Drakha book was sent from Panda and we will be receiving it by next week, around Thursday. It should be ready and with us by the end of this week! This is the last check for the book prior to packing for freight shipping. 

Also, Kickstarter's bug played against us and the previous update went through without the photo of the dragons —please forgive the low resolution, as soon as we have the mass-production copies in our hands we will share more pictures and videos from them. The factory indicates that the molds will be finished by the end of August.

And as revealed before... we are including an extra set of alternate parts with combat battle scars (head & 1 limb) as an extra thank you for your support!

Regarding the STL for the dragons lairs:

We are close to fulfilling Aureus' lair by the weekend. You should receive an email via MyMiniFactory to redeem your lair. Take a look at the Golden city plaza. This one is highly modular so you can assemble different configurations for your other RPG campaigns, even with other settings, although they have very cool details from the Golden city such as a statue of Aureus himself with a stone texture.

Additionally, Rawraxxa's lair should be ready in the coming weeks. Here's a preview of some of the tiles. What do you think?

A friendly reminder in case you can't locate your PDF file of Great Wyrms of Drakha or other digital rewards, just send an email to [email protected] with the subject "Missing GWoD digital rewards" and we will swiftly follow up from there.

Dragonbond Lords of Vaala - launching on Monday

Keep exploring the ever-expanding world of Dragonbond. This time, find the battles and conflicts that make up Valerna, a continent raided by the offspring of the great wyrms. 

Lords of Vaala, our incoming asymmetric tactical board game, is about to become real. 

Raid as a dragon or raise armies as a general, destroy your enemies, and cast mighty spells, all to collect power. Once you have collected 10 power tokens, you win the game immediately. Dragons and generals play entirely different in strategy and actions. And all characters in the game have a unique deck of spells.

Join 2500+ people already following the project for launch and be notified when the campaign goes live by clicking the button you can find on this link! 

As a returning backer you will receive a free add-on (extra dice set, large rubber mat or card sleeves) and you can get advantage of the Kickstarter deal: a copy of the game and a free cosmetic expansion with more miniatures for just $49. Plus 3 exclusive promo cards for all backers. 

Dragonbond: Lords of Vaala will launch on Monday 2nd! 

That's it for us today. Tell us your stories fighting these amazing creatures. Show us your pictures, your dragons, your gaming table, everything. You can find us on most social media, and you can always join our Discord Server where you can be in touch with our team in real time!

IMPORTANT: Effects from Container Shortage in China
almost 3 years ago – Wed, Jun 30, 2021 at 04:50:14 PM

Hello Dragonbonded,

We are back with important news. In all our Kickstarter projects, we are committed to fulfilling all our promises to you, because without your support we would not be able to do what we love. Sometimes things go awry but we strive for transparency, because Kickstarter projects are built around trust between creators and backers, and that trust go both ways.

If you regularly back other Kickstarters or if you are very involved in tabletop forums, you may be already aware of a critical situation on China due to container shortage. This issue is affecting many industries, not just tabletop. Due to the post-pandemic bottleneck release with companies around the world resuming their plans and activities, factories have a lot more products in their pipeline (particularly those in China). This has led to a series of consequences:

• Ports have dense ship congestion, some of them due to new Covid-19 outbreaks, causing unloading wait times to double.
• There are not enough containers for ocean freight from China, causing prices to go 3x to 5x higher.
• The cost increase leads to some publishers to not being able to cover shipping at the time, and factories struggling to find storage space to their already high production volumes.
• Factories are increasing production lead times because of this.

Here's a video explaining the current complications more in detail:

 What does it mean for this project?

Our factory extended production time for this project with additional 50 days. The new estimated times are as follows:

•  The Book: The first Mass-Production copy for our approval is expected to arrive by the end of July. Once approved, the rest of the mass produced books will finish by the end of August. If we air ship the books, there's a slight possibility we will have them available for local pickup at Gen Con and for fulfillment in September for backers who just ordered the book. 
•  The Miniatures: Steel tooling molds are now expected to finish by the end of August, with the mass production miniatures finishing by the end of October. The freight shipping scenario for those is even more uncertain since we will most likely have to ship those by Ocean due to the high volume and it will happen in peak season due to the upcoming holidays at that time. With good luck we might have them arrive before Christmas. We will certainly keep you updated.

We have been exchanging emails with the factory almost daily and having weekly calls to touch base. They are also doing everything they can to complete production sooner. 

What we can assure you is that the miniatures and the book will not let you down. We are delighted with the quality of the miniatures and the development of the book. 

Delayed but overdelivering

When it comes to you, our backers, we do not hesitate to put our 200%. This is not the first time we end up delivering twice the amount of pages we promised for an RPG book. (And we are starting fulfillment of Eldritch Century this month!)

But not only Great Wyrms of Drakha has 312 pages —instead of the 180pages offered in this campaign— but the miniatures also include an additional surprise that we are officially announcing today:

All miniatures include an alternate detachable head and limb (with combat wounds). The miniatures come pre-assembled and their corresponding heads or limbs are easy to fit.

Here are some pictures directly from the —please forgive the low resolution, as soon as we have the MPC in our hands we will share more pictures and videos. 

Are we going to charge more for shipping?

As explained in the video above, some fellow tabletop publishers have been requesting additional funds from backers to partially cover the increase of freight shipping costs in order to sustain their project.

With the extended production times from the factory,  we are hoping the panorama to be clearer in a couple of months and not be affected by a 3x cost increase or higher (although some say this situation won't get fixed until next year).

The truth is that we do not know for sure yet. We are still awaiting the updated estimate freight cost for this project and we will be updating it every few weeks. 

Our current business stance is to cover the added costs ourselves because we believe your early support and trust on Kickstarter deserve the best deal. We are cutting some other major development expenses to prepare for this.

One of them is our web development with LAIR platform (our 3D printing branch). 

Today, LAIR servers and site was shut down indefinitely. While LAIR continues as our brand for 3D printables, it will indefinitely pause its progress as the platform we were building to connect the makers community with non-3D-printers. We want to thank you for your endless support. This has been a difficult choice for us to make, but we firmly believe that it is the best for the moment. Part of running a business such as ours involves making a series of incredibly tough decisions. We will move digital fulfillment to MyMiniFactory and DrivethruRPG, all PDF and STL files will be available there and you will start receiving redeemable codes for your PDF on DriveThruRPG and for your STL files on MyMiniFactory.

And speaking of 3D-printables....

Nixis' 3D-Printable Lair completed and fulfilled

 Nixis' lair was finished this month and already fulfilled via MyMiniFactory, along with Baastherox's. Aureus Fulgen's lair is the next one and we should be able to fulfill it at the end of July, followed by Rawraxxa in August. 

DRAGONBOND: LORDS OF VAALA 

Before the unforeseen situation with container shortage arose, we were expecting to launch our first board game of Dragonbond in August 2nd on Kickstarter, right when fulfillment for your rewards would be starting. 

We would like to ask you if it would be ok with you for us to stick with our release schedule for this game. Development for Great Wyrms of Drakha book and miniatures has finished and the project is in the mass production stage with the factory. We have fulfilled several Kickstarter campaigns in the past and Great Wyrms of Drakha will be entirely fulfilled too. The setbacks mentioned above will not impede us from fulfilling this project. Please let us know in the comments your thoughts.

We would like to talk to you a little bit about the game, since this is the first official announcement in a Dragonbond project:

Dragonbond: Lords of Vaala takes place in Valerna, a continent in the world orbited by the Red Moon, Drakha. This is where young dragons feast on Vaala, the magic within all living beings, and bring draconic offerings to their great wyrms. 

In this asymmetrical game, you can play as a dragon to devour units or as a general and raise an army (with tons of unlockable miniatures). In some games, a dragon player and a general could potentially form an unbreakable alliance in the form of a dragonbond. Includes an AI system to play solo or up to 4 players (with 5 & 6 player expansions available in the campaign). You need to collect power to win, and you can use this power to cast unique spells from your Vaala deck. 

 Raid as a dragon or raise armies as a general, destroy your enemies, and cast mighty spells, all to collect power. Once you have collected 10 power tokens, you win the game immediately. Dragons and generals play entirely different in strategy and actions. And all characters in the game have a unique deck of spells.

You can sign up to be notified on launch and as a returning backer, you will get extra perks in the form of loyalty rewards. Sign up here: https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/dracostudios/lords-of-vaala/

If you want to learn more about the art of Dragonbond (Great Wyrms of Drakha or Lords of Vaala) join us this Thursday July 1st at 12:00 PM (Central Time) in an interview with Tom Babbey, our art director in Dragonbond! Click here to register in the Facebook event! 

Please share your comments with us to continue the conversation about this update, we value your insight and our backers truly deserve our very best. We hope to see you on Thursday!