Base Camp Newsletter: February 2023

Base Camp Newsletter: February 2023

Pre-Orders Are Now Open for Select Products

For those who love the feel of cards and dice, we are excited to be launching our first print run of the year! If you already have some of our physical copies, you know the quality of our print products: clean, precise, and vivid on the best card stock we can get. Our local print shop is top notch, and they have actively worked with me over the past couple of months to keep prices reasonable through a new supplier.  Once LOB and DU are back with new editions, I will likely do print runs quarterly.

Ordering Phase Now:
The out-of-stock items available for this print run are listed below. They all have a Pre-Order option, which will be open until Wednesday, February 22nd, at 8:00 a.m. central time. At that time, we will close the pre-orders and compile everything to send to the print shop. Each pre-order item listed below is linked to the corresponding product page in the SMP Shop:

Fulfillment Phase: Early to mid-March
Turn-around is usually two weeks, depending on the volume of larger corporate orders the print shop has in queue. Once the order is received, I will sort things out and begin fulfilling orders A.S.A.P, expected shipment window is March 8th-11th. We did this routine with the launch of Stone Cold Hockey last fall and it worked out pretty well (ahead of schedule).

In-Stock: A small percentage of additional copies will be ordered, so we will have a thin amount in-stock after the pre-orders go out. However, that extra supply will be limited. My small office also serves as a music room, so I can only keep so much shelf space.

Hopefully this approach works for most of you. As I said in previous newsletters, I love producing physical copies of these games. This is the heart of my business.

IN THE PIPELINE...

  • SCH NHL 1993/94 - This set is virtually ready for computer release. The PDF versions have not been created yet, but I plan to produce them through Publisher instead of Excel.  I was not satisfied with the Excel version of 67/68 - some of you weren't either - and I also want to upgrade that set at some point.
  • SCH CCL Season Two - Wrapping this up currently, but it is included in the print run above.
  • SCH Season Sets – We are looking at a couple more seasons from the 70s and perhaps a WHA season, maybe 73/74. More research is needed on the WHA.  
  • Dice United 2nd Edition and Dice United for Windows: This project is the #1 priority at the moment.  I am working closely with Richard Hanna to tighten-up every facet of the game and his computer version is used to analyze/verify our changes. Bookings and Crunch Time are the key aspects for the new edition and our objective is to improve the game engine to better simulate a broader range of football leagues.
  • Dice United Season Sets– EPL and EFL Championship 2022/23 are always on the annual to-do list and we try to get those out in June or July. There are likely to be one or two classic seasons as well, but that has yet to be determined.
  • LOB 2nd Edition (20th Anniversay Project) - Work resumes when Dice United is done.  Target: July 2023
  • LOB: Kings of the Ring: 2010s - Work will resume once LOB 2nd Edition is mostly settled.  Target: August 2023
  • Untitled Robot Battle Game (formerly Shrapnel): Still in the concept phase. I am still "waffling" about using the Modiphius 2d20 license (SRD) or creating my own system in-house.  Partnering with Modiphius would help us get exposure to a wider audience, but much of their game system would be discarded altogether for the focus of this game.

That's it for now! As always, thanks for following the developments here at SMP. If you have ideas of more things you'd like to see, let me know.