Sorted! Distribution woes all gone

A couple of weeks ago, the rug was pulled out from under our feet by our shipping and fulfilment partner getting cold feet at the last minute.*

We're happy to say that's now all behind us. We've found better companies to work with and ones with a sense of humour to boot.

We now have an exciting partnership with a fulfilment company in the States who really knows what they're doing. As a bonus, they can ship to Canada too, so no more excuses and moaning, we can now post to Canada for the same price as the US.

Because we're astonishingly nice chaps, we're going to refund the difference to those people in Canada who have already ordered. We think we have everybody, but if in a few days, you feel you've missed out, just get in touch.

* Thanks to everyone who contacted us with useful leads and advice (like, 'get a contract' - yeh, cheers, we worked that out ourselves).

Order update: 1,151 games

Essen toy fair protest

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We'd become accustomed to not being very popular and being banned from every major toy fair in the world. It's become a sad fact of our strange, new existence in the world of games and toys. We shrugged and moved on.

But one guy refused to take it lying down. He was angry at the whiff of censorship surrounding Essen's decision to ban the game and he wanted to make his voice heard. That man was Sjap Horwitz from the Netherlands.

War on Terror is sick and ridiculous, but a game about Europe's first urban guerrilla terrorists is fine and dandy What he and four other friends did was make 5 t-shirts to wear at Essen, all with various messages of protest. It's just a shame we weren't allowed there to see it, but if you can just picture 5 fully grown men walking around a toy and games fair with "I want my War on Terror" and "Stop censorship: give me War on Terror" scrawled across their chests and backs... Genius. Here's Sjap's own account of the fair:

"We started looking at games, and to people who tried to read our shirts, we explained what it was all about."

"We talked to quite a few people, and everybody had basically the same reaction: it's a stupid ban!"

"I bought an expansion for an existing satirical game with a suicide terrorist card in it... I Also talked to a Swedish guy who had made a satirical card game about the RAF (not the Royal Air Force, but the Rote Armee Fraktion) - talk about a dodgy subject in Germany, but no, no problem at all."

Quite amazing. War on Terror is sick and ridiculous, but a game about Europe's first urban guerilla terrorists is fine and dandy. As we've said all along, we're not so bothered by the decision of being banned alone, it's the double standards applied that leaves us scratching our heads.

Sjap went on to say how he confronted Dominique Metzler, the Essen Spiel organiser and author of the 'sick and ridiculous' quote:

"She completely refused to discuss anything with me, she kept saying check the website (I guess she meant the discussion on the Spielbox.de forum. I just checked it out and the vast majority of posts support WOT, so I don't really understand.)."

"She walked away from the counter, so I had to shout, "you have absolutely no sense of humour"."

"It's kind of weird that the person responsible, the person in charge, refuses to clarify/justify her opinion on the matter. Pretty weak, I'd say."

Cheers, Sjap. Sounds like we missed out on some fun. Oh well, maybe next year ...

Sjap also snapped some pictures of the convention being held in the hall nextdoor. It's a seemingly harmless Teddy Bear convention, but if you check out the gallery you'll see a sinister overtone to those furry fellas.

All we can wonder is, why wasn't this banned too?

Ship Ahoy!

Finally, somewhere out there on the waves there's a boat with a big metal box full of War on Terror, the boardgames. So we're on target, the games will be shoved through mail boxes starting the week of the 19 November.

Depending on quite where you are in the world, it may take a little longer to get to you. As soon as we have firm dates for UK, US, Canada, Europe and 'elsewhere' we'll be letting people know via email and this website.

The media circus rolls on... Another day trip to London and we had fun and met some very nice people for our Televisa Mexicana interview. And a piece in today's Guardian has already created some interesting leads, more of which you'll hear about in good time.

We've also found a great venue for our launch party in London and we're still trying to work out how to use the TerrorBull Games video camera.

Game Report: Andy S, Andy T, Tom & Ben

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Have we been looking forward to this! Not only has it been ages since we've found time to actually play the game, but tonight marks the first game on a proper set with no home-made elements whatsoever. And what a lovely, shiny, smooth, newly-printed treat it is.

The board is set up and the original WoT triumvirate - the Andies and Tom - take a moment to drool over the cards, money and other game elements. Ben looks worried. It's not even started yet.

Ben gets to lay his starting villages first, spreading them out across the globe. Andy S next, sensing Ben - as fresh blood - would be easy pickings, places his villages next to Ben's. Tom goes for Nowhere and Asia, while Andy T cannot resist getting aggressive straight away and tries to outnumber Andy S in N.America.

Andy T also turns evil very early on, earning him some valuable terrorist cards. Unfortunately, as soon as he can, he uses his new terrorist influence to destroy Andy S's barely upright-walking culture in N.America. A town and a village fall, but the next go, Andy S puts some war cards to good use and chases Mr T out of his home continent.

In his excitement, Ben managed to overlook the Falkland IslandsSmarting, but not defeated, Andy T concentrates on populating Africa and Australia instead, while Tom and Ben quietly get on with the relatively peaceful business of Empire building.

Both Ben and Tom get a thirst for development and cities start springing up in Asia and S.America. A lucky oil gush makes Andy T an instant billionaire, while Andy S isn't going anywhere fast, hindered by a regime change in Egypt and a terrorist attack in Libya. Shortly after, Tom flushes Andy S out of Saudi Arabia and Iraq and so leaving Andy S with one village in the Balkans, sandwiched by three empires - a crucial buffer to world peace.

But not for long. The Balaclava of Evil gets passed round to Tom, then Andy S, then Ben, each wreaking their own special brand of terror.

Suddenly Ben seems to wake up to the point of the game and turns nasty. He decides he wants S.America for himself and funds some terrorist activities in Columbia to make sure of it. Then in the same go, quite arbitrarily, he decides to drop 'The Bomb' on the centre of Tom's business district in Afghanistan. Nasty business. Luckily Tom has a nuclear bunker and the attack is foiled.

A moment of particular tension follows when Ben, holding a terrorist column, hovering over Asia, can't quite decide where to place it. Each move seems to have a thousand possible outcomes, none of them good. "It's too mental", he declares and decides against the move altogether. Ben, you haven't seen anything yet ...

The temptation to ramp up the mental stakes is too much for Andy S who cashes in his chips and turns terrorist, but not before playing the much-feared 'insurgency emergency' card, thus doubling every terrorist unit on the board. Chaos and horror ensue.

It's a bloody mess from that point onwards, but Ben starts to see the temptation in turning terrorist, especially when Andy S convinces him that with some careful planning as a rogue Empire, he could ensure a terrorist win when he turned. To this end, Andy S donates two of his best cards.

What no one expected from a newbie is that he'd take those cards and use them entirely to his own advantage and try and go for glory all on his own. He builds a few cities, declares Europe for himself and bingo! Victory!

But not quite. In his excitement, Ben managed to overlook the Falkland Islands and so hadn't quite conquered S.America, despite the fact that sheep and penguins formed the only resistance on the vital island. But it's the end of his go and he has to save glory for another day.

After Andy T does very little, it's down to Tom - if Andy S can persuade Tom to turn terrorist, then a terrorist victory is well within grasp. Tom's interested, but first he needs to use all his cool cards that he's been saving up for half the game.

So that's why he cleared up some radiation in Peru, and then followed this by dropping a nuclear bomb in Brazil. Ben's devastated. A load of terrorist nasties in Europe and a particularly uncalled-for political kidnap mean that Ben finds himself on the verge of bankruptcy. He caves in and joins the terrorist force, pushing the terrorists to within a point of victory.

While Tom contemplates which mode of torture to use on Andy T, Andy T is busy doing sums and very slowly comes to the realisation that the next person to turn terrorist ensures a terrorist victory, thus resulting in the one remaining Empire losing. Pointing at the board, he ventures, "Hang on, if I turn ..." And just at that moment, Tom declares his intentions to join the dark army.

And that's how the game was won and lost. Three terrorists share the victory and Andy T, the sole Empire, a very sorry loser.

A classic game. Everyone was evil. Terrorist hi-jinks. Stupid secret messages. Back-stabbing a-plenty. And asses laughed well and truly off. Ben declaring at regular intervals 'I can't believe you've made this thing I'm playing'...

And now, my friends, we give it to you...

Delivery update

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Just when we thought things had calmed down a little...

The past week has been a mental'un. We did an interview with Forbes magazine; been asked on Mexican TV; asked to give a talk on boardgame design in Holland; sent some promo sets out to reviewers and others who have influenced and inspired us ... And then all hell broke loose when our shipping and fulfilment partner (Charles Gee & Co.) who had been working with us for six months suddenly backed out after seeing the 'sick' tabloid headlines.

Needless to say we were amazed by this latest development. We first talked to Charles Gee representatives at the London Toy Fair back in January. Since then we were repeatedly impressed by their friendly and prompt service. Two reps came out to see us. They had reservations, but loved the game as soon as they saw it. Only after we'd arranged shipping, warehousing and fulfilment with them, did Tim Thompson - a partner at Charles Gee - drop us an email to say he didn't want our business. We'd never heard of Tim Thompson before, but here he was, screwing up our entire release date with one email. Very professional. Cheers, Tim.

So where does that leave us? Well we managed to sort out a replacement shipping and fulfilment company pretty quickly. They are cool and we're indebted to them. As far as dates go, Instead of our original delivery estimate of end October, we now have a confirmed shipping arrival date of November 12. Apparently we have to factor in another week for customs clearance, so this is a real set back. Sorry. We're as gutted and frustrated as you are.

We've sent an email out to everyone who's pre-ordered. If you pre-ordered and didn't receive this email, please get in touch right away.

The only problem we're left with is North America. Our Original partner had a base in the States, from which we could fulfil American orders. Unfortunately our new partner can't do this so we've just started contacting warehousing/ pick+pack/ fulfilment people in the States, but have had no joy yet. It's pretty hard when you don't have any leads. So if you know of a suitable (and reliable) company, please let us know.

If you've ordered from the States and you're now panicking, please don't. We have 500 games heading your way and even if we have to train winged monkeys to distribute them, we'll do it.

Having companies run away from us is getting such a bad habit, that we've dedicated a page to flakey and irrational business behaviour. We've called it the Coalition of the Unwilling.

Thanks for your patience and understanding. We'll get there in the end. After seeing the finished product last week, we just can't wait until the games are out there! We want to be a fly on the wall of every house as they open this box of joy. It will be well worth the wait, honestly.