Bye bye 2013

2013 has marked the third year of existence for NSKN Games and it has been one great yet challenging period for us. We had ups and downs, we sold a lot of games and we made mistakes which made us learn and improve.

Jan 2013 - For the first time in our brief history, NSKN Games attended the Nürnberg Toy Fair, a fair very different from everything else we had previously experienced. From the board games world only a few publishers made it there due to the prohibitive prices and also because it's not a trade fair - meaning companies may not sell games to the public and the attendance is restricted to traders. Nevertheless, it was a  very proud moment, NSKN was the only company of its size to exhibit in Nürnberg.

Feb 2013 - The first edition of Exodus: Proxima Centauri became officially sold out at publisher level. With the exception of a around 40 copies especially saved for gaming conventions, there were no more games to sell to distributors or retailers. This was another proud moment, because Exodus became the first ever published game of our to be completely sold out.

Mar-Apr 2013 - The spring was dedicated almost entirely to working on the new prototypes, games planned for late 2013 and 2014. As it turned out, our plans changed a little throughout the year, however the outcome of the spring was that NSKN had no less than four fully tested prototypes ready for showing to the public: Praetor, W, Perfect Storm and Evolution.

Besides working on prototypes, we have also decided to re-print Exodus, backed by popular demand. Taking into account the issues encountered with the first edition, we decided to produce the game in Europe.

May-Jun 2013 - The first month of summer was dedicated to gaming conventions. We went first to UK to attend for the second time the UK Games Expo and what a convention that was! With a new venue and almost double the attendance, it's one of the fastest growing gaming events in Europe. Add to this experienced gamers and very positive people and you have the ingredients for a great event. Next we went to Italy for the 5th time to attend GobCon organized by La Tana dei Goblin and we had fun, we played cool games and sold whatever was left from our "convention stock" of Exodus.

Jul-Sep 2013 - Reprinting Exodus was no easy task. With the decision to produce in Europe and to keep the same retail price, we had to work really hard to re-engineer the game. We changed all the think paper components to 2mm cardboard, we gave a new look to the game without changing core concepts and we supervised closely the entire production process. It was very hard work, but we saw the light when we opened the first box of the game. 15 punchboards, 2 decks of cards, 72 dice, almost 200 wooden pieces and 48 plastic space ships added to a total of 6 pounds (3 kilos) making it a massive games really well packed in a standard box. Another moment to make us proud.

Oct 2013 - This October, the same as the for the two previous years, was dedicated to preparing and attending Spiel Essen. For the first time we went with a large booth - 4 times the standards 10 sqm - and we brought our remaining stock as well as three final prototypes to be displayed on five gaming tables. It was a real success and you can read more about our experience in the posts we wrote before, during and after the convention

http://nskngames.blogspot.com/2013/10/spiel-essen-day-2-playing-and-preparing.html

http://nskngames.blogspot.com/2013/10/spiel-essen-day-0-playing-and-preparing.html

http://nskngames.blogspot.com/2013/10/space-battles-or-spiel-essen-days-12.html

http://nskngames.blogspot.com/2013/11/first-thoughts-after-essen.html

Nov 2013 - The Essen follow-up proved very fruitful. By the end of November, Warriors & Traders and Wild Fun West were sold out at publisher level, meaning that we kept enough copies to fulfill a few online orders and cover the next gaming convention we plan to attend. On top of that, the orders for the Revised Edition of Exodus: Proxima Centauri exceeded what we had in the warehouse so we had to turn down a few orders and work hard on the upcoming expansions. As a consequence, NSKN Games experienced another great feeling, that of having an empty warehouse and lots of games in the stores and on gamers' tables.

Dec 2013 - Our next big release is Praetor, our first worker placement game. We plan a massive production with editions in English, German, French, Japanese, Romanian, Korean and more. We have just finalized the graphics and we plan to release the game early next year, so the next few months will also be very busy for everyone at NSKN Games. But before that happens, we are going for holidays, some well deserved two weeks of relaxing and... playing, because we are gamers at heart and mind.

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Find out more on the NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine 

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

Essen preorders open!

The largest gaming fair in Europe is less than a month away and everyone’s purchase list is getting ever thicker. We’re talking about Spiel ’13 Essen and the hundreds of new games being released during the four busiest days of the year for any passionate gamer.

We have been preparing for this event for several months and we already have a clear picture of what we are preparing for all our friends and fans. So, to keep the long story short, we are opening the preorder campaign for Exodus: Proxima Centauri (revised edition) and for all the other games we’re bringing along.

To preorder simply visit this page and choose your games.

There will be many questions regarding our preorder campaign and we want to anticipate and offer you a few answers.

Why preorder? Because we have a limited quantity of each game. The most wanted and expected isExodus: Proxima Centauri and we will bring along to Essen 150 copies of the game. The other two games available for preorders are Wild Fun West (60 copies) and Warriors & Traders (100 copies).

What about the discounts? The revised Exodus comes with a 10 EUR discount and this needs no further explanations. It’s Essen, so it’s like Christmas for gamers! For the other two titles we simply have that many game boxes left and while reaching the finish line we’re offering huge discounts – 10 EUR for Wild Fun West (MSRP 20 EUR) and 8 euro for Warriors & Traders (MSRP 45 EUR).

How does it really work? You pay via PayPal before October 20th and then come by our booth (G-140, hall 1) and pick up whatever you ordered. It’s that simple.

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Find out more on the NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine 

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

Preparing for Spiel '13 Essen

NSKN Games is hitting yet another milestone this year. With our third presence at Spiel Essen, we are entering a new era because, for the first time, we are able to do it according to our imagination. Let me explain why...

Every other year we managed to bring one or two new games to the fair, play them and sell them and we made a good buzz. But we never managed to bring along final prototypes of the new games.

2013 come with good news. We have three games already play-tested, with the graphic art ready and made into nice looking prototypes. We also booked a larger space so that we have one playing table dedicated to each game. This way everyone will have the chance of testing, enjoying and giving feedback on the game we plan to release in 2014.

The three final prototypes I mentioned before are Praetor, a worker placement tile laying game for 2-5 players, W - The Board Game, a strategy game about American politics for two players and Perfect Storm, a lightweight Euro-game for 2-5 players.

We'll also bring along the games which we already have in stock. Warriors & Traders will be present at the fair for the third year with a significant discount, Wild Fun West will see its second Spiel Essen and last but not least we will release the revised edition of Exodus: Proxima Centauri. This is our most expected release and we have already talked about it in a previous post and we will bring more news as we get closer to the opening of the fair.

All in all, we are hoping that 2013 will mark a new beginning for NSKN at Essen. We will focus on playing, with up to 5 simultaneous sessions and we do hope that many of you will join us in Germany.

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Find out more on the NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine 

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

NSKN @ 2 years (part 2)

I felt nostalgic today and it felt like a good time to tell the rest of the story of building NSKN. The first part ended with the 1-year anniversary of the company... well shortly after we went for the first time to the UK Games Expo, with high hopes yet knowing quite little about the event.

May 2012 - We still had only one published game, but we had ready-to-play prototypes of Exodus: Proxima Centauri and Wild Fun West and we had prepared one table for each, hoping to raise awareness and interest for our planned release in Essen or Nurnberg.

NSKN was among the very few publishers daring to show off prototypes during the expo, and while we were a bit afraid that they won't be well received, most people reacted quite well and some even wanted to pay us to make sure they'll get a copy of the final games. Pushed by people's interest, we decided to put the games on Indiegogo later in 2012, hoping to raise some money for the production and a spark the interest in Essen.

Jun 2012 - GobCon LAGNA and the first expansion. Right after the UK Games Expo, we took a trip to Italy to meet our friends from La Tana dei Goblin for the second time. We prepared for them an expansion of Warriors & Traders called Italia, with a cotton map and a more interactive game play. It was a small series of only 50 copies, but after the first week of preorders it was all sold out. Add this to the sun and wine from Italy and you have the perfect small gaming event!

Sep 2012 - We started our first two projects on Indiegogo, Wild Fun West and Exodus: Proxima Centauri. Most people thought we were crazy and we shared their opinion at first, but there was a good reason behind this decision. We knew that only one game will succeed, NSKN was too small to advertise and keep two projects alive, but with little experience in crowd-funding we did not know which of the two games had better chances. As soon as Exodus took off and reached a quarter of its goal in less than a week, we directed all our advertising efforts into supporting it. And it was worth it.

Oct 2012 -This was the craziest month in the history of NSKN. We had a place in Essen booked long time before and waiting from Exodus and Wild Fun West to arrive from China, go though customs and ship immediately to Germany for the big event. Two weeks before Spiel Essen, the ship carrying the games was delayed in Istanbul, we later found out that the games were not packed on pallets and the truck we had booked to carry the games backed out of the deal. 

I will spare you the details and get to the conclusion. The games made it on time, but just 5 days before Essen. We had to rent a van and drive all the way to Germany, with 1.5 metric tons of games and furniture for the booth. While part of the team was enjoying Essen, the rest were packing games and shipping to our Indiegogo backers.

For NSKN it was the first fair with more than one published games, so we attracted some attention, had about 30 business meeting and around 10 interviews with reviewers, so all the effort paid off in the end. Our distribution network expanded quite a lot and our games ended up in store in 31 countries.

Nov 2012 - While most publishers are late with delivering their crowd-funded games, we managed to beat the deadline. By half of November all the pledges were shipped out and about 1/3 of them had already reached their new owners. 

Every success story has its shadows. By December 2012 we started receiving complaints about the quality of the components in some of the Exodus boxes. We looked into it and asked the help of the manufacturing company to replace the defects. To this day they have refused to support us in any way. So, we sacrificed some of the game boxes and sent out replacement to every owner of a flawed games who has reached out to us. It has been a giant amount of work, but we need to make sure that everyone gets what they pay for.

Jan 2012 - We released the second expansion of Warriors & Traders, called Middle Ages, again in Italian for La Tana dei Goblin. It was our third presence in GobCon and we were already feeling like part of the community. We also showed the prototypes of Praetor and W - The Board Game and got quite a positive reaction.

Feb 2012 - We had another premiere, we had a booth in the Nurnberg Toy Fair, a quite expensive and exclusive trade fair where the big names in the industry show they latest inventions. It was out first corporate event and even though we were a bit lost in the beginning, we managed to get the most of the fair, establishing a few long term partnerships and selling out whatever was left of our stock of Exodus: Proxima Centauri.

Mar 2012 - We took out all the upcoming games and went on a play-testing spree, trying to see which of the four games (W, Praetor, Perfect Storm and Evolution) will take priority for the rest of the year. Praetor and W were the two games that stood out and made it past the finish line and even though we don't have clear deadlines yet, we are trying to make them available as soon as possible.

In 2013 we did not have a formal celebration of two year of NSKN, but we plan to do that in Essen. Being still quite an international team, we don't have that many chances to be all together in the same place, but there's always one big event that gathers all of us and that is obviously Spiel Essen.

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Find out more on the NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine 

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

NSKN @ 2 years

A bit more than two years ago I was registering the name NSKN Legendary Games, embarking, together with some of my friends, on an unexpected and amazing journey. I had big plans and little knowledge, but it seemed that designing and publishing board games is the right thing to do. Two years later I can confirm that I made the right decision and, even if this proves to be a much tougher journey that I could have ever expected, it is worth every moment.

Anniversaries are not only moments of joy and celebration, but also good opportunities to remember, because "Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it" (G. Santayana).

But the history of NSKN did not start only 2 years ago. It goes back another year or so into the past, when the idea of making board games sparked in my head.  That is the true beginning...

Jun 2010 - Warriors & Traders prototype, second version. Looking back at this it feels like ancient history, like it happened 500 years ago. Looking at the prototypes we are making today, it feels childish, but deep inside I know that had it not been for this one game, NSKN would not be what it is today.

It took another 14 versions if I remember correctly and one year of play-testing before Warriors & Traders was ready for printing, but hard work and good friends to exploit were the key to making it happen (there are so many people that I want to thank for their help and for believing in this project, but that is beyond the purpose of this post).

Apr 2011 - The last play-test of Warriors & Traders. Soon after we established NSKN, while our graphic designers were doing their magic, preparing the final version, ready to print.

The summer of 2011 was one full of planning and hoping, we were about to go to our first Spiel Essen, we had no idea how the distribution was working and until the very last moment we were afraid that the games might be late (it had happened to the biggest names in the industry) and we will simply be eight people in an empty booth showing people a big... smile.

Oct 2011 - Spiel Essen - In the end, everything was fine, NSKN came to Essen with Warriors & Traders, a game well received by both the public and the distribution companies.

Spiel '11 was an event I will never forget. I still get goosebumps when I go think about the amount of people we talked to, that we ran out of games several time and we had to drive back and forth from Germany to Belgium to bring more. It was indeed a magical time, one to remember every time something went so wrong that I wanted to quit and never look back.

By the end of 2011 we had already sold a significant quantity of Warriors & Traders, covering most of Europe and North America and reaching game stores as far as Thailand and Japan. What we were still missing was the direct connection with the gamin community, but we were about to take care of that aspect too.

While still busy and focused on selling Warriors & Traders, I was secretly working on another big game, Exodus: Proxima Centauri, though back then it carried a completely different name.

Jan 2012 - GobCon - This was our first contact with gamers in a local convention and it was a blast and not only because it was in Italy - the country of amazing food and wine - but because of the people I met and the friends I've made. This was also the starting point of the first expansion in the history of NSKN, Warriors & Traders: Italia, developed especially for the organizers of GobCon.

Feb 2012 - The prototype of Exodus: Proxima Centauri was ready. I had worked on it for half a year, I had learned physics and read books in the process, but all my effort was rewarded with good feedback after the first session.

And how many designers out there can honestly say that for their first test of a sci-fi game they had good feedback from an all-girl team? :)

Apr 2012 - NSKN was celebrating 1 year. We had cake, and Champagne, we recalled the good moments of the year that had passed and we made plans for the future.

By then, Exodus: Proxima Centauri and Wild Fun West were both tested, working quite well and it was just a matter of time and fixing the details before NSKN was ready to publish two new games.

And that is the first part of our little saga... The second part is coming soon.

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Find out more on the NSKN official website | Facebook  | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine 

Follow us on Twitter: @NSKNGames

New video reviews

The holidays season brought us a few gifts, some quite unexpected. After the release of Exodus: Proxima Centauri and Wild Fun West we gave a few copies to experienced reviewers all over the world who would in exchange share their opinions, pointing out what they liked and disliked about our board games. If last year it took a long time to see impressions about Warriors & Traders, this time things moved a lot faster and we got these unexpectedly quick gifts.

Wild Fun West caught the attention of Tom Vasel from The Dice Tower (English review)

Exodus was analyzed by Alex from ce-jucam.ro (Romanian review)

Last but not least, during Spiel '12 Essen, the NSKN booth was visited by Andreas from cliquenabend.de and who talked to our team about every single one of our board games and expansions, Exodus: Proxima Centauri, Wild Fun West, Warriors & Traders and the Italia expansion (English/German)

The video of Warriors & Traders is slightly too long to add it here, so please have a look at the original link http://www.cliquenabend.de/news/992500-Essen-2012-Neuheit-Warriors-Traders.html.

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More about NSKN Legendary Games on the website | Facebook | Twitter | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine | Blog

Warriors & Traders can also be found on its own website | Facebook |  BGG
Exodus: Proxima Centauri: website | BGG
Wild Fun West: website | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: Agni, Alexandra, Andrei and Vlad 

Bye bye 2012

We're back from holidays and among the first things we have to do at the beginning of the new year is to draw the line and analyze the last 12 months with the goods and the bads, so we can learn and improve.

For NSKN, 2012 was a very busy year, the second in our short history and the year with the greatest growth so far. We released an expansion for our first board game and two new ones, we attended several gaming events and we expanded our market. But, let's take it step by step...

Jan 2012 - NSKN attended GobCon, an event by gamers for gamers in Bologna, Italy. It was our first local gamin convention, we got to meet a lot of great people and we established a long-term relationship with La Tana dei Goblin, the largest board gaming community in Italy.

Feb 2012 - We announced our new games for 2012, Wild Fun West and Exodus: Proxima Centauri on BoardGameGeek. With the aid of the great people, we polished the games, we chose the right names and we organized play-testing sessions.

Apr 2012 - One year after being established, NSKN got a new look. We designed a new logo and a new website in our effort to increase awareness and to give better customer support to all of you who own or are interested in our games.

May 2012 - Our team went all the way to Birmingham, UK to attend for the first time the UK Games Expo. It was a unique experience, we met lots of great people and we discovered a community of great people. We presented to the public for the first time the final prototypes of Wild Fun West and Exodus: Proxima Centauri, our upcoming games for the fall of 2012. The feedback was encouraging and we decided to move further with both board games.

Jun 2012 - June marked our second trip to Italy to meet Tana dei Goblin for and to released the first expansion of Warriors & Traders, Italia. We got a lot of help from our fiends form Italy and we designed this expansion  especially for them. The first print sold out immediately and this represented another landmark for NSKN, our first ever sold-out product.

Jul 2012 - The graphic design for Wild Fun West was ready and we announced the game for Spiel '12 Essen.

Aug 2012 - Exodus reach its final state, with all the illustrations and it was ready to go into production. We made the decision to use Indiegogo for crowd-funding and we prepared the projects.

Sep 2012 - In the beginning of September, NSKN celebrated another brand new accomplishment, we were no longer a one-game-publisher, we had Wild Fun West ready and Exodus was getting significant support on Indiegogo, getting ready to be funded. At the same time, our new games were being produced and shipped from China.

Oct 2012 - October was by far the month with the most work, events and accomplishments for NSKN. Just a few days before Essen we reached our goal on Indiegogo. Our year long efforts were repaid by gaming enthusiasts who decided to back Exodus and we even exceeded our goal by 10 %. As soon as our crowd-funding campaign was successful, we shipped more than 130 copies of Exodus, in an effort larger than it looks for a still very small company.

Since the first print of Warriors & Traders: Italia sold out so quickly, we decided to make a second print, also limited to 50 copies. It was the last chance to get this exclusive expansion and we got preorders for more than half of the production.

The second part of October was marked by the mobilization effort for Spiel Essen. We attended the largest board gaming event in Europe for the second year, bringing a team of 8 people, three games and one expansion. 

Nov 2012 - NSKN went back to Italy for Lucca Comics & Games, a convention that brought together 138,000 people. We were the only foreign publisher and even though our Italian language skills were limited, we made an impression and sold out the last few copied of Warriors & Traders: Italia.

Dec 2012 - After we got back from Lucca until the end of the year we focus of sales and getting our new games to as many hobby stores as possible. We expanded our distribution network in Asia and Europe and this effort will continue throughout 2013. The year ended with a long overdue vacation from which we have just returned.

After we drew the line, 2012 was a good year with many highlights but also some mistakes. We managed to expand, we designed and produced two new board games, but we also encountered some production quality issues that we'e still fighting to solve. We have big plans for 2013 but we want to stay a small, friendly company which is capable to respond to any request in a matter of hours or days, putting our fans and customers first. We're still learning and every day we realized how special and amazing the board games industry is.

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More about NSKN Legendary Games on the website | Facebook | Twitter | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine | Blog

Warriors & Traders can also be found on its own website | Facebook |  BGG
Exodus: Proxima Centauri: website | BGG
Wild Fun West: website | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: Agni, Alexandra, Andrei and Vlad 

Impressions from around the internet

The new NSKN games are not going unnoticed this winter. There are some English reviews waiting for the final touches, but in the mean time, we found discussions and reviews in several other languages. 

In French, on trictrac.fr there's a short description of Exodus
Exodus Proxima Centauri (au lait)

Ludoversum have published their own impressions of the game. For our German fans
Exodus review

There's a review of Wild Fun West, also in German, on spieletest.at
Wild Fun West

Wild Fun West was noticed as far as in Japan and the game description together with some links on plaza.rakuten.co.jp
ワイルド・ファン・ウェスト(Wild Fun West)

Our Italian fans were not forgotten and, even though a bit older, there's a nice game description  of Exodus on kultunderground.org
Exodus review

We are constantly collecting all the impressions about our new games, good or bad, from everywhere in our quest to provide the latest info and it is all on our website.

__________________

More about NSKN Legendary Games on the website | Facebook | Twitter | BGG |  ScoopIT Magazine | Blog

Warriors & Traders can also be found on its own website | Facebook |  BGG
Exodus: Proxima Centauri: website | BGG
Wild Fun West: website | BGG

Follow us on Twitter: Agni, Alexandra, Andrei and Vlad