Kill the Unicorns - An Enchanted Card Game For Evil Geniuses

White copies and pre-press reports
almost 6 years ago – Sat, Jun 16, 2018 at 12:00:05 AM

Hello Everyone,

We received the white copies last Monday + a full 2nd pre-press report.

Prepress report sent from Panda GM to flag any file mistake, it take a bit of time and sometimes involves some core changes. Nothing really interesting to show you about that, it's just a bit of back and forth with Panda to make the files correction and make sure we don't have any problem during mass production.

It seems that Panda struggled a bit with the 1st player unicorn, especially to make sure that the "surprise" is working correctly, so we don't have the PPC for that yet. We should get it soon.

Regarding the other elements, we got all the white versions of the boxes and the cards.

• Game boxes

Main Game box (the big square one) is stunning. It really works well. Really, nothing to say :)

The expansion box has a die-lines problem and as when you push on the front of the box it opens. So we need to change that slightly.

• Cards

It's a 300gsm ivory core carton, according to us the most playable material in that case. If feels really nice in the hands, we are pretty happy with the result.

Final size for the small cards is 63x63mm (to match the "standard" sleeves)

Final size for the biggest cards is 80x80mm

• Rulebook

The paper used is the Panda standard for rulebooks, it's a bit higher quality than other factories and it feels a bit thicker.

On the rulebook, we just need to add two pages to match a 4p multiple, this shouldn't take long.

Here you are everyone. So the next steps are :

- Finishing the files following the pre-press report, I will most certainly do that this sunday

- Receive the player mats & the 1st player token to validate the material.

- Validate the trays.

- Send to mass production ;)

Don't hesitate to ask if you have any question.

Cheers,

Tim

One big important news and some updates on the production :)
almost 6 years ago – Sat, May 26, 2018 at 01:01:45 AM

Hello everyone,

Hope you all go well :)

First important news; it’s official now, Morning has been purchased by a great Canadian company called Snakes & Lattes.

Most of the North American might already know about Snakes & Lattes, for the others in a few words; it's a board game café chain based in Toronto that is now opening new cafés in the USA.

We are thrilled about this news as it ensures an amazing future for Morning and it’s projets. The entire team remains as is and all the projects are continuing, now with the support of a bigger company that will both open our games to the US market and give us the financial support that we needed, staying as human and down-to-earth as we can be :)

Of course, Kill the unicorns remains our priority (and the priority of our new mother company Snakes & Lattes).

Regarding the next steps, lot of you asked for an update and while we have been replying in the comments to questions you may have, we always think twice before doing a full update as we don’t want to get too much ahead of ourselves and communicate some ETA too early that might turn out to be fase. I hope that you understand.

For the production of the game, things are moving forward and the manufacturing as a whole has started, but the printing machines are not running yet.

So it's a bit hard to give substantial news because we are between two phases and we are just doing many many small things.

To clarify where we are at: 

• Typo verification on the rules is done and all the final content was integrated the last two weeks. 
• The print files are now ready and we are doing what we call a “prepress check”, basically we are in contact with a specialist at Panda who is in direct contact with the factory folks and looks at every details in the files (colours, density of pixels, legal indications, barcode, etc.) to make sure we don’t launch a 10K units production run with mistakes and poor quality files :) I’m doing that directly with them and it’s a huge work so it may take a few days of back and forth. 
• We are waiting to receive the “white copy” of the game to validate all the printed items format (sizes, number of pages, cardboard thickness, etc.). 
• We are waiting to receive the first production copy of the 1st player unicorn as it had to be modified for molding (the tail was too fragile). 
• We just got feedback on the trays to make sure we are ready to launch production on that part. It was a tricky part as we are putting together a new concept of tray using injected pulp instead of plastic, essentially to keep the use of plastic as little as possible in our games and because we believe that the injected pulp gives a nice warm touch :)

That’s all for now folks. I’m trying to be as descriptive as possible but I can’t give definitive ETAs yet. Be sure that when the machines are rolling, I will get you some dates !

Let us know in the comments if you have any questions.

Cheers,

Tim

Short progress review
about 6 years ago – Thu, Apr 26, 2018 at 02:16:58 AM

Hi everybody,

I'm posting a quick news here to update you about our progress with the manufacturing of Kill the Unicorns.

Since the last update, we have been working on finalising the pre-prod process with the factory. It's a process where we work on the moulds and tooling to make sure that the printing and manufacturing go as expected. We had to adapt all our art files to the dielines the factory provided us and in the meantime, the factory worked on modifying a bit the 1st player token (yes, the Unicorn) to avoid any casting problem.

The real manufacturing is expected to be started within the next few days. We finally chose to go with Panda GM, which is, to us, one of the best manufacturing company in China and this is the insurance that a very good care will be taken regarding production quality.

As you might have understand, at this point it's going to be really hard to be in line with the deadline we had originally imagined for May. There are many reasons for that including the fact that we struggled a bit to take the decision to finally go with a new manufacturing facility when needed. We chose to insure a high standard of quality for Kill the Unicorns rather that rushing the whole thing to match the original (a bit optimistic) ETA.

It's really hard for me to give you an updated ETA at this point. I'd frankly rather wait a bit that I get a real timing estimation from the factory, at the official launch of the production. Of course, as soon as I'm having a better vision regarding the timeframe, I'll do another news to let you know.

That said, we are really really excited to get this game into production as we can't wait to have you guys get your hands on the actual Kill the Unicorns :)

As usual, don't hesitate to ask any additional question you need us to answer in the comment section.

Cheers,

Tim

Last graphical elements and next steps!
about 6 years ago – Thu, Apr 05, 2018 at 01:26:39 AM

Hi everyone,

I hope that you had a nice long-weekend for easter (for those who have that in their country) :)

I know you guys were expecting a news last week as I initially promised, my bad, I was expecting to have all the elements I wanted to show you by the end of last week, but as a matter of fact I did not get them in time. Now we're good.

On our side, we are still moving forward on Kill the Unicorns and we have made great progress that I'm happy to share with you!

First things first, we are nearly finished with the files for printing! A few text integration and proof-reading remains, but all the illustrations are done :)

Here are the last elements that you guys were expecting:

- Final Black Market cards back (I show it first because it's definitively my favorite ^^):

- Last Hunting cards backs finalised:

- Character power cards (text is not integrated yet on these ones):

- Character power cards back:

- Special Order cards:

- Special Order cards back:

- Rulebook: Please find the rulebook in French following this link (proof-reading in progress), english text integration is still in WIP and we will be able to share it soon.

Now that all the graphical elements are done, we are ready to move to manufacturing. We are sending over the files to the factory these coming days to start the verification process and potential adjustment. As soon as I have a timeline from the factory to communicate, I will provide it to you!

As we have experienced some issues on the production of HOPE, our first Kickstarter, with our manufacturer, we chose to move to another facility for Kill the Unicorns. This new manufacturer is one of the best in the board game industry and we are very confident in the idea of having great quality delivered to you guys.

We will try to be the closest possible to the delivery that we initially promised, that said we are really looking to achieve the best quality game possible, even if it results in some minor delays. Anyway, we will give you as much information as possible along the way and let you know the expected delays. Keep in mind that we are making huge steps everyday :)

You have asked us in the comments when we were planing to close the PM and charge your cards; for now we don't have any shipping costs to pay upfront, so it doesn't make sense to charge you too soon. We will most certainly charge you next month, in May :)

Let us know in the comments if you have any question!

Cheers,

Tim

Art update and other cool stuff!!!
about 6 years ago – Tue, Feb 20, 2018 at 10:57:45 PM

Hi Guys,

It's been quite a time since the last update, but trust me it's not for nothing, we have been working on a lot of stuff. 

First thing is that we almost have all the art finalised, just a few things remains to be finished to really be 100% done and it's just a matter of days. Levi is a fast artist but not yet magic (or is he?). 

Here are the new illustrations with colors, starting with a BUNCH of new unicorns for the expansion (Legendary pledge and up):

The Ninja-corns (damn, I love them):

The underground unicorns with the famous "4 unicorns of the apocalypse":

And (my absolute favorite), the pigicorns in their double-lands:

We also have the final art for the hunting cards with the 3 new characters, the (booored) elf, and the dwarf from the expansion (Legendary pledge and up) and the KS exclusive black mage:

Aaaand the related Scheme cards:

What's next?

Regarding the next steps, I want to show you some WIP we have. 

First for the the Player Mat. We are pretty happy with the look and are still working on it to make it easy to use (i.e. try to make obvious where each card goes):

We are working on the Hunting cards back and the black market back:

Here is a list of the last things that we are finalizing :

• Expansion box art
• Order cards (SG)
• Characters power cards

A lot of this new art is reserved for the Legendary backers, but keep in mind that you can still update your pledge level through your PM until end of next month :)

By the way, we are also working on the final rules, that we are going to share with you soon for review. The size of the box requires us to fit everything on a 10x10cm booklet and that's a challenge :)

Other subjects:

Some of you guys are asking about the "small surprise" we have promised. As every good surprise, you'll get to discover it when you'll open the box... You'll have to be patient ^^

Don't forget to tell you friends about Kill the Unicorns, the pre-order are open of the retail version: https://killtheunicorns.backerkit.com/hosted_preorders

Bonus:

At Morning, we have some different projects going on. Finishing KtU remains a priority as we want to deliver in May as promised, but I also wanted to show you a game another part of the team is working on. It's called Red Panda, it's a small card game by Romaric Galonnier and art by Derek Laufman (BGG: https://boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/244203/red-panda):

Don't hesitate to tell us what you think about it in the comments section.

Love and Unicorns,

Tim