Big milestone to share: our full digital samples from LongPack have been developed, reviewed, and approved. The back and forth took longer than planned, but we're viewing it as a good thing. LongPack's experience and attention to detail is increasing our confidence that we chose a good partner, we feel it in the process. It just takes time, even when you plan for it taking time. We are very eager to get into real production!

Next Up:

The pledge manager has been a huge success with over 90% of you completing your surveys. We are closing it on June 14. If you haven't completed yours yet, now is the time. Your survey is how we know what to make and where to send it. For any outstanding charges, those will complete when the Survey closes on June 14th. 

After that date, the Pre-Order store will stay open but any crowdfunding specific perks may be limited. 

Find your pledge manager here: https://redtides.backerkit.com/

BackerKit is hosting a webinar with us on June 11. The session covers how the Red Tides campaign unfolded and what we learned along the way. Register here: https://www.crowdcast.io/c/tortugas-games-red-tides

If you are not in the Discord yet, come on in. We are going to be doing more community testing there, including a web app prototype for stat tracking and a digital version of Red Tides on Tabletopia. Both will be available to test drive. 

https://discord.gg/akZEfsQgdJ

We also want to hear from you. What do you want more of? Lore, art, behind the scenes, Q&A, design deep dives? Let us know and we will make it happen.

More soon.

Fair winds and following seas.

Nick and Micah

Fair winds and following seas, Captains! 

Spring is here and we've got real news to share. Not all of it is the news we wanted to give you, but it's all important. 

The fulfillment survey went out mid-March and we're sitting at 85% complete. That's great!

Help us get Red Tides to you by filling out the pledge survey. Responses aren't just administrative housekeeping. They're how we tell the factory exactly how much of everything to make. And on a more basic level, if you haven't filled out your survey, we don't have anywhere to send your game! Every missing response is a number we're guessing on and an address we don't have. If you haven't completed yours yet, please do. We'll give you a high five in person the next time we see you.

Find your survey here: https://redtides.backerkit.com/

If you're running into trouble, reach out to [email protected] and we'll get you sorted. 

We're been working through the hardest components first and making real progress. We want to be honest with you about what's affecting our timeline though. Aside from a number of minor tweaks (I'm looking at you, medium range dice and your finicky perfect shade of gold), the international shipping situation has introduced genuine uncertainty that we can't fully control. Not that this is the most important part of what's going on by any means, but if things get sorted out, it will help the shipping.  If it doesn't change, we're planning around it. What that means practically is that we have more confidence in Q3 delivery than Q2. I know so many of you have been jonesing to roll some bones, so this really stinks. However, we're continuing to push at the factory (without sacrificing quality). When we know more, we'll let you know.

The wooden token upgrades were confirmed and locked in with manufacturing. Both the Foe Wooden Token Upgrade Pack (free for all backers!) and the 5 Faction Deluxe Wooden Upgrade Bundle are available now in the pledge manager and on the pre-order site. The response has been genuinely great. Thank you to everyone who pushed on this from the early conversations all the way through to final design. This one was a community effort. 

We've signed a contract with a US distribution partner. That's a real milestone and it means Red Tides will have a path to retail shelves after fulfillment. You'll already have your copy, of course, but it will mean we can keep growing Tortugas Games for more games, expansions, etc.  We're still figuring out what our footprint looks like outside North America and will share more as that picture gets clearer (pledge manager tells us where our backers are). 

We're working with our distributor on securing space at GenCon and/or PAX Unplugged (hopefully both). Having the game in hand is a requirement to make either one happen. Right now we have higher confidence in PAX Unplugged than GenCon given the timing, but we're pushing on both. More on this as manufacturing progresses.

We're in the home stretch for getting this thing made. We're already thinking about ways to expand Red Tides, if there's an appetite for it, but are most focused on delivering on our pledge to you first and foremost. Join us on Discord if you want to chat or help mold where we go from here.

February has been a different kind of month and I held out as long as possible because I wanted more HARD NEWS. I’m bummed to say I can’t tell you exactly when you’ll get Red Tides. And the biggest elephant in the room is the Pledge Manager, a couple of words I’m about ready to fight. Pledge Manager is STILL in the works, lesson learned.

That being said...

Chinese New Year wrapped up and the factory is back in action. As expected, they came back to a backlog. Ours is in the queue, all files approved, nothing blocked… but we don’t yet have a clean “this is the exact date production finishes” answer.

Rather than pretend we do, we’ll wait and share real timing once it’s locked. This phase is less flashy. No dramatic dice videos. No shiny prototype photos. Just queue position, throughput, and patience. But we are in it.
 

One of the advantages of the slight manufacturing delay is that we had a small window to make one more adjustment before files fully locked.

After years of playtesting we’ve amassed a couple of “if only we had time” wish list items. One of those was specifically, Specialists.

Specialists are the upgrade slots on your ships that allow you to shape your play style. In the early days, our philosophy leaned closer to competitive deck construction. There was a certain dependability around pursuing a specific build and trying to execute it as cleanly as possible.

What we found over time was that the most fun moments did not come from perfecting a build beforehand.

They came from reacting.

Red Tides plays better when the fleet evolves together rather than each captain executing a pre-written script.

So we expanded the Specialist pool to introduce more variants that cover a wider range of scenarios.

Read more about it on our Discord
General Address: https://discord.gg/fC3NEP3Vuj
Direct Post: https://discordapp.com/channels/1199013414211682404/1199014072520282273/1477005517225197732

With production largely in the factory’s hands for now, we’ve been shifting some of our energy to what comes after fulfillment. Getting your games to you is still the north star.

At the same time, if Red Tides is going to live a long life, we can’t wait until the containers are on the water to think about retail, distribution, and long term availability.

That world is proving very different from crowdfunding, to say the least! Different packaging realities (man, am I tired of thinking about how to wrap up dice) and big-time different expectations from retailers and distributors.

We’ve been talking with folks who live in that ecosystem full time and trying to be thoughtful about who we align with. If we move forward with partners, it will be because they share our commitment to quality and presentation.

For those of you outside North America, this is for you!

We’re continuing to clean up EU regulatory requirements and international documentation. It’s not glamorous work, but it’s necessary work if we want smooth fulfillment and broader availability.

We’re working with Vesuvius Media, who also run the Hive platform. They have deep experience with global shipping and distribution, and they’re helping us navigate the realities of international logistics.

Long term availability outside North America will ultimately come down to demand. Retail distribution requires scale to make sense. As fulfillment unfolds, we’ll be watching closely to see where Red Tides is gaining traction around the world. 

We also want to give a real shout out to the backers who jumped into the BackerKit comments and Discord conversations about the wooden token solution (see the shipple prototypes in teh Just for Backers section below). The final approach was not something we dreamed up in isolation. It came directly from that back and forth.

That’s something Micah and I have been talking about a lot lately. We built Red Tides in a bubble for over ten years (12? 15?!).

Most of the core systems were hammered out just the two of us, iterating, arguing, refining, testing. That gave the game a very strong spine. But it also meant we didn’t have this kind of live feedback loop. And honestly it’s been energizing.

Right now, we’re neck deep in logistics, documentation, freight planning, manufacturing coordination, compliance, and the thousand invisible gears that make publishing work. We are not currently sketching new factions or tweaking cannon math.

But that season will come again. When it does, we want to be more intentional about involving this community.

Don’t get me wrong, it’s not design by committee and a poll for every decision but structured, thoughtful engagement where it makes sense. Early looks. Focused feedback. That sort of thing

The wooden token discussion remind ed us that this doesn’t have to be a ten year bubble ever again.

For now though? We wait for our slot on the production line.

More soon.

Fair winds and following seas in New Caribbea.

P.S. And here’s some art because we can...