I understand the trouble with the shipping cost of product to oversea kickstarter backer so I am offering 3 suggestion as a way to solve the problem :
1- ADG is using people in several European country to stock replacement parts for their games. This way they dont have to pay shipping cost from Australia each time someone need a replacement for a counter sheet. Perhaps the same kind of deal could be made with one Shop or online Shop by country, thus they will receive be delivered kickstarter items with standard shipment or when you are present in Europe for convention then deliver them at cheapest cost.
2- Use Vouchers that can be traded at the local FLG (with support of thoses shops of course). I suppose you have only a few suppliers for Europe so you can have them stock the kickstarter items with their order and they just have to join them to the shop that order the product.
3- Create special kickstater reward for oversea people and limit them to things that can be send in a standard postal envelop. I suppose the 40 cards of a promo hero wont cost that much, and you could lower the shipping cost from 50$ to 5-10$ for such backing.
Best Regards.
P.S. of and BTW your games are just very very good. They worked very well in the gaming shop I demo-ed them, plenty of people where interested, if in non-translated version. Too bad they are so hard to get here, perhaps you should strike a deal with a European editor so he produce a localised version to distribute ?
The ideal solution would probably be to "centralize" all kickstarter commands in a country at one shop in this country, but I fear it is to us, players, to convince our retailers to "kickstart for us"...
The idea of an "overseas reward" seems good ! A reward that would be free for us poor non-US people, but that buyers in the US could have for 5$ ?
Why not a free one year subscription to the Sentinels of the Multiverse PDF Comics line ;) ?
I'll kickstart anyway, as soon as I can scrap the money, this game is soooooooo enjoyable, but a little something in compensation for high shipping costs would be very pleasant :)
"NEW OPTION! For no additional cost, you can pick up your games and rewards at either PAX Austrailia 2013 or Essen 2013. We are not doing convention pickup for any other show, as it is more costly and a significant hassle, however, we are willing to do so for those two shows in order to help offset the steep international shipping costs."
Woot! I almost missed that new info. That solves the high shipping costs for me personally, and probably quite a few others as well, knowing how many people visit that fair each year. Now I can think about what to back :) I will also give a 'heads up' on this kickstarter on a well visited Dutch board gaming forum.
One thing that I have thought of is that they could offer international backers a free playtesting account. It equals the international shipping costs, doesn't cost them anything, and has the added benefit of making the (slightly) longer wait less torturous for us.
But well, one of the reasons I suggest this is because I really would love to be a playtester >_>
But to be clear, I don't think >G owes us anything, but if you're talking about ways to make the international shipping less painful, this would be one of the more effortless and simple options.
Well, I have a solution for a few (3) of my fellow foreigners. I've checked with the >G people that this is ok and as such, I'm making the following offer. Post below for your interest and send me a PM with the details your using on Kickstarter (only account name, don't worry) and I'll pay the $40 for international shipping. This offer is good for the first three repondants only as even my lunacy, and bank balance, has limits. If anyone else is interested in backing this admittedly daft idea, just let the >G people know when you fill in the survey (and increase your contribution by $40 a time, obviously).
That's a great idea pwatson. I was just thinking of something similar and Paul confirmed that it can easily be done on another thread. So in that spirit I posted this offer on BGG:
I can't believe my GeekList made it into an official >Games update; that really made my day when I read the email. Not much action there yet, but it's a start.
Err, what's a Geeklist? I was put off donating 'cause of the horrible shipping fees, but if I can have a way to get around that I'll certainly put some cash in. I can wait for Shattered Timelines itself (till a UK seller has it - I picked up everything up to Infernal Relics from Games Lore) but Unity and Ambuscade are a different matter - I want to get hold of them but sellers over here don't stock them 'cause they seem only available from Grater Than Games themselves :(.
GeekLists are a feature on boardgamegeek.com. They are somewhat like forum threads, but have slightly different functionality. If you follow the link up above (or here: http://bgg.cc/geeklist/149102/sentinels-of-the-multiverse-shattered-timelines-ki, or on update #8), it will take you there. Basically there's a header at the top, and comments at the bottom. In the middle, people can post items (which can have their own individual comments). The idea behind this GeekList is that people would post an item if they are willing to subsidize shipping, and the person that posted the item would choose someone (or more) to subsidize (via whatever method they want).
Looks like there's only my offer (which someone has already claimed) and one that's Canada specific so far, but hopefully there will be more in the future.
Can I just say you guys are amazing. While I'm one of those people paying $50 shipping on a $20 expansion, the cost is not completely prohibitive for me, since I can share it with someone. But it's amazing that you can help people get the game that wouldn't be able to otherwise.
