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---------- Hi everyone!



A Quick Note: This month in this section I'm conveying some important operational information that impacts many of our customers. PLEASE, if you're going to skim it (I understand limited time), READ #1-4 below in this section. That will give you the core of the important information you need to know about your account, orders, and our communications. Thanks! - Gene



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Wow, what a month! Our first sale in three years has dominated our time daily since our last update. And the sale itself was awesome! You all responded in a huge way, creating a sale for us that was over 300% larger, both in units and in total sales receipts, than we've ever had before! So thank you for your overwhelming support. I hope everyone got some great games that will bring joy to your game tables for many years.



On the not-so-positive side, this sale was really the first big stress test of all of our new systems, both digital and physical. And as you might imagine, that stress test helped us find quite a few issues, several of which were rather unhappy surprises that have caused our office and digital systems people a lot of angst. Unfortunately, they've also caused delays and frustrations to many of you who ordered sale items or have near-term P500 games on order, as the mass of the sale and the friction of the issues have combined to slow down much of our order-processing and shipping operations of late. We are very sorry for any inconveniences you've experienced, and are doing our best to correct them ASAP.



In an overall sense, the mass of orders and the operational friction caused by some of the issues listed below have created a real crunch for the office and warehouse people. Almost a month in, we are still finishing up processing and shipping the orders from the sale, and probably won't have those complete until mid next week. For perspective, the last time we had a sale we had about 1/3 of the orders and it took us almost 5 weeks to process and ship them all. So our capacity HAS improved this time - just not as much as we hoped it would, in terms of fast order-processing of large numbers of orders.



So that you know what to expect in the near term, and "what's normal and what's not" for us right now, here's a brief overview of some functional issues that may affect your orders and near-term communications.



1. Massive Disruption (and an ugly surprise) to P500 Orders. We've had to delay shipping the November P500 orders, as there was just no capacity to get that done, with the sale volumes filling our systems. Finally, yesterday we were able to begin shipping the Andean Abyss and AA Update Kit orders (the PACs arrived), so you'll have those soon, but everything else has been on hold while we finished up the sale orders. We think we will finish those next week, so we plan now to send Talon 1000 and the Update Kit, as well as The Dark Sands starting the Tuesday after the Thanksgiving Holiday, November 27th.



SpaceCorp. The ugly surprise happened early this week, when designer John Butterfield brought to our attention that four of the mid-late game cards in SpaceCorp are missing. We did a quick check of scores of boxes, and they are all missing those four cards. Clearly, we should have caught this error earlier (I'm really glad John caught it when he did, or we would have a bigger problem if we had shipped them all out), but we all missed it - even with a bunch of proof copies. Sometimes human error just jumps up and bites us, and that's what happened here. Fortunately, Tony and Mark got with our printers and ordered a rush shipment on the four missing cards. We now anticipate that we'll have the cards in the warehouse around December 5-6 and can begin inserting, repacking, and shipping all the SpaceCorp orders then.



Please take a look at the Production Update later in this newsletter for a comprehensive look at which games are shipping when. We are going to do our best to fix systems, ramp up processing speed, and get everything shipped in December, but it's clear that it will be challenging.



2. Auto Notifications and Updated Order info in your account. Regarding individual order processing, although auto-notifications and website updates for UPS orders seem to be working well and as intended, we continue to have problems with both notifications and updates for non-UPS orders. We're working on this, but so far getting all the right systems to talk to each other has proven elusive.



For those of you who don't use UPS but really need to have tracking or delivery notification, there is a free USPS service you can sign up for that will allow you to preview and manage any deliveries coming to your home. It's called Informed Delivery. Just click on the link to go to the sign up page that has more info.



3. Office E-Mail Problems. In the midst of this much-larger-than-normal sales volume, we got a really large number of customers mentioning on social media that they weren't getting emails answered from the office. Our office folks are great at customer service and they definitely don't ignore customers, so we started looking into this in more detail. The upshot is we found some technical issues that had resulted in problems (either in or out) with around 2,000 customer emails!



So, for those of you who haven't had your emails answered, please accept our apologies. Mitch has been working this problem and it seems to be better over the past few days, but longer-term we're thinking we may have to move all of our office email addresses away from the ISP (the source of most of the tech issues). We'll keep you updated and get you new email contacts for the office folks if necessary.



In the meantime, if you experience email issues, please use our online chat (top right of any page on our website) to contact the office folks directly. Or if you'd rather call, contact us at 800-523-6111 in the US/Canada and 559-583-1236 worldwide. For both chat and phone, our office hours are 7 am to 4 pm Pacific time (GMT -8).



4. Auto Charging Issues. There are still a lot of customers who haven't gone into their My Account section on our website and updated their credit cards. Some cards are just expired; others are the ones that were corrupted when we did the system migration in June. We thought these would improve over time, but we're still seeing about 1/3 of all P500 orders get declined when we do the auto-charge. For SpaceCorp, for example, around 700 people of the 2,000+ who have a P500 order for it had their cards declined when we auto-charged and have not yet been charged for the game.



So first thing, if you have a SpaceCorp order (or an order for any other game in the "Charging" section of our P500 page), and you haven't seen a charge come through yet, there's a problem and your order isn't going to ship until we can charge your card. Please contact our office folks by online chat or phone (as above) so they can make sure the charge is done before we ship the game, so you don't miss out.



Secondly, we encourage all of you, especially if you haven't gone into your My Account section on our website in a while, to go in and make sure that your account information includes your current credit card information. To Edit the information, from the "Account Info" Tab, go to the bottom of the page and make sure you've clicked the box for "Save my Credit Card Info" and Saved. Then click the red "here" on the "Edit Credit Card Info here" line at the bottom. It looks like this:







Longer-term, we're creating some new processes that will hopefully decrease the # of auto-charges that fail and also improve our communications both before and after we charge. This may take a few weeks to accomplish, but this should improve soon, especially as customers get their credit card numbers updated.



Perspective. I've found that it's important, especially when dealing with the frustrations of trying to fix a lot of problems at once, to retain some perspective about the overall situation. And overall, GMT is stronger than we've ever been. Our design, development, art, office/warehouse, marketing, and production teams have never been stronger. Our overall sales volumes and customer base have never been higher. And I'm just really proud of the quality of the games we're creating. I'm not blind to the areas where we absolutely need to improve (witness the details above), but even with those issues, we are more capable by far today than we were a year ago. We're just not yet where we want or need to be. But we will address these areas and provide you all with better systems, support, and communication as we move forward. For now, I'd just like to thank you for your patience and your support as we work through these issues and continue on the path to better systems and processes to serve you.



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The only other info for my column this time is to answer one of my most-asked Mailbag questions:



"What is the Status of the Five Consim Press Games on the P500 list?"



There's been a lot of positive movement on that front of late, so I asked John Kranz to give us a quick update on status. Here you go....



An Update on the Consim Press Games From John Kranz It's been very quiet on the Consim Press front, which I'm 100% at fault for and this has no reflection of GMT Games (so don't blame them!). Now that I am finally getting traction on preorders, Gene asked me to provide this update, which I think will be greeted favorably.



THREE GAMES GOING TO PRINTER NEXT MONTH, RUSSIAN CAMPAIGN AND BEAR'S CLAW READY Q1 2019



The Hunted has entered the final stage of preparation for the printers. Chad Jensen has just completed all player aids so just the rules booklet and box art remain. We anticipate sending out to the printers in the next 30-45 days, not only The Hunted but The Hunters, 3rd Printing and Silent Victory Reprint as well! Following these 3 games, we will begin final rules layout for The Russian Campaign, Designer Signature Edition and Bear's Claw. Only the rules booklet and box packaging remains for both games, so that layout work will begin once the rules for The Hunted rules are completed (both will be ready for the printer in Q1 2019).



In closing, I want to thank the crew at GMT Games for giving Consim Press the opportunity to publish these games, which I'm grateful to see many will enjoy. Please note that all games will be officially branded under GMT Games moving forward, with print permission provided by Consim Press, since I will no longer be publishing games under that label. - John



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Keep up with GMT Online

Virtually every day, we announce new information or show off upcoming products or give you a peek under the hood of our new designs in our various online sites and forums. For you guys looking to keep up with us online, here's where you can find us. Drop in and start a conversation!



GMT Games Website

InsideGMT blog

GMT Facebook Page

GMT's Twitter Feed

GMT on Instagram

GMT on BoardGame Geek

GMT YouTube Channel

GMT on Consimworld



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We are doing our best to segment this update so it's easier for you all to read. Here is what you'll find in the rest of today's update:



- New P500 Additions and On the Horizon

- Digital Games Update

- News You Can Use

- InsideGMT

- Charge and Shipping Update

- Production Outlook

- Coming Events

- Project Updates and Sample Art

- Website File Additions



Thanks, as always, for your support of GMT Games! Enjoy the games! - Gene