Pre-Production 🏭 Component Photos 👀 Wehrlegig Schedule ✈️
4 days ago
– Tue, Sep 03, 2024 at 09:09:49 AM
Hi Molly House backers!
Got another exciting update for you today with a lot of photos and below, but before we get to that let's quickly go over the project timeline.
While our next production major milestone is getting everything into mass manufacturing, the next backer milestone is shipping address lock. We lock addresses for fulfillment in stages when the games are finished being manufactured and will soon arrive at our different fulfillment partner warehouses. We typically try to aim for about 3-4 weeks lead time to let folks confirm their delivery address right when our shipping partners have the games in hand at our fulfillment centers. We'll have another update about when you can expect addresses to get locked when we are near the end of manufacturing.
The exact fulfillment date is still TBA. We haven't entered mass manufacturing for all components yet, so we cannot guarantee when we will start shipping to backers. Sadly, I am pretty sure we're going to miss our 2024 goal. I think it is best to assume that Molly House will be an early 2025 release and will be roughly expected to go out to the majority of backers in Jan-Feb 2025. Expect this December for the earliest possible address confirmation notices.
Thank you all for your support and patience with us on this project, so in the mean time to tide us all over, check out these new photos of the Molly House components!!
Pre-Production Photos 📸
Look at these metal pawn beauties! These samples are actually in the mail for a few more days but I had to share this sneak peek photo with you. We are so happy with how these turned out. Once we have them in hand, I'm sure we'll take some video and more pictures to show them off further.
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And what about these wooden pawns! We're really glad we landed on the look of these turned pawns for the player pieces rather than meeple-cut style. At a stately 50mm average height, these are going to look amazing in every copy of Molly House. We'll take some really nice pictures eventually to share, but we couldn't wait to show them to you!
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The molly house dice! I'm so happy with the marbling effects and designs on these dice. The movement boots and the black/purple rogue dice are wonderful too! Note: there will only be x4 d6 for the solo game too.
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And of course we've been doing tons of playtests with these pieces. While this is not a production copy at all (see the Pax Pamir playtesting cards and home printed and uncut punch pieces, we have been playing Molly House. The game mat that you roll dice and play festivity cards on is incredible. The printed design is evocative and beautiful and makes the game just an absolute joy to play on the table. I cannot wait to take some better pictures of everything when we get our full PPC together soon.
Play Molly House 🃏
I hope this is getting you all excited about the game you helped create! Our next update we'll show off the full pre-production copy and maybe even do a box reveal and unboxing video or stream. If you are ready to play MH already, I'd suggest going over to our
discord server and hopping on a game to try it out.
RulesScreentop.gg
TTS
Wehrlegig Planning 🗓️
We've confirmed our Fall plans for those that want to see us on the road! We'll be off to Germany for Essen Spiel and we're hoping to run some molly house demos out there (Pretty sure we'll have a production copy for our demos on Thursday afternoon) as well as to San Diego for SDHistCon in November. We'll be wrapping up the year with a pre-launch celebration at PAXU! We have a fun end of the year ahead of us, and we're so excited to finalize the last of the Molly House print files and get off to mass production soon.
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Thanks as ever for giving us the privilege to work on this amazing project together. I cannot wait for it to get to the table someday soon enough,
Drew
📆Timeline Update 🚗 Gen Con 💳 BackerKit Balance Charge Date
about 1 month ago
– Thu, Jul 25, 2024 at 11:40:06 AM
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Hi everyone👋 I have another exciting update about Molly House and Wehrlegig things, but before we get into it, check out this new art piece that is going to be front and center in the middle of the game board! I cannot wait for folks to see for far the design and art has come since launch. Let this just be a bit of a tease before we share a big art update next month. In this update, I'll share a brief progress update, mention a few key dates to look out for this fall, and chat about some of our Gen Con events next week.
📆 Production Progress
If you were unsure, we have been hard at work on getting Molly House ready for pre-production. Recently, we reached a important milestone for the project: Our manufacturing partner now has the production specifications for all non-paper components and we've confirmed our production numbers. This means that as we work on finalizing the cards, board, rulebooks, and punchboard, we'll be receiving updated production samples of the evidence cubes and dice and pawns over the coming weeks.
Given that we haven't started mass production yet, the schedule for fulfillment will be pushed back into into late 2024 and into 2025. Exact dates are hard to pin down right now since we are not exactly sure how long pre-production will take, but we're hoping to enter mass production in September (and potentially start mass production of some of the hard components in August). Just rest assured we are taking our time and we want to make the best version of Molly House possible and we can do that because of your support and patience as we enter this next stage.
📆 Key Dates
So what is next on the horizon for Backers? It's mostly a whole lot of waiting for now. Nearly 100% of pledges have been confirmed and locked. The next stage is for us to Charge Cards for remaining balances, which we try to do right before production starts to include all of the late-backers and shipping costs ahead of time. On August 28th, any outstanding Molly House pledge balance will be charged. Many Backers only have their shipping fee outstanding, which will be processed at this time, as well as any fees for add-ons and taxes.
Also, your delivery address does not need to be final and confirmed yet either. The next important date to look out for is when we start collecting final addresses! We'll roll these out by region, so we'll start sending emails to backers this fall.
The first batch of final address confirmation will start October 22nd. I suspect this address confirmations roll across regions through Nov and December. We'll have a fall update that has more details about when exactly we'll confirm delivery addresses and when we expect to start shipping to backers and in what regions. Hard to tell until mass production starts up in ernest and moreso until the games are freighted and get through customs. One step at a time!
As always, let us know directly over email if you have any questions about card charging or your pledge. Always open to hear from you
[email protected]
🚗Gen Con 🚗
Next up is Gen Con! The show is right around the corner and it is going to be such a fun and busy time. Cole and I will be with the Leder Games crew playing just an absolute mess of Arcs over the Con in the Leder Games Demo Room across from the Exhibit hall, and I will be running some Molly House demos! Though all of my events are
sold out, please come by if you want to take pictures and check out the game. I am also planning on doing a shorten'd demo / show-and-tell in the Tabletop Gaymer's Room during their free-play hour from 6-8pm on Thursday too.
Lastly, Cole and I were invited to participate in this curious John Company / qausi-actual play event on Friday night of Gen Con. Check out the info below. If you can attend, even if just for a portion of it, this event will be like nothing else you get to experience over the weekend (especially if you just want to see what John Company is like being played).
![](https://cdn.discordapp.com/attachments/1235570292458524785/1262063126975877160/tca_gencon_flyer_2024.png?ex=66a3bbe1&is=66a26a61&hm=edabfdbbb1140d3f45b137f89818cbb785b55b5e9374118e69b9f54ddaca52b9&=)
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Alright! That's all for now. Thank you all so much for being here and helping us finish this game. I cannot wait for the next update where we get to show you photos of production samples, but until then, wish us luck upcoming our conventions this year : )
Drew
Pledge Lock 📝 Origins Recap 🏙️ Gen Con 🥳
2 months ago
– Thu, Jun 27, 2024 at 01:17:35 PM
Hey Molly House Backers!
I have quick update today. We're hard at work on Molly House and making great progress. I'm happy to announce that most everyone should have just received a 48 hour notice to finalize their pledge! By finalizing your pledge now, we dramatically improve our print run accuracy, which helps us direct money to future projects and start planning our shipping splits to different regional hubs. Please check out our previous update about the metal pawns too if you were on the fence about that Add-on. They are going to be incredible. If anyone has any questions about their pledge and add-on selections, please let us know in the comments here or by sending an email to
[email protected].
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In other news, Cole and I just got back from Origins where we played Molly House constantly over the weekend! Our tests were fascinating and thrilling, and it was so much fun to show the game to many folks who had seen it previously at last year's at conventions. It's grown so much!! Jo and Cole have been hard at work finalizing the last few details of the design. The design itself should be fully complete within a few weeks and we are now moving basically everything into final layout.
You can see the current state of the rules here. This is still an site of active development and you'll see comments crop up from our testers from time to time. As new versions are finished, we'll be uploading them to that link. We still have some big ticket graphics and spreads which need work (like the component's spread and the setup page), but basically all of the major layout work is done and the text itself is very close to complete!
In terms of the game's overall art, Rachel is very nearly done. We have all of the elements we need to finish the board and Rachel is moving on to the last few odds-and-ends before tackling the game's cover. We're hoping to be fully done with all of the art within a couple weeks. The final round of usability tests should wrap up around then as well. Things are looking very promising to have files submitted for review and production to begin in August!
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In our next update we'll share some detailed samples of the game's final art and layout. We might even do a live stream in July to showcase some of it in detail. We'll keep you posted.
And lastly, we will be at Gen Con showing off Molly House! We have a couple of sold out demos planned and I am hoping to show off MH in the Tabletop Gaymer's room after exhibit hall hours during Gen Con too. We'll post more about our Gen Con schedule in the next update.
Thanks as always!!
Drew
Metal Pawn Reveal♟️New Layout and Art ✏️ Order Lock Date 📆 Upcoming Travel 🚗
4 months ago
– Fri, May 10, 2024 at 08:14:26 AM
Hi Molly House folks!
It's been a minute since the last update, hasn't it? We've had a very productive few months and are happy to report that everything is roughly on schedule and the design is close to complete. Today, we're delighted to share some news about the metal pawns, some art sneak peeks, and write about pre-production and our spring schedules.
Metal Pawn Add-on Design Reveal
After many months of deliberating on the style of the upgraded metal pawn design, we've finally landed on the style and design of the metal pawns. They will be fanciful, gilded chess-pawn inspired player pieces with a bit of unique flair! Below is just one of the 5 unique pawns that will be included in the metal pawn upgrade. Each of these metal pawns will have a wash applied to them and come glued to a painted wooden base corresponding the the player color. We've just received this revised design and I am happy to say, we love this more abstracted approach to the player pieces. While more traditional miniatures were fun, we wanted to present players with a flexible and open sense of player identity, while still grounding the piece in the period. We absolutely love how they are looking and cannot wait to get some of these samples in hand.
![](https://www.backerkit.com/rails/active_storage/blobs/redirect/eyJfcmFpbHMiOnsibWVzc2FnZSI6IkJBaHBBeTFZQWc9PSIsImV4cCI6bnVsbCwicHVyIjoiYmxvYl9pZCJ9fQ==--9c8512c3662bd780961ee76140ccc1874b519728/IMG_6567%20(1).jpg)
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Now that you can see the design of the metal pawns, we'll be giving folks about a month to decide on their BackerKit selections. I'll mention it below again in the schedule update, but we'll be proceeding to lock in pledge quantities on June 25. Cards will not be processed for late-pledges and shipping fees until later this summer, but this will dramatically help us learn how many of these metal add-ons to make after pledge lock.
More Art Incoming
We're thrilled to say that layout work is moving forward and we're getting more art from Rachel every week. The board is getting an illustration overhaul right now and we're currently working on the layout of the cards with decorative border designs and banners for the quotes. There is still a bit of clean up to do, but you can tell that the card design is settling into it's final form!
Timeline News
Like I mentioned above, we will be
locking pledges on June 25 so please review your BackerKit selections before then to make sure you like what is in your cart. If you were on the metal pawn fence, you'll have to make up your mind over the next month or so!
We are still hoping to get into pre-production later this spring, so I am hoping we'll have an update in June for y'all with photos of samples and more production details. It is hard to say right now how fast the remaining art, layout, and editorial review will take as we head into production, but we're in a good place and working at a great pace. We're still gunning to have all pledges fulfilled this year.
For folks interested in an updated Print and Play, I'll kindly ask you to hold off a bit longer. I'd hate for you to take all the time and energy making a Print and Play file for it to be obsolete since we're still actively updating the art and layout of the cards and board each week. We going to be doing lots more layout and art updates in the coming days, but know that we'll release an Print and Play after all files are ready later this summer.
The next pressing date comes when production is wrapping up and we start getting ready for the first orders to ship! Right now, I suspect we will be processing BackerKit payments and
charging cards in late August. This will be shortly followed up with some backers needing to confirm their addresses in September - October. Address confirmations will happen right before the games get to fulfillment center, and we try to ship out pledges 2-3 weeks after address confirmations.
As always if you have any concerns about your pledge, payment processing, fulfillment, or anything, email
[email protected] and we'll be happy to help.
Wehrlegig on the Road
Lastly, Cole and I keep traveling to shows to talk about games and show off Molly House!
Cole was just in Maine for the Kemp Symposium a few weeks ago and will be off to Boston for an event at MIT in two weeks. We'll both be in Columbus for Origins (though we won't have a booth), we will be with Leder Games at Gen Con for the Arcs release, and we'll likely be at Essen and Unplugged later this year. We'll keep traveling with our bleeding edge copy of Molly House, so if you see us out there, say hi and we'll show you what we're working on.
For folks attending Origins this year, I'll be running a couple sessions of Molly House Friday. One on Friday afternoon and maybe a couple on Saturday night. Details to come when we are closer to the con.
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Okay! That's it. Let me know if you have any questions. From here one out, we'll be updating the campaign on a monthly basis. Our next update will spotlight a near-final set of rules and more art. Stay tuned!
Drew
🛠️ Development News 🎲 Playtesting Print and Play ✈️ Upcoming Conventions
7 months ago
– Fri, Feb 23, 2024 at 08:45:28 AM
Get ready, we have a big update for you today. We've been working non-stop over the past few months on development. I'm happy to say things have really been coming together and Molly House is playing better than ever! In the next section Cole will go into the details about all of the changes we've implemented. There's a lot to check out. Later in the update you'll find the Print and Play files for playtesting, links to playtest the game online, and exciting news about our upcoming shows.
🛠️ Development Progress 🛠️
Hi everyone! I'm happy to report that Molly House has now moved into final development and balancing. What this means is that we've made it through all of the major system revisions and that the shape of the game is now set. From here on out, we'll be making sure to dial in the balance while Ricky resumes his work on the solo game.
So what were the major changes? Well, we focused our efforts on three parts of the game.
First, we wanted the game's festivities to be as expressive as possible and as central as possible. To do this, we dropped the concept of mollies as "orders" which had to be filled collectively (e.g. Flying Horse Moll wants a straight flush) and moved to a much more open system where the best hand would be selected and scored at each party. This allowed us to create a new hand ranking system.
This new system is built on two pillars. First, each "rung" in the ranking will usually differ dramatically from the rung just above it. This creates a ton of interesting incentives for players to explore and manipulate as they determine which cards they should contribute. The rankings also allow us to use the mollies as "signal cards." Queens are only used for Christenings so, if you play one, you are telling the table what you want folks to build. This is espeically important because we need ways for players to quickly communicate their intentions.
Second, we spent a mountain of time getting the patrol/constable system right. In the version we last shared with you, getting caught was a matter of pulling specific cards out of the deck. But we found that this created lots of odd timing issues and didn't allow players to ever feel really and truly chased. To fix this problem, we revisited the game's map and general turn structure, and decided to have the constables become physical pawns on the map who would chase the players with the highest sum of that suit in their area. It's taken quite a bit of work to get this system working properly, but the effort has been well worth it as it's allowed us to even more strongly situate the game in the context of 18th century board games with a simple roll-and-move system and a classic circular board. But, don't let the dice fool you, there's a lot of strategic and tactical depth to the system.
Third, we've revised the informant system. Previous informant systems used the deck. This system had a lot of merits but it also suffered from a classic hidden traitor problem of making it a little too easy to catch informants. If one play draws an a card, stares at it for 5 minutes, checks the rulebook, and then adds it to their hand--they are pretty clearly signaling something! To get around this, informer cards have been pulled out of the deck and we have a little loyalty card system where players must commit to either one of the game's molly houses or to informing against one of those houses each turn. These loyalty cards will then be worth different amounts of points at the end of the game depending on what happened. This system has also allowed us to have a more robust "Known Informer" system for players who been outed by their fellows. It's neat and does some really good work for the design.
All that said, there's still a lot of work to do on the game, but it's coming together at a very good clip now. In terms of the broader project, this milestone means that we can finally lift our "art pause" and can start working with our partners at the factory, Rachel, and our sculptor to nail down the final look of the game.
We'll have a lot more to report on this front for our next update.
🎲 Print and Play + Play Online 🎲
If all of this sounds exciting to you and you want to start playtesting, go ahead and check out Molly House Dev Kit right now! We have our Discord server where folks are playtesting and sharing their experience and we'd love to have you join! Below are the different links and places where you can play.
An important note is that these dev kits are still not in final layout. We're starting to move things into concept layout and Rachel is working on the next wave of compositions. In the picture below you can see a really rough mockup of how the cards will be formatted, though Rachel is still working the art. This new format of the tarot/poker hybrid style has been playing really well, and we're looking forward to spending more time on layout and graphic design and more illustrations start coming in.
These Dev kits are very playable, but if you want a late-stage PnP with more finalized art and the new layout, I would hold off another couple of months. I'm quite excited to share a big art update in a few weeks, but for now you'll have access to everything below to get playing!
Dev Print and Play Files
Screentop.gg Dev Mod (Free and browser based!)
Tabletop Simulator Dev Mod
Dev Rules (Google Doc)
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✈️ GAMA EXPO + Circle DC ✈️
Convention season is gearing up and we're kicking the year off with GAMA Expo! We've never done GAMA Expo before, so it will certainly be an interesting industry-focused show. We'll be bringing our copies of Molly House with us and are excited to play it with some of the folks going to Louisville March 4-7. If you're at the show, swing by our booth during exhibit hours and at First Look, where we'll hopefully be playing this new build of Molly House.
We'll also be off to DC for Fort Circle's gaming convention
Circle DC. We both love spending our time in San Diego with SDHistCon and I suspect this has the makings of the east coast version of that gaming weekend. I think there are still a few tickets available, so check it out if you are interested in joining for what will be one of the the best historical gaming weekends all year : )
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Thank you again for coming out to support this project and giving us the opportunity to make this game together. It's taken a long time and there is still plenty of work to do ahead. Know that backers like you allow us to spend this much time on making the best board game we can, so thank you and see you in another month or so for our next update that hopefully will have more art from Rachel Ford!
-Drew and Cole