Dear friends,
I hope you are safe and well as the world collectively struggles through the challenges of covid-19. New Zealand, our home, is currently undergoing a 30 day mandatory nationwide lockdown, with severe social and economic consequences for our country. We understand first hand the impact this is having on the lives of people around the world.
Even in these challenging times, I would like to take this moment to reflect on the past quarter and look to the future of FAB.
Arcane Rising
The preview season for Arcane Rising was an exciting time for both fans and our studio alike! A massive thank you to the content creators who partnered with us to reveal the secrets of Arcane Rising day by day over the 3 week preview season.
Though a majority of Arcane Rising pre-releases were cancelled due to covid-19, Arcane Rising launched to market with strength. Thank you to local game stores and our distribution partners who adapted quickly to get Arcane Rising to keen fans in safe and sensible ways.
A huge amount of effort and investment was put into the craftsmanship of Arcane Rising. We are thrilled at the reception towards improvements in print and production, such as improved colour balance, new foiling methodologies, reminder text variants (which took a massive amount of time to implement!), and more.
There has been incredible growth in stores and player numbers signing up to GEM leading into Arcane Rising. More Arcane Rising boosters were sold on pre-release weekend, than Welcome to Rathe boosters sold in the entire five months since it was released!
Moreover, the excitement and love we have seen towards the new heroes is amazing. We look forward to sending stunning Arcane Rising hero banners to local game stores to display when they are able to reopen.
fabtcg.com and GEM
A huge upgrade to fabtcg.com went live in February, activating key GEM features; leaderboards, event locator, and store locator.
Before covid-19 hit forcing store closures, we saw a rapid increase in the number of active stores and upcoming events on the locators. As stores are able to reopen, we look forward to seeing their upcoming Armory events and Road to Nationals bring the locator back to life.
We will continue to improve and expand our systems far into the future.
Organized Play
All official in-store organized play in all territories is currently on freeze, including the flagship Q2 program, Road to Nationals. We are committed to delivering comprehensive organized play as soon as Government authorities in each territory relax social distancing measures.
At this time, we don’t know when that will happen.
Our primary organized play goal for 2020 is to see the National Championship run in each territory. Depending on the duration that social distancing remains in place, we may have to adapt some of the initial concepts for National Champs, particularly around qualification. There will be regular updates on National Champs in the coming months.
Online Organized Play
The Legend Story Studios vision is people coming together in the flesh and blood through the common language of playing great games. Covid-19 makes the “coming together in the flesh and blood” part difficult at the moment.
Thank you to the team at Metrix Daily, who have done an incredible job enabling the rest of our vision to hold true during covid-19, through the establishment of regular online organized play tournaments and leagues. Thank you to fabdb.net for providing the tools to effortlessly build and export decks for online play, and Kenny Nguyen for his work creating the online simulator mod for Flesh and Blood.
On that point, here's a small gift for TTS users due to popular demand ;)
We are working with the Metrix Daily team and will be announcing an official online organized play program in the coming days. This is something that we will be looking at temporarily supporting while players are unable to access organized play in local game stores, and based on ongoing player feedback.
Supporting Local Game Stores
The industry and local game stores across the world are facing an unprecedented challenge. While Legend Story Studios is a young indie studio, our team and our vision is deeply rooted, invested, and committed to supporting tangible gaming. We will be doing our part to help local game stores survive covid-19 shutdowns and rebound when they are able to reopen.
We will be experimenting with a number of initiatives to help save local game stores. The first will be revealed in the coming days and is designed specifically for LGS in the USA. Additional initiatives will be made available to LGS in our other territories.
Crucible of War
Pre-production of the third booster set, Crucible of War, is well underway. We've been hard at work, and are about 1 month away from sending files into Cartamundi to print. At this time, we are planning for Crucible of War to release in August as scheduled.
The set looks incredible. I’m sure that many of you will discover a “new favourite art” or two, and deck builders will relish the opportunity to evolve deck, weapon, and equipment configurations for all 8 of the original heroes of Flesh and Blood.
Thank you for your continued support and passion for Flesh and Blood. I wish you, your family, and your friends, stay safe, be well.
James White
Founder and CEO