Now we are about to unleash two new games into Stage 2 testing.

Excitement mounts as we put the finishing touches to these prototypes. They will both be on the table looking for willing volunteers at Board Games by the Bay, starting tomorrow.

Granny Wars:  A game of Tit 4 Tat sees battling nanas and their allies sabotaging each others’ craft projects in a quick paced card game of secret identities.

Manifest – “It’s tough out there on
the high seas.”
A map-based game where you must ship your cargo to its destination without being robbed by pirates, blown off course or foiled by competitors.

If you are in Auckland this weekend why not come play with us?

You can also check out our latest newsletter if you missed it it is here

Happy Gaming from Schil & Mil
Mr K says Hi too

Schil and Mil waiting for visitors to arrive at the start of day 2 of the Australian Toy and Hobby Fair last week in Melbourne.

Back in New Zealand. We are happy with the trip, having sold all the stock we took with us and with a list of potentially interested retailers. We now have 5 retailers in Australia. We also met the distributors we are in discussion with. I think it always helps to know who you are dealing with by having a face to face meeting.

We are getting organised to go to Melbourne for 10 days in search of streets paved with gold, or at least a Distributor for our games. We are exhibiting at the Australian Toy & Hobby Fair – a  Trade Show with more than 4,000 visitors through in four days starting Sunday.

In another vein, we’ve also shown off a couple of new prototypes including “Manifest” in its first public outing at Battlecry. It is our most ambitious game yet.  The feedback was very positive and I look forward to testing and refining it in coming weeks. If you are interested please sign up on our Playtesting page.

Players (including Mil) mid-seas and avoiding pirates.

December saw a satisfying increase in our sales. It is heart-warming for us to think that hundreds of people in NZ and some farther away opened Xmas gifts containing *our* games!  One satisfied customer sent a photo of their Raid cards they had sleeved in plastic to protect them from overuse.

While Mil was in Melbourne over the Xmas hols she enjoyed teaching her niece’s children to play SchilMil Games. During Raid the Pantry seven year-old Thalia asked – “Aunty Mandy, did you colour in all these cards yourself?”
So sweet. I recounted a brief summary of the real world which was an eye opener for them, I think.

Coming up in the first bit of 2013:

• Schil is on holiday in Akaroa and visiting current and potential retailers in Canterbury
• Mil will be taking a brief sojourn to Fjiordland in early Feb and visiting potential retailers in Queenstown, Riverton & Invercargill
• Preparations are under way for our visit across the ditch to the Australian Toy & Hobby Fair – our first ever Trade show, where we hope to connect with distributors to help us get product into Australian shops
• Prototypes are being worked on: Squirrels, cargo, pirates, and more are getting closer to being ready for testing
• We will be at Battlecry on Feb 16th with some games available to be played and possibly brand new hot-off-the-printer prototypes too

Sadly, the recent passing of Julia’s father has taken the shine off an otherwise momentous year for the two of us and our fledgling company.

We wish you a very peaceful holiday, and hope you can make time to relax, enjoy some fun times with family & friends, and get those games out!

If you think you can handle his tantrums and mock secret-agent manouvers, you can catch him at the following upcoming appearances:

• Saturday Dec 1st at Mainly Toys, Mt Eden, with Schil
• Sunday Dec 2nd at Puzzled on Devonport Wharf, with Schil
• Sunday Dec 2nd at Coatesville Market, with Mil

Just watch out for his acid tongue, corny wit – and flatulence if he has been at the beetroot again.

Mr K here.

Schil and Mil have been so busy gearing up for the holidays that they let me write this. They say there will probably be an update posted weekly through Christmas, so this is a great time to subscribe to the blog if you haven’t already.

BREAKING NEWS: American reviewer Tom Vasel of the Dice Tower likes me, he really likes me! You can watch his video review of Komodo here. I’m still blushing!

And on to this weekend’s events:

Come and see Mil and me at Puzzled on the Devonport Wharf this Saturday, November 17 from 11 AM to 1:30 PM.

I’ll also be appearing with Schil at Whitcoulls Botany Downs Kids Store from 1:00 to 3:00 PM on the same day. Yes, I can be in two places at once! We’ll be challenging patrons to house as many animals as possible with the tiles and cards they are given. Oh yeah, there may be a challenge related to that SchilMil cooking game too.

Mil will hit the Takapuna Market bright and early on Sunday, November 18. Come by before noon to see her.

Finally, this Sunday is Boardgaming Day at King of Cards in the Auckland CBD. If you drop by between 11 AM and 4 PM, you can enter the Mini-Kenakalan Tournament. Play Kenakalan once–it takes about 20 minutes–and go into the prize draw to win a copy. You needn’t be present to win.

Your friend (and ‘excellent family game’)

Mr K

We are planning other promotional events and appearances through Christmas:

Mil will be appearing at Puzzled on the Devonport Wharf on Saturday, November 17 and at Coatesville market on Sundays: December 2nd and 16th (that’s a 3-7pm twilight market).

Our games will be on sale at the Takapuna Market on Sunday, November 18 and at the Mt Albert Board Gaming Group’s Trading Night on Tuesday, November 27.

We will be appearing at the Auckland area Whitcoulls Kids Stores in November and December. Details here.

For more, check back here. We’ll update this post as December dates are confirmed.

Kenakalan is out there in the world. We’ve also fronted up at nine sessions of in-store demos at Whitcoulls branches so I think a small breather is needed before we get into Xmas PR and marketing activities.

Here’s some monkey business captured at last Friday’s launch party where Schil’s MP Simon O’Conner (Nat) was one of the sharper dressed attendees…..

The wait seems to have gone much quicker than last time when we were excitedly bouncing up & down to get our first delivery.

Can’t see any monkeys on the poop deck…

I know I haven’t written for a while. Life in the super-stardom fast lane is just so – fast!
However,  I have shocking news to tell you. I just tripped across this new movie purporting to star me and you know what? They’ve used some stand-in Komodo!

And what’s worse – the star of the show seems to be a bunch of monkeys. As soon as I get out of this warehouse I’m locked up in I am going straight to my lawyer re breach of contract.

**I** am the star and it’s going to stay that way. Ha!

Your everloving scaly son,
Komodo Xxx

PS Crikey – I hope they don’t expect me to share this space with the shipment of monkeys. It’s bad enough there’s so much beetroot in here.

Fresh off the plane, via Fedex, these wise and wicked monkeys seem a little jaded after their journey. I will introduce them to our resident Komodos – that should wake them up. Ha!

We are hoping to get the shipment in about 4-6 weeks time so we can share the fun and mischief before Christmas. Are you ready for some monkey business?

We just heard that Komodo has won not just one, but 2 awards from the New Zealand Games Association.

And we received confirmation of our first order from Whitcoulls: their Kids Stores at Albany, Botany Downs and Sylvia Park will soon be featuring Komodo and Raid the Pantry.

If we only didn’t have to do the accounting and GST return it would be a perfect day!

The wicked monkeys we’ve been promising for the last 3 months have been polished and buffed (we literally spent a good half hour today giving one of them a full manicure), and are on their way to China for the manufacturing to commence.   Our new game, Kenakalan, will be taking a bow in the not-too-distant future.

In the meantime here are some pics taken today of the first mock-up box, home-made lovingly by the hands of Schil. All the artwork was done in house this time. We are proud parents indeed.

That was just a warm up to the weekend activities in St Heliers where “Board Games by the Bay” is now an annual event in Auckland. SchilMil held the world’s first ever Komodo tournament on Saturday and on Sunday the premiere Raid the Pantry tourney. These attracted a good amount of interest, with 16 people playing in each over a 2 hour period.

The winners (pictured below) were Brad Thompson and Patience Davis. They each went home with a copy of the game they had played. Brad told Schil he owed his success to the noble dugong.

Brad Thompson: The winner of the worlds first Komodo board game tournament. Auckland July 2012

Patience Davis: the world's first Raid the Pantry tournament winner. Auckland July 2012

At the end of a hectic and enjoyable weekend we wound down by playing some new games with new friends. I particularly enjoyed learning Tsuro and DiscWorld, which I managed to win even though I didn’t really know what I was doing and have never read a Terry Pratchett book in my life.

Since the games are not too well known yet, the aim of the tournament is to introduce them to new players in a fun environment. All players will receive a discount coupon for SchilMil Games purchased at the event. You ony need to commit to playing one game. The winner from each game will go into a draw to receive their own free copy of the game.

The Komodo tournament will take place from 2:00 to 4:00 p.m. on Saturday, July 21 and Raid the Pantry at the same time on Sunday, July 22.

You are requested, but not required, to register interest in participating ahead of time. Copies of the games will be available in the event’s games library, should you wish to brush up any komodo-housing and crepe-making ahead of time.

Watch this space for photos from the event. In addition to running the tournaments, we will have prototypes of our new games Kenakalan and Manifest on hand for play and feedback.

Firstly, we’ve chosen our favourite shop names from all the suggestions that were posted two blogs ago.

The winners are:

• David Taylor
• Joanna Bosman
• Alistair Stafford
• Nathan Grange

Each will receive a free copy of Kenakalan once it has been manufactured. We are aiming to have it produced before Xmas.

Also, we’ve drawn the names from a virtual hat for the June Draw to win a copy of Komodo or Raid the Pantry:

• Alyssa Field
• Trisha Brodie

Congrats to you both. Your games will be on their way to you asap.