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John Company: Second Edition

Created by Cole Wehrle

John Company late pledges have closed. John Company will have limited availability in Q3 2022. Sign up for our mailing list if you want to be notified when John Company is back in stock. Pax Pamir and metal coins available on wehrlegig.com.

Latest Updates from Our Project:

Final Update - John Company, Molly House, Conventions, & Next Game Reveal Date
5 months ago – Tue, Oct 31, 2023 at 12:37:20 PM

Hello dear John Company backer,

Here we are with the final update on this project! It's been quite the adventure wrapping up John Company and working on new projects over this past year. John Company has been played thousands of times, was nominated for several awards, and still remains on our minds more than ever. Let this be another chance for us to say thank you for making this game happen.  Because of the support you've shown for our projects, we were able to fully realize this game, and furthermore, we felt emboldened to start quite a few experimental projects in the historical gaming space.

As the last update for this Kickstarter campaign, I wanted to share a bit about our next game and why we decided to publish it as our 3rd title. We also have some news about upcoming conventions and a small teaser of what is coming for other Wehrlegig projects. We have a lot of burners going on our creative stovetop, but it's time we share what we've been cooking up!

Molly House

A lot of folks have asked up "why not republish An Infamous Traffic traffic next?" There are several reasons, but the first is that we wanted to use this time after John Company to experiment with some new projects. One of these new projects has become Cole's first co-design. He's been working with the game's lead designer, Jo Kelly, on a game unlike anything he's worked on before.

Molly House offers players a window in the the queer communities of early 18th century London. In the game, players will try build a community while under the watchful eye of the Society for the Reformation of Manners, a citizen group hell-bent on curbing any behavior they deemed deviant. What follows is a very accessible game filled with the hallmarks of our games: emergent stories, odd bedfellows, and tricky calculations of risk. 

If this is the first you've heard of Molly House, check out the campaign and read the several design diaries about the design history from Jo and Cole.

Also, you might wonder why we are using BackerKit for this project. There are a few reasons for this, but one of the biggest is just that we wanted to experiment with a new platform and do our small part in helping the broader crowdfunding ecosystem be as robust as it can be. We've certainly learned a lot and, I think going forward, there will likely be some projects which find a home on BackerKit and others which will remain on Kickstarter. 

Conventions! SDHistCon! BGGCON! PAXU!

In other news, we're doing a silly amount of traveling over the coming month. We're headed off to San Diego to play our favorite history games with the wonderful folks at San Diego HistCon. We'll be demoing Molly House, checking out a new cut of Tyranny of Blood with Akar Bharadvaj, playing a megagame of Liberty or Death, and soaking up some lovely weather. 

Then shortly after we are off to Dallas for BGG CON! This show has long been one of our absolute favorites because unlike most conventions for us, BGG is much less about work and much about more play. If you are attending, come say hi and maybe we'll get a chance to play a game together. This is always a such a fun show, in part because of the absurdly well stocked and managed library they run.

And lastly on the travel docket, Wehrlegig is finally exhibiting for the first time ever! We're going to have our own space at PAX Unplugged as Wehrlegig, and it's gonna be a party. We will be running Molly House demos, Pax Pamir and John Company on show floor for the first time, and even have some exclusive Wehrlegig swag. Why not?! 

If you were on the fence about coming to PAXU, come on out! This is another experiment, so if this goes over well, maybe we'll do more conventions and make this a bit more of a recurring thing. 

Wehrlegig and Leder will be at PAX Unplugged this year, so come check out Arcs and Molly House!

What's Next

We'd like to end this update with a couple more things. First, I wanted to remind folks that after all the campaign business and travel, we'll take some time to gather ourselves and get busy finishing Molly House and working on next projects.  We started Wehrlegig to explicitly take as much time with our games as we needed and we don't have any plans to rush our projects. We have every intention of giving the time to making a wonderful new edition of AIT, while also using some of our time and energy in exploring new titles like Molly House. Our games take time and we are so thankful to have you in it with us for the long haul.

Like last year, we are planning on do another live stream in January for a Wehrlegig Year Ahead 2024 video. There is certainly more to say on every front, but we really liked having a chance to tell our backers what were working on in a casual conversation. All of the projects we've mentioned in our previous year ahead video are still at various stages of development, but we'd love to update folks about about where things are at with Wehrlegig and also use that stream to reveal our next game after Molly House...

And that's it! Thank you so much for being here and supporting this campaign. Your support not only enabled us to make the best edition of John Company possible, but allowed us to begin exploring the world of historical game publishing outside of Cole's first three games. If you want more updates about future projects, sign up for our email newsletter on our website, follow us on the various social media places and check out the updates we've posted about Molly House.

Drew + Cole

Print and Play Release and Golden Geek Nominations Open
12 months ago – Sun, Apr 16, 2023 at 11:20:01 AM

Hello! 

This is probably the second to last update we'll be writing for this campaign. Over the past few months, Drew and I have been shepherding our language partners through their localizations of John Company. Look for it in German, French, Spanish, Italian, Chinese, Polish, and Portuguese later this year!. We've also been doing a lot of work on some upcoming titles which hopefully we'll be sharing with you in a few months.

Today, we wanted to just let everyone know about two things. First, we've assembled all of the files for the game's print and play kit. As we mentioned during the campaign, it's important to us that all of our games have a home in the Creative Commons. This is both to provide easier access for folks who might have trouble getting hold of a physical copy of the game, as well as a small tribute to the many public domain documents and pieces of art that made the game possible in the first place. As an added benefit, these files are also quite useful if you've ever wanted to explore making custom pieces for your own set! 

You can find everything you need here.

Second, the Golden Geek Award nominations are now open. If you're an active member of BGG, and have had a good time exploring John Company, we we would appreciate the nod. Awards like this go a long way in helping small publishers like us get their games to a broader audience. Drew and I have been active members on BGG for many years and the site (and the awards) mean a lot to us.  

You can find the nomination sheet here.

(Nominations are open till the 23rd of April.)

That's it for now. Hopefully the next time you see an update for this campaign in your inbox, it'll contain details about our next campaign! 

Fulfillment Wrapped! PAXU! Webstore!
over 1 year ago – Fri, Dec 02, 2022 at 01:40:55 AM

Hey everyone.

I am so happy to finally share that we are finally at the end for this project! It's been a long road getting here, but all pledges have been shipped outside of a few exceptions. Copies are nearly in everyone's hands (a few folks that are living in the far reaches of the Canadian north and folks that never completed their address). There are a just few pledges left that I am still tracking down addresses or shipping payment, so you are out there still waiting for your game, please email us [email protected] and we'll get you sorted out. 

Cole and I are both absolutely ecstatic to have finished this project and gotten it out into the world to share with you. It was a beast of a production and we are both so happy with how the final game turned out. Thank you for being here and making this project a reality. We simply couldn't have done this without the help from our backers and the great playtesting community on our Wehrlegig Games Discord server. By the way, if you're looking for players either locally or digitally, or just want a place to talk about these games and games like them, you can join here. 

Wehrlegig Games Webstore now live

For those folks that wanted to get coins but didn't during the campaign, you can now have at 'em! The remaining stock from the Kickstarter campaign is now live on our webstore. These are the same items that backers received, but you might notice the prices are listed at MSRP. The webstore items are stocked at all of our same international shipping hubs, so shipping should be available in most regions. Since we have finished fulfillment, new orders are now available! 

Cole at PAX Unplugged

If you are in Philadelphia for Pax Unplugged, go say hey to Cole and the Leder Games crew! They will be there with Ahoy and having a ball over at Booth #2801. Wehrlegig is not boothing (maybe someday??), but please let us know if any Wehrlegig Gaming is happening at PAX on social media. I'm sorry to be missing the show as it's one of my favorites, so please enjoy it extra for me! 

Print-and-Play Progress and Beyond

So, we have dragged our feet on releasing a print-and-print files frankly because we just haven't been able to set aside the time to prepare it lately. We also wanted to make sure that we had a chance to fold in any typos and points of errata before sharing the files. This is a big print-and-play project, and we'll also be providing some hints about how best to assemble a kit. We'll also be providing some templates for folks who might want to customize some of their own components. Cole is hoping to have all of that ready for you all sometime before Christmas. We'll share another update here with those links in a few weeks.

We're also hoping to release information later this month about our next project we're going to crowdfund directly with Backerkit! We're excited about this big experiment and I'm thrilled to share more info with you on this project soon. 

As always, bother us on email [email protected] if something is up with your pledge, need a replacement part, or have any Wehrlegig questions. We are here to help. Thanks for being here and hope to see you on the next campaign : )

Drew

John Company is here (almost) - Stuck orders, duplicate packages, and resources!
over 1 year ago – Sun, Oct 23, 2022 at 04:42:15 AM

Hey everyone!


Drew here again with a fulfillment update. Woof! It has been a shipping whirlwind over the last few weeks. We have gotten a lot of packages out, but we're not done yet. Below are some specific updates for backers that have not received their pledge or got more than they bargained for. I'll wrap up this email with some great resources I've seen from the community.

Canada People

Hey CA folks. Our logistics plan for trucking from US to CA warehouses got a big old delay from the trucking schedule to clearing thru CA customs, but I am happy to say the games finally got to Pick & Pack Logistics. Packages might get sent out later today, but most all CA orders will get sent out this week. You'll get tracking then and if you don't by the end of next week, please send me an email [email protected] so we can figure out if something is up!

US Orders - Tracking but stuck on "Label Created"

So we've learned that 250+ US pledges experienced a backend, warehouse software error that falsely reported the shipment of many packages. This was a software error that is rooted in the integration with UPS and their own reporting software. It has been a big mystery and a really frustrating mess for all of us trying to get you your packages--as well for the many of you that have not yet received an update on your packages! 

Funagain's team and I are working through this and we have a full list of all orders that require a new shipment and tracking number. If you are one of these backers (nearly all US backers that haven't received a copy are in this bucket), rest assured we are working on getting new orders packed and updated tracking numbers sent your way. This has been a really difficult to sort out, and I'm asking for your understanding and patience as we get your pledge shipped out. 

Because we work directly with some retailers, we know that there's a chance you'll see the game on the shelves of your local game store. We try really hard to avoid this, but sometimes it still happens (like the CA shipment getting held up a couple weeks). Know that we are doing everything we can. Reshipments/new tracking numbers will start today and go into next week. This is a little slower than our normal pace of fulfillment because we have to manually validate each order to make sure it's going to the right person. I want to also say thank you to the many backers who have reached out and who have helped us understand the scope of the glitch. Rest assured that you'll have your package soon. And, if you don't have it yet, don't worry about reaching out as we have your pledge already on file and will be working to it as soon as we can. 

Duplicate orders - working through return slips

So this is a whole other headache! There is always a small % of pledges that might get x2 shipments because of human error or printer errors or what have you. Funagain's new software sent out over 100 duplicate orders and y'all have been amazing letting us know and being willing to ship them back. These return slips take a ton of manual attention and will take a week+ to get through all of them (because they also require UPS reporting and it's a whole thing on that side). Funagain is getting return slips out already so if you're one of the lucky ones, you'll be getting an email about how to help us recover the stock sent out. For a small company like us, your help here is critical in making sure we can keep making these games. I cannot thank you enough.


John Company in Action!

It has been incredible to see folks playing John Company--a surreal experience as always to see the thing on the table and all of the photos mid-negotiation online. Cole and I have really enjoyed reading all of the early comments and reports.


I really wanted to share some incredible links that y'all might find useful that I've seen on BGG. If you are not familiar with BoardGameGeek, it is a great resource to look up rules questions and resources. Their file section has PDFs of rulebooks and fan-made aids. Ricky even posted 100 Solo game Achievements to attempt, which is absolute madness and I love it. 


I wanted to highlight this post by user @antro on learning to play and photo references for new players. If we had all the room in the world, we would have loved to include something like this and likely we will include a detailed board anatomy and some answers to some frequently asked questions on the back of the letter if we get to do another printing. We will of course provide a pdf of this component guide to everyone when we make it. 


And lastly, here is the game's Official Errata. We're going to be working on this and making sure that when we release the PnP files, all of the changes from the Errata are included. No 1st printings are perfect, and so far the error rate has been roughly what we would expect for a game of this size and scope. Thankfully, most of the errors are not critical, however, I do want to draw your attention to one: the 1813 scenario setup card doesn't include placing the +2/-2 VP overlay in the court of directors. That is indeed gameplay affecting and should be in play for that scenario. We have no plans to reissue updated scenario cards or anything like that, and I hope y'all understand! We'll certainly have that amended when we share all of the files for the PnP as we get to them (if there were only enough hours in these days). Cole is hoping to get to that within a couple of weeks.


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As always, your best resource for direct assistance is emailing [email protected] and we'll get back to you in a few days. I'm off to go officiate a close friend's wedding this weekend, but I'll be right back to help backers out for this final leg. Thanks for being here and thanks again for bringing JoCo to life <3


Drew

Fulfillment Update and SPIEL!
over 1 year ago – Thu, Oct 06, 2022 at 11:50:20 PM

Hi everyone!

It's been a busy few weeks over here in Wehrlegig World. Our fulfillment partners are hard at work shipping out your pledges all over the world and this fulfillment plan is in full swing! It has been absolutely wonderful seeing folks post online about getting their games. 


🎲🎲Essen🎲🎲

Cole and I are off to Spiel and we'd love to see you out there! It is going to be a blast and I am so excited to be in Germany for the first time exploring Essen and meeting backers and our international partners abroad. Cole and I will be roaming the hall and playing games, and also running a couple sessions. I think all the seats are taken, but Cole and I will be showing off John Company in a big 4 hour full demo on Friday at the Spielworxx booth (6-H102) @ 2pm. Come by to see the game in action! John Company is only now moving out in the EU, so we're not boothing or selling any games. Hope any backers that will be there will come by on Friday or Saturday while we're hanging around with Uli @ Spielworxx, or catch us while we're roaming and demoing games : )


This is also to say, Cole and I will be somewhat ~unplugged~ for the next few days while we are away, but please keep sending any your requests and support messages our way.  I'll be lingering in Europe for some post-Spiel exploration with my partner, but I'll be doing my best to check-in and help where I can over the coming week.  Just rest easy that many support requests might have to wait until later next week.


🚚🚚Shipping🚚🚚

Below I'll have some updates about each region y'all might find useful. Feel free to skip as much of this as you want.

USA

Funagain Logistics has been sending out packages all last week and this week to folks in the US. Many people are getting their copies or will soon! If you have not received a tracking number, that is okay! We are still working through the shipping list and we'll have your pledge in the mail soon. Hopefully the remaining pledges will go out in the coming days.


Also, I wanted to share that we've been experiencing a pretty frustrating software bug on our fulfillment side of things. There have been cases of folks receiving their pledge twice because the warehousing and shipping system processed the orders twice. I am really hoping this doesn't cause any delays as we sort this out, but it mostly means that some folks might find themselves with extra copies. If you'd be so kind to let us know if this happened to you (I still don't know the extent to how many copies went out) and help us process returns for these extra pledges.  I've talked with many folks that have had it happen already, but if we haven't touched base, write to us [email protected]. New software rollouts are tricky and weirdness happens, but we appreciate y'all helping us recoup the extra games that went out.


CANADA

Games are en-route to Pick & Pack Logistics still and we haven't received any update CA orders have started up. P&P has been incredibly fast so I think it will be a pretty short turn around once the items land at their warehouse. I will let y'all know in the comments below if there is any update, but we should have movement on CA orders soon. 


EU/international/ROW

Fulfillment Europe just started sending out packages to backers this week! They will be be handling all international and rest-of-world destinations for backers. They will also send out tracking information when the order has been packed and shipped, but it might take up to 3 weeks for them to get through all of the orders. They are cruising so I suspect it could be wrapped up as soon as the end of next week.


Southeast Asia + Middle East (VFI)

Many regions have completed their shipping plan (China, Japan, Singapore, etc) but if your copy is still enroute (Philippines, Indonesia, and Saudi Arabia), it may be a while longer. You can see some of the bulk shipments to local fulfillment partners are still being shipped on VFIs distro hub list. Let VFI know directly if you have any questions about your shipment or you can also reach out to us [email protected]


AUS/NZ 

All of our AUS and NZ backers should have their copies! If you did not receive your items or something is wrong, please reach out over email and we'd be happy to sort your order out.


📦📦Replacement Requests📦📦

As I'm sure y'all know, there always a small chance of weirdness happening during fulfillment as well as at the factory during assembly. Please let us know if your copy was damaged or has any manufacturer errors (missing pieces, weird printing errors, etc) by sending pictures and a message to [email protected] and filling out this replacement request form.  We'll be getting to replacement orders at the end of the month once we've wrapped up fulfillment.


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OKAY! That's a ton. Cole and I are now flying off to Germany. As always, thanks for being here. Thanks for supporting this campaign, and for those getting your copy of John Company over the next few days, happy gaming! We'll have a few more updates coming that will cover things like the impending print-and-play and what we will be up to next, but that stuff will happen after Essen.


-Drew