Decisions, decisions...

I have been pricing out printing, and it should come as no surprise that there are a wide range of vendors who sell the same thing at a wide variety of prices. On the bright side, there's nothing like calling a place and having them tell you, "Oh, yeah, we have a hundred thousand 1/2" flat head furniture plugs in stock, how soon do you need them?"

Sorting through the mess, I think when I pull the trigger, I am going to be able to create enough copies of 18IA, without having too many. We're still probably 12 to 20 months away from printing at this point. I'd like to get in at least two or three normal playtest sessions prior to opening it up to blind playtesting, as well as figuring out what the final dimensions of the project will be, reworking all my art, rewriting and proofreading the rules, etc.

At this point, I know how big my print run is going to be, and about how much it'll cost for me to make. Now the fun question: How many people can I get to pre-order 18IA, how many should I get before I print, and how much do they need to pay for this entire project to make sense?

I also have at least two other options for publishing: Z-Man Games and JKLM Games. Both of them were jointly responsible for 1861, which sold out 600 copies quite handily in spite of the high price tag.

Right now, there is no decent introductory 18xx game that is fully-finished and available to order today and get by the end of the week. Mark Derrick's single-state games 18AL and 18GA are out of print (though still available as print & play), and Deep Thought Games, which publishes the reportedly-excellent 1889 and 18TN, and the reportedly-decent 18FL, has a several-month backlog. As in, you order it now and you get it in, oh, a few months. This is unacceptable - a huge gap in the market. Although Deep Thought Games' products have earned respect in the gaming community as excellent examples of a quality production effort, they're also fairly expensive, depending on what options are used to buy them.

18IA fits into the single-state 18xx category nicely, and although I am still working on some of the chrome, it's clear that the introductory/newbie-friendly 18xx category has room for one more, especially if I can get the price point right.