Fulfillment begins! Some additional notes too...
over 2 years ago – Fri, Dec 17, 2021 at 12:04:16 AM

Finally! What an odyssey!

I feel like the Great Wylenti himself, finally coming home after being stranded on a deserted island away from Eliza! 

Fulfillment is underway!

Offically the Tempest is on the way to you! Here's a general timeline of what we can expect.

For BACKERS not in North America: The Rest-of-world fulfillment is HAPPENING right now! Many of you will receive your decks in time for Christmas. 

North American backers-- the Prism and Dynastinae decks are in customs en route to Texas and as soon as Gambler's Warehouse receives them they will begin packing and shipping. I'm hoping it happens before the holidays interrupt normal business but worst case they will be an early new year's present to open just past the holidays! I will update as soon as they begin to ship!

For BACKERS who ordered a Tempest in a Bottle-- you will receive your order with everyone else however your bottle will come separately shipped for safety and security. You should receive your bottle in no later than a few week's time.  If you have regular decks you will receive those first!

For those 26 of you who were lucky enough to order PARLOUR DYNASTINAES through the limited sale on backerkit--I have some infuriating news. Gambler's Warehouse has lost a majority of the decks in question. You can imagine that I was livid to hear that this happen. Apparently GW recently moved stock from one location to another and the Parlour Dynastinae decks were lost. I feel TERRIBLE about this. My personal RESERVE stock (in my possession) is 10 decks. I am going to send those out--which means I will be left with only a single Parlour Dynastinae deck.  That means 16 of you will not be able to get the decks you ordered. I can only offer a few solutions... I plan to honor the orders in order I received them. If you were among the first ten to get a Parlour Dynastinae then you will receive your deck from me after fulfillment is complete, I will also send along a signed Tempest deck as a gift. For the remaining 16, I can offer the following options: (a) you may request a refund for your deck ($45) or (b) chose a receive instead a TEMPEST Dynastinae deck ($95 value) signed by me. Please reach out to me if you have a Parlour Dynastinae in your order with your preferred option. I will also be reaching out to backers myself to go over this in more detail. SO SO SORRY for this. I couldn't believe it myself. 

In the meantime, THANK YOU SO MUCH for the continued support and patience! REST ASSURED if you plan to stay with me during future projects that I have LEARNED a great deal from this experience and will take all necessary steps to ensure that these lengthy delays don't happen again!

Happy holidays!

Best,

Omar (TGW)

Lotrek has finished the Dynastinae and Prism decks!
over 2 years ago – Thu, Nov 11, 2021 at 07:22:30 PM

So close we can taste it!

Hi wonderful backers! First of all let me extend a tremendous thank you for your amazing support and above-all patience. We are closer to fulfillment then ever before! In the final steps of preparation before the packages go out to you! Keep reading for a quick course of actions to follow!

First things first, the gorgeous decks by Lotrek have been finished and they look WORTH THE WAIT! Truly gorgeous work. Check out my post on IG HERE and HERE to see some absolutely GORGEOUS photos of the finished products. The decks have made it to our fulfillment center in Germany. From there the stock going to North American backers must be shipped to Texas to our NA fulfillment center. Then both fulfillment centers can begin to send out the decks en masse to you the backers!

But before that happens...

We initiated Address Lockdown!

You should be or have just received an email asking to confirm final shipping info on your addresses. PLEASE DO THIS AS SOON AS POSSIBLE as the decks will be in the wind soon and we won't be able to correct any address issues. The email will come from Backerkit! So be sure to check your spam folders just in case! This process takes a couple of days.

THEN COMES THE FUN PART!

Please when you receive your decks post pictures on social media! Let everyone know how you like them! I have a feeling you will all be really happy with the end product despite the long delay in getting them to you!

Please check out Lorenzo Gaggiotti (Stockholm 17) and Alex Chin (Seasons Playing Cards) new collaboration!

A brilliantly irreverent and gorgeously designed deck campaign that you do not want to miss if you are a fan of awesome artwork and high quality playing cards!

Click here to see The Odd Fellows Playing Cards. 

 Click here to see The Odd Fellows Playing Cards. 

Printing beauty
over 2 years ago – Fri, Oct 01, 2021 at 11:25:01 PM

A note from Lotrek:

Hi dear all,

I am sorry to disappoint the whining few but I just came from the printer where we had the second day of printing the Dynastinae back side and also the great joy of seeing the back design complete! Absolutely happy with the result and certainly relieved now that the most difficult part (the face cards) is finished.

 I did a video to show sheet after sheet how it looks like. It’s not how it is actually done, I just selected sheets from the various stages of printing to make a sequence showing how crap becomes beauty.

We need about 4 days of work to finish printing of the deck. Unfortunately, as I have explained many times, these days cannot be consecutive. I am using a very small workshop for the foil stamping which is the best in the business in Athens so by all means they have to accommodate their other clients as well. Therefore we will continue mid next week. I will keep you posted!

A last note for those who love to complain: Although reading comments such as ”Lotrek sucks” could make me angry, in fact I find them understandable and after all, funny! I know, it’s not amusing to endlessly wait for something and not everybody is familiar with the rabbit hole called Lotrek. However, I can assure you of two things: Unfortunately I could not do that sooner and there is nobody who wants that finished more badly than me.

And, please, please, please! The Gentleman Wake is by no means to blame for the delay. It has nothing to do with him and he is as helpless as you.

Thanks for your patience,

Lotrek

MISSION ...almost COMPLETE!
over 2 years ago – Tue, Sep 28, 2021 at 09:03:16 AM

A note from Lotrek:

Hi dear Gods of Patience,

I'm happy to announce that the most difficult part of the process -and what has held us back for such a long time-  is over. The faces of the DYNASTINAE deck are at last all foiled! Here is the full sheet (actually the 2 parts glued together). Crappy photo, I know but I just couldn't wait to show you what we have.

Next step is the back side which will be MUCH easier to do. I'm expecting to finish it in the upcoming week. Fingers crossed, because as I have many times said, the workshop I'm using is a tiny place which is at the same time the best in the business, with many clients that have to be accommodated, too. They said that next week we will work on this but as has happened in the past, this may be pushed back a few days.

That's all for now, I will post videos of the back side as we're printing it. Stay tuned and stay reassured that all this is not in vain. 

Even VJose32 will love it!

Best,

Lotrek

Hope to have news of the finished decks soon! Then on to fulfillment! Trust me when I say that I COMPLETELY share in your frustration. There's NO doubt I thought that this campaign wouldve been LOOOONG fulfilled by now. Many of you know that I have a new project, The Successor designed By Kevin Cantrell Studios, waiting in the wings. I hope all of the fine backers who backed this project will come and check out the The Successor when its ready!

Regards,

-TGW

DYNASTINAE Production progress update
over 2 years ago – Sat, Sep 18, 2021 at 05:09:20 AM

Hey all,

Finally, some solid, good news! We have already printed the ink part of the deck and everything is great. I decided not to rush things despite the delay because one wrong move or decision could (can) ruin everything -as I so bitterly found out in the previous print run.

We let the sheets to completely dry between the layers of varnish and they're all in perfect condition. As today we started the most demanding part which is the foiling, we thought that you'd like to have an insight on how it's done. Let's take things from the beginning:

First, a layer of opaque white ink is applied where the colors will be printed.

Then, we print the colors.  Many sheets need to be printed in order to get the colors right. Here you see the very first sheet with the inks still very weak and the registration almost random

Finally, the registration is perfect and the colors vibrant. We are ready to print!

This was the first part. After the printing, we let the sheets dry for 2 days and then applied 2 layers of varnish on each side so as we could do the foil stamping.

Aaaand today we finally started with the shiny -and most difficult part: FOIL!

I was very hesitant to post anything before today because everything can seem great until the day you start foiling. This is when “the truth is revealed“ and you can discover problems you didn’t know they existed. Nothing like that happened and I am confident that we will soon see the end of the Tale of the Tempest!

I will be posting videos and pictures of all the production stages which I hope you will find interesting.

Stay tuned and thank you once more for your kind patience!

Lotrek