It has been a long road, but the Limited Edition version of Shadowrun’s 20th Anniversary core book is currently being shipped across the ocean, and the sample copies have arrived in our Seattle office. We’ve been mum about the exact features of this title, but now it’s time to show it off:

A black, leather bound hardcover with silver imprinting, each book is numbered for the limited printing. The LE comes with a full-color heavyweight slipcase, two bookmarks and an 11”x34” double-sided poster of the Seattle skyline—one side blue, the other red.

We will be posting a street date in the next few weeks, when the books arrive in our warehouse and we can finalize that date.

If you have already pre-ordered this book: sit tight, and we will ship it to you from our Seattle location as soon as possible.

If you want to buy this book at your local game store, please give them a call and let them know you want a copy. The stock number is CAT2600LE and you can give them the following sell sheet (or a link to it): SR4A Limited Edition

If you want to pre-order this book from us: You can do so in the following configurations:

Pre-Order through BattleShop

At last! My patience is rewarded! Now I just need to buy a regular SR4A, because my LE is definitely going to be a shelf copy.

OK, I'll take it to one session so I can lord it over the other guys, but then it's going on a shelf.

It's possible to check if you still have a pre-order with BattleShop for it, yes?

Yep. Log into your Battlecorps.com account, and your preorder should show up in your order history as pending. Mine does.

How many cookies would it cost to make that a standard feature in all future books?

57 gazillion. Of course, coffee works much better for me than cookies do.

Goddamnit... 30+$ shipping... you guys are killing me.

When will amazon get it *grumble*

Never....CGL has said time and again they do not deal with Amazon.

CGL does not sell directly to retailers, that's what our distributors do. We have seen before that a distributor sells to Amazon (despite our instructions), so it is possible they will get them. That said, we do not have any control over those sales.

Edit: BN.com seems to have a slightly higher stock level than Amazon at the moment. However as before, we don't control any of the outside sales, so there are no promises of whether they will get the LE in stock.

Any guesses when it will be available in stores?

As a policy, we don't issue Street Dates until the books are in the warehouse and ready to fulfill orders.

Just out of curiosity, how come CGL won't deal with Amazon?

Just to make sure I don't screw this up.

How do I get my local gaming store to order this, they don't usually stock Shadowrun stuff. (It's in Europe)
Who do I refer them to, or would it be better if I order through Battleshop, etc ...

Thanks,
WM

Battleshop is probably your best choice, but don't scream when you see the horrible shipping costs...

I think there was a sell-sheet in the announcement. You can probably just print that and take it to them. That way they can order it.

And remember that anything that gets shipped from outside the EU will get slammed with a huge handling fee (ca. £15/DKK175 IRRC), then they add VAT on top of the cost of your goods (incl. shipping and handling fee).

When I bought my LE 4, I could have saved around DKK100/£10 by ordering directly from my FLGS.

This time I have ordered locally.

Lars

That's what I was worried about.
I sent our local store a mail with the details and I'll see what they say.

Ordered on Saturday at my FLGS. So looking forward to this, and since I haven't got a 4A yet my GF won't kill me for getting two copies of the same rules.

Sweet!

Mine is already ordered looooong ago (and I already have the regular HC for use).

Bye
Thanee

P.S. Maybe I need to order an extra copy, if it is that nice... just because...

Amazon gives you a good deal now, but that ignores the damage they due to the brick-and-mortar stores that keep our hobby alive by selling books at a price that would put a normal store out of business.

Without those stores as gathering places—and the new customers they bring into gaming—the hobby as-we-know-it will wither.

The problem is analogous to Walmart. The chain can save the average American family a few thousand a year, but it does so by pricing production out of the United States, forcing the loss of good domestic jobs. In the end Walmart costs the average family more in lost income then they saved in buying goods there.

Personally, I will only buy things from Amazon, that are not available from my local retailers.

Actually if you're in Europe you're probably best getting in touch with Leisure Games in London and trying to get them to keep a copy and send it to you. It'll be cheaper than shipping direct from the US, and you won't get hit with additional taxes.

My Local Gaming Store (I refuse to put "friendly" in front of that) sucks. I, and all my friends, dutifully shopped there for years (I think '92 was the first time I went there), paying higher prices than I could get down the street at a normal brick and mortar store, because they had a fantastically odd selection of games (all my Cheapass Games products and Car Wars and Starfleet Battles and Illuminati card game and other out of print stuff came from my then-Friendly LGS).

Then the owners sold it. The incredible variety that brought people in constantly disappeared overnight to make room for card tables so that they could run Magic tournaments.

Then they stopped carrying everything except tabletop games (warhammer & the ilk), CCGs, D&D, and White Wolf games.

Then they stopped carrying White-Wolf books.

Then they stopped selling used books, which made up a thriving portion of their business (half of my white-wolf out of print splat books were used)

Then they cut their D&D offerings by 75%.

Then they started cutting back on the tabletop games to make room for the anime section, where you could rent anime, or purchase the same used, scratched discs for more than you'd pay down at the mall at the over-priced DVD store.

All this inventory they moved to another location 45 miles away. I refuse to drive 45 miles one way to browse.

They also have a horrible, horrible tendency to open board games, play with them, then box them up and sell them as new. They make you pay in advance for a special order, and at least three times they have lost the special order and refuse to refund the buyer's money, saying there was never a purchase of the item. The last three times I went there in the last 5 years or so I went for impulse shopping, to buy basics that I didn't have. They didn't have primer paint for figs (!) or for that matter *any* paint for figs (they had figs though) but would special order it for me, they didn't have a battle mat, but would special order it for me, they didn't have markers, but would special order it for me. Ship time would be 2-3 weeks. And I'd be paying at least full MSRP. The primer paint was a little more than MSRP. The last time I went in to buy something they did have (dice), I waited 15 minutes while the guy who was supposed to ring me up played a round of heroclix. If I didn't need the dice that night I would have left.

If I have to wait 2-3 weeks to get an item, I want it on discount, even if it's 5-10% as a nod towards not going through Amazon or directly online. If I need it that same day, I'll gladly pay more than what Amazon charges/full price. Otherwise it's idiotic of me to pay 20-30% *more* for worse service from my LGS than through Amazon.

Sorry this is off topic, but it strikes me as silly to completely vilify Amazon. If CGL doesn't want to do business with Amazon that's their prerogative entirely, but at least in my case, Amazon is the only real option I have in my town, as my LGS is run by clowns. I'm sure my town isn't anywhere near unique.

On topic, I did order the LE through battleshop. Shipping was way steep (15 bucks for same-coast shipping) but it was worth it to me. Lately the quality of hardcover books I've received from places like Amazon & B&N.com have been very, very sub-standard (broken spines, scratched covers, pages creased/torn). For something this expensive, I'm willing to pay the shipping premium. Can't wait to see it. I have every shadowrun core book except for the 20th anniversary edition (which I'll be picking up), so this will make a nice addition to my collection.

I hear you, Dixie. I'm more than happy to pay a premium to support a store that I care about, but they have to hold up their end of the bargain by making themselves worth it. If my FLGS owner treated me like that, I'd walk out and never come back.

Or the hobby will find a new paradigm. Thats one of the things I appreciate about CGL (and Randall Bills in particular)- they are searching for that new paradigm and making a concerted effort to add value to their products (SR4A is a case in point). Now if every book came with the pdf for free, that would be wonderful for my wallet...

Thats not entirely accurate. Sure, that is a factor, but Walmart certainly didn't invent the idea of overseas manufacturing. Walmart doesn't make money by selling cheap shit at a profit. They sell cheap shit at near cost and make money by investing the cash revenue. They turn a profit in the market before using that revenue to pay overhead. Thats why Sam's Club deals almost exclusively in cash or certain credit cards (specifically companies that allow them the same liquidity).

This is still true, tho. The end result is the same.

Look out! Its an escaped clone-post...

Yeah, MY FLGS is actually run by a friend of mine but they only work with Devir (a brazilian company who holds the distribution/translation rights of Wizards AND White Wolf), needless to say, they never translate books on schedule, they totally overprice the books (importing books doesn't pay taxes or fee here) and the books are sold 3-4 times the american price.
So, the only things I buy there are dice and comic books.

Happy Birthday!

As of today, my SR4A LE pre-order is exactly one year old. A long road indeed, and still ongoing...

So the question remains... when should we expect to receive our pre-ordered LE SR4A books?

I can't give dates, they will hit me with bricks if I give dates, but soonish. They've been on the boat for awhile, and coming in fast.

It's not so much that Walmart directly moves jobs overseas. Walmart goes to its suppliers and tells them that cheap is not cheap enough. Make it even cheaper or we'll stop carrying it in our chain.

The comapny cannot continue without the Walmart contract since Walmart has become too large a part of the marketplace. They also cannot meet the price demand from Walmart while producing goods domestically. So the suppliers are indirectly forced to move production overseas, and as a result lay-off their employees.

But at least all those laid-off employees can shop cheap at Walmart.

Maybe if you told us where the boat is, we could get out there and start pushing to get it here quicker

Announced 1 month ago yet still not here I order books from Folio that ship by boat from England that get here faster.

Can I somehow convince you to increase the transparency here? Would be a nice birthday present for my lil' pre-order. Maybe a status update once per week or month? Even if it's "nothing new yet, sorry" repeated ad nauseum i'd consider it an improvement.

Stephen (Bishop McQ) just gave an update a couple of days ago.

Jason H.

Sure, but only as a response to darthmord's post. What I'd like to see is that you give us an automatic update here and/or on shadowrun4.com in regular intervals.

You see, in August 09 CGL sent me an apolgy because "Recently you placed a pre-order for one or more of our latest products, and due to a number of unfortunate circumstances your order has likely been delayed beyond what either you or we would consider reasonable." This made me very happy because it showed me that you were actively working on the issue. No news are not good news in this case.

Obviously, I am no longer in the loop on this. When the advance air-shipped copies arrived at the Seattle office, photos were taken, the announcement was made, and a copy was shipped to me. It arrived earlier this month, while I was out of town, and when I got back, it sat, unopened.

I opened it last night, and it's pretty goddamned nice, if I do say so myself.

I hope everyone's copies arrive as soon as possible, after the trip on the boat, the train, the truck ...

Wait, what?
64,99$?
The German version (which has been in stores for a while now) costs 99€!
Damn, if i ever buy the LE, i have to make sure to get the English one...even with the shipping costs on top, it would still be a bargain.
And i don't think a FLGS ordering through a retailer would pay the full 30 bucks for shipping.

Exactly my thoughts (did pre-order the english LE through 2 german stores, but didn't receive any feedback on that...).

I am hoping the delays aren't due to other anouncements that has been made recently. When you get the books in, are you going to be able to ship them?

I would expect so.

Jason H.

I can't afford to get my pre-order in until next month(I only get paid once a month. Yaay tutoring salary). I hope there are still copies available then!

Just a coulpe reminders for folks:
First, the pacific is alot bigger then the Atlantic, and takes longer to travel by shipping boat.
Second, things can, and do, get held up in custom. Any fans of Battletech should remember TacOps
sitting in customs for about a month or so before it was able to be shipped.
Third, shipping boats coming from asia are BIG boats, so they do not travel light. A show I saw on one of the educational
channels(I want to sayd Discovery, but could have been TLC, or a dozen other channels) was following an Asian shipping
ship, and it took a week to load the cargo, then another week to offload the cargo. So, yes, it was announced on the boat
a month ago...
Fourth, those big boats? They are SLOW. The ones plying the Atlantic have all number of things to help them get across the
atlantic faster, but Pacific boats do not.
Fifth, depending on where it was departing from, it might not be cutting across the Pacific. It might be faster for it to go through
the Indian Ocean, the Red Sea, the Suez Canal, through the Mediternaean, down to the Azores, then up the coast of south america,
through the Panama Canal, and then up to Seattle. Because that way is safer, navigationally speaking, then cutting across the Pacific.

Not saying any of these are exactly the case, but they are things to keep in mind when dealing with Boat Shipping....
Personally? I think everyone should be using Antonovs now.

@Cardul true it takes time go cross the Pacific that I agree with but here's a question is it crossing the Pacific to go to Seattle or is it crossing the Atlantic and being shipped elsewhere like Chicago?

Shadowrun / Battletech / ect. ect. I.E. F.A.S.A. was based in Chicago when they started out.

If it works like all previous books, and I'm sure it will: it will go to Fort Wayne, Indiana, via large container [boat, then train, then truck]; the container will be broken down, direct-order copies will be sent to Seattle and then sent to individual customers.

Cermak Road, to be precise ^^

Where did you think the Cermak-Blast came from? ^^

Adam's desciption of the process is accurate. As soon as they reach the warehouse at Ft Wayne, an announcement will be made regarding the street date.

@Sengir @Stahlseele Heh Yeah I thought it was quite funny when I read about the Cermak-Blast I was like wait a minute that's F.A.S.A's headquarters! (1100 W. Cermak Blvd. if memory serves)

@Adam & BishopMcQ Yeah I thought i had read stuff goes to some place here on the east coast then is sent out from there to US locations which means the ship crossed the Atlantic.

I'm having this mental image of the cargo ship docking in Seattle, loading the container on a truck, and then the container driving past CGL ship-point, out to Indiana (via truck or train), and then being sent straight back to Seattle to be broken down further to ship out.

Somehow, it seems just ludicrous enough to seem plausible.

Just out of curiosity, is it Ft Wayne because it's going straight to Alliance, which IIRC has their main warehouse there? Or is there some weird, esoteric reason for going to Ft Wayne, since AFAIK no one at Catalyst has any connection to the city

Bull