Check this article for some more news coverage of Mayday Games locally:

http://www.sltrib.com/sltrib/money/51258423-79/game-games-board-hiatt.html.csp

Mayday Games release from 2010 was recently mentioned in Deseret News in Salt Lake City:

http://www.deseretnews.com/top/122/1034/5-locally-designed-board-games-to-watch-Hagoth-Builder-of-Ships.html

Mayday Games has been gone for the last few days to a convention here in the USA and we just got back late last night from a great convention.  As we are catching up from being gone it has come to our attention that some concerns have been posted publicly about our products, practices and customer service support.  We just wanted to reaffirm our commitment to all of you who have purchased from us in the past, currently have outstanding orders, or will be giving us your business in the future.

We stand behind every product we sell and unquestionably refund or replace any damaged/defective product in all cases. We have had over 10,000 orders on our website, and many more through partnerships with retailers.  We realize with that many orders it is impossible to please everyone all the time.  Anyone who hasn’t received their product or a full refund instead (if requested), please contact Sarah directly at maydaygames@gmail.com and we will be happy to take care of you ASAP.

There were two individuals that had an issue with Crokinole orders through a third party vendor recently that we would like to address.  The first customer “Dave” received his board on 3/4/11 from Fedex (tracking #127578915005190).  This board was shipped directly from Mayday and we heard from Dave on 3/8 with an email reporting the following:

As I had mentioned, the surface of the board has a couple bubbles under the veneer (that I can’t seem to rub out) and a scrape/scratch on it.  There is also a ring of scuff marks that goes around the inside of the outer edge of the board.  The board really doesn’t look like it’s of the basic quality of the other 2 Mayday boards I’ve seen, so I was really taken aback by it.  I really don’t know if there’s a way I could fix this, or if there’s a way to coat/refinish the surface safely.  (I thought about trying some sort of heat treatment – but then I realized that I’d feel really stupid if I totally ruined the board surface by messing around with it like that.)

We replied back that same day stating that we would send a replacement board out to him that same day (3/8) no questions asked on Fedex #127578915005817.  He received this replacement board on 3/12 and we heard back from him that same day with the following email:

Sent: Saturday, March 12, 2011 12:51 PM

Subject: RE: Crokinole Board via XXXXX.com

I got the board, it definitely looks a lot better.  Thank you!

DB

We thought Dave’s board was fine and all was well but recently he posted on a public forum that the replacement board was of terrible quality.  He didn’t email or call us about this but we did hear about it in a public forum along with the rest of the world.  He received a refund in full immediately from the third-party vendor and still has the board.  We have emailed and called him several times to ask about this but haven’t heard back from Dave (yet).  We are hopeful that he will return the replacement board but for now he has the replacement board and a full refund.  Either way we feel we have done what we can for him.

There is another customer “Pete” who ordered a new board from this same third-party vendor around 3/6 or so and who was shipped Dave’s damaged board on 3/8 on Fedex # 127578915005800.  Yes we created a “return label” from Dave to Pete for the damaged board.  How did this happen?  We receive requests from customers to return a Crokinole board with no imperfections because of our 1-year warrantee guarantee.  This has happened probably 10 times since we released Crokinole in 2010.  Rather than send a “good board” back to us in Utah and then reship it right back east ($20 each way in shipping) we have these “good boards” shipped directly from the return customer to a new customer, saving us $20 in shipping.  We have done this several times with no issues but when Dave reported his return to us Mayday accidentally classified this board as “good” on our whiteboard where we keep this sort of temporary information, when Dave’s board was in fact damaged.  This wasn’t Dave’s fault or anyone but Mayday’s and has let to further confusion.

This was an error on our part and this and the board was delivered to Pete on 3/11.  Pete immediately noticed this was a bad board. He knew this board was imperfect because he had previously seen our boards in person when we had 10-12 of them at GenCon 2010.  He knew the standards of the boards he personally inspected and played on as he reported on his blog:

Shea and I then went into a random gaming room as the dealer hall had been closed, and we found ourselves at the Mayday Games room. There were about fifty Crokinole boards sitting around and when Shea asked me what the hell it was about, a random guy turned around and invited us to join he and his buddy for a game. I’d never played before, so after a short explanation we got right into it. It’s a cross between Carrom and Billiards with a touch of Pitchcar, and I have to say that when I ever get a hundred dollars again, I’m buying one of these. They are expertly crafted pieces of wooden gaming goodness and I would highly, highly recommend it to anyone who likes dexterity games. It’s phenomenal.

He emailed us that the board he had was unacceptable on 3/14 and we replied that same day that we would send out a replacement ASAP.  We generated a label with Fedex #127578915006050 and shipped it off.  We also asked Pete to send the damaged board to someone who runs a small venture for dads/kids to learn games.  This new person was happy to accept an imperfect board at no cost and we let Pete know that.  When we emailed him the information on the shipping of his board to this new person we attached the wrong label as a PDF file.  We were in the middle of packing up for our convention and in a hurry and just got our attachments mix up.  We accidently sent Pete a label for a lady (Jacki) who purchased a board from us from a different third-party website.  This lady’s Fedex label had already been initiated here in Utah though and shipped out to her early on 3/15 as we were leaving for our convention in Las Vegas.  Her tracking # on Fedex is 127578915006043 and  it is en route to her now.

We emailed and called Pete a few times early on 3/15 to let him know of the mix up but he was traveling and we were unable to get in touch with him and he didn’t get back to us.  We did email him the correct label for the damaged board to go to the right guy (Scott) as soon as we realized our error.   As we had used the label already and Pete was traveling there was never ANY chance Pete could have sent out the damaged board to Jacki though since we had already used the label before he even got home.  Fedex will NOT accept duplicate labels into their system once one of them is used.

Pete posted at length about the damaged board he had received right after contacting us, which we discovered a few days later.  A few minutes AFTER our package to Jacki was scanned by FEDEX here in Utah he posted that Mayday intentionally lied to him about the nature of the shipment he was supposed to send out after calling Jacki directly.

Pete contacted the third party vendor he purchased through and they refunded his money in full without question.  Pete has since refused to send out the damaged board to Scott, but instead told us he “donated it to Goodwill” because the third-party vendor told him he could ‘do what he wanted with it’.    The replacement board to Pete is with Fedex but Fedex is trying to have it returned to us.  Either way Pete does have a full refund, as does Dave.  Dave ended up with a free board that, at least on 3/12 he emailed us was fine.  Pete ended up with a damaged board but choose to give it to Goodwill.  We have credited the third-party vendor in full for both purchases and look forward to putting this entire comedy of errors behind us.

We aren’t in the practice of shipping damaged boards to several people across the country and there isn’t much motivation to do so since we get charged a significant shipping bill each time we ship a Crokinole board.  There was never any mention of insurance or claim of shipper-caused damage, the damaged board in question was a manufacturer’s defect.

If ANYONE has ordered anything from Mayday and has any problems at all please email or call us.  We have had quite a few transactions over the years and while 99% of our shipments/products are error free there are still those few that have gone awry.  We request anyone with any problems to please call or email us and we will happily help you by refunding you in full if requested or sending out replacement product.

We will discontinue shipping product from one customer to another even if the returning customer claims the product is totally perfect though to avoid future confusion.  We do apologize publicly to Dave and Pete for the confusion here and hope they will contact us if there is anything else we can do to help them.

Regards,

Mayday Games

Mayday to Produce “Eaten By Zombies” Deck Building Game!http://www.boardgamegeek.com/article/6359166#6359166

Description

In the new game Eaten By Zombies! players strive to survive as the horde of the living dead make it their goal in Death to force you to join the crowd. You must work with or against the other survivors to be the last one standing.  No not standing, cowering in the corner crying for their mommy.
In the spirit of AMC’s “The Walking Dead” and “I Am Legend”, Eaten By Zombies takes you into a dark world of eventual death. Every turn you must venture out from your safehouse and scavenge for Swag. But not so fast, the Undead have other plans for your brains. Every day a Horde of fresh zombies will be waiting for you, and over time the threat gets greater. Now it’s time for your “Fight or Flight” instincts to help you to survive just one more day. Using the swag you’ve got on you (ie cards in you hand) you must survive any way you can.
If you can get away or kill the Horde, you may scavenge the remains of the desolate suburbs for any Swag the neighbors may have left behind.   With the right stuff and a few good friends to out run, you may just make it through this alive… well, no probably not.  But being the last one to die a slow, painful death means you can claim sole victory!
With a set of over thirty different cards to start with, no two games will ever be alike. This game is a combination of Card Drafting, Hand Management and Survival Horror with a few dirty tricks thrown in.

Game Play:
You start with five heavy sticks (each worth +1 fight) and five hide cards (each +1 flee) as well as two sandwiches (+1 Flee & Draw one card).  You shuffle these 12 cards and draw 6 into your hand.  You then face one of the 25 zombies from the Zombie Deck with a fight value ranging from 1-8 and a flee value of 1-4.  You must announce Fight or Flee and then proceed to play some/all of your 6 cards in your hand.
If you successfully fight/flee you then take the total fight/flee value to the scavenging portion of your turn (think of it as a “buy”) where you acquire items such as Shotguns, fists full of ammo, crowbar, binoculars, fire on a stick, grandma pantry, deadeye or other cards which you then put INTO YOUR HAND for use in the very next turn and draw back up to 6 cards from your draw deck.  Played cards go to your discard pile, including any zombies you have succeeded in killing.
If you flee then the zombie card goes to the zombie discard pile.  As you draw zombies into your hand (from shuffling your discard pile) you are stuck with them in your hand forever unless you play them into the zombie horde attacking on another player’s turn, so the zombie horde gets tougher over time.
If you are unsuccessful in killing/fleeing then you must loose a number of cards equal to the flee value of the horde.  These lost cards come from either your hand or as a blind draw off the top of your draw pile and go back to the scavenging area, weakening you.  If you run out of cards you succumb to your wounds and become a zombie, now trying to kill the other players on each turn.
If a player ever ends up with six zombie cards in his/her hand the zombie players win as the remaining players have gone insane.  Each time the zombie deck is gone through and reshuffled you add one more zombie to the horde for the rest of the game, making perpetual survival impossible.
It isn’t a matter of if you’re going to die but when.  Be the last player standing and win.  If at any time the entire zombie deck is depleted (because the players have killed all of them rather than using flee), all remaining players alive win together.
This is a unique cooperative/competitive game where you really feel the tension and inevitability of doom.  You spend the first few turns building up your deck only to see the zombies increase in power and slowly drain your will to live as the game progresses.
2-4 players, 20 minutes per player.

Mayday News Update 2/10/11

Mayday Games continues to grow and in early 2011 relocated to a new warehouse with better docks and a nicer front office.  Mayday Games has been more actively working with other board game companies to better meet demands for board game accessories and components and has reached cooperative agreements with the likes of AEG, Repos Productions and others in recent months.  These agreements include designing or promoting card sleeves for specific titles for these companies and in the case of Albe Pavo, a small Italian publisher, including Mayday card sleeves INSIDE each copy of their flagship game!

Mayday has recently released card sleeves specifically designed for 7 Wonders and future prints of this runaway hit will include special offers for 7 Wonders owners.  Mayday also recently released it’s new “Magnum” card sleeve line for larger cards found in games like 7 Wonders, Lost Cities, Dixit and more.

Mayday also just recently released an Automobile / Car Token Set (180 tokens, $25 MSRP) to fill the wooden token void found in many Automobile games.  Mayday is also reprinting several of it’s more popular games in the first half of 2011, including one of the only affordable Tournament-sized Crokinole Boards to reach board game distribution channels.  Mayday is also reprinting it’s 2^nd run of Hagoth: Builder of Ships and will reprint one of Tom Vasel’s top 100 of all-time favorites Get Bit! after acquiring the rights to this little gem from Robot Martini.  Other titles in the pipe include King’s Vineyard (which had a very small run released at Essen 2010 and immediately sold out) and two other as yet undisclosed games.

Mayday also just entered into a partnership with Red Kyron out of Portugal to warehouse and distribute Mayday products more efficiently into France, Germany, Italy and the rest of Europe.  Limited supply of Mayday card sleeves in Europe have caused most retailers there to charge as much as 4,00 euros/pack (over $5) for their $2.25/pack MSRP sleeves.

Mayday has also been actively looking for licensing agreements with European companies to distribute popular games that aren’t yet available in the USA and hopes to announce several such agreements in the coming year.

The Dice Tower, arguably the most important podcast for board games, has done a review for Crokinole:

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=isudfD7dcXI

Mayday Games is proud to announce its latest card sleeve release:

Ultra-Snug™ “Almost-a-penny” Card Sleeves! Preorder

Ultra-Snug™ “Almost-a-penny” Card Sleeves

Preorder, coming January 2011!  Picture coming soon!

Details:

Standard Size 2 5/8 X 3 5/8 Inches

Perfect Fit™ Sleeves for standard card sizes, best fit in the industry!*

100 sleeves per pack

Acid Free –No PVC

Clear Polypropylene

Archival Safe

*Take our Perfect Fit™ Challenge, take one of your cards and sleeve it with one of our sleeves, then take our sleeved card and put it inside your old sleeve!  Yes it fits that much better!  And at almost a penny (if you round down) you are getting the best fitting sleeves for an excellent price!

UPC #080162895119 and Product code of MDG-7105.

Compatible with all collectible cards including:  baseball cards, basketball cards, football cards, hockey cards, Pokemon©, Magic The Gathering©, VS©, Dragonball Z © and others!

Visit Maydaygames.com for a complete list of compatible products for these sleeves.  Above names are © respective trademark holders and all rights are reserved.  No endorsement by the respective trademark holders is expressed or implied.

Get Bit will be re-produced by Mayday Games shortly!  We have it available for sale on our site now!

http://boardgamenews.com/news/mayday-games-ready-get-bit

Mayday Games is now distributing GET BIT, a great little game by Dave Chalker!

Get Bit Game: 3-6 Players in just 10-20 minutes!

We are clearing out the last few copies from Robot Martini and will be reprinting this game shortly!

We have had some nice press coverage in recent months including:

Space Junkyard featured in the Lunar and Planetary Information Bulletin

Hagoth: Builder of Ships featured in Deseret News

Deseret News also did a follow up article HERE

Podcast Featuring Mayday Games HERE (Mayday starts at 41:10 in the podcast)