This is an indepth answer about the development time for Red Eclipse that I posted on our FB page.
Håkan Lundgren posted a comment about where is the support for Red Eclipse? That the game has been around for years and still no game in hand.
Some of this is common knowledge and some of it isn't. There are some things that I can't go into in much depth but let me at least give you some background.
I created the Kontact Now series after playing Fire Team. Designed by Jon Southard and published by West End Games. I started it way back when. The board war game companies mostly closed up shop. I went to doing computer games.
I'm not a game designer. I'm a scenario designer. I use other people's game systems to create my scenarios for. But Fire Team just got to me and I kept playing with it. Just me. Nobody else for about 18 years. On again, off again. Until my Grandson, Gary Krockover and Ralph Ferarri pushed that I finish it.
So, I got more active after I saw that board wargames had made a come back. What GMT offered to pay me was an insult. I went with LnLP for various reasons. Not the least of which is I have done business with Dave when he owned Matrix.
He gave me total control of my game. Which was both good and bad. I got to have the last say but I'd never produced a boardgame before. So, I made some mistakes. Every mistake costs time.
LnL wasn't the company that Dave thought it was and there were 'issues'. Ones that needed to be fixed if the company was to survive.
What that means in real terms is that LnLP had to concentrate on their existing catalog to survive and that catalog needed work to be legitimately good enough to keep selling. LnL's quality issues are still legendary. LnLP fixed those. But at a cost in time. Some of that time delay was passed on to Red Eclipse.
Then enter the novice. I wasted more than a year thinking I could get my rules done without me writing them. Tony Casas tried. He really did but it wasn't his place to do it. It was mine. When I finally got my own memo I wrote the rules. Now we are in the process of editing them. We're getting closer but things show up. Just like now we are waiting for 3 weeks for them to get back to our rules. Which doesn't matter because we aren't on the KS schedule to be next up.
I took their delays and never really complained much. Instead we have continued to develop and playtest the KN system. More and more content. More and more playtesting the rules. More and more SCENARIOS!!!!! So, I wasn't worried. As each day goes by more is added to the system. The playtesters can tell you. There are dozens of scenarios, thousands of counters and almost 100 maps for this series. As Håkan Lundgren commented KN has been around for some time.
What that means is that once we get this first game in the series printed others will be ready to follow it immediately.
The plan, at this moment, is to do 1989 the normal way.
US vs Soviet
West German vs East German/Czech
BAOR vs Poland
Then after that you guys will get to pick. IF the game series sells well. At this point I've got no reason to think it won't. There have been several people that have played the series and so far only one gamer hasn't cared for it that plays tactical games and he is the designer of his own series. Which I don't care for so, go figure.
Lots of personal and health issues have been sprinkled through the LnLP and KN time slots as well. Many of you know of my own physical restrictions. China, the corona virus and KS'ers all count into that as well.
Add that all up and I can tell you that KN is alive and well.
What I cannot tell you is when it will be for sale but I would think by Christmas at the latest. That of course is determined by issues outside my control.
We, me - the playesters and LnLP, are working on it. It is coming.
Hope this helps.
Good Hunting.
MR