Dear SWMs community,
As many of you may know we have temporarily shut down funding for RaR while we worked out some issues behind the scenes. You may also know that Dean has had to step away from the community for a while. A lot has happened behind closed doors, that I won’t be divulging, but suffice it to say, Dean has ongoing personal issues that will keep him away for a while. This will affect many things in our community so please bear with me as I explain everything as best I can. (I will not answer questions about Dean so don’t ask).

1) V-set funding. First, I’ve set up a new Paypal account for V-set funding. This is very important. Those that have already donated to R&R through the old account, need to file a claim with paypal against Dean. There is no other way at this time to deal with this unfortunately. Paypal claims are easy, simply go to the site and look it up. You will not receive anything from donations that were made in this way. I am deeply sorry, but this is all we can do. Secondly, I’ve set up a new account. You will need to re-donate to this account. Engineer, Ruhk, Dvader and I all have access to this account and we promise to give regular updates to donations totals and what is still needed to meet the printing/shipping goals. It also means that if one of us has to step away in the future, there are other people able to access the account.

2) RaR, BoT and Epic costs. We need $5000 to pay for the three V-sets currently in production. RaR is a 60 piece set, Bot is 10 pieces, and the Epic set is 12 for a total of 82 cards. This means our production cost is much higher than before, especially with the special card designs for the Epic set. We raised about $1600 for DotF and in the end it was not enough even with the extra donations to cover the costs of shipping and production. So we have upped the request this time around to cover what we now know are the accurate costs. Further, if you do not donate, your odds of getting a set are going to be much lower this time around. We need people to contribute or we cannot have these printed.

3) DotF and Shadow Stormtroopers. We have acquired the remaining of each of these from Dean and shipments have begun flowing again. If you are still in need of DotF and you donated please contact Leshippy via PM. If you paid Dean for Shadow Stormtrooper Promos, please PM Dvader and he will be sure to get them out to you ASAP.

4) Donation Details. In order to have RaR printed in time for Gencon, we need to be able to pay the printer by July 1st. So we have until June 15th to make donations if you want any of the 3 sets we are producing. Suggested donations are as follows. For 1 set of RaR, $30 minimum. For RaR and BoT $35 minimum. For one set of RaR, BoT and the Epic Micro Set, $50 minimum. Remember, these are simply suggestions, if you want to donate more, please do so. We as a community need to raise $5000 or we are in danger of not being able to print anything. If you live outside the United States you need to donate additional money to cover all shipping costs to your country. That includes the full expense of tracked UPS shipping to your country. We will not send more than one package to a person and we will not send overseas again without it. For those attending Gencon, you will be able to claim your product at Gencon. For everyone else, you will go through the point man for your area. Here is the link to the correct paypal account for donating. Please list in your comments, “V-set contribution” and how many of each set you would like to receive. We also need your full name, address and forum names included in the comments. We will provide regular updates (weekly) to the donation status and goal. That way everyone in the community knows where we are and how far we still need to go, as well as constant reminders of the upcoming important dates.

5) Pointmen. We will be streamlining the pointman concept for this set. There is a new thread for pointmen volunteers if you would like to be a distributor. Requirements of the job are listed there. Everyone not in attendance at Gencon must go through the pointman for their state/country. There will be only one, and you must communicate directly with that person to get your set mailed. If you provide your information to me via Paypal, it will go directly to that person together with your sets of cards. There will be no exceptions to this. We will not mail to any individuals unless of course you are in fact the only person in your state/country, in which case you will become the pointman.

6) Moving forward. Since Dean has had to step away, a group of us are taking over everything that he used to do, and then some. Please be patient with us as we work to resolve all past issues. Remember, those issues were not related to any of us. Dean will not respond to PMs, so please don’t send him any for any purpose. Any questions or remaining issues can be posted in this thread. Moving forward, the SWMs team will be handling everything from Gencon planning, V-set fundraising, production and distribution, and tournament organizing. Thank you for your patience.

7) Finally, here is the new account link. Please make all donations to this link. And if you've already donated to the other one, those donations will not count. You have to go here and donate again, and file a claim against the other one.
Donate Here to Support the V-Sets

Bill

---

I added a little more (Especially if you have...) to the subject to help draw people's attention - eMouse

Thread regarding new pointmen has just gone up. Here's a link: http://swmgamers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=3&t=11385

I wouldn't worry about getting your $40 back, this is a pretty standard PayPal procedure, there shouldn't be a problem with it.

I am doing the same thing as keith. I posted a dispute as "product not received" and will wait to see if I get my 40 dollars back. Being in the start of a move, it would be hard to pay the 50 as I don't know where I am going to be when the set breaks.

Same here, pointed to this thread and hope that they realize something is wrong just from the number of claims made at the same time.

As sooon as I'm paid I'll get my order in.
For postage to the UK would a blanket +$20 cover the cost?
ie if your donating the minimum $30, you should donate $50 and so on?

Hope its nothing serious and Dean is ok.

Why not just set aside a small amount at a time until you have the amount needed? The end results would be the same and it would be less hassle.

Paypal charge per transaction, so it would be best to save up the money and pay in one go.

http://www.swmgamers.com/forums/viewtopic.php?f=53&t=11326

Just a snip of the full post:

Yes, please escalate from a dispute to a "claim". For those past the 45 days, a suggestion was made on Gamers to try a dispute with your credit card company as well. We will do anything we can to help. For the installment idea, it would be better to wait and donate the full amount, but if that's really not possible, go ahead and just make sure you notate that additional information in the payment. For the UK specifically, I'm assuming Dreadtech will take on Pointman duties again (or someone else). You do not individually need to add more for postage. If it works better, you guys can go in collectively and split up the total package price. Let's say it's something like $50 to send UPS with tracking, then split it up between the 5-10 of you who want a set, etc. We don't need an extra 20 from everyone, unless you simply want to give it to make sure we hit the goal and to help players who can't afford the full price. That is always welcome as well, which goes for anyone. My amounts are the minimum breakdown dividing up the cost for the full 5000. But if you are a person with higher means, we can use all the help we can get to make sure we can continue to do this for the SWMs community. As I said on Gamers, unlike the first time with its many faults, we will provide a full breakdown of costs and expenditures as we are able to do so. And just so everyone knows as much as I can tell you, the group of people working on all of this as of right now, have put up a good chunk of their own money to pay off our debts for the first set. This is a community project, not a Gamers project, not a bloomilk project, but a SWMs Community project. Thank you all so much for the support we have seen thus far. Again I apologize for the issues and errors we've had, but I can promise you we have a good grasp on everything going on and will do whatever is necessary to make things work better as we go forward. I am very excited for you all to see the work we have put into RaR, BoT and the ultra cool Epic set! And work for V-set 3 and 4 has already begun!

Thanks Bill for your work on this. I'll make a donation to the new account after work today.