NEW SAIPAN MAP PRINTING

[larry marak]

Your absolutely right of course. I'm just darn glad Mike found a way to keep the company going, even though keeping it alive meant burning quite a few bridges and relationships. It was certainly a quality control issue in the first printing, as some map sets apparently had good contrast, others very poor contrast. It is my suspicion that Saipan's release timing was related to the failure of the release of South Flank to cause a groundswell of new orders, and APL needed a new release to bring in fresh funds and to use up the 400 black silk boxes reserved for new orders for KSF that didn't materialize. You will recall that Fall of Empires was to be the summer release in 2012, (my impression was that the counters, die-cut, were ready) but it was decided that pushing KSF out first would be better for reviving sales and credibility to Avalanche. When KSF didn't generate a lot of new sales, Saipan was pulled out of the accepted design locker-room and went to bat for the gipper. And I think that Jay's magnum opus really did succeeded in reminding all of us of what PG could continue to mean in our future...new, exciting, and unexplored battlefields.