At long last birch is in production at full quality. In update 35 I showed you that the quality of the production tiles was much lower than the proofs. The issues have been resolved and production is moving forward. You can see the fine detail in the river.

We should be able to get these shipped out relatively quickly. I'm very excited for you to finally have these beautiful tiles.

Thanks,
Jon Adams

A Better Rule Book

Quite a few of you have reached out asking for clarification on the rule book. I've been working with Playford Games to address your feedback. I think what we have address most of your concerns. Playford Games has posted the updated rules on their blog at rules.cartographygame.com.
One of the core strategies of Go and hence Cartography is "Two Eyes". Playford has a stratagy guide in the works, but if you can't wait you can learn more at http://www.pandanet.co.jp/English/learning_go/learning_go_7.html

Four Player Games

Playford Games also posted a short explanation of the 4 player rules in the post mentioned above. You might be surprised to hear there aren't any additional rules for four player games. You should however keep in mind it doesn't matter who is surrounding a group. If a token(or token group) is completely surrounded it is captured.

Birch Production Update

I'm very sorry that the birch games have not shipped yet. In our last post we highlighted a quality control issue with the production of the birch tiles. We are still working to resolve the issue but unfortunately 2015 is coming to a close and the manufacturer has shut down for the holidays. Once they start back up we will continue working toward a solution.

Merry Christmas,
Jon Adams

Post your comments reviews and photos

It's been exciting getting your feedback as the games are trickling in. I'm really looking forward to hearing from you.

BoardGameGeek: boardgamegeek.com/boardgame/163031/cartography 
Twitter: twitter.com/CartographyGame
Facebook: facebook.com/CartographyGame

Cartography has shipped

All games have shipped out except the premium "birch" games and games destined for the EU. It is my understanding that the EU games will be shipping out after the new year.

Birch production update

We hit a bump with the birch production. The quality wasn't quite as high as the proofs so we are having those remade. As you can see the detail on the left isn't as high as in he proofs on the right.

We expect to receive those early next week and ship them out as soon as possible.

Thanks again,
Jon Adams

You may have received a shipping notification from our partner Playford Games. Please keep that for your records just in case. We inadvertently triggered some erroneous shipping notices. More than likely you will receive a new tracking number. I'm sorry for any confusion this may have caused.

Thanks again,
Jon Adams

A Quick Update

We cleared customs and the games arrived at our distribution center on Friday!

Birch production is well under way. We are verifying all the little details before assembling and packing the final shipment. This is the very last step and we hope to ship to you very soon. It is my hope that many of you will receive Cartography before Christmas.

Thanks again,
Jon Adams

Birch is beautiful

It's taken far too long but we finally have our birch prototypes.

I don't want to be dramatic but... They Are Beautiful!!!

The engraving is lovely and the tiles interlock perfectly. It's hard to see in these photos but the relief in the the waves is filled with depth and detail.

The birch tiles will come in a similar punch board to the standard game.

The quality of the material is very good.

Stuck in Customs

Our mass production copies are in America but they are stuck in customs. I was hoping they would arrive before Thanksgiving but that hope is slipping. We expect them to clear in the next couple days. It is now my hope that will be able to deliver before Christmas.

If all goes well the birch copies will ship along side the standard games. After many delays I'm so excited to finally see the finish line in site. Thank you so much for your continued support and patients.

Thanks again,
Jon Adams

In my last post I mentioned that we would stop accepting address changes. It was brought to my attention that I had commented on a post that we would notify you before we stopped. To honor that, we will extend the cut off until Monday. If you still need to change your address please let me know before end of day Monday. Thanks again. 

Jon Adams

Dear colleagues and friends,

It is a privilege to serve the ICA as your president for the next four years in our dynamic world where maps play an important role as interface to geo-related information to support decision making in many different situations.

It is obvious I do this not alone. I can and will built on the shoulders of my predecessors. And I do realize it is quite a responsibility because Georg Gartner, the now past-president has left us a healthy association. During his term ICA has been enriched in many ways. Think of our new journal, our embedding in ICSU and relation with UN-GGIM, the GeoforAll initiative and the beautiful website.

Secondly, I will act with an enthusiastic team. The newly elected members of the Executive Committee and the new Commission Chairs will allow me to put new accents.

Especially the newly established Working group Cartography for Global Geographic Information Management can put such accent. With this working group the plan is to provide the UN-GGIM an ‘atlas’ of good cartographic practice for the new sustainable development goals.

Dear all, over the next four year let’s make the world a better place with maps!

Menno-Jan Kraak...

The 16th ICA General Assembly was closed on the last day of ICC2015.
Slides of the agenda can be found here.

The Executive Committee for the term 2015-2019 is:

• President: Menno-Jan Kraak (The Netherlands)
• Secretary-General and Treasurer: László Zentai (Hungary)
• Vice-Presidents:

Sara Fabrikant (Switzerland) David Forrest (United Kingdom) Yaolin Liu (China) Pilar Sanchez-Ortiz (Spain) Monika Sester (Germany) Lynn Usery (USA) Vít Voženílek (Czech Republic)

• Past President: Georg Gartner (Austria)

The 17th General Assembly and the 29th International Cartographic Conference in 2019 will be held in Tokyo, Japan.

All corresponding website subpages (EC, conferences, commissions, working groups) will be updated within the course of next week. Please stay tuned....