Fear, terror, paint & bed sheets

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So a sunny Sunday and we need some backdrops for our stand at the Vegas. Apparently we've got black & silver curtains as standard, so we thought we'd try and brighten the place up a bit.

A few hours of intensive brainstorming the week before had left us with the rough plan of 'sunday', 'big red sheets', 'black paint', 'white paint' and 'make a bit of a mess'.

So Sunday rolls on and "we've" got 4 huge sheets to paint in a day. After some initial hard work finding a suitable old van and railway gate to paint on, it soon transpired that the two Andys had little more to do than supply beer, music, entertainment and harsh critiques and 'artistic suggestions' to Tom now and then, through a loud-hailer.

Tom kept up the pace with amazing stamina, throwing the paint on the canvas with both speed AND precision.Tom steps up to the mark and leaps in with bomb blast, flying bodies and calm smoking men sitting in deckchairs. A few coffees and cakes later and we're on our way to having the first banner cracked.

Tom kept up the pace with amazing stamina, throwing the paint on the canvas with both speed AND precision. The two Andys struggling to keep at his pace with their beer drinking and peanut eating.

Andy T wandered off at one point, only to return on the new pirate trike sound system... Irreverent, but it made our hanging around watching Tom work a lot more fun.

As the sun starts to come down, we have four crazy banners which will provide the perfect stage for our 'just been nuked out' stand for the Vegas show. Good work Tom.

Only a week left to go before we're off to Vegas. Plenty of work still to be done, we're currently etching cock-roaches. Will they be ready for us?

Other news: It's true, we originally had the idea for the EVIL Balaclava back in '68, but only recently cracked getting it mass-produced as part of a boardgame.

Re-supplying North America

Have pity on our American cousins. For over a month now they've been WoT-less. Their lives have been terror-free, evil-free and - worse of all - balaclava-free since we sold out over there in January.

The War on Terror drought is coming to an end though. We have a fresh supply of games on a ship somewhere in the mid-Atlantic, due to arrive 30 April. For everyone asking when you can get your grubby mitts on a game, you can place a pre-order and be among the first to have your game delivered.

So soon you won't have to rely on Fox news any more for your daily fix of belligerent war celebration, bigotry, paranoia and propaganda - now you can supply it all yourselves! Order your copy now.

In other news, it appears Chris Morris is jumping on the terrorism-based satire bandwagon.

We also have some exciting TV-related news, which we can't tell you just yet. So it's a bit pointless mentioning it. Just shows us up as the teasing media-sluts we are.

War on Terror, coming to America.

We've got some big, exciting news in this special, American- themed blog post.

WoT in Vegas: believe it or not, we've actually been invited to attend a game convention, rather than being turned away from one. Is it a trap? We don't know, but we can't wait.

WoT is going to be featured in Playboy's May issue So we'll be exhibiting at the GAMA '07 games trade show (GTS) in Las Vegas from 23-26 April. If you're attending, or think you can sneak in, come and say hello. We're in booth 1216 (see floorplan). Rather amusingly, if you look closely, you'll find we're just round the corner from the department of homeland security. We'll be holding daily 'find the WMD' competitions, so it'll be a golden opportunity to see just how good they are at their job. Or maybe just a golden opportunity to get abducted and wake up in their popular Guantanamo holiday camp. Who knows?

WoT in Playboy: We still can't get over this one. WoT is going to be featured in Playboy's May issue which will be out next month while we're over there. If you ever needed an excuse to buy a gentleman's interest magazine, this is it. Maybe we can drop in on The Mansion and get some bunnyclava action? But then again, maybe not.

And last, but certainly not least ...

WoT in LA: A particularly dedicated fan of WoT in Los Angeles has decided to stage the world's first War on Terror the boardgame Tournament! This is going to rock so much. It's going to be on 28-29 April at (yet to be confirmed) Meltdown Comics in Hollywood. We'll have some kick-ass prizes too and for what it's worth the entire WoT team (the creators and the illustrator) will be there, looking confused and laughing a lot.

More details to come, including information of how to sign up, but for now if you're interested in taking part or helping out, just get in touch with us and we'll pass you on to the organiser.

Lastly - want to do us a favour? We know you do. So if you've played the game and you like it - or even if you loath it - please take a few minutes to rate it over at Board Game Geek. It's like an American Gamer's Bible and we want to be the equivalent of one of the Ten Commandments. Thou shalt not judge a board game by its cover. Nor by its name. Nor by what the papers say. Only through the playing shallt thou knowest me.

Coming soon ... some You Tube silliness ...

All our War on Terror are belong to us. Finally.

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After over a month of fighting with our warehouse to get our games back, this week we finally reached a compromise of sorts and the remaining 2,000 games of War on Terror are now back safe in our hands.

So here it is: why Uniserve are the latest - and greatest - addition to the Coalition of the Unwilling.

Things were starting to look bad before Christmas, delayed orders, missing deadlines, a distinct lack of information and general crapness. In January we started to get suspicious. We realised that delivery reports were being falsified and it gradually transpired that nothing had been done with our orders for over 3 (and in some cases, 6) weeks. Oh dear.

Uniserve responded to this situation by first sacking our account manager and then serving us a 'notice to quit', chucking us out of the warehouse.

They then realised they had misquoted us on delivery rates and tried to charge us retrospectively - up to 5 times as much in some cases - all the while, holding our stock and refusing to release any unless we paid what they demanded.

It gets better: when we finally reached a compromise and were about to pick up our games, the MD issued some impromptu 'exit terms', which involved signing away our legal rights regarding making future claims against Uniserve.

It's the end of a very stressful period in TBG's history. We have never - nor has anyone we've told this sorry tale to - heard of anything so unprofessional and we're still recovering from Uniserve's triple whammy of incompetence, extortion and bullying.

Here's to the marvellous reality of "doing business". We're now part of this illustrious network of seasoned professionals and important businessmen. We're living the dream, man, we're living the dream.

Other News: We've handed out our second 'Special Initiative Award'.

United States: War on Terror finished!

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Even with the Terror Team stricken with illness induced by haging around warehouses, trying to fix punctures on vans and lifting boxes of games, we've still managed to clear the backlog of UK problem orders and European orders are going out today. It's been quite a slog and big thanks to Jazz for coming in and helping us out in TerrorBull HQ.

With all this activity we failed to notice that our initial batch of 525 games for the United States & Canada was running dry, in fact we've sold out and had to stop taking orders over there. Sorry about that, we're more upset than you are.

How to take our life size (cardboard) suicide bomber on the plane?We've got around 2,000 games left and would like to send another batch over the pond. But the bulk of our stock is still being 'held' in our (ex) UK warehouse. We're trying our best to extract them as soon as we can. We'll be shouting with updates on the blog.

Plans for Vegas are coming together, there's now talk of a road trip to Los Angeles for a 'War on Terror Tournament' and some other great leads coming from the west coast. We just need to find a red mustang and work out how to take our life size (cardboard) suicide bomber on the plane.

And we've heard rumours of an EVIL Sunday football team somewhere in the north of England, but have yet to see photographic evidence.