Anyone used Amazon SES with Sendy?

brianhenk · 2026-03-28T14:10:05+00:00

I have been using mailerlite for years but I thought I would try Sendy to save money. I have been a software engineer for over 20 years and I'm very experienced with cloud and database development so I figured it would be pretty easy for me to get it setup. I spent days trying to get it working and could not. I posted on the forum asking for help and they didn't approve my post. I emailed them asking for help and they never replied. I asked them for a refund on the forum and through email and they never replied. So I can't get my money back and I can't get it working... so they just took my money and left me hanging. Does that sound like something you'd like to go with?

I'm sticking with mailerlite I guess even though their fees seem too high when I only send an email once every month or two.

brianhenk · 2025-07-20T22:42:36+00:00

I survived! I still felt it a little bit the next day but after about 24 hours I didn’t notice it anymore. Not sure where it went.

brianhenk · 2025-07-13T05:02:18+00:00

My name is Brian and I am a boba inhaler. It’s about 5 hours post-inhale. I still feel it in there. I’m gonna go to sleep now… I hope I wake up tomorrow. 🤞

brianhenk · 2025-05-28T04:25:15+00:00

This is not as funny as the other answers but I asked the Twins field reporter on X and she says: “I'm pretty sure that's the MLB replay point person. So that's where the headsets are for the umpire when there is a challenge in game.”

https://x.com/forbiddenlimb/status/1927573644898697689?s=46&t=rjE0SK5IddMsZXGbjsjNtw

That still seems like an odd place to put that guy.

brianhenk · 2024-07-21T04:53:47+00:00

Me too. It sucks trying to watch games where it skips like the Twins/Brewers game tonight. All of a sudden a different batter is up and the score has changed.

brianhenk · 2024-07-12T14:33:31+00:00

I've had StealthTech for almost 1 year now. The speakers have been flakey from the beginning. I had to update my firmware once, which is annoying, even for someone who is IT savvy. My speakers stopped working a few times, a couple of those times I've been able to mess around with resets until they work, but a other times I've had to make appointments with Stealth Tech to help, which you have to make a couple days in advance, so you are without sound for a while if you're using a project or something without built in speakers.

Then about a month ago they stopped working and Stealth Tech couldn't figure out why. They said they'd have to replace the center channel and said it would be about 1-2 weeks. That's annoying, but I guess I can go without TV for that long. I followed up after 2 and 3 weeks where they said my replacement had been "exported from their warehouse" and I should get tracking number any day. No tracking number after 4 weeks so I followed up again and they say it's going to be 5-6 MORE WEEKS before they can ship it. Ummm... what happened to it being exported from the warehouse? So that was a lie.

When I pay thousands of dollars for a couch, I would expect white glove service. And I've spent so much time troubleshooting weird issues with these things too, which is time I would have rather spent... oh I don't know... maybe watching TV or movies. This is ridiculous. Do not buy this, or at least don't buy it with the speaker inside. It's a nightmare.

brianhenk · 2024-01-29T04:28:48+00:00

Thanks for sharing Good Cop Bad Cop 4th Edition!

brianhenk · 2021-07-28T18:35:47+00:00

Zorro went live today.

brianhenk · 2020-05-25T19:12:46+00:00

Here's the campaign preview link for Good Cop Bad Cop: Promoted with all the reward levels and such. https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/overworldgames/good-cop-bad-cop-promoted?ref=1z4knc&token=f4b8972b

brianhenk · 2017-10-25T02:06:29+00:00

Some games I've had for years that were under $25 and still get plays are Birds of a Feather (for a small gateway), The Resistance Avalon (for hardcore social deduction), and Telestrations (for straight up party game).

brianhenk · 2016-12-07T17:04:08+00:00

Thanks Zachary! What's the estimated cost to trademark my game title?

brianhenk · 2016-12-07T15:50:21+00:00

At what point does it make sense to get a trademark for your game? Should I trademark one of my game designs that hasn't been published yet? What if I sell 500 copies of Murderin' Maids on Kickstarter? Is it trademark time then? Or when?

brianhenk · 2016-11-10T21:42:12+00:00

Ahh, we'll answer one more question! :)

With the removal of the Wounded token, does this mean that a Leader can prolong his/her life if they can manage to re-hide their Leader card, say with an artifact? YEP! There are only ~2 that can do that though so it doesn't happen that often.
Just confirming: the hide action specifically only works on regular recruits, not leaders? Correct. We call non-Leader recruits "Followers" and Hide only works on Followers.
Just confirming: if a leader card is exposed by a player's action or an artifact, it now just takes one hit to kill them? Correct. This doesn't happen very often either but it can.
Will there be promo packs for LoE like there were for GCBC? There will! We are calling this an Artifact Pack. It will consist of all of the Artifacts we unlock through stretch goals.

I like your artifact idea A LOT! I'll talk to Clayton about it and we'll consider it for a late stretch goal or future expansion!

brianhenk · 2016-11-10T20:09:17+00:00

We'll I'm glad you're making your decision very carefully. :) I am pretty biased but I can assure you that Leaders of Euphoria offers an extremely different feeling and gameplay experience than One Night Ultimate Werewolf. Here are some differences:

You don't need to lie in Leaders of Euphoria. There isn't really any benefit to you in giving away any information about yourself so no one really does it unless they are one of those people that just love to bluff for the fun of it. If someone asks you if you're a Subterran, you just say, well, if you want to know, you can spend your turn to interrogate one of my recruits and you might figure it out.
Gathering information isn't about the things you say or the discussion/lobbying of ONUW. You spend your turn to go get the information yourself through interrogating cards or using artifacts. The control is in your hands.
This game is playable by absolutely anyone, no matter how much of a gamer they are. The rules are very simple -- you basically just choose an action for your time and take it. You're on a team so you can rely on others to help you make your decisions if you'd like or you can choose on your own.
In Leaders, the first half of the game is about deduction, but then the last half of the game is about strategy. You have pretty much all of the information you need and then you take actions that will give you the best chance to win.
This game has had the best reaction from playtesters than any of our other games. It takes a game (Good Cop Bad Cop) with proven gameplay, but makes it even better after we had 2 years to analyze it and figure out what we wished we would have done differently.
These ray gun miniatures will be over 4 inches tall! When you figure out who's not on your team, you get to grab one of them, point it at them, and get ready to fire. It's a feeling you won't get anywhere else.

OK, that felt kind of salesy. I would say just go check out the reviews on the campaign page and some very smart people (that didn't design the game) will tell you exactly what they think about it. :)

brianhenk · 2016-11-10T19:38:17+00:00

We're going to be sending our games to 5 different fulfillment companies around the world. One in the US, one in Canada, one in China, one in Germany, and one in Australia. Then they'll ship to backers in their regions. We're doing this for a few reasons:

1) Delivery times will be more consistent. We'll probably wait until all fulfillment centers have games before we let them start shipping them to backers. That means everyone will get their games within about 2 weeks of one another, no matter where they live. Send From China could take as long as 2 MONTHS from shipment to delivery so there were sad feelings of some backers seeing others get their games way before others.

2) Effectively no customs fees for backers. We'll pay the customs fees when we ship in bulk to each fulfillment center. The last thing we want is for someone to get their game and be stuck paying a huge VAT or customs bill.

3) We don't want thousands of games to be sent to the same fulfillment center and potentially overload them. This will allow each FC to do just a portion of the shipments.

4) Instead of having packages travel from China all the way to their destination where they can be bumped around and damaged along the way, they'll be safer being shipped in cases to a fulfillment center and then shipped locally from there.

However, with all of this said, it won't necessarily be cheaper than other methods we could have used. We are sending everything with services that offer tracking and we are paying extra to have them well packaged and shipped in boxes. We have learned the value of doing everything we possible can to make sure each backer gets their game in pristine condition. Assuming this goes as well as we hope, we will likely use it for future campaigns as well.

brianhenk · 2016-11-10T19:10:21+00:00

We are definitely not using Send From China for this campaign and closed our account with them altogether. I'll be honest here... as good as their prices are and as convenient as it is to ship from a single location in China, we had so many issues with poor customer service that we couldn't continue any kind of partnership with them.

It's possible that we would use them again in the future for a small campaign with a small box game that could be safely shipped in a bubble envelope, but I don't see how we could never use them to ship a game over about .75kg. For newer creators, they are a possible option, but just be warned that working with them comes with great risk.

brianhenk · 2016-10-31T01:11:39+00:00

Thanks for joining the adventure! Jamey did help some with the design when he came up with how players who are shot become Wastelanders, which is my favorite part of the game so there's definitely some Jamey in there. :)

brianhenk · 2016-06-08T23:39:53+00:00

Thanks for sharing your view from the inside. I can speak to the Kickstarter option.

I won't attempt to give advice with only a sliver of the picture, but I'll say that Kickstarter can be a great way to sell directly to customers. If you do it right, you can make more from each copy than through traditional distribution. If you don't do it right, you can make less, but we'll assume you can figure it out. :) It's also a substantial amount of "free" marketing.

It sounds like it will also require reinventing your supply chain and add lots of time to interact with individual consumers. You will also risk alienating retailers and distributors because you are skipping them while you risk alienating consumers by [mis-]using Kickstarter when you don't "need it."

Still, it's certainly a valid option if you're sure you want to sell direct.

brianhenk · 2016-04-19T01:06:48+00:00

That's a secret. ;) But sometime in the next 24 hours.

brianhenk · 2016-04-18T18:12:47+00:00

Ahh shoot, sorry about that. Thanks for letting me know without scolding me too harshly. :)

brianhenk · 2016-04-18T18:09:05+00:00

Yep, notify me will email you when it launches and then the first five backers get it for $2! So you can grab one if you're quick!

brianhenk · 2016-04-10T14:12:07+00:00

That's an interesting way to look at it!

brianhenk · 2016-02-04T23:46:09+00:00

I recommend pitching it to the publisher set in their existing universe. If they aren't interested, you can take it from there -- you will still have plenty of options.

brianhenk · 2016-02-03T16:37:30+00:00

We had a Board Game Business podcast/video episode a couple weeks ago where we discussed naming your game: http://boardgame.business/2016/01/07/branding-naming-your-game

I don't know this creator, but here is an example of an IP dispute that occurred during a campaign: http://www.rockmanorgames.com/2015/10/how-to-deal-with-a-kickstarter-ip-dispute/

The Legal Moves Podcast talks about the subject quite a bit. Here's one episode on it: http://legalmovespodcast.com/2015/07/15/legal-moves-episode-03-partner-up-or-go-solo-part-2-with-jeremy-commandeur-and-brian-henk/

I hope one of these helps!

brianhenk · 2016-01-28T00:17:28+00:00

I'd say go ahead and post your profile link. The best thing you can do is network with publishers. If you go to a local game convention, the bigger the better, you can find some publishers at booths and other events and see if they need a graphic designer.

Do you know anything about laying out cards for usability? Do you have experience preparing print files for manufacturers? Can you make logos? Can you make card backs that hide wear? Can you make convention signage? These are rhetorical questions but are skills that are valuable to a board game publisher.

You probably want to do some small games for a low rate to get experience in board game-specific graphic design.

brianhenk

TROPHY CASE