About Us
Welcome to the new home of Advanced Deployment!
We provide laser cut and engraved gaming accessories, perfect for role playing, miniatures wargames and board games. Our products are designed and created in Washington State by a small team of three people. We’re gamers just like you, and we seek to produce quality products at a reasonable price.
Crowdsourcing
We’re just a few nerds in the big sea of gamerdom, and we just can’t get our hands on everything out there. Many of our products come from us pausing in the middle of a game and saying “You know, I wish I hade X thing.” Cue us scrambling for paper and pen to scribble out our ideas. But we don’t play everything, and we certainly cannot think of everything, we rely on our fellow gamers to come forward with ideas.
Advanced Deployment isn’t one of the “Big Guys,” we’ve always got time for our fellow gamers, and since we print on demand, no niche is too small for us. We’ll design tokens for the big popular games, right down to the indy games, or heck even for your home brew.
If you ever have an idea for a token or accessory, don’t be shy, shoot us an email!
Who We Are
Ravyn
Ravyn is me, the originator of Advanced Deployment, I’m the artist, and creative director behind all those nifty tokens you see. I’m a graduate of WCC in Bellingham with a degree in Graphic Design, and am an avid gamer, playing both miniatures games and table top rpgs. I’m hugely fond of Warmachine and Dungeons and Dragons, though I’ve done my time playing Traveler, Warhammer and lots of board games! Oh yeah, I’ve been known to cosplay too. I live in beautiful Bellingham, WA with my husband and my four cats, I also run a reptile rescue in my spare time!
Dustin
Dustin is my husband, and the company’s go-fer. He is the self proclaimed El Presedente (for life) of Advanced Deployment, Production Money, and Director of Viral Marketing. Often in charge of packaging shipping, more often than not he can be found organizing the weeks orders, and usually he can be found running to the store to pick up that one thing I forgot…again. He’s also the guy I bounce all my ideas off of. He tests the creations we build here, making sure they are up to good gaming standards.
He’s working on a degree in Electronic Technology, so this has some awesome prospects for future products for Advanced Deployment.
Kevin
Kevin is my father and the master of the laser. He is in charge of creating the layouts we use, and tweaking designs until they are just right. He’s also the person who sits there and hand cleans the over-burn off of every token that comes out of here.
He’s a Army veteran, and when not doing my bidding at the laser, he’s usually found tinkering with his Datsun 260Z.
Mission Statement
Or: How our first attempt at terrain taught us everything we needed to know about ourselves.
Hi guys! I'm Dustin, the other face of Southpaw, along with my wife Ravyn. I'm a long time nerd and gamer, and that's how I think of myself first and foremost. This whole business thing got started when I asked Ravyn if I could get some custom tokens out of the design shop, she said “Sure! We can make something cool for you” and ever since then we haven't bought off the shelf. That got us thinking that if we liked playing with custom labeled and uniquely designed tokens maybe other people would as well. After all, if we're going to put in the time converting, painting and customizing every aspects of our models, why would settle for generic tokens?
We cranked out what worked for us and it turned out quite a few other people liked them as well. Business was good, and that got us thinking some more. Maybe we could make terrain as well! We've had mixed luck finding a local gaming store that had decent terrain and found ourselves needing something quick and easy that we could layout fast and get playing. We tinkered around a bit, knocked out a set and kept going. Again with the idea that if we could use it, maybe someone would want it as well.
But as it turns out while some people liked what we created, not everyone did. We're not annoyed about it, our tastes and needs aren't what everyone wants. This is a good thing, and made us realize that we were starting to fall into the same business pit trap we had just pulled ourselves out of: mainly other people trying to tell gamers what we should and shouldn't be playing with. That was the last thing we wanted to be as a company, our whole goal is to produce things people actually want, not something they have to settle for.
Which is where you guys come in. We know what we like because we play these games. But we're not you. We don't know what you want. But we want to! Because its just the two of us, we can make what you want if you tell us what that is. We're not beholden to any shareholders or anyone demanding a bottom line. Its just us. If we make something that you want, great! Glad it works for you. But if we roll something that doesn't work, let us know. We'll hit the lab again and try to make something that is what you need.
Keep giving us feedback and we'll work to make sure that you get tokens, tools and terrain that you like. Not what some corporate office thinks you need, but products designed by gamers to be easy to use, cheap to get and durable enough to hold up to a weekend con of packing, unpacking, drops and getting stepped on. We don't have any ego about our products, we just want to make stuff that makes gaming better. To that end, keep the emails and forum posts coming, we try to read everything that's out there so we can continue to improve and innovate. We truly do appreciate all the feedback we've gotten and none of what we do would be possible without you guys.