Call/email Jen. She can give you an approximate timing. Last I saw a week ago, they were still fulfilling December 2012 orders ... people are still receiving Smaugs, so it is still the early orders. But ... she told me mine should be near the end of Sept and I ordered a little less than a year ago. So yours should be soon if it was ordered between December 2012 and late last year.

I'm with you on that thought. But now that it sounds like all the quirks are worked out and fixed, it is getting harder to be patient. If I wasn't told that my LE with my number picked out on it would ship in a month or so, I'd switch to a current Smaug (with the fixes) from one of the distributors.

Me three. Hopefully they get that production line rolling again with the toys.

I played the black arrow version 4 times at expo. I still like the LE better for looks. The plain blackout (like black ink) just isn't as good looking to me. Still waiting for my LE though. The black flippers and black balls ... just too weird. Not necessarily a bad weird. The silver ball with all the reflections seems better. You kind of loose the black ball a bit with it speeding around.

I don't play TH enough to know the code differences with the update. I only see them at shows.

Off topic a bit ... I like the Escalera stair climber that was at the show. I REALLY want to get one before my Hobbit arrives. The Hobbit sounds like one heavy pin. Not super easy for this old guy and his son to get pins in my basement ... and eventually back up. But man ... those are expensive. Might have to rent it out or something to make back some of the cost to make it worth it.

A Dialed In might come next year for me. Played that and liked it too. It's a different animal - a cool one. Blinders on for my TH to arrive.

In the "Deep Dive", they said it was the exact same hardware guts (CPU and "stuff in the metal box) as the Hobbit and later WOZ's. They said it might be a newer CPU by the time it goes into production ... board manufacturer dependent.

I think they just wanted to change it up a bit from the stereotypical JJP (so far) and get out of that mode of game to win over some of the JJP haters. I got that inflection from the presentations.

Thanks for the input. Your making me lean towards getting it before my TH arrives.

Woohoo! Just got "the call" from Jen that my THLE is shipping today - no early call that it is on the line for me! Now if I can just get that Escalera that I ordered a couple of weeks ago shipped in time. My wife (a avid pinhead too) does not know that I bought the TH yet. She does know about the Escalera though - she pushed me to get that. This will either be a good surprise or a begging for forgiveness surprise. It was supposed to be a birthday surprise for her back in June, but ...

Excited for the pin, but nervous for the "surprise" response.

Order date for my LE was in late Oct 2015 (a little over a year ago), so they must be catching up ... at least with the LE's.