The merge schedule is off as a result of fewer families than planned. To get back on schedule, the next merge will be going from 10 fams to 8 fams.
I’ve heard that some were surprised that they got merged, which is understandable. However, our primary goal here is that once merges start happening, no player is left alone. Given that, we had to merge here from 20 to 10, instead of 20 to 16.
In the future we will make it more clear that the merge schedule and targets may be impacted by the available number of families.