If I understand correctly, the substrate is lost in space, there may be some ETA for it, but they're not telling you what it is.
Its a rather crucial part of the chip package. Its like a mini PCB.
And whenever they magically receive this substrate, they're going to finish packaging the ASICs and just assume everything went according to plan. I mean specifically that the PCBs and everything else works the way they're supposed to, which they can't possibly know until they have an ASIC in hand. Do I have that right?
Yep. Though to be fair, thats exactly how it went with KnC, and I assume they did plenty of testing with an FPGA. Of course its entirely possible (likely even) they will run in to more hickups, like the firmware issues KnC had. If they dont get packaged chips in the next 10 days, I seriously doubt they will ship anything before the tail end of November.