Print and Play Bastelecke

Was habe ich gespielt?
Flughörnchen Flotte – Mission Futterjagd
Strategeti
Desperate Oasis
Der verzauberte Turm

Discord – https://discord.com/invite/NqeuzX2eJ
Bluesky – @vintersphrost.bsky.social
Mastodon – @vintersphrost@brettspiel.space
Boardgamearena.com – vintersphrost
Yucata.de – vintersphrost
tutti.ch: https://www.tutti.ch/de/seller?id=2079528265671090841
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/vintersphrost/
YouTube Hörspiel Einspieler – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCER_eNjl0R-Rzev5IMG2uufJSbXt01Mp

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I’m struggling to fully understand something, and I’d love to hear your perspective.

It’s actually two different sides to the same coin:

1. Is there something inherently magical about crowdfunding for consumers that cannot be captured by a newly revealed, ready-to-ship product?
2. If there is a sacrifice in attracting early-adopter consumers via the ready-to-ship model, is it vastly outweighed by the positive impact on retail customers (the vast majority of our sales)?

Since 2018, our model at Stonemaier Games has been that we invest our time, creativity, and resources into designing, developing, fine-tuning, producing, and freight-shipping new products before we reveal them–along with reviews and playthroughs of the 100% final version–and then we finally ask customers to consider buying them. We then ship to customers (consumers and retailers) over the weeks following the launch, and soon after there is a retail release.

This is done entirely in service to both consumers and retailers. By having such a short gap between reveal, launch, shipping, and release, we cast a strong spotlight on our new products, which increases the chances that the excitement from the reveal will sustain through the retail release and beyond. Customers aren’t left speculating on incomplete games with uncertain timelines (even as an avid backer myself, by the time I receive most crowdfunded games, I can’t remember why I was excited about them in the first place).

I’ve run crowdfunding campaigns (my last was Scythe in 2015), and I admire how creators and platforms have evolved over the years. I learn from them every day. But I have zero interest in returning to crowdfunding, as I truly believe our method better serves customers. We don’t need crowdfunding to build and engage community, gauge demand, improve our products, raise awareness, and allocate quantities to region-friendly fulfillment centers.

However, despite all those pros for ready-to-ship launches, I can’t ignore the data: Many crowdfunded games of a similar weight, aesthetic appeal, polish, quality, price, and region-friendly fulfillment–even from less-established publishers with a much smaller reach than Stonemaier Games–have attracted more early-adopter customers than our launches. Why is that? And does it highlight a problem or an asset?

Here are a few data points from our ready-to-ship new games sold over the last year:

• Braided Skies recently earned around $200,000 from around 4,000 customers.
• Wingspan Pocket earned around $255,000 from around 16,300 customers.
• Duel of Meloch earned around $250,000 from around 7,100 customers.
• Origin Story raised around $92,000 from around 4,200 customers.

Those are perfectly fine numbers, and I’m happy as long as our games bring joy to those who buy them. But relative to our overall reach–55,000 newsletter subscribers, 59,000 YouTube subscribers, a combined 100,000+ followers on Facebook and Instagram, and even 15,000 Champions who get a discount on all webstore purchases–it’s fair to say that quite a few potential early-adopters are missing out on our launches.

What elements of successful crowdfunding campaigns are missing from our ready-to-ship launches?

• focus: My favorite crowdfunding campaigns are those where there are 1 or 2 core products at most, plus a few related add-on options. Conversely, for many recent Stonemaier launches, we often offer a bunch of new accessories and expansions (most unrelated to the core product) that happen to be ready at the same time. We do this so people can consolidate shipping and reach free-shipping thresholds, but I think there’s value in a more focused approach.
• super-deluxe versions: Crowdfunding campaigns seem to be thriving on deluxe and super-deluxe versions of games. Our approach is to try to offer a deluxified experience in the standard version of each game, though we’ve never made a super-deluxe version of any game (at least not by modern standards).
• duration: Our launches are 5 days; crowdfunding campaigns average around 25 days. Why so short for us? I view it as a concentrated spotlight during that time, after which we’re typically ready to start shipping to customers. The products remain available on our webstore after the launch, just without the launch discounts. We typically see around 80% of consumer launch orders on the first day. That said, from the day of the reveal through the end of the campaign, we’re looking at 3-4 weeks–the same length as a crowdfunding campaign.
• visibility of funding and backer totals: There’s undeniable power in the visibility of funding and backer totals on crowdfunding platforms. If I check out an active campaign and see that it’s raised $500,000 from 6,500 backers, I have increased confidence and curiosity. We display launch units sold on each Stonemaier webstore product page, but it’s so spread out and you may not even see it.
• sense of urgency: Even crowdfunding campaigns that don’t use FOMO tactics (I have zero interest in using fear as a motivator) still have a sense of urgency to them, as there’s a good chance the game might be difficult to find for a while after the campaign delivers to backers. Aside from a small launch discount and a desire to be the first to play a new game, there’s almost no urgency to our launches. If you don’t buy from us now, you can easily buy from a retailer in about a month, and if the product sells out, we’ll make more.
• platform-driven discovery: I’ve always been a little dubious about the numbers reported by crowdfunding platforms for platform-driven discovery. However, there’s definitely a difference between hubs for a wide variety of projects compared a publisher-specific webstore in how people are more likely to browse and stumble across products they weren’t aware of.

Do you think a few of those elements add to the “magic” of crowdfunding? Of course, there’s also the aspect of helping to create something that doesn’t exist yet, but I still believe we can best serve our customers by making the product before asking customers to pay for it.

As much as I want people to get excited about our games from the start, our commitment to the ready-to-ship method seems to yield great results for our retail customers and localization partners, which is great! Here’s the data: If I add up the consumer webstore launch sales of new games since the beginning of 2024 (starting with our most recent retail releases, Wingspan Pocket and Duel of Meloch, and going back to Wyrmspan), the total is 72,462 units. Compare that to the total units in print for those games: 1,320,000 units.

That’s right: Over time, only 5% of our games are sold to consumers during the 5-day launch period. Close to 95% of our new games are sold by retailers and localization partners (plus some via our consumer webstore on an ongoing basis).

So it seems to me that in de-emphasizing the launch itself and offering a tight gap between reveal and release, we vastly increase the long-tail of our games. I think this is a worthy sacrifice, though I would still like to add a little more crowdfunding magic to our ready-to-ship launches. What do you think?

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Also read:

• Jamey Stegmaier on Crowdfunding 11 Years Later (external article by Fulfillrite)
• Are the Reasons We Quit Kickstarter Still Valid 6 Years Later?
• 10 Years Without Crowdfunding

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

We’ve had two long-standing pricing practices that often raise questions, so today I thought I’d consolidate both into a post about pricing. One is about why we don’t reveal the exact price for new products before they launch on our webstore, and the other is about why we charge full MSRP at conventions. I don’t think we are alone among publishers for these practices due to the reasons explained below.

Launch Secrecy

Since 2017 we have not announced the exact price in advance of a launch for the following reasons:

1. There are three different prices (MSRP, launch discount price, and Champion price) across multiple currencies (USD, CAD, AUD, GBP, and Euro). This greatly increases the potential for confusion about which price is being discussed online (i.e., if you hear me say, “The game’s price is $50,” there are 15 different ways that could be interpreted). But it’s very clear when you’re looking at your price in your currency on your webstore.

2. Sometimes I make small adjustments to the discounted price leading up to the launch based on the continual influx of industry information: Products that other publishers launch around the same time, reviews, buzz, instinct, and the many other random inputs I try to observe during this critical time.

3. As soon as the MSRP is made public, some retailers will start to list the game for preorder even if they don’t have other important pieces of information. We want our games to do well in retail, and I think it’s fair for retailers to wait until the publisher has launched a new product before they start to sell it. Withholding the MSRP helps to facilitate that goal.

People have asked for a rough estimate of the price in advance, so I’ve come to provide a high-threshold answer. For Braided Skies, I said that if you set aside the equivalent of $100 USD, you would have more than enough to order the game on our webstore. As you now know–the game launched last week–Braided Skies has an MSRP of $75 USD.

Convention MSRP

We charge full MSRP for our products at conventions, including the products we’ll have at Essen Spiel this week. Here’s why:

Selling games at a big convention like Gen Con or Essen is a huge investment. There are personnel costs (travel, lodging, and food for my coworkers and payments to all demo team members), booth fees, and freight shipping/logistics expenses to get the products to the convention hall. On a per-product basis, these costs triple the landed cost of most products.

It’s for this reason that every cent matters when we have a booth at a convention–this is why we charge MSRP. The silver lining is that customers don’t pay shipping fees when they buy games at a convention, and there are other perks as well: You can learn a new game from our demo team and sometimes get it signed by the designer or artist (both designer Dan Germain and artist Andrew Bosley will be at our Essen booth).

Also, even more importantly, this is why we don’t offer free games at conventions to content creators. I really appreciate reviewers–we send thousands of review copies each year–but if you want to see publishers invest in conventions, please consider buying a game from their booth instead of asking for a complimentary copy. I promise that we’ll have review copies for our new Essen games available later in the year.

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I hope this helps to answer some questions around our pricing practices. I’d love to hear from other publishers–is there anything I’m missing here?

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Also read:

• Price Secrecy: Flexibility and Patience
• 4 Most Popular Questions Asked About Any New Tabletop Product

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

Empire of Grass: The Conquests of Gengis Khan is a solitaire card-wargame of the Mongol invasion of Eurasia in the twelfth century under Genghis (Chinggis) Khan. You play the Great Khan, commanding his armies as he conquers territories, recruits other nomads into his army, and either garrisons or razes cities.

The map of your conquests is made through placing cards which represent the regions of Eurasia that the Mongols conquered (or tried to). As you expand you have to take care as neighbouring kingdoms may appear to challenge you and your allies can desert or even rebel. An optional game allows for an uncertain world with the cards randomised.

We posted an interview with the designer David Kershaw and you can read that at the following link: https://theplayersaid.com/2025/09/08/interview-with-david-kershaw-designer-of-empire-of-grass-the-conquests-of-genghis-khan-from-white-dog-games/

-Grant

Print and Play Bastelecke

Was habe ich gespielt?
Strategeti
Zombie Dice
Flip 7
Odin

Discord – https://discord.com/invite/NqeuzX2eJ
Bluesky – @vintersphrost.bsky.social
Mastodon – @vintersphrost@brettspiel.space
Boardgamearena.com – vintersphrost
Yucata.de – vintersphrost
tutti.ch: https://www.tutti.ch/de/seller?id=2079528265671090841
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/vintersphrost/
YouTube Hörspiel Einspieler – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCER_eNjl0R-Rzev5IMG2uufJSbXt01Mp

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In the early ‘90s, I was fascinated by a magazine called Nintendo Power. It was mostly a strategy guide for Nintendo video games, complete with vibrant visuals showing levels and hidden areas in games like Mario Bros., Zelda, and TMNT. Despite not even owning a Nintendo gaming console, the magazine made me feel like I had access to dozens of hidden worlds.

Little did I know that many years later I would have a hand in creating some hidden worlds at Stonemaier Games. Our tagline is literally, “Which world will you visit today?” So I thought it might be fun to create a strategy magazine in the style of Nintendo Power, allowing you to explore our tabletop worlds in a different way.

While I’m either the designer or the developer of all Stonemaier games, I’m certainly far from the foremost expert on how to play them well. So I posted a survey to Stonemaier Ambassadors (people who actively welcome people to our worlds on a regular basis) to see if I could find someone with deep knowledge for each of our games.

The result is the Stonemaier Strategy Magazine, a guide for each of our games, including mini-guides for 3 new games of 2026 (Duel of Meloch, Wingspan Pocket, and the just-launched Braided Skies, which were not revealed at the time of this magazine’s creation).

If you’re like me, you might enjoy discovering strategies as you play instead of learning how others play the game. I think you’ll find that this single-issue magazine is just a tiny taste of what you can do in these games—most of the discovery is entirely up to you. You might also learn something new about a game you know well, or you might be inspired to try a game you’ve never played.

The 52-page, full-color Stonemaier Strategy Magazine is $5, we will donate all proceeds from each copy purchased during our annual charity auction to these charities (divided equally). The auction is live now and will end tomorrow.

Thank you so much for exploring the worlds of Stonemaier Games! I’m so grateful to you for playing our games, the experts for authoring this guide, Alessio Paniccia for turning text into beautiful layouts, and all the amazing people—my coworkers, playtesters, proofreaders, artists, designers, etc.—for creating these games.

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If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

I’ll never forget a brief conversation I had with a friend in the game industry around 10 years ago. We were talking about a publisher with 20 employees, and they were looking to hire more people. I asked my friend, “Is having more employees inherently better?”

His answer–a resounding YES–was memorable because (a) it wasn’t even a debatable answer for him and (b) I actually don’t agree. I think there’s a big difference between purposeful growth and growth for the sake of growth, whether it applies to the number of employees, products, infrastructure, revenue, etc.

This was perhaps the biggest topic I broached with Joe of Allplay and Nick from Bitewing in our recent conversation. Early in the chat Joe mentioned an exit interview with an employee who had concerns about the complex web of internal systems resulting from Allplay having 30 employees and publishing around 25 games per year.

I was already curious about this, as Allplay and Bitewing both have quite a few unfulfilled crowdfunded games (14 total between them at the time of the recording). I asked them how they felt about that quantity and how it serves their customers. We also talked about overhead (Allplay owns a warehouse) and the general concept of growth (Joe mentioned the size of Asmodee as an aspiration for Allplay).

Bitewing is a little more similar to Stonemaier in that both companies have less than 10 employees and rely heavily on outsourcing to independent contractors, facilities, and services. We incur different risks than Allplay: We have less control and might be forced to pivot (this happened recently when our fulfillment partner in Canada told us they no longer wanted to be a fulfillment center). Conversely, the risk of high overhead is that if you have a bad year, you might struggle to pay salaries and leases.

Here’s my take on growth for each category:

• Personnel: I believe in hiring based on need. If there are enough responsibilities for a new coworker to have and sustain a full-time position that will serve customers better, that’s when I start to think about a hire. The first place I turn to is this form. Also, importantly, if I hire someone, it’s because I believe in them and the position so much that it’s a long-term commitment that Stonemaier can commit to supporting through good years and bad years.
• Products: I believe in quality over quantity; I don’t think more is better. I think we can best serve customers by spending a lot of time, effort, resources, and love to release only a few new games at most each year rather than casting a wide net, especially when there are so many other companies also making great games. We can really shine the spotlight on each game when we do this, which also gives each game a better chance of long-term success.
• Infrastructure: We’ve never invested in infrastructure at Stonemaier Games. I view our core competency as game publishing, not warehousing, manufacturing, fulfillment, or retail (i.e., selling our own games via a storefront). We all work from home from 5 different states rather than maintaining a shared office space.
• Revenue: I literally don’t care at all about growing revenue year to year. In my opinion, the pursuit of increasing revenue doesn’t have any connection to serving customers (at best it is one of many metrics for gauging customer satisfaction). As long as we have the funds to generously support our personnel and fairly pay independent contractors, we have what we need. “Number go up” is simply not a goal for us.

For what it’s worth, I feel similarly about events and conventions: To me, the goal is for everyone to have a great time in a specific shared experience. An event that works well with 100 people may feel completely different if it grows to 400 people.

Those are my thoughts on growth! I’d love to hear your perspective: Is more inherently better? When is growth good?

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Also read:

• Questions for The Bits (part 1)
• Questions for The Bits (part 2)

If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

Abroad gives off a vibe. It presents as a pleasant little outing, maybe something akin to Parks or Trekking the World. This is deceiving. It is not a cozy travel game. It’s a stout mid-weight fella that’s more robust than it appears. In fact, it wanders in the region of burgeoning modern tableau builders like…

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Print and Play Bastelecke
Personal Demons
(https://www.kickstarter.com/projects/tettix/personal-demons)

Was habe ich gespielt?
boardgamearena.com: Der Kartograph
Carnuta
Strategeti

Discord – https://discord.com/invite/NqeuzX2eJ
Bluesky – @vintersphrost.bsky.social
Mastodon – @vintersphrost@brettspiel.space
Boardgamearena.com – vintersphrost
Yucata.de – vintersphrost
tutti.ch: https://www.tutti.ch/de/seller?id=2079528265671090841
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/vintersphrost/
YouTube Hörspiel Einspieler – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCER_eNjl0R-Rzev5IMG2uufJSbXt01Mp

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A few days ago I posted an article with my answers to some of the questions I asked Joe from Allplay and Nick from Bitewing on their podcast (The Bits), and today I’m back with a few more responses. Also, the podcast is now available–check it out to hear their fascinating answers!

4. What’s a recent piece of constructive criticism you heard from a customer, coworker, or contractor that made you rethink your position?

I think there’s great courage in listening, learning, and evolving, and I think it’s important that I give others the grace to do the same. It’s okay to change your mind or a process.

Here’s a little thing, but I heard it and will act on it: I recently wrote a post about our announcement trailers (Braided Skies and Namiji), and a reader–Tom–commented that they found it a little jarring that the text for each “scene” was in a different position on the screen. So in future trailers, I’ll request that the text always be in the same position.

Here’s one more, as that first example isn’t really about me changing my mind. I had a plan to print on the inside of our box lids small images from all of our games and a QR code to learn more, as I thought that’s a place that would ensure the information is always in the game (even if it passes hands over time). A coworker said that people really don’t like promotional content printed on their game boxes–their theory is that people like the choice to keep or recycle such content. So I changed it to a loose sheet of paper that will start to appear in some games in 2027.

5. What’s a game by another publisher you recently played from which you learned something about product design?

I can’t possibly narrow this down to one game, so I’ll mention some quick observations from recent plays:

• Jisogi: I love how different tile shapes fit together to form each anime.
• Hellas: The box lid folds out to become the board, and the bottom of the box is the score track.
• Sky 5: A different quantity of cards is used for each player count, but instead of requiring that you count out that exact amount, you hold up a card like a ruler to determine the approximate height of the deck.
• Kano: I love the use of a canvas material for the board and the resin paint jar tokens.
• Torchlit: Certain special cards are foil-embossed, which really makes them stand out.
• Aqua Garden: The sheer volume and beauty of the fish meeples in this game is staggering.
• Eldur: Another game that uses the box as a board; the box also acts as a tug-of-war track and a place to display active ability cards.
• Falling: I love that Falling only has a 10-VP track, and when you reach 10, you gain a random card valued at 10 VP with a small surprise bonus on the back.
• Askalotl: This adorable game uses multiple lidless boxes to speed up setup, make cards easy to pass around, and to conceal information on cards.

6. What’s an experiment you tried recently? What about it went well, and how would you adjust it if you did it again?

A little over a month ago I had a chat with a friend in which I expressed a desire to engage more often with our customers. I do this publicly on many platforms, but gone are the 2012 Viticulture Kickstarter days when I thanked every backer individually in a private, personal message. Due to the scale of our webstore sales, this is no longer possible, but it also didn’t feel true to send customers a generic, fill-in-the-blank message.

The friend pointed out that this doesn’t need to be an all-or-nothing proposition. Sending a few notes is better than sending none. So for the last 6 weeks, every week I pick a few random customers who recently placed orders, and I send them a message thanking them for the order. I often share something I love about the product they bought, a short design story, or a recommendation for the first time they get it to the table. I’ve been delighted by the responses, and it’s a great reminder of the power of something real, genuine, and personal in an era of AI slop. Honestly, there isn’t really anything I’d adjust about it at this time, but I’m curious to see how it evolves.

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I’ll be back next week for my final answers. In the meantime, here’s the video with Joe and Nick’s perspectives!

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If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

I love listening to publishers speak publicly, frankly, and openly about their business decisions. Two such publishers are Joe from Allplay and Nick from Bitewing, both of whom share their thoughts and often field questions from guests on a podcast called The Bits.

I also love asking questions, so I reached out to Joe and Nick to see if they might consider me as an inquiring guest. They were very kind to accept, and we recorded the episode recently. It hasn’t aired yet, but I thought it would only be fair if I answered the same questions I asked. So here’s part 1, and when the episode airs, I’ll share it here and add my answers to the remaining questions.

1. I really appreciate that you two take the time to make this podcast. Does it continue to bring you joy, and what’s a game-related podcast you enjoy?

I’m fortunate to have a few platforms on which I share my thoughts on publishing from different angles: this blog (which is also available as a podcast), our game design YouTube channel, and the Posivitely Board Gaming podcast (with cohost Mitchell Whitfield). All of these formats absolutely continue to bring me joy, especially when I get to hear your thoughts in the comments; if they weren’t, I wouldn’t keep making them week after week, year after year!

I listen to a lot of podcasts about games, but I’m only aware of a few that are recorded and regularly posted by fellow publishers. There’s The Bits, Lens and Veil (by Shem, Sam, and Zach from Garphill Games), Decision Space (one of the hosts is Paul from Gamehead Games), Think Like a Game Designer (Justin Gary from Wise Wizard Games), Nerdlab (Marvin at Nerdlab), and Crowdfunding Nerds (Andrew Lowen at Lowen Games).

2. What’s the best way you currently serve customers? What’s the #1 area of improvement for serving your customers?

This is a slightly difficult answer to question, because at the heart of literally every decision we make at Stonemaier Games is, “Does this serve our customers? How can this better serve our customers?” We don’t always get those answers correct or execute them perfectly, and what’s best for one customer may not be what’s best for another hundred customers, but this is our guidepost every day.

So what’s the best way we serve you? I’m actually more interested in your answer to that than my answer. But if I were a customer of Stonemaier Games instead of the co-founder, I think I might say that I appreciate the sheer abundance of art (all created by humans) in each of our games. I love when every card or tile in a game has unique art, and I don’t take that for granted–it is a significant expense, and one that takes time, trust, and project management. A close second might be how accessible we are (mostly publicly, but also privately for confidential questions/requests), but it’s really quite rare that I ever have a direct question even for my favorite publishers.

As for our #1 area of improvement, I think it’s first-printing perfection. We put so much work into creating, testing, and proofreading our games, expansions, and accessories, yet we all-too-often falter late in the process with something that ends up sticking out like a sore thumb. While only some of these errors are my fault, they are all my responsibility. We’re currently using an app called PageProof for proofreading that seems to be helping significantly, and our PPC playtests over the last few years really help too. But we can do better, and we will do better.

3. For people who don’t already follow you, what is the number 1 way they discover your newest product?

Honestly, it’s far more important for me to serve people who already follow us or our games than it is to entice newcomers (whether it’s via organic marketing, our content, advertising, etc). However, I also strongly believe in the power of actively and inclusively inviting people into the world of Stonemaier Games. I want to welcome people who haven’t tried one of our games, especially if there’s a game we make that might bring joy to their tabletop.

Again, it’s difficult to pick a true #1; rather, I have a top 5. However, of those 5, I think if I had to choose one, it would be word of mouth from people who either play our games and share them with friends (one of the perks of making games/expansions that always play up to at least 5 players) or follow our content and share it publicly. This is followed by reviewers (we send thousands of review copies each year), retailers (it’s hard to measure if people are discovering our games through retailers or if they’re learning about them elsewhere and going to the retailer for the purchase), digital games (Board Game Arena in particular is a great discovering platform, though I’ve heard from many people who discovered Wingspan via Wingspan Digital), and play-and-win at conventions (thousands of people play our games for the first time via play-and-win, but I’m not sure how many of them are learning about those games for the first time via play-and-win).

I’ve rambled enough for today, so I’ll save the remaining 7 or so questions for future articles. I’d love to hear your thoughts about all three, whether they’re in relation to Stonemaier Games or if you’re a publisher who would like to share your answers!

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If you gain value from the 100 articles Jamey publishes on this blog each year, please consider championing this content! You can also listen to posts like this in the audio version of the blog.

Grabble sounds dumb. You take it off the shelf, remove the lid, and put the game box in the middle of the table. The box is the playing arena, so yes, I’m hitting you with the “place the board in the center of the table” instruction. In the box is a bunch of junk. Shiny…

Read more →

Print and Play Bastelecke

Was habe ich gespielt?
boardgamearena.com: That Time You Killed Me, Der Kartograph
Strategeti
Affenschreck
Nanu
Strike

Discord – https://discord.com/invite/NqeuzX2eJ
Bluesky – @vintersphrost.bsky.social
Mastodon – @vintersphrost@brettspiel.space
Boardgamearena.com – vintersphrost
Yucata.de – vintersphrost
tutti.ch: https://www.tutti.ch/de/seller?id=2079528265671090841
Instagram – https://www.instagram.com/vintersphrost/
YouTube Hörspiel Einspieler – https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLCER_eNjl0R-Rzev5IMG2uufJSbXt01Mp

💾

Auch 2026 lädt der Merz Verlag wieder zur SPIEL Essen ein. Vier Tage lang verwandelt sich die Messe in einen Treffpunkt für Hunderttausende Spielebegeisterte aus aller Welt. Natürlich sind auch wir von ELZNIR GAMES wieder mit dabei und bringen jede Menge Neuheiten mit nach Essen.

Unsere Neuheiten auf der SPIEL’26

Ihr findet uns mit unserem eigenen ELZNIR GAMES Stand 2B110. Dort könnt ihr unsere aktuellen Neuheiten direkt vor Ort ausprobieren und euch von unseren Spieleerklärern durch die Partien führen lassen.

Ihr müsst also nicht erst die Spielregel lesen, bevor es losgeht. Unsere Erklärer zeigen euch, wie die Spiele funktionieren, und beantworten natürlich auch eure Fragen. So könnt ihr euch direkt auf das konzentrieren, worum es eigentlich geht: Spielen.

Ihr könnt einige unserer Neuheiten bereits vor der SPIEL Essen 2026 vorbestellen. Die jeweiligen Spiele haben wir unten direkt mit den entsprechenden Vorbestellseiten verlinkt. So könnt ihr euch euer Exemplar schon vorab sichern und wisst direkt, welche Spiele euch auf der Messe erwarten.

Bei uns könnt ihr unter anderem diese Neuheiten entdecken:

Und wenn euch eines unserer Spiele besonders gut gefällt, könnt ihr es natürlich direkt bei uns am Stand kaufen.

Dabei habt ihr auf der SPIEL Essen 2026 teilweise sogar die Möglichkeit, Spiele früher zu bekommen als im normalen Handel. Für die Messe haben wir von einigen unserer Neuheiten kleinere Mengen vorab nach Essen gebracht. Dadurch können wir euch die Möglichkeit bieten, manche Spiele bereits auf der Messe zu kaufen, bevor sie anschließend regulär bei Händlern und in Spieleläden erhältlich sind.

Noch mehr Spiele am zweiten Stand

Aber das ist noch nicht alles!

Neben unserem großen ELZNIR GAMES Stand 2B110 gibt es auf der SPIEL Essen noch einen zweiten Stand von uns. Die JoeKas World GmbH ist direkt gegenüber mit einem eigenen Verkaufsstand vertreten.

Damit führen wir eine lange Tradition fort, die bereits beim Heidelberger Spieleverlag ihren Anfang genommen hat. An diesem Stand findet ihr eine große Auswahl an Spielen von uns und unseren Partnern zu teilweise deutlich reduzierten Preisen.

Wer gerne nach besonderen Schnäppchen sucht, sollte hier also unbedingt vorbeischauen. Neben reduzierten Spielen könnt ihr dort auch das eine oder andere echte Schätzchen und möglicherweise sogar Out-of-Print Spiele entdecken, die im normalen Handel nicht mehr ohne Weiteres zu finden sind.

Ihr findet den Stand direkt gegenüber unseres großen ELZNIR GAMES Standes bei 2B100.

Wir sehen uns auf der SPIEL Essen 2026!

Egal, ob ihr unsere neuesten Spiele ausprobieren, euch die Neuheiten erklären lassen oder auf Schnäppchenjagd gehen wollt: Besucht uns auf der SPIEL Essen 2026!

Wir freuen uns auf vier Tage voller Spiele, Gespräche und hoffentlich jede Menge spannender Partien mit euch.

Der Beitrag ELZNIR GAMES auf der SPIEL Essen 2026 erschien zuerst auf Elznir Games.

Over the last 14 years at Stonemaier Games, many times we’ve asked ourselves why things are the way they are (both in the game industry and within our company). This led to us being one of the first publishers to offer region-friendly shipping, to Stonemaier leaving behind crowdfunding in 2015, and eventually to me hiring my wonderful team of coworkers starting in 2020.

“Why?” is such a powerful question. So why only ask it once?

This is an insight from Mehul Nariyawala, co-founder of Matic Robots. On his recent appearance on the Unit Economics podcast, Nariyawala shared that a common practice at Matic is to ask “why” three times in a row to get to the heart of a problem or question.

An example of this came up recently with the success of Wingspan Pocket. Both externally and internally, people have asked if we should make an expansion or a spinoff. “Why?” I asked. Well…that’s what publishers do when a game sells well. “Why? Is the game missing something?” Well…no, but I’ll always take more cards. “Why aren’t there more cards?” Wingspan Pocket’s abilities are depicted as icons, not text, and with icons there’s a limit to the number of unique abilities. “Why not add more text?” That’s counter to the accessible, approachable concept of Wingspan Pocket; rather, Wingspan is already there if you’re looking for a lot of unique, text-heavy powers.

Sometimes the answers might reveal information but need more time. For example, a number of people have recently asked if we will sell games on our webstore for pickup at Essen. The answer is no, but why? We use InsideUp’s POS at Essen, and it doesn’t sync to our Shopify. Why do we use their system? We share a booth with them, and it’s more customer-friendly if customers can buy products from both companies at a single checkout. Why value efficiency over preorder convenience? It’s partially economics: It’s much more expensive to sell games at a convention than on our webstore. Why? Booth rental and personnel costs. Why not find a way to make it work financially? If it best serves customers, I think that’s a worthy goal to pursue.

I really like this concept not only for business discussions, but also for processing playtest data. “This card was useless.” Why? “I never used its ability.” Why? “The ability was too expensive to activate.” The best playtesters provide the third answer right from the start, but even then I sometimes dig deeper to best understand the problem so I can try to identify the best solution.

Why? Why? Why? I’m going to use this approach for more questions in the future. Have you tried something like this?

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