MyMiniFactory marketing and brand head Anjuli Smith has left the 3D-printing marketplace to launch her own tabletop agency, whose work will include helping smaller board game publishers find distributors and expand internationally.

Smith left MyMiniFactory at the end of September to focus full-time on her newly-launched Tabletop Growth Partners, which will primarily target the TTRPG and wargaming sectors with marketing, digital growth and business development services.

But she is also looking to offer international business development support for smaller board game publishers, using contacts built up over 13 years in the industry to introduce them to distributors and support them through sales and negotiation meetings.

Smith told BoardGameWire she is currently in talks with three board game publishers about working with them at the Spielwarenmesse trade fair in Nuremberg next February – including new Canadian publisher Acolyte, which focuses on co-op and semi co-op games and is looking for UK and European distribution.

She said, “An available network is a huge blocker for many smaller and newly launched publishers. Getting your games in front of the right people who know how to market them (and will in fact market them) is key to expansion.

“With over 5,000 new board games releasing annually I think it can be pretty daunting for smaller publishers who lack the massive budget of The Op’s Flip 7. Being able to use someone who people already know and trust to open a door for you is a huge win.”

Smith said her work with those publishers would include introducing them to distributors she already has relationships with, approaching potential new distribution partners and organising their meeting schedules ahead of the show.

She will also sit in on meetings for publishers that request additional support, including helping with negotiations and expansion plans.

Smith said, “I have a huge network of industry colleagues I have grown over the last 13 years and I think it’s important to give back and not gatekeep that.

“I like being able to introduce folks to each other and watch them both grow and succeed because of it.”

Tabletop Growth Partners will also offer marketing strategy, digital storefront optimisation, crowdfunding and subscription support, and representation at international events including SPIEL Essen, PAX Unplugged, GAMA Expo and UK Games Expo.

Smith told BoardGameWire she believes the cost of attending international shows could make that kind of support particularly valuable to smaller publishers.

Smith said, “For a small publisher the costs of flights, hotels, and a booth are huge. Asking them to then take time away from sales to talk to others simply isn’t an option.”

She added that many board game studios and publishers had opportunities to expand their communities, but lacked the time, knowledge or money to pursue them themselves.

“At the end of the day they are creatives, they should be creating their next bestseller, not getting bogged down with admin and endless meetings. Let me do that.”

Smith joined MyMiniFactory after previously working as a purchasing assistant at Asmodee UK and at Asmodee Entertainment’s fiction imprint Aconyte Books, and most recently served as the 3D-printing platform’s head of marketing and brand.

Her work there included business development around bringing established tabletop properties into 3D printing, including Steamforged Games‘ Warmachine and Modiphius Entertainment‘s The Elder Scrolls.

Smith said that while she is based in the UK, she has set her working schedule to cover US mornings because she expects “a vast majority” of the agency’s clients to be based there.

The agency has also signed up as an ambassador for MyMiniFactory’s Soulcrafted initiative, which was launched to champion human-made creative work amid the rapid growth of generative AI.

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On Wednesday we will reveal our final new game for 2026, a big Euro game called Braided Skies. We’ll share information about the game with people who already follow Stonemaier Games, but that’s a fraction of the people who could potentially enjoy this game. So starting soon after the reveal, we will run some ads on Facebook and Instagram to invite people to sign up for a notification when the ready-to-ship game launches on our webstore in mid-October.

This is a common practice among crowdfunders, though from recent reports they are spending exponentially more than I would expect: Some publishers are investing $20,000-$40,000 on prelaunch ads (compared to our prelaunch ad spend of $1,000, which is augmented by organic reach from our YouTube channel, Instagram, Facebook, newsletter, Bluesky, etc).

It seems to me that spending $20-$40k prelaunch can dig creators into a deep hole, shifting the focus from serving backers to getting enough backers (that you at least break even). I talked to Tamas at Lemery Games about this topic, and he shared that he spent less than $3,000 on a recent prelaunch campaign for Caravanserai.

Cleverly, Tamas uses these ads to evaluate the market for the game using click per lead (CPL) as the key metric. If the CPL climbs too quickly into the ad campaign without generating a significant quantity of signups, that’s a sign that (a) the game or its presentation isn’t ready, (b) the format of the project isn’t resonating with people, or (c) the timing of the campaign isn’t ideal. This is an opportunity to step back and make key adjustments, not push through with another $20,000 in ad spend.

That’s the first step. If the ads are resonating with people, I think it’s reasonable to spend up to $5,000 (or maybe $10,000 for a much bigger project) on prelaunch ads, with the goal of reaching those who are genuinely interested in the product. I think it’s fine to have an extra hook (e.g., Tamas offered an expansion with a miniature to anyone who signed up for Caravanserai in advance and ended up backing a core pledge), but I personally think that pairing the right game with the right person is what matters most.

Tamas provided some data: “For Caravanserai, 695 people signed up on a dedicated pre-campaign landing page, and 1 week into the campaign 16% of them pledged. For a game with a higher entry point (rewards range from $45 to $89), the average CPL was $2.60, which is still a good number at 695 sign-ups.”

Maciej at Gamefound recently shared some related data with me as well. Their average CPL via AdFound is $3.10, and they’re seeing a 22.6% conversion rate (these are prelaunch followers who become backers).

Again, I think it’s really important to keep Tamas’ observation in mind: The math isn’t linear, and nothing is guaranteed. $3,000 spent on ads with a consistently low CPL is a good sign that you’ll see around a 20% conversation rate after the project launches. But $30,000 spent on a swiftly increasing CPL is money you may never make back.

For other creators, what is your total prelaunch ad spend, and what have you learned from running those ads?

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Also read:

• Kickstarter Lesson #245: Should You Advertise and Preview Pre-Launch?
• 3 Ways to Maximize Prelaunch Signups
• 3 Key Insights from a Year of Social Media Advertising

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.

The biggest reason Stonemaier Games hasn’t returned to crowdfunding is the gap between asking customers for payment and actually delivering the product to those customers. Even if a game is 99% production ready leading into the campaign, roughly 6 months are needed for pre-production, production, and freight shipping.

So I’m always fascinated when publishers employ creative methods to close that gap in service of their customers (and also as a marketing tool). Some publishers offer a demo version of the game digitally, Earthborne Games and Covenant offered free preview decks of Hubworld Aidalon, and the recent campaign for The Old King’s Crown started production on the first reprint before the campaign via Gamefound’s “express crowdfunding” option, allowing some backers to receive the pre-printed games just a few months after the campaign’s conclusion. There are also the options to demo games at conventions and even game stores before their release or to offer partial print-and-play copies of the game for people to try at home.

Let’s jump forward to early May 2026, when I saw a Facebook ad for an upcoming crowdfunding project, Cataclysm Arcade. It featured some intriguing mechanisms, so normally I would have just clicked the prelaunch “follow” button and waited for a launch notification (especially as a trading card game).

However, Cataclysm Arcade combined two elements in the ad that made me pull out my wallet: One, it offered curious customers the option of buying a few booster packs before the campaign for $5 each. Two, as long as each player has a booster pack, that’s all you need to play a game of Cataclysm Arcade!

I want to call this “try before you buy,” but it isn’t exactly that, as I literally spent $10 to buy two packs. It felt that way, though. The real hook for me was the ability to play a full game using just 1 booster pack per player. Cataclysm Arcade accomplishes this by using a modern deckbuilding mechanism: If you run out of cards in your deck to draw, simply shuffle your discard pile to form a fresh deck.

Not only was this a player-friendly sneak preview, but it was also great marketing: It had me actively thinking about the game before the Kickstarter project, it showed that the game was fully designed and ready to print, it gave potential backers a chance to try the game before backing it, and it gave content creators a timely way to talk about the game (as I did on our channel).

As I mentioned in last year’s article about free preview decks, this method won’t work for most games. Small packs of cards are incredibly cost-effective, so you need a cards-only game where you can play the game with a small subset of the cards while still leaving players wanting more. Yet it’s a pretty cool tool to consider during the design and marketing process.

Do you have an example of a game you were able to try on the table well before crowdfunding fulfillment? How did it impact your experience with the game? Did you end up backing the project?

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When I’m scrolling through Facebook, there’s a specific type of image that frequently catches my eye. It’s used the most by digital game news outlets: An evocative image plus a few descriptive lines of white and orange text on a black background.

I like this format so much that I recently decided to apply it to our games. In fact, I made two versions for each game: One using art and thematic vibes; the other using a photo of the game on the table and a few stats:

Despite having an active Facebook page for Stonemaier Games, I rarely use it to post about our games. So I’ve started posting one of these images once per week.

While I would prefer to equally showcase each of the two images per game, I think this type of image has the biggest impact when it’s alone. So for the first 25 posts I’ll use the thematic image and post the photo version in the comments with a link to the game’s page; after I get through every game, I’ll switch the two.

The most surprising result after doing this for Vantage and Apiary is the number of people who have commented on the posts (despite there not being a question or prompt). Some have shared their love of the game, others have asked questions. A rare few have even decided that this is the right place to share how they dislike the game.

But I love that a simple image has generated conversation and sense of community outside of our Facebook groups. Given that, I may also post these images on Instagram and Bluesky in the future.

What do you think about this approach? Are there other eye-catching image formats on social media that pique your interest (without being clickbait)?

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My favorite way to market our products is to facilitate and encourage them to get to the table more often. Your table, my table, the tables of reviewers, ambassadors, etc–any table will do. The more our products get to the table, the more they’re exposed to people, and hopefully the more fun people can have with them.

One of my favorite ways to accomplish this goal is through play-and-win donations for game conventions and 100+ person gaming events.

Play-and-win is a convention concept where people can check out a game, play it, and then enter their name in a lottery to win that specific game at the end of the convention. If I donate a play-and-win game to a convention, it can be experienced by dozens and dozens of people in a short amount of time. Only one of those people will win it, so if other people liked the game, they’re now informed in their decision to purchase it later.

The play-and-win room at the recent Geekway to the West convention was a bustle of activity right until the end of the convention. Geekway solicited and invested in over 140 different play-and-win titles, each with multiple copies. In total, these games had nearly 15,000 reported plays over the course of 4 days.

Geekway does play-and-win exceptionally well, but they aren’t alone. There are over 250 conventions listed on the 2026 tab of the play-and-win Google Sheet I maintain, so publishers have lots of options when choosing events to target. But which games should you send to these conventions?

Geekway play-and-win coordinator Jeff Hiatt was very kind to send me the data from the Geekway 2026 play-and-win, and he gave me permission to share and analyze it. The sheet is here. I’ll focus on the first four columns, but you’re welcome to contribute your thoughts to any data in the comments.

I’ve highlighted the most-played games in blue (1-30), the highest “desire to win ratio” in yellow, and the crossovers in green.

Number of Plays

The top 5 games that were played the most were Hot Streak, Magical Athlete, Bomb Busters, Moon Colony Bloodbath, and Hummingbirds. All of the games in the top 10 were released in the last year.

For this and the other categories I’ll discuss, I’m hesitant to draw blanket conclusions or stretch to find commonalities among the top 5. For example, there are 2 racing games here, but not every racing game will garner 250+ plays at a convention.

Average Player Count

Around half of the games with the highest average player count are among those that reported high numbers of plays: Hot Streak, Magical Athlete, French Toast, Bomb Busters, Trinket Trove, and Spooktacular.

However, sorting the data this way doesn’t seem to indicate that higher player counts equate to more convention plays. I think player count flexibility is more indicative of a game’s popularity at an event like Geekway–if you grab a game off the shelf, it’s nice if you can just play it with one other person or if you can invite a few others to join too.

Desire to Win

I calculated this by dividing the number of player who wanted to win a game by the total number of plays, indicating that people had a great time with the game. The top 5 were Hot Streak, Magical Athlete, Pinched, 12 Rivers, and Spooktacular. Some games with fewer plays but a high level of desirability were Sprocketforge, Mission: Red Planet, Rebirth, and Pergola.

The main pattern I see here is great table presence, whether it’s component hooks like in 12 Rivers or Sprocketforge or eye-catching art.

Rating Delta

This is perhaps my favorite data point. Which games rate significantly higher at a convention than their BoardGameGeek rating suggests? I think this is so important to pay attention to, as the top-rated games BGG would lead us to believe that people value heavy, complex, long games over everything else. But a vast variety of games bring joy to tabletops, including lighter games.

The top 5 rating delta games were French Toast, Purrramid, Tembo, Australis, and Catan.

Granted, the boisterous environment of a convention is atypical for gaming. Some games shine at events and may not have the same luster when it’s just you and a few friends at home. Also, you might take a look at the games that actually left a worse impression at Geekway than their BGG rating would indicate. Those are the types of games a publisher might avoid contributing to play-and-win (I mostly see longer, heavier games here).

Anecdotal Analysis and Conclusions

Here I’ll look at the games with the both the most plays AND the highest desire to win ratio:

1. Hot Streak
2. Magical Athlete
3. Bomb Busters
4. Moon Colony Bloodbath
5. Trinket Trove
6. Formaggio
7. Fate of the Fellowship
8. 12 Rivers
9. Spooktacular
10. French Toast
11. Sanctuary

• ease of learning: Most of these games skew towards easy to learn and teach.
• game length: Most of these games are played in under an hour.
• game weight: Most of these games are on the lighter side.
• price: Most of these games are less than $50.

Overall, the types of games I see exceling in play-and-win are those released in the last year, have player count flexibility, feature great table presence, and are on the lighter side.

Despite those patterns, I still think it’s completely fine to send a variety of games to play-and-win conventions. Take a look at the Google Sheet and you’ll see games of all shapes, sizes, weights, prices, player counts, etc. I think this speaks to the diversity of gamers at events like Geekway.

What did you learn from this data? Are there certain types of games you seek out at conventions?

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The post Popular Japanese Board Game En-nichi Gets Localization by Mugen Gaming appeared first on Graphic Policy.

Mugen Gaming has announced that En-nichi, a cozy Japanese festival board game, will soon debut on Kickstarter in an all-new English edition!