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Hi people ! So, late question, I know, but just what happened with CMON ? By that I meant that in the past, it used to produce and distribute many miniature games (Wrath of Kings and Dark Age more precisely), and then, like that, they just stopped selling these products. But even weirder, the websites for those games are still online. Even stranger, if you go on the CMON website, they still list them amongst the games they own and sell products for. Someone told me that these products weren't selling enough. Honestly, I don't believe it. These products ran out of stock in the span of 48 hours after they became available again. Plus, there was a quite active facebook community for Dark Age. I just don't get it. Maybe it's a corporate reason ? Financial reason ? Their website reveals noting. As for Bryan Steele, who used to work for them and more specifically on the Dark Age game, he's totally silent since he went his own way. Is there someone who knows what happened ? Thank you for any scrap of info that you could give me.

They appear to have switched their focus entirely to Kickstarter boardgames. There are rumors a while back that they had dug themselves into a bit of a hole, and didn't have the cash to maintain anything else, but it may just be that they decided that the KS projects were a better income source.

they just didn't make enough money compared to their boardgames (one of their shareholder reports broke down the numbers and it was less than 1%) so as they grew and listed themselves on the stock exchange there was more and more pressure to use the design time and money to do something more profitable

WoK also got hit by a major supply chain problem just around the time they were trying to relaunch it meaning no new product available for the launch and for the next 6-9 months (or longer if you weren't in the US)

distribution was also poor in the US and very poor elsewhere (in part as they were ordering occasional batches from china as FFG found with Xwing, it's just hard to keep stuff in stock if you don't do your own manufacturing)

So WoK went into hibernation, nothing new was released (including stuff they'd showed off as prototypes at conventions, the new Dragon in the Massive Darkness 2 KS that just ended was originally shown as a WoK model)

Dark Age was a little more active but not much

both were available as black Friday deals at 80% off for a couple of years

then When CMON signed up to the distribution deal with Admodee they cleared their warehouse and sold off all remaining stock of both lines to Miniature Market

they still own the IP though and show no signs of wanting to get rid of it


Automatically Appended Next Post:
The Dark Age thread in news and rumors will have a few more details

Well thanks for these informations. Still sad to hear these.

It's very sad

this is the WoK thread from news and rumours

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/740046.page

and this is the Dark Age one

https://www.dakkadakka.com/dakkaforum/posts/list/0/635967.page

the cover the sad demise of the games (I only hope one or both can come back at some point)

One issue for niche games is that manufacturers have large minimum orders.

If you're selling (to make up numbers) 10k boxes a year and your manufacturer has a minimum order of 100k you literally cannot restock on the game.

KS board games allow them to make to order, clear out the stock and move on.