How Terra Mystica Teaches Correct Crowdfunding Marketing…

When Crowdfunding your Board Game

You Need a Robust “Victory Point Strategy”

Crowdfunding is a popular strategy for all sorts of board game, TTRPG, and tabletop game designers out there.

And no wonder: there are countless success stories. Tons have raised six figures, and several millions of dollars!

So one question I get a lot is:

“How can you make the Kickstarter successful?”

Which is a reasonable question for any board game copywriter and tabletop games marketer…

Its… like… what I DO.

But what is NOT reasonable is

“Oh, and I’m hoping to launch the kickstarter in about 6 months”.

Why is that not reasonable?

Because usually they haven’t started any marketing yet.

Zero…

Zilch…

Nada…

And sure, better late than never, but you have to think of it like victory points in a complicated board game.

Something like… Terra Mystica…

image is not property of Riley James Copy

Recently, I played Terra Mystica again, this time as the “Darklings” faction.

My whole strategy revolves around getting “priests” rather than “workers”.

Wanna terraform anything?

THEN FORGET THE SHOVELS.

Because unlike every other faction in the game, Darklings only use priests… no workers.

(I guess your priest will pray super hard and make the desert become streams of living water…?)

So if you want to get anything done in the later rounds…

You have to start building your temple/sanctuary ASAP

The only way to get priests as income (income resources are the hand symbol on the faction board image above) is to build a temple.

My plan was simple:

1. Build minimum dwellings and trading houses.

2. Turn them into temples

3. Get 3 priests every income phase in the later rounds

4. Use those priests to dominate the elemental cult board

Because if I could get #1 in ALL of the elemental cults, then that would be 32 victory points I could add at the end!

But there were two problems with my strategy:

1. I wouldn’t have the most structures (but my opponents wouldn’t have cults, so this balanced out).

2. I had no strategy for getting victory points throughout the game…

As you might have guessed, it was the second problem that KILLED ME.

By round 5/6, my opponent (dwarves) was 25 points ahead of me.

And it was far, far too late for me to do anything about it.

In the end, despite totally CRUSHING IT at the elemental cults and getting around 66 victory points overall…

I placed third out of four players…

Not very good for a “fool proof plan”.

The board game lesson is simple and not exclusive to Terra Mystica.

For victory point-based board games, you need two strategies:

1. You need a way to earn victory points THROUGHOUT the game

2. You need a way to earn a bunch of victory points AT THE END of the game

And you can’t just bank on a big win at the end.

You have to find some way to have the victory points trickle in each round,

And then combine that with a big “end of game bonus”

Your strategy won’t be this one, but the multi-step process communicates what I want: your tabletop Kickstarter campaign is the section in red… the END of a multi-step process of marketing spanning months (image is not property of Riley James Copy)

Now is the part when I tie it into your Kickstarter or Gamefound campaign.

Because it turns out, crowdfunding marketing is the same way:

You need to have a long-term marketing strategy that supports the crowdfunding campaign.

To succeed in launching a board game, you can’t just rely on a “big launch”…

You need to be doing marketing leading up and supporting the big launch.

In fact, some believe Kickstarter is better referred to as “Kickfinisher”.

Your crowdfunding is the end, not the beginning, of your board game marketing journey.

In order to have a Kickstarter that actually succeeds (and not just one that claims they reached their funding goal), you will need the following:

• CLEAR mission, vision, and goals

• Your strategy OUTLINED

• Your specific customer base IDENTIFIED

• A PERFECT website to collect emails

• Social media channels UP AND RUNNING

• OVERWHELMING social proo

Because when you launch, you need a crowd not only ready and waiting…

But also AWARE that the launch is even happening.

And to to that, you need to already have been marekting.

Engaging to increase future crowdfunding engagement.

In conclusion, when people want to launch a crowdfunding campaign and yet they have:

• No branding

• No USP

• No understanding of their target audience

• No email marketing

• No social media presence

• No benefits or features

• No landing page

• No influencer support

• No reviews

Well, the proverbial crowdfunding mountain goes from a rigorous 10 mile hike with 3000 ft elevation gain…

To a technical climb with ice picks and oxygen tanks up 20,000 ft Mt. Denali…

And my ability to predict results is drastically diminished.

This is why I suggest at least 6 months of prep to implement a board game Kickstarter marketing strategy.

If you rush it in a few months, yeah, you might still reach your crowdfunding minimum…

But you’ll probably spend more money on marketing than you make.

And just like me as the Darklings faction, you won’t do nearly as well as you hoped.

Found this cool image of a french priest that was also a plumber. Ended up not fitting the blog, but was too cool to not include!

Backerkit, Gamefound, or Kickstarter

Are “All or Nothing” Approaches

No One Can Afford to Fail