Launching a first Kickstarter feels a bit like a high-stakes handshake. You’re asking people for their hard-earned money for a product that doesn’t exist yet, from a team they’ve never heard of. It’s all about the “trust gap.”
When we put together the campaign for Legends of the Arena, we knew we had to bridge that gap. We leaned heavily on the “Stonemaier Model”—a mix of radical transparency and taking on the risks ourselves so you don’t have to. Here’s how we did it.
1. Eating the Tariff “Surprise”
In 2025, the tariff landscape for board games shifted wildly, with rates on Chinese imports hitting a staggering 145%. This created a ton of “pledge manager anxiety” where backers were getting hit with surprise bills months after a campaign ended.
We decided to pre-emptively announce that we would pay all tariff costs.
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Why we did it: For an established company with a massive payroll, this might be impossible. But as first-time creators, we felt this was the right risk to take to make backers feel safe.
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Shipping: We still charge for shipping during fulfillment, but it’s strictly at cost. This protects us from postage hikes without us making a dime off your delivery fee.
2. The “No-Questions” Safety Net
We followed Jamey Stegmaier’s lead and offered a full, no-questions-asked return policy. If you get the game and decide it’s not for you within a month, you can send it back for a full refund.
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The Reality: We take a small loss on these because of platform fees (usually about 8% of the pledge), but it’s worth it.
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The Result: So far, we’ve only had one person take us up on it—a canceled pledge before fulfillment. Data shows that when you stand behind the product, very few people actually return it.
3. Borrowing a Reputation
Since we didn’t have a portfolio of 20 delivered games, we partnered with industry titans who do. Listing these partners on our page was our way of saying, “We’re serious about doing this right.”
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Manufacturing: We chose LongPack Games, known for high-quality miniatures and massive hits like Santorini.
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Art: We worked with Gunship Revolution, the studio behind art for Star Wars and Street Fighter.
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Logic: Backers might not know us, but they know and trust these names.
4. The “Padded” Timeline
The quickest way to lose trust is to miss a delivery date. We spent months researching how long production actually takes—accounting for the “5 hurdles” like payment clearance, proofing cycles, and port congestion.
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Our approach: We posted a rough timeline (granularity of months, not days) and added significant padding.
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The Benefit: We’ve already used some of that padding for file revisions with the factory. Because we didn’t promise an “optimistic” best-case scenario, we’re still on track and our backers aren’t stressed.
Final Thoughts
At the end of the day, building a brand legacy is more important than squeezing out every penny of profit on day one. By taking on the risks—the tariffs, the returns, and the timeline buffers—we’re hoping to build a community that knows we’ll always have their backs.