CMON

CMON began as CoolMiniOrNot, a website launched in 2001 where users could upload and rate photographs of painted miniatures. The company gradually moved from showcasing hobby work to publishing games built around detailed plastic figures, campaign play, and cinematic themes. It later adopted the shorter name CMON, reflecting a business broader than its original online gallery.

Its breakout project was Zombicide, designed by Guillotine Games and published through Kickstarter in 2012. The cooperative game placed players in a modern zombie apocalypse, combining modular boards, character development, equipment cards, and large groups of automated enemies. Its success established a recurring CMON model: use crowdfunding to finance ambitious miniature-heavy productions, then support them with expansions and additional campaigns. Zombicide subsequently received multiple settings and editions, including medieval fantasy, science fiction, and Wild West versions.

CMON’s catalog expanded beyond zombies. Eric M. Lang’s Blood Rage, released in 2015, transformed Norse mythology into a competitive strategy game about Viking clans seeking glory before Ragnarök. The game is notable for its drafting system, territory battles, upgrade cards, and highly sculpted clan miniatures. Rising Sun, another Lang design published in 2018, moved the conflict to a fantastical version of feudal Japan, emphasizing negotiation, political alliances, honor, and asymmetric clan powers. CMON also published A Song of Ice & Fire: Tabletop Miniatures Game, based on George R. R. Martin’s novels, with battles structured around ranked units, commanders, and scenario objectives rather than conventional individual-hero skirmishing.

The company’s history includes important partnerships and acquisitions. Guillotine Games, the French studio behind Zombicide, became closely associated with CMON and contributed to several later projects. CMON also worked with designers and licensors on games such as Marvel United, a cooperative superhero title funded on Kickstarter in 2019, and Cthulhu: Death May Die, which adapted H. P. Lovecraft-inspired horror into fast, scenario-based investigation and combat. These projects demonstrate CMON’s characteristic blend of recognizable intellectual properties, streamlined rules, and extensive miniature collections.

CMON Limited became a publicly traded company on Hong Kong’s GEM board in 2016 under stock code 8278. Its publishing strategy has depended heavily on crowdfunding, allowing it to test demand and collect substantial preorders before manufacturing. That approach has also produced complex fulfillment schedules, because a single campaign may include a core game, stretch-goal figures, exclusive components, and several expansions. CMON is therefore best known not simply as a board-game publisher, but as a company that helped make premium, miniature-driven crowdfunding a major part of modern tabletop publishing.