{"id":6731,"date":"2026-06-04T09:51:54","date_gmt":"2026-06-04T08:51:54","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/?p=6731"},"modified":"2026-06-04T09:54:43","modified_gmt":"2026-06-04T08:54:43","slug":"frosted-games-brings-in-ex-pegasus-heidelbar-marketing-chief-michael-kranzle-hires-new-sales-head","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/2026\/06\/04\/frosted-games-brings-in-ex-pegasus-heidelbar-marketing-chief-michael-kranzle-hires-new-sales-head\/","title":{"rendered":"Frosted Games brings in ex-Pegasus, HeidelB\u00c4R marketing chief Michael Kr\u00e4nzle, hires podcaster as new sales head"},"content":{"rendered":"\n

Frosted Games<\/a>, the German-language publisher of titles including Too Many Bones<\/a> and Endeavor: Deep Sea<\/a>, has brought in board game industry veteran Michael Kr\u00e4nzle to lead its marketing operations – and hired a board game podcaster as its sales head.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Kr\u00e4nzle has a storied history within the German tabletop market, having previously spent more than a decade working in editorial and marketing for Pegasus Spiele<\/a>, followed by another five leading marketing efforts at HeidelB\u00c4R Games<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He replaces J\u00f6rg Hopfengarten, who has left Frosted to become project director for fair management at Spiel Essen<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frosted Games CEO Benjamin Sch\u00f6nheiter, who worked with Kr\u00e4nzle at Pegasus Spiele in the early 2010s, told BoardGameWire, “I know Michael from way back in the day at Pegasus Spiele – and I was always impressed with his ability to create a strong brand awareness both offline and online. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“I want him to bring that same drive and success to\u00a0Frosted\u00a0Games to help us build on our twice in a row nomination (and our previous win) at the Kennerspiel des Jahres this year. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“We are still only a small publisher, and not known to many players. And there is none better to change that.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frosted launched in 2015 with the announcement it would publish a board games advent calendar, with each door revealing a different small expansion for a popular hobby board or card game.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

The company has since grown to become a significant publisher of German language board games, including last year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres winner Endeavor: Deep Sea<\/a> and big name titles such as Andromeda’s Edge<\/a> and The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Frosted is in line for a potential second Kennerspiel des Jahres win in a row this year<\/a> as the publisher of Reiner Knizia’s tile-laying title Rebirth<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

\"\"
Rebirth, designed by Reiner Knizia || Photo credit: Frosted Games<\/figcaption><\/figure>\n\n\n\n

Alongside Kr\u00e4nzle’s arrival Frosted has also appointed Dennis Oettershagen as sales manager – a figure best known in German board game circles as a host of the Board Game Theory podcast<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

He joins Frosted from barefoot shoe manufacturer Wildling, and previously spent more than a decade working for furniture giant IKEA.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sch\u00f6nheiter said, “While\u00a0Frosted\u00a0Games wants to have a much stronger and better retail presence and experience – we are very much focused on a tight relationship with our players. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“…Dennis has exactly that experience from his previous job at Wildling shoes, a barefoot shoes pioneer. His main focus in 2026 will be to solidify our retail presence while overhauling our e-commerce platform and direct to consumer channels.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Sch\u00f6nheiter added, “In general, I want to keep doing in 2026 what we have always been doing – creating and delivering phenomenal games with partners around the world. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“Our tag line is ‘We love games’. What seems like a foregone conclusion in an industry mainly driven by the hearts and souls of players that create games, it was nevertheless important to me to make that statement. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“And I want\u00a0Frosted\u00a0Games to publish games we love, not games that ‘just sell well’. And I want to keep investing in every single game, to give it the attention it needs and deserves always as a first thought – as a dedication, not a business model first. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

“And I think that I have a great team that lets me achieve this\u00a0goal, and I can see that the industry appreciates this as well.”<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Titles set for release by Frosted this year include the German language version of Entropy<\/a>, designed by Tommaso Battista, Simone Luciani and Nestore Mangone.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

Last summer BoardGameWire reported<\/a> that Frosted had signed a deal with industry heavyweight\u00a0Asmodee<\/a>\u00a0to expand its distribution across Germany, Austria and Switzerland.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

That deal came just over a year after Frosted ended its years-long distribution deal with Germany\u2019s Pegasus Spiele, saying at the time that as a niche publisher of small print runs, \u201cthe wholesale route was no longer financially viable without either drastically increasing the prices of our games or making massive cuts somewhere in the production chain\u201d.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

For more stories like this direct to your email inbox, click here to sign up for BoardGameWire’s free email newsletter. \n\nAnd if you’ve found our reporting interesting or useful, please consider a paid subscription to help support our journalism!<\/a><\/div>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

The company has become a significant publisher of German language board games, including last year’s Kennerspiel des Jahres winner Endeavor: Deep Sea and big name titles such as Andromeda’s Edge and The Elder Scrolls: Betrayal of the Second Era.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":6733,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[3],"tags":[1736,6,135,2405,1701,1734,113,1245,484,2406,106,40,2404,2094,70,105],"class_list":["post-6731","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-news","tag-benjamin-schonheiter","tag-board-game","tag-board-games","tag-dennis-oettershagen","tag-endeavor-deep-sea","tag-frosted-games","tag-germany","tag-hire","tag-jobs","tag-jorg-hopfengarten","tag-kennerspiel","tag-marketing","tag-michael-kranzle","tag-rebirth","tag-sales","tag-spiel-des-jahres"],"blocksy_meta":[],"aioseo_notices":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=6731"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":6737,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/6731\/revisions\/6737"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/6733"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=6731"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=6731"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/boardgamewire.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=6731"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}