Looking at the box, I fully expected Gnome Hollow to be cute—the sort of cute that leads a publisher to take the Gen Con balloon sculpture by the horns and make it all gnome-y. I can’t say I expected it to be as substantial a game, though. As it turns out, there’s a lot going on in there. Sometimes you even lift back the pointy hat to find competitive little thieves behind the rosy cheeks and beards.

Gnomenclature

The path to describing the gameplay of Gnome Hollow is not entirely linear. Every turn is a flow chart complete with if/then statements and cascading consequences (not unlike Mr. Lynch’s flowing review of Riftforce). A relatively simple, cartoony, flowchart by comparison, but a chart nonetheless.

Players add two (or more) hex tiles to the central garden to begin each turn. Tiles are predominantly green with some combination of glittery path and colorful mushroom(s). The great hope is to enclose a glittery path ring to unleash a series of fortunate events. The first is to (potentially) collect every mushroom depicted on the path. The second is to (likely) move a ring marker on the player board from its starting location to a bonus spot—determined by the number of tiles incorporated in the ring—and to receive any subsequent cascading bonuses.

Gnome Hollow Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

I was born after the decline of the milkman. I live in a small town where the idea could almost live again. Folks around these parts walk to pick up milk from their organic suppliers, but no one dons the cap and uniform for house calls. I have fond childhood memories of food deliveries, helping the mailman with his daily rounds, and, obviously, the daily passing of the ice cream truck. There’s some nostalgic romance in those aspects of bygone days, I guess.

The whole home delivery scene is appealing as a setting for a game. Milkman, from Dice Hate Me Games, puts players in charge of the whole operation—from farm to front door.

Raw

Milkman is a dice-chucker. Players each roll their two black dice on every turn. With two possible rerolls, they then make the best of their results and take action. The active player also receives a single roll of four white dice, granting a few extra options and first dibs in selecting customers for the turn.

On the dice, cows produce raw milk that is stored in tanks with limited capacity. Bottles convert an entire tank into whole, skim, or chocolate, stored in refrigeration with its own limits. Cash gives wooden cash tokens. Meeple select…

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What fascinated me as I read the story of the game’s design is a number. Actually, it’s an open-ended range of a number: two hundred plus. That’s how many times Chénier La Salle played iterations of this city-building game with his family. We have a lot of games we love, but we don’t own a single one that we’ve played two hundred times. The closest bet might just be Take the Gold, a silly little five-minute game from CardLords that my youngest daughter has played since she was three. Non-stop. Seriously, she has worn out more than one deck. 

Two hundred…plus. I love it. I wanted to know more, so I reached out to Chénier to see if he’d be interested in a conversation. To date, New York 1901 is his only design credit. I think I could live with that if…

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Pencil erasers. You know the sort, the molded 3D variety that were never intended to erase. They were more like elementary school status symbols, beacons of personality that wagged in the air as you filled in bubbles with your Ticonderoga No. 2. Truth be told, they were a bit of a nuisance for how they threw your pencil out of balance, but they looked so cool.

Finally, someone has made a game with erasers as player markers—minus the hole necessary to properly top a pencil. It was the artwork that first drew me in as I listed Kyoto No Neko among my most anticipated list for GenCon 2024. Even as I tore into the shrink to check out the illustrations, though, I had to pause to admire the kitties made of the stuff of erasers. Endearing, they are.

In fact, everything about Kyoto No Neko has a charming look. The square board is flanked on all sides by stair-stepped player-specific territories to create a unique overall shape. The finished grid is an overhead map of the city: rooftops, terraces, and roadways for kitty travel. Cute little kitty paw tokens are scattered about, face-down and waiting to be discovered.

Feline It Out

The whole of the game is a series of skill checks. Every token requires one of several…

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Over the years with Everdell, I’ve gone through phases. I’ve run through the expansions, ranking every Everdell experience along the way. I’ve played with my kids regardless of age, introducing even the youngest through My Lil’ Everdell. I’ve played with friends—I’ve even played Everdell digitally. I’ve explored strategies for my favorite tabletop world and I’ve followed that world to new edges of the map with the release of Farshore.

Most recently, I’ve settled into two-player outings with my elder daughter. She has an enthusiasm for Everdell that rivals mine and I cherish the chance to play together. I was immediately intrigued, then, when I found the announcement for Everdell Duo. I think it’s safe to say most players most enjoy Everdell as a duel. Sprawling table presence and ballooning downtime tend to keep the smaller, tighter experience appealing. The upcoming campaign is obviously hoping to scratch a developed itch and maybe rake in the folks on the fringes of the Meadow.

With the rise of two-player versions, it seems everyone is out to streamline and redefine stellar gaming experiences. What changes have James and Clarissa Wilson brought to this newest iteration of my favorite game? Are they refreshing? Worthwhile? I surprised myself a little with my answers.

Remarkably familiar

Everdell Duo will strike all…

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Stalk Exchange - Andy Matthews

While I was at GAMA Expo 2024, I had the opportunity to preview and even play many games that will be released this year. But my absolute favorite of the show was Stalk Exchange, from TheOP. It was the only game that I came back to after walking the floor, because I wanted to see more of it. TheOP was kind enough to send me a copy for review, so I’m giving you a sneak peek at this one because it’s worth looking into.

Stalk Exchange is a market manipulation game, loosely set in the Dutch tulip bubble of the early 1600s. In this game players attempt to earn the most money by forecasting the value of 5 different types of flowers, then planting and harvesting those flowers in order to manipulate the value of those same flowers. Mechanically speaking it’s a very simple game: you plant flowers from the market, or you swap your private collection with what’s in the market. Flowers are planted bulb side up, and then bloom once the bulb has open spaces around it. Flowers are harvested once they’re completely surrounded by other flowers, bulbs, or the sides of the board. As flowers are harvested they’re placed onto the main…

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Sola Fide: the Reformation - K. David Ladage

Sola Fide (Latin for ‘faith alone’) is an interesting game about The Protestant Reformation. One player takes on the role of the Pope and the other of Martin Luther. Each side has a deck of unique cards with various abilities tailored for that side. Of the cards available, the players will use a drafting mechanism to select 15 cards that will be their deck for the game. Starting with a small hand of three cards, on a player’s turn they will either play a card from their hand and do whatever action is printed there, or they will pray (i.e., draw a card from their deck into their hand).

The game has 10 regions (of which three are available at the start of the game). Each region has two sides: the nobility and the peasants. The balance of power between these two factions in each region is measured on a sliding scale of four positions (one or two in favor of the nobility; one or two in favor of the peasants). On each side there is also a set of allegiances. These can be four or five spaces with a mixture of red (allied with Martin Luther), black (allied with the…

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“Yes, but which sylLAble receives the emPHAsis?” I asked. “Is it P’RAM-i-dice, like Paradise with an extra half-beat? PY-ram-i-dice, which begs pronouncing the first syllable as if I were Archimedes? Pyramid-ICE, as if it were a beverage? Or maybe emphasizing every syllable—PIE-RAM-EYE-DICE!”

I guess it’s a good thing when a game offers that sort of conversation before the teach, a conversation that inevitably ends with allowing the eventual winner to select the pronunciation that will live in perpetuity.

Pyramidice is a dice rolling pyramid builder from Ares Games and the mind of Luigi Ferrini, who had a semi-hit a decade back with Stronghold’s The Golden Ages. Rather than building a civilization, players are marking their civilization with pyramids on behalf of the Pharaoh while seeking the favor of the gods—and the occasional sacred cat.

Building blocks

Pyramidice is, in many ways, a procedural affair—add a stone die to the quarry, roll a number of dice determined by available workers, then choose from a list of possibilities until the dice are spent. You might reroll, attain a god card, send a stone die to a pyramid, carry out a god action, discard a die to refresh a card, or discard two dice for a point. As needed, you’ll discard cats to modify dice.

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Planta Nubo - David McMillan

There were only a handful of titles from Essen last year that I was really excited about, and Planta Nubo was up there towards the top of the list. I mean, a co-design between Michael Keller and  Andreas “ode.” Odendahl (the co-designers of La Granja and El Burro) and the G.O.A.T. himself, Uwe Rosenberg (Agricola, Caverna, Bohnanza): what is there NOT to be excited about? Unfortunately, due to the logistics (and shipping!) involved, I wasn’t able to obtain a copy from Essen Spiel at the time. But, thanks to our friends at Devir Americas, I finally have a copy in hand and was able to play it for the first time recently.

Let me tell you, folks, it was worth the wait.

There’s a lot of things going on and, even after having read the rules and having watched several videos, my wife and I still found ourselves going back to the rule book during our first few turns to figure out the meanings of some of the iconography. By the third round, though, we had a good feel for the game and were able to progress more confidently to the finish line. We had a great deal of fun and I am excited…

The post Quick Peaks – Planta Nubo, Shinkansen: Zero-Kei, Roll for the Galaxy, CATAN: Starfarers – New Encounters, River Valley Glassworks appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Nearly two years ago, I sang the praises of 7 Wonders: Architects as worthy of a place in the Wonder-verse alongside its more mature colleagues, 7 Wonders and 7 Wonders: Duel. I spoke of speed and charm as if it were destined to be a staple family game. 

I still believe all of those things. In fact, 7 Wonders: Architects has remained a steady play in our family and is one of our most-played titles overall. The younger kiddos still adore it (now six and eleven years old), and the teenagers still join us for the experience. 

After demonstrating whole weeks of patience following the release, we grabbed a copy of 7 Wonders: Architects – Medals, the first expansion, from an out-of-town FLGS and brought it to the vacation table. What a great decision. 

Wonder me this…

Medals brings two new Wonders to the table—the Roman Colosseum and the ancient city of Ur. The Colosseum twice allows for the theft of a single card from another player—as tribute—only to then provide a free card from the center as benevolent compensation. Ur brings the game’s beloved Kitty home to roost along with a free card. These mid-game triggers fit the game like a glove without feeling contrived.

More significantly, the titular Medals are a stack of stickered…

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Without a doubt, Glow puts a beautiful first foot forward.

The box is unique, the illustrations are stunning. The first two pages of the rulebook are a journal, the story of one Adventurer’s eight-day trek out of the land of shadows. I’d call that a suggestive move, and one that proves the level of commitment to the setting. In the journal, Pocana (one of the critters in this adventure) is chasing light Shards, meeting friends, and testing the hand of Fate in a quest to battle a world of darkness. The introduction is a narrative stroll through one game of Glow. Players take up this mantle in the family-weight, dice-chucking, push-your-luck-engine builder.

Every day

Mechanically, Glow has a nice rhythm—eight Days of mildly consequential decisions. In the Morning, players add a new Companion to their journey from a market of five. Companions primarily interact with the dice, but they may also bring a boon of points, dice, abilities, etc. Rounding out the decision, each card is accompanied by a number of small dice, the quantity of which is determined at the end of the previous Day.

[caption id="attachment_302647" align="alignnone" width="1500"] Shopping for a new companion[/caption]

In the Late Morning, players roll their full-size character dice plus any acquired mini-dice to obtain…

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As I contemplate Moon—note: I did not say the Moon as if I were stealing Li Bai’s drinking partner, but rather the drafting game known as Moon—I ask myself what keeps me from giving it the fifth star. I don’t give fifth stars very easily. I admit, I find many games enjoyable, but few worthy of such supreme recognition. The third title in Haakon Gaarder’s approachable-game-in-a-clean-white-box series (Villagers, Streets) is a contender for that elusive perfect score.

Welcome to my moon base

Moon is a card drafting game that, on the surface, gives me notable Fantastic Factories vibes, swapping the dice for passing hands of cards. The progression involves building an expanding base (literally) of resources and requisite flags that open the door to special abilities, engine exchanges, and endgame point feasts. More than the mechanisms, the charm of the illustrations and the simplicity of the iconography repeatedly hearkens to the ethos of the Factories.

The vague and inexplicable connection breaks down completely, though, in looking at the various mechanisms. Players build their moon base by passing hands of cards to the left, choosing either to build a card for lasting gain or assimilate—discard—one for a small boon. In order to build a card, players must spend any required resource tokens and match stated flag requirements.…

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Pampero - Justin Bell

Pampero is the new heavy Euro designed by Julián Pombo, who served as the co-designer of Mercado de Lisboa along with Vital Lacerda (Kanban EV, Inventions: Evolution of Ideas, Vinhos: Deluxe Edition). While Pampero is interesting, it plays like a game just shy of something that would hit my table repeatedly.

Players are investors working to build out the energy network of Uruguay by building wind farms and electrical towers across a massive, beautiful playspace graphically designed by Ian O’Toole. Across a short series of turns (18, give or take), players manage a hand of cards to take actions while doing a bunch of Eurogame-y things like boost income tracks, fulfill public contracts, and race other players to have the most of certain icons before each of the game’s three scoring rounds. Pampero looks great, has a ridiculous number of high-end components, provides a fantastic player aid that answered all of my in-game questions, and plays much faster than I would have guessed (an hour and 45 minutes with four players).

But some of the upgraded action cards are strictly better than other cards in the same market, and some of the basic action cards were not used at all during my game, including…

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