Sometimes, you need to table a game that is good, dumb fun. (And look—I might sound like a guy who has the mental capacity to play heavy pieces of chicken like Speakeasy, Nucleum and Railways of the Lost Atlas, but the reality is that this works only because I balance it with games like UNO.)

Any time a new Ravensburger game arrives at the house, my kids want to give it a spin. That’s because Ravensburger has generally been good to us—Villainous, Horrified, Piñata Blast, The Lord of the Rings Adventure Book Game, Dungeons, Dice & Danger, etc.—and the games are always easy to get to the table. So when I whipped out Oh My Pigeons! after dinner the other night, something magical happened:

The kids wanted to play it again as soon as the game was over.

Now, some of that is because Oh My Pigeons! is SO short. The first game was won in less than five minutes. But subsequent games didn’t take much longer, with our longest game taking about 12 minutes. That’s because Oh My Pigeons! is so easy to teach you can knock that part out in less than 60 seconds.

Each player has a…

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The Dwarves: Big Box - Andy Matthews

Up until 2022, I’d never heard of The Dwarves, a hugely popular German five book fantasy series, which spawned a video game and a board game. And I certainly never expected to play it. But my game group wanted to inject some cooperative action into our game nights and The Dwarves was picked.

The goal of The Dwarves is to work your way through a scenario deck of cards, while protecting your lands from invading orcs, trolls, and elves. Players may also complete side quests which can provide valuable bonuses or cause trouble in Girdlegard (the dwarven homeland). At the beginning of every player’s turn the hero marker advances can trigger new enemies to emerge, cause drama in the dwarven high council, or cause negative effects to the side quest deck. In typical coop game fashion there are multiple ways to lose, but only one way to win.

My group had a good time playing The Dwarves, and even spent some time afterwards talking about different approaches we might take in our next play. While I don’t think The Dwarves is going to win any awards, it’s a solid game and one we’ll be playing again. 

Ease of entry?:
★★★☆☆ - There were…

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Disclosure: Meeple Mountain received a free copy of these products in exchange for an honest, unbiased preview. This preview is not intended to be an endorsement.

With Paizo's release of Player Core 2 for Pathfinder Second Edition, 8 more classes and Ancestries are now reworked to coincide with the Pathfinder Remaster Project. This also rounds out the original 'core' classes from the first Core Rulebook so that nobody is left behind any longer. It always seemed strange to me that some of those weren't remastered in the Player Core and instead put on the backburner until this installment. Nevertheless, the combination of Player Core and Player Core 2 exist as a sturdy base for this next era of Pathfinder Second Edition.

Pathfinder Player Core 2 Overview

Player Core 2 brings the total page count for the player resources to nearly 800 pages, which feels like a substantial barrier to entry for new players. Thankfully, there still exists a remastered version of the Pathfinder Beginner Box that cuts down the rules overhead substantially for those people who are just dipping their toes into the Pathfinder waters. If you want a bevy of character options as a player, however, the Player Core 2 is a must for the shelf.

The primary purpose of the Player Core…

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[caption id="attachment_307619" align="aligncenter" width="600"] That is some gorgeous artwork![/caption]

Pulp Invasion! I read the description of the game and saw that it was a solo affair. I decided to get two copies: one for me, and one for my friend, Steve (Steve loves solo gaming). I looked around on BoardGameGeek and I saw that the designer, Todd Sanders, has done a few other small print run games, and another series using the pulp-style artwork he had acquired the rights to. This one dealt with the old Gumshoe genre.

[caption id="attachment_307620" align="aligncenter" width="600"] I can hear Sam Spade when I see these images![/caption]

I loved it! I searched around and I located the base game for Pulp Detective, all three expansions, the slip-cover to hold all of the boxes together (like a set of books), and the puzzle-piece playing board for the combined experience.

These games came about after…

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[caption id="attachment_307628" align="aligncenter" width="600"] These beasts were common. I am not sure how the elves survived.[/caption]

Over the years, I have become one of those guys that tries to sleeve every game I own. It started early in my collecting years as I had small children and I do not like the idea of having to replace a game (or game parts) after someone damaged them. Worse yet, I do not like the idea of being unable to replace a game (or game parts) after someone damaged them because that game is out of print and the only way to get it these days is from some individual on ebay who is selling my beloved game for some ridiculously inflated price.

[caption id="attachment_307629" align="alignright" width="150"] Fantasy Flight card sleeves were the best. I miss them.[/caption]

My friend,…

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Flip 7 - Andy Matthews

I love it when a game "hides" the premise in plain sight, like Flip 7 from The Op. It's a lightweight (and I do mean light) press your luck game that has you flipping over cards from a shared deck and deciding "do I stay or do I go?". Number cards earn you points, action cards do special things, and if you ever "Flip 7" cards you earn a sweet 15 point bonus and end the round. But if you flip over a number card that you already have in front of you, then it's a bust for you.

You'll earn points based on the numbers on the cards; their values ranging from 0-15. With the exception of the 0, each card is worth its face value and there are that many cards in the deck: three 3 cards, ten 10 cards, etc. But there's also a handful of action cards which can be both angel and demon (depending on who's receiving them). The Second Chance card lets you skip a "bust", the "Freeze" card helps you stop a runaway leader, and the "Flip Three" card forces a player to flip over three cards even if they might bust!

I played with 3 players and it hummed along…

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Spoiler Warning

This is a rant. It's a big, fat, slimy, whiny rant that I'm not ashamed about because this stuff needs to be said. Now that that is out of the way, I'm about to rally some people, offend others, make some people laugh, and maybe even some others cry, but it's all in good fun kind of, because I'm going to be quite subjective here since these are all my experiences (in no particular order).

So, feel free to laugh and get angry with me and agree and disagree and agree to disagree and leave comments and suggest other things that should have been mentioned. This is literally your chance to get a glimpse into what my bugbears are, so enjoy it. Or don't. It's really up to you. You've been warned.

Mini Cards

I have guitar player's fingers. This means they're long and dexterous and should be able to deal in the small and precise as easily as the large and cumbersome. But believe me, when I say I struggle with handling…

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Reclamation themes are commonly explored throughout the media we consume. Whether it is presented in a mysterious way like Lost, or through a lens of inevitability during a post-apocalyptic story like I am Legend, there's always a hearty contrast between the power of nature and the desire of humanity to endure. In Life in Reterra, the latest game from designers Ken Gruhl and Eric Lang, you are tasked with building up a community from the remnants of the past.

Life in Reterra Overview

There aren't any life-threatening zombies on Reterra, although the other players may serve as threats to the livability of your community. In Life in Reterra, players will be placing tiles in a 4x4 grid in order to line up gear symbols and match terrain types. Gear symbols allow you to place buildings, thus adding a means for scoring and areas of interest for your community's inhabitants.

Each game features 5 different building cards, which can be mixed and matched to foster a gaming experience that is suitable for your group. Since these are also double-sided, there are thousands of combinations of buildings to play with. Some of these buildings offer more take-that mechanics that impact other players, and some grant a more peaceful, solitaire-like experience.

After setting up the buildings and the public market of 5…

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Quartermaster General WW2: 2nd Edition - Justin Bell

Our partners at Ares Games recently sent a review copy of the 2020 card-driven, supply-line-obsessed wargame Quartermaster General WW2: 2nd Edition. Unfortunately, it arrived after my plays of the newer take on the system, Quartermaster General: East Front. In some ways, that was fine—I came into the base game material prepped and ready based on my experience with the newer game. Unlike Quartermaster General: East Front (two players only), Quartermaster General WW2 accommodates anywhere from 2-6 players. After my first six-player game, I’m not sure I would ever play this with less than the full player count.

That’s because at six players, QG WW2 is a blast, truly asymmetrical (right down to the differing number of both draw cards and placeable army and navy units), and wicked fast. As the leader of the Soviet Union, I was able to play interesting cards and make fun tactical decisions while working with the other Allied powers in the game (the US and the UK). Like QG: EF, the second edition of QG is surprisingly rules-light for a wargame, a category that I think I’ve been avoiding for too long because of an unsubstantiated fear of rules overhead and long playtimes.

The…

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This was a shock, to both me and many of the other contributors on the Meeple Mountain team. That is because Dixit—first released in 2008—is such a classic that people just assume everyone has played it.

And, almost every gamer I know has played Dixit…which led to a player objecting over getting it to the table for review plays for this article.

“Nah, I’m not playing Dixit.”

Dixit has reached an interesting point in its lifecycle—it is the word association version of CATAN. By that, I mean that Dixit is so good, and such an important cog in the history of these types of games, that players have played it so much that they often DON’T want to play it any more.

I was shocked how often I proposed this game to my gaming groups during the months leading up to this post, with players responding that they didn’t want to play it any more, a bit like proposing Codenames, Pandemic, or other classics that have hit the table so much that players are a bit burned out just…

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Civolution - Justin Bell

I love coming back from SPIEL each year because many of my local Chicago friends bring home a ton of the hot new treasures they bought in Germany. At a recent gaming event, I plopped myself at the table where Stefan Feld’s new release Civolution was about to be taught because I was excited to give this one a spin. Then the teach started…and SIXTY-FIVE MINUTES later, we jumped into our play.

That teach was comically massive because Feld’s newest game is easily his heaviest, in terms of strategic decision making. I’m ready to say that “heavy” is not Feld’s lane. A civ-adjacent design, with tableau building technology cards, tracks, public goals, private goals, action selection, and map exploration, leads to a game with an unheard-of 32 different actions spread across each player’s personal board. Civolution is a dice game, meaning that this strategy game is really a dice-driven action selection design, which will rub many readers (and at least one of our writers!) the wrong way.

To Civolution’s credit, our playtime was just over two hours despite the hour-long teach, so at least the game didn’t take forever…but it never featured the kinds of interesting decisions I was hoping for. The best way I can…

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There are games that come very close to being perfect. The mechanics weave in and out of the theme, which is reinforced by the artwork to create an experience that is far greater than the sum of the parts. But then there comes one element that hits like nails on a chalkboard, or a needle scratch that feels off, or causes issues.

There are some that are almost insignificantly minor (e.g., in Splendor, I do not believe that the gemstone a card produces should ever be a part of its cost). Others get louder with each play. This article is about the others, the rule or mechanic or aspect of a game that, once I saw it, bugs me every time I play the game.

Coup

Its missing one simple action!

Coup is a beautiful deduction game. It is a card-driven game with a small Court Deck containing three each of Ambassador, Assassin, Captain, Contessa, and Duke. Each player starts with two of these individuals and a couple of coins. Nobody knows who has who in their hands. Thus, players can bluff and claim to have an individual in hand they do not have.

Some actions a player takes can be blocked by those having (or claiming to have) some…

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Most important of all in noticing and remembering Jim Williams is Jim Williams himself. The Englishman approaches every interaction with a level of sincerity, enthusiasm, and engagement that is rare. When Jim talks to you, you cannot help but feel that he is speaking to you, and you alone. He seldom checks his phone and rarely looks about the room. Like many people who are easily distracted, his attention is absolute when he applies it. Speaking with Jim over…

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