A few years back I was wandering through various campaigns on Kickstarter (as I am wont to do) and I saw a pair of images that were right up my alley. The images were sci-fi but of the old 1930s to 1950s variety. The sort of images that invoke some of my childhood heroes!

[caption id="attachment_307619" align="aligncenter" width="600"] A return to the golden age of sci-fi![/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 started getting the expansions, too. I stopped, but that is another story (see below).

This game (and Pulp Detective) came about after Mr. Sanders acquired the rights to a whole bunch of pulp magazine covers and interior illustrations. In other words, this is the real deal! These are not modern artists mimicking the pulp era styles, these are authentic pulp era pieces. And they are beautiful!

Engage the hyperdrive!

In Pulp Invasion, you are a Free Captain, a sort of trader and mercenary who roams interstellar space. However, you are no ordinary Captain! In secret, you are an agent of the Intergalactic Council, an arm of the…

The post Pulp Invasion appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

From card games to social deduction, mega games to role-playing adventures, the possibilities of board games might seem endless. However, this wasn’t always the case. In the late 2000s, 'narrative' games were far less common than they are today. The concept of app-integrated storytelling or voice-acted narratives wasn’t even an idea at the time. If you wanted to have your story experience in a board game form, options were scarce, and the most well-known at the time was Tales of the Arabian Nights.

As you can tell from the game’s name, it draws inspiration from the classic “One Thousand and One Nights” as players traverse the lands to seek fortune and glory. Instead of complex mechanics, they are told about their situation through a book and the players decide on their response to the situation. To some players, this was a great game, especially for families that want to tell silly stories. For others, like myself, we found the game to be quite random and nonsensical, often overextending its welcome.

When I heard about Tales of the Arthurian Knights, saying I was interested is downplaying my reaction. I loved the idea of Tales of the Arabian Nights, but I was yearning for something that was a bit more consistent and I was quite curious to see fifteen years’ worth…

The post Tales of The Arthurian Knights Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

In Maps of Misterra, you’re playing as explorers, mapping out the island’s landscapes—landscapes that might change from turn to turn, say Mountains become Forests. That’s because there’s a difference between terrain types that are ‘confirmed’ and what your sponsor has said they want to see on your map. Score the most points at the end of the game and you’ll be the winner.

If that sounds a bit confusing, stay with me. The mists will part as we get the game to the table.

[caption id="attachment_305395" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Maps of Misterra: The Box[/caption]

Cartographers At the Ready

You’ll place the large central board in the middle of the table, then hand each player their own smaller version of the map. Depending on the player count, a number of Forests will be placed, full-color side up. (More on this soon.)

[caption id="attachment_305401" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] A 3 or 4 player game ready to be played.[/caption]

Each player will also get a Cartographer of their choice and three Claim tokens in their matching color.

At the top of the board, place the four stacks of terrain tiles full-color side down. Then shuffle the…

The post Maps of Misterra Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

About two years ago, I stared at the copy of Maracaibo (2019, Capstone Games) sitting on my shelf.

The game looked back at me. “You keep looking at me like you love me, but we used to spend so much more time together.”

“You’re right,” I said. “The problem isn’t totally on you, and I don’t think the problem is me, either. The problem is that as much as I love you, you take a while to set up, you take a while to teach, and every time I have to explain how combat works and where cubes go on the map and how all that affects the end-game scoring mechanics, I pivot to another game. Plus, all that usually takes two, maybe three hours, to play…I just think it’s best that I find another home for you.”

With that, I gifted Maracaibo to a guy in my review crew. I got the Maracaibo app (which, sadly, still doesn’t support play against AI opponents outside of the solo game) then basically stopped playing the game until it appeared on Board Game Arena a few months ago.

But recently, something at the Bell household changed.

Near the end of my time at Gen Con 2024, I stopped by the Capstone booth to chat with the team…

The post Pirates of Maracaibo Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

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…

The post Kyoto no Neko Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Over the course of several months, I led a group of six players through the Grand Campaign scenario from Europa Universalis: The Price of Power. For 4-6 hours a day, every other Sunday, we would convene around the gaming table, remind ourselves of where we left off, and get to the business of running the great nations of Europe in the 16th century.

All six players were acquainted with Europa Universalis IV (EUIV), the massive computer game that served as source material for this massive board game. Several of them had put thousands of hours into exploring its nooks and crannies. This isn't, I am told, unusual. EUIV is the type of game that consumes lives. It is one of PC gaming's largest sandboxes. “I mean, it's a Paradox game,” people would say over and over, the developer's name considered enough of an explanation.

The first EU computer game, released back in 2000, was itself adapted from a 1993 board game of the same name. Given that, a modern board game adaptation feels inevitable. It also feels ludicrous. The Price of Power…

The post Europa Universalis: The Price of Power Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

If you’ve had the chance to read any of my previous Mindclash Games coverage, you probably think I’m a fanboy…and, you are right.

Mindclash has put out a bevy of bangers, including Anachrony, Trickerion: Legends of Illusion, and the granddaddy of them all, Voidfall. I wanted to try the 2022 release Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles Episodes 1 & 2, so I reached out to the Mindclash team to grab a review copy and I spent about a month working through both episodes.

The format is wild. Perseverance is a four-game series that will wrap up with a third and fourth episode later this year, so I wanted to get in now to ensure I know what’s going on when the new games are delivered to backers. Players take on the roles of leaders stranded on a remote island in the present day that also happens to be inhabited by dinosaurs. By the end of Episode 4, I’m guessing Perseverance (the name of the game’s deserted location) will be a full-blown city where dinosaurs and humans are living side-by-side, working together to further a shared way of life.

The backstory is richer than that, so while I’ll talk about both episodes in the first box, I won’t talk about the things that Mindclash always does better…

The post Perseverance: Castaway Chronicles Episodes 1 & 2 Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Clash of Galliformes is a bit of a throwback to when area control games contented themselves with being dumb and proud of it. As a dumbo, I appreciate this. I do not demand intricate combat systems with convoluted rules about order of battle, troop deployment, terrain. I’m not here to be a grognard, dammit, I’m a lord of the giant sage grouse kingdom, and I demand blood, not rules overhead!

[caption id="attachment_302380" align="aligncenter" width="768"] Blood for the bird god![/caption]

I don’t like “animals” or “nature” as a setting for a game. Sorry, Dominant Species, I’d rather play as a man than as a bug. Now, if you cast me as a group of humans who have co-evolved with gigantic landfowl and ride them around like horses, now I’m interested. Thomas, the great Quail-lord. I suppose birds are the exception to my no-animals rule.

Them’s fightin’ birds

Anyway, Clash of Galliformes is an area control euro-puzzle hybrid game where you build bird soldiers, march them around a point-to-point map, take over sites, build outposts on them, and try to level up your bird board to get better powers. At the start, you have a single minion, but you expand to develop greater resource production capacity, and you start collecting chits.

The almighty…

The post Clash of Galliformes Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Nothing out there explores this theme quite like the worldwide sensation The Walking Dead (TWD). For the most part, the world of TWD follows a single group of Survivors, led by Rick Grimes, as they try to find their way in a world that’s hardly recognizable. And, while it initially seems the thing to fear is the titular walking dead, they soon discover that the real terror is other people.

TWD first arrived on the scene as a comic book in 2003. Written by Robert Kirkman, the series’ themes and rabid fan base eventually attracted the attention of the AMC television network who turned it into one of the most popular shows in the history of television. It ran for a total of eleven seasons over a period of twelve years and has spawned a number of spinoff series. While the core television show, and the comic books, have come to an end, it’s clear that The Walking Dead isn’t going anywhere.

From low effort tie-ins such as TWD Monopoly and TWD Jenga to more nuanced efforts such as TWD: Something to Fear, it…

The post The Walking Dead: Surrounded Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

I met with Gigamic during the Festival International des Jeux a few months ago, and they provided a copy of the upcoming Viking-themed tile-laying game Looot.

“I saved this copy just for you!” our friend Rawan said during our marketing meeting. “I think you are going to like this one because we are very excited about it.”

As I say often, publishers say this to me all the time. I always smile, say thanks, and move to my next meeting with the same level of optimism. Gigamic has never led me astray, but tile-laying games are very, very close to the signature cliche “a dime a dozen.” Between high-water abstracts such as Azul, to any number of animal-themed tile layers like Cascadia, to harder puzzles like Calico, to Euro-themed classics like Carcassonne and Tigris & Euphrates, players have hundreds of options in this crowded field.

Still, I think Looot—despite its tricky title, which is one O too heavy for every spell-check tool in the book—is worth a look. That’s because its weight, playtime, and strategic depth give Looot a pretty interesting distinction through the first quarter of 2024: this is the most game you can play in about 30 minutes. Not a lot of games can say that!

The post Looot Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Second editions speak. For a game that has circulated and expanded for years, they speak of the desire for a consolidated experience, like Camel Up, London, or Nemo’s War. Of course, sometimes they stir mixed reactions, creating a clamoring for the original (Sheriff of Nottingham, anyone?). For a newer release, second editions might speak of unrelenting demand or lessons swiftly learned from a wide release and the ensuing abundance of consumer feedback. 

In the case of I C E, the forthcoming Second Edition speaks a message of access—budgetary access. The original campaign boasted one of the most intriguing deluxe game boards that I can recall, but it was expensive. The matching premise was also fascinating: digging through layers of icy hex tiles to collect goodies. I was so close to backing the first edition. In the end, though, my budget got in the way. I really wanted every bell and whistle in the catalog, but my wallet shut the whole thing down. 

In every way, then, I am the target audience for this new release. The team at This Way! had always planned for a retail-level release to complement their behemoth, but lacked the means to pull it off in the first funding push. The upcoming campaign will introduce a scaled-back version of the original, with…

The post I C E: Second Edition Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

I’ve been on a hunt to play as many games from the purported “4X Family” on BoardGameGeek as possible. Over the last three years, I’ve added quite a few 4X plays to my arsenal, and when an opportunity arose to grab a review copy of Empires of the Void II (2018, Red Raven Games), I scooped one up.

First, let’s talk 4X. This family was created on BGG based on the idea that many large-scale adventure/exploration games feature a bunch of the same elements. First, you’ll eXplore a mostly undiscovered map, featuring a “fog of war” or maybe face-down tiles that need to be touched by a player’s civilization members, a spaceship, etc. to be discovered. Area control elements enter play as players eXpand their presence on the map as it is revealed.

eXploitation takes place as player factions do their best to make use of the map’s natural resources…and in some of the 4X games I’ve tried recently, this is where engine building really shines. Finally, conflict leads to players attempting to eXterminate each other and possibly the locals who currently possess a given territory, as everyone tries to make a land grab for the map’s best spaces. Extermination usually leads to major consequences for the loser of these combat scenarios.

The 4X family of games…

The post Empires of the Void II: First Take Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

In my continued efforts to remind people that there are in fact games older than 15 minutes ago, I stopped by the Red Raven Games booth at Gen Con last year to see if the publisher would provide review samples of their older games.

“Sure,” was the one-word response I got from the staffer at the booth. Like most publishers I meet, they appreciate that some of us want to look back in time to play the games that helped build the foundation for newer games hitting store shelves.

One of the games offered was Near and Far, the sequel to the first game in the “Arzium Storybook Series”, Above and Below. Despite the fact that Near and Far is only seven years old, that fact alone made some people roll their eyes when I tried to table something that ancient. “It can’t be any good,” their eyes seem to say. “When was the Kickstarter?”

[Another note of sadness: so many people think that games only arrive as the result of a crowdfunding handout. “You know, sometimes games are designed, then developed in-house by a studio, then fronted by an organization willing to bet on themselves, then released in a traditional retail format. You know that, right?” This is usually met with a scoff, a person…

The post Near and Far Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.