Burning Banners: Rage of the Witch Queen is a beefy box. It would have to be. There are dozens of scenarios and hundreds of tokens, as well as four different full-sized boards. There are two manuals and six player boards. Burning Banners is a production. It feels a bit like an event. It isn’t Twilight Imperium beefy, but it would make a good Reuben.

The quick pitch: old-school hex-and-counter wargaming married to a Dungeons & Dragons-esque fantasy setting. Players control dwarves, orcs, armies of the undead and beplagued, usually in the name of conquest. Spend money to deploy units, move the units, fight with the units. This is the fundamental turn structure of Burning Banners.

There’s more to it than that, of course. It comes with an awfully large manual for that to be everything. There isn’t much more, though, which is to Burning Banners’s credit. Though the rulebook is intimidating—I would argue it is inefficient and in need of an overhaul—the rules themselves are easily grasped. This is not a GMT design. There are few if any dangling edge cases. There are no complex charts to…

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The box for Unreliable Wizard immediately announces its intentions. There’s a lineup of six characters identifiable as the archetypes that populate classic RPGs, each lovingly rendered in 8-bit pixels. The key detail here, the one that shows that Unreliable Wizard designer and artist Kamibayashi knows what he’s about, is the arrow above the wizard’s head. This is no box front. This is a character selection screen.

Your selection, as both the title and the arrow indicate, has been made for you. You are the wizard. Your quest is to defeat the Demon Lord Terra, who waits in the Demon Castle at the far end of the map. In the meantime, you have to make your way across that hexagonal map, moving one space at a time.

Most spaces are there to create the illusion of freedom, to give you the impression that you’re in a wide-open world full of possibilities. They have no other purpose. You enter those spaces, you pay a certain amount of health—travel is exhausting—and you go about your business. Every now and then, though, you encounter a space harboring a monster.

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Despite reviewing board games for nearly 5 years now and having written over 100 reviews, I never reviewed a campaign game. Time is a bit of a luxury for me, and campaign games have the daring proposal to subject me to hours of my time to get the “full experience” these behemoth boxes offer.

So why on earth am I reviewing this one? The answer is as simple as writing this sentence: I used to play the Monster Hunter video games back in the day. Much like how Nemesis is an unlicensed version of Aliens, Primal: The Awakening is an unlicensed version of Monster Hunter. However, that isn’t the only reason.

Campaign games have always irked me on their design. You see, a game calling itself a "dungeon crawler" or "boss battler," and you think, "That's my jam!" But then you're stuck doing some bean-counting for upgrading a town or playing choose-your-own-adventure in between the good stuff. I'm here to skewer baddies, snatch their loot, beef up my gear, and then go skewer even bigger baddies. I want boss fights to feel like I’m a third monkey rushing towards Noah's Ark because, brother, it is starting to rain.

Taming the Complexity

Fortunately for Primal: The Awakening, the campaign structure is exactly that. Your “prologue” is fighting a creature that…

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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…

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Wyrmspan is a game that looks and feels a lot like Wingspan. This is purposeful, since the designer took the Wingspan mechanics and used them as the baseline for this new game. There is a lot here that will be familiar to a Wingspan player, and just enough to throw them a curve once in a while. This was anticipated.

Wingspan is a game with almost universal acclaim and recognition. If you are not one of those people familiar with the game, please check out our previous reviews of Wingspan (Mark Iradian’s review of Wingspan, or Logan Giannini's review of Wingspan), or perhaps Tom Franklin’s wonderful review of Wingspan digital, or our Wingspan strategy guide.

Stonemaier Games has a Rules and FAQ page that discusses where Wyrmspan differs from Wingspan. Below is a summary of these differences:

• Your personal game board starts with three places where you can place dragons. Additional locations in each cave must be excavated first by placing a cave card there. Doing so activates a one-time power. You explore and excavate the caves from left to right. Completing the exploration of a cave has some additional benefits.
• Actions are paid for with coins (and sometimes eggs) rather than action tokens. It is possible to acquire additional coins and take…

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A Brief History

I have a rather large game collection. Too large, by some estimates, but that is another topic. The point is this: I do not have a large collection of train-based games. I have played several, from the old crayon-rail games to more modern offerings. I like a few of them, find others to be tedious. I guess what I am trying to say is that this is not a theme I seek out.

Before I started writing for Meeple Mountain, I was (and remain) a fan. One of the first things I ever experienced on the site was an unboxing of Empyreal: Spells and Steam. This video (and the others that followed) introduced me to the core game, the expansion, and the deluxe edition upgrade. I went from that unboxing video to ordering the whole kit-and-kaboodle!

So let's take a look at this fantasy world train game, set in the early industrial-age and see what we have here, shall we?

[caption id="attachment_306878" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The box is almost a foot to a side, and nearly 9-inches deep. This is not a small package.[/caption]

Spells and Steam

In Empyreal: Spells and Steam, you have a magic-filled fantasy world that is just entering that glorious period…

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I am not really sure, most of the time, what it is that draws me in and makes me want to get and play a new game. Sure, in my youth, the idea of someone suggesting a game and introducing it to me certainly was a factor. But now that I am seeking out games (both board and role-playing), it is the oddest things that grab my attention. Back in 2022, I was immediately hooked on the game Hidden Leaders when I saw this image online:

[caption id="attachment_306969" align="aligncenter" width="450"] Be honest: what is not to love about this guy?[/caption]

I mean, look at this guy! He is a confident and self assured individual. There are a few meanings for the word ‘queer’ but none of the definitions that fall outside of ‘gay’ seem to apply. As an ally, and someone with many friends and family in the LGBTQIA+ community, this is the sort of character I can get behind! I got a copy for me, and one for one of my old Navy buddies (who happens to be gay). I have never regretted this purchase, because beyond the wonderful artistic style of the game comes great game play as well.

Overview

Hidden Leaders is a card-driven board game where two…

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I don’t know what they put in the water at PostCurious, but it’s working. Rita Orlov and her cohort have made a name for themselves over the last few years by publishing a remarkable series of escape rooms, including 2022’s startling The Light in the Mist and this year’s masterful The Morrison Game Factory. In a market dominated by the long-past-their-prime Exit games and the under-appreciated Unlock series, PostCurious distinguishes itself by offering games that push the boundaries of escape room narrative. These are games that stick with you not only as a series of clever and satisfying puzzles, but as stories.

The scope of PostCurious’s narrative ambitions is generally matched by the scale of their games. The Light in the Mist takes 4-5 hours. The Emerald Flame hit around 7-8. I haven’t cracked open my copy of Threads of Fate yet, but the box promises 10+ hours of work. Those are not rookie numbers. The idea of sitting down—over a series of sessions, mind—for that much puzzle can be overwhelming.

It is with that in mind that PostCurious has started Ministry of Lost Things, a series of more modest offerings. Designed with a less-seasoned audience in mind, Case 1: Lint Condition takes about two hours when all is said and done, spread out over five chapters,…

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Generally speaking, I am not an RPG guy.

From time to time, I can be tricked into Gloomhaven-like gaming experiences. While games like Gloomhaven feature some elements typical in a role-playing game like Dungeons & Dragons, the main focus is on the combat and the loot, not the storytelling.

Don’t get me wrong—I love good storytelling, especially in my visual arts, like TV and film. But in my board games, I want action. If I only get an hour or two to play a game every night, I wanna get in there!

As long as we are speaking broadly, I’m also not a tabletop campaign guy.

Maybe you’ve experienced this, too—it is getting harder and harder to get people to come over to play the same game 12-15 times. (Sometimes, it’s hard to get people to play the same game twice, am I right?) If anything, post-COVID life killed the ability to do campaign games. During COVID, we found another couple or two to “bubble up” and play campaign games, or my wife and I did two-player games on our own, because no one had anything else to do.

But when the world opened back up, getting a weekly run of games like Clank! Legacy—Acquisitions Inc. became almost impossible in my circles. Who is coming out…

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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.

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In classic mythology, the hydra was a many-headed demon that proved very hard to kill. As if its poisonous breath and tainted blood weren’t enough, a hero attempting to slay a hydra would have to contend with its heads not just  regenerating, but doubling, just as quickly as they were lopped off. Back then, the hydra was a friendless, angry beast.

The modern hydra is a much friendlier, more jovial hydra. Much of that is due, no doubt, to the hydra’s affection for the loveable, peaceable otter. Nothing pleases a hydra more than making its otter friends happy and, if there’s one thing that makes them happier than anything, it’s shiny stuff.

In Reef & Ruins, from Carla Kopp (Way Too Many Cats, Roar and Write!), players take on the roles of otters directing their 3-headed friends (represented by three 6-sided dice) as they search through the ruins of wrecked ships and the surrounding reefs for treasure. If they’re feeling particularly generous, they’ll even impart some of their magical essence into their finds to make them even shinier, enhancing their overall value for the end game.

Each round, a player will roll the three dice and players will use those dice however they wish across their three sheets: Ship Ruins, Enchantments, and Reef. Everything a player does…

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A Midsummer Night’s Dream is not my favourite Shakespeare romcom (hello Ado!) and A Midsummer Night’s Dream by designer and publisher Icerain Lin is not my favourite card game. One of these is a close-run thing, the other less so. 

Puck It and See

A Midsummer Night’s Dream is a small box card game where players try to empty their hand of cards (card shedding, for example UNO) by playing combinations of cards to the table, always ensuring that the sets of cards they play are higher or one level up from the cards that are already on the table (ladder climbing, for example SCOUT). If I play a pair of fours, then you could play a pair of sixes (higher cards at the same level) or a run/straight of three cards (one level up from a pair, for instance one, two, three).

This isn’t too tricky to start. Players begin each round with 12-14 cards, the majority of which can be one of two numbers. A 3 can be rotated to be a 4, a 5 can pivot to a 2 and so on.

As the round goes on, however, your options become more limited whilst the demands of…

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From the rulebook:

“For generations, the Blancgriffon school has trained apprentice sorcerers to master the arcane mysteries of earth, water, air, and fire. Every three years, the school’s most talented students enter the Tournament of Sorcerers to defend their class’s honor. In magical memory, the Dragombre school has always won this competition. But this year could very well be different… Who will win?”

Released in 2023, Clash of Magic Schools is a retheme of one of Uwe Rosenberg’s previous titles, Babel. You can check out my review of Babel. In Clash, players are wizarding students leading their class in a contest against other classes in an effort to come out on top and win the competition.

The artwork for this game is lovely. Rather than just rehash a general “blue student/red student/etc.” for each of the different schools of magic, artist Xavier Gueniffey Durin (Tokaido, Namiji, Seasons) has taken the time to provide a unique illustration for each student involved. This uniqueness not only serves to breathe life into the magical school concept, but also lends the game a measure of inclusivity that a lot of games still struggle with these days.

Rather than rehash the…

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