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Published — 05. März 2026 Meeple Mountain | The summit of board gaming

Yokohama Duel Game Review

I first saw Yokohama at Gen Con in 2024 when it was reprinted with updated art and dual-layered boards. My main turnoff was that it seemed quite fiddly with the smaller meeples and felt generally busy with the various worker placement locations. Enter Yokohama Duel which eliminates those issues and presents a similar gameplay wrapped in a convenient two-player package. The question remained: does it stand on its own merits amidst the evergrowing list of 'duel' games? I aim to find out.

Yokohama Duel Overview

Each player in Yokohama Duel assumes the role of a prominent merchant in the Meiji era of Japan, pushing themselves towards prosperity for themselves and the burgeoning port town. Through the acquisition of goods, fulfillment of orders, adoption of technology, and culturally mindful practices over four rounds, players compete to see who will come out on top.

The core of the game is the placement of 'workers' in the form of Power cards. At the start of the game, each player receives a set of Power cards valued 1 to 4. On their turn, a player selects the lowest remaining Power card in their hand and plays it to an unused location on the board. The value of the card played gives an increasing benefit such as more resources, a higher valued Technology…

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Published — 08. Januar 2026 Meeple Mountain | The summit of board gaming

The Pillars of the Earth Game Review

Just because a game is old doesn't mean that we should overlook it. Thanks to a new gaming group, I'm getting some exposure to lots of older games that I normally wouldn't even think twice about. Our most recent foray was a five-player jaunt through The Pillars of the Earth, a worker placement euro that wasn't as stuffy as my initial cover-based assessment gave it. Together we built the fictional Kingsbridge Cathedral from Ken Follett's novel of the same name, although the process wasn't free from cutthroat resource battles. With twenty years of board game innovation between its release and the present, does The Pillars of the Earth still stand firm?

The Pillars of the Earth Overview

Over the course of the game, players assemble big, blocky, wooden pieces to form a central cathedral, which serves as a glorified round marker. During that time, they balance the need for employing Craftsmen and utilizing their talents to convert resources into victory points. Whoever has the most victory points at the end of the sixth round wins the game.

After setting up The Pillars of the Earth—which involves a great deal of shuffling and deck-stacking—the game begins in earnest. In the first phase, players use their pool of workers and gold to send laborers out to gather resources or to hire…

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