My friend Joe and I share an interest in logistics games that feature planetary rotation. I’m not sure exactly why he’s into it, but I like it for the interesting questions that emerge from having to plot movement in two dimensions: distance and time.

Plutocracy got me excited because it puts landing on moving planets front and center. Unfortunately, while many of the mechanisms within the game are clever, the process of playing the game is frustratingly obvious. It puts you in the unenviable position of both having to do a significant amount of analysis and then discover that the analysis you did wasn’t really worth it.

As the world(s) turn

The object of Plutocracy is to turn money into majority points. You fly your ship around a truncated map of the solar system (sans Mercury, Venus, and if you’re not a hater, Pluto) buying and selling various goods. Each planet buys one type of good and sells one type of good. When you buy, supply price goes up 1, when you sell, demand price goes down 1. The objective is to buy low and sell high, and also land on planets where you can turn money into planetary council seats, which gain you points in the “Plutocratic Council” when scoring happens 3 times during the game.

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Unmatched is a modern classic. Unmatched, you might say, in the genre of miniature combat games. Accessible rules, punchy fights, card art that turns heads. It’s fun, especially for those of us who don’t generally enjoy player-versus-player miniature fighting games.

And then there’s Unmatched Adventures, a cooperative take on the system. The best of both worlds: all the fun of combat but working together to defeat a common enemy.

A lazy design studio might simply have created automated opponents and left it at that. Restoration Games is not a lazy design studio. Yes, the bulk of the game is indeed an automated boss and its minions fighting the players until one side is defeated. But the team pushed beyond that basic experience, adding little pressure points that influence how you approach defeating the big baddie.

A downside is that each villain is restricted to its own scenario, tied to a specific board and rules additions. You can’t mix-and-match villains in the same way as you can with the heroes. Mothman always tries to destroy the bridges of Point Pleasant, presumably to cause transportation chaos and highlight America’s overreliance on the automobile. Meanwhile, the Martian Invader is exclusively focussed on dropping aliens into the cornfields of McMinnville…

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Thunder Road: Ignition is Restoration Games’ attempt to streamline the production, ruleset, and gameplay of Thunder Road: Vendetta, itself an update of the 1980s Milton Bradley game Thunder Road, designed by Jim Keifer.

I’m on record here at Meeple Mountain as saying that Thunder Road: Vendetta is perfect in every single way save for one: the game runs about 30 minutes too long, and it does that pretty consistently regardless of player count. It’s gorgeous, it’s hilarious, it is a great design, and it has almost unlimited amounts of content in its deluxe Maximum Chrome version. Between that version, and the expansion Carnival of Chaos, there might not be a better “beer and pretzels” laugher in my collection.

When Thunder Road: Ignition arrived, I immediately set it up and waited for my nine-year-old to come home. He’s loved Thunder Road: Vendetta for a couple years now, and I was sure he would want to play Thunder Road: Ignition. He saw the cover artwork (once again brought to you by Marie Bergeron) and smiled that big smile. He was home. Then he asked a simple question, which I think defines the break point of where we landed on Thunder Road: Ignition.

“Where are the choppers?”

Son, There…

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I sit down to write this review with two questions on my mind: first, are twelve cards worth a full review? And second, with a game as near-perfect as Castle Combo, are twelve extra cards worth the risk? I’m going to assume the first one is a yes. As for the second, maybe.  

By the way, if you don’t know Castle Combo, check out our review before moving on. 

Where’s the bubble gum in this thing?

This pack of a dozen cards adds six cards each to the Village and the Castle. Along with new characters to make you smile, these cards introduce mechanical twists and a few delayed effects. 

The delay is marked by a (free!) key that is either turned in to unlock the ability or retained for endgame scoring. Whether the cards are resetting the market (with perks) or raining blessings on the current tableau, they are in high demand as soon as they appear. As far as I can see, this will be the big knock on Oubliette, an extension of one of the few legitimate gripes with Castle Combo: when player experience depends on managing cards as they are randomly revealed, some will cry foul if their opponent is fed consistent opportunities with some of these doozies. 

As for the new mechanical twists,…

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Hello and welcome to ‘Focused on Feld’. In this series of reviews, I am working my way through Stefan Feld’s entire catalogue. Over the years, I have hunted down and collected every title he has ever put out. Needless to say, I’m a fan of his work. I’m such a fan, in fact, that when I noticed there were no active Stefan Feld fan groups on Facebook, I created one of my own.

Today we’re going to talk about 2007’s Notre Dame, his third game. Following the release of Rum & Pirates the year before, this was Stefan Feld’s second game to appear in Alea’s big box series. Even though the game was released in the same year as In the Year of the Dragon, I’m calling this his third game because, numerically, Notre Dame comes before In the Year of the Dragon in the series (numbers 11 and 12, respectively).

In Notre Dame, players take on the roles of noble families in the city of Paris at the end of the 14th century as they vie to become the most prestigious family in the city. Each player begins the game with their own borough, a board which is divided into seven different sectors, and is connected to a central tile which represents the Notre Dame…

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It was easily the most shocking designer news I heard at last year’s SPIEL Essen event.

The designers of Devir’s new hidden role game, Berlin 1960—complete with cover art that made it look like a movie thriller combined with a wargame—were Flaminia Brasini & Virginio Gigli, co-designers of modern classics such as Coimbra and Lorenzo il Magnifico, some of the best medium-weight Euros of the last 20 years.

“The Lorenzo folks did a hidden role game?” I thought when I heard the overview. “This might be the biggest surprise of 2026!”

Berlin 1960 arrived at my house a few weeks ago, and I waited patiently for a game night when I had enough players to get a play rolling. That is a key component of this review…because the more players you can find, the better your experience will be. I’d frame it this way: Berlin 1960 is an eight-player game with variants that accommodate 4-7 players.

You should play this game at its maximum player count of eight…and, you should not play it with many less.

Gunshot Wound

Berlin 1960 is a hidden role game for 4-8 players. Players are individually assigned a role as a spymaster for either the KGB or the CIA, so…

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Here at Meeple Mountain there’s a spectrum of opinion on the merits of Restoration Games’ Unmatched. I lean towards the positive. Partly because of the system’s easy rules, snappy fights and gorgeous production. It’s a hard game to hate.

But I’m also the ideal audience for Unmatched. I don’t play player-versus-player fighting games, as a rule. It’s the head-to-head combative nature of them; it’s just not my jam. Sure, I’ll happily block your perambulation in Tokaido, cut you off in Through the Desert and strand as many of your meeple as possible in Carcassonne. I can be ruthless as I claw towards victory, but that victory isn’t dependent on you being eliminated, just inconvenienced. Perhaps it’s less honourable than looking you square in the eyes as I punch you in the face, but a game where the entire point is to whittle you down to zero health does not my boat float.

Unmatched is the exception. With its sleek rules and sharp turns, I don’t have to invest much energy into engaging with a genre that doesn’t thrill me. The stakes are lower, which conversely means I’m more invested in enjoying the experience itself. And there’s a lot to enjoy.

Unmatched: The Witcher – Realms Fall and Steel & Silver Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Over time, trends will shift in our glorious hobby. Take 2016 and the types of games hitting the table as an example. Arkham Horror was into its stride, a tense world of monsters and madness that only those who play vinyl backwards would feel cozy in. Terraforming Mars rocketed up the charts (sorry), but proved to be a challenging learn/teach, and not exactly an accessible entry to the hobby. Scythe, arguably the least conflict-heavy of these, presented a relatively grim 1920’s Europe of mechs and worker placement that was unlikely to feature in your dream holiday destinations. Excellent games? Yes. Worlds you’d want to live in? Maybe not.

Now, what are we playing today? Thick, tactile cardboard hexagons displaying sweeping rivers and lush forests cover the table. Someone pulls a screen-printed wooden token of a red panda out of a velvet bag. Instead of grim orcs or space marines, whimsical witches fly across the board on brooms as they make deliveries, or cozy pirates host high teas with fine silverware. Across from you, a player sighs with satisfaction as they tuck a beautifully illustrated card of a Cedar Waxwing underneath their player board. There is competition, sure - someone took the bear token you wanted three turns ago - but nobody is angry. We are chill.

…

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Here at Meeple Mountain, we’ve written a lot about Wingspan. Since its inception in 2019, Elizabeth Hargrave’s Spiel des Jahres winning masterpiece has inspired and captured the hearts of gamers worldwide. I’m not going to go into detail about how to play the game here. If you’re unfamiliar with Wingspan, then I suggest you familiarize yourself with the base game before reading any further.

It’s been four years since the Wingspan: Asia expansion (2022) was released. Unlike that expansion, the subject of this review, Wingspan: Americas is not a standalone expansion. To play Wingspan: Americas, you must have the base game or the Wingspan: Asia expansion in order to do so.

Something Old

Americas introduces a whole host of new birds, each featuring new and interesting abilities. A couple of standouts for me are the White-Throated Magpie-Jay which lets you tuck cards behind its neighbours, replacing the tucked cards with newly drawn ones, or the Firewood-Gatherer which steals eggs from other birds in your tableau and dispenses eggs of its own to other birds in your tableau.

A user on BoardGameGeek has compiled a list of all the new birds and their abilities that you can go check out if you’re interested. Many of these…

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When it comes to modern board gaming, there is no denying the impact that The Settlers of Catan (now just Catan)has had on the hobby, bringing the ideology of modern game design to players around the world in a format that’s approachable, digestible, and easy to learn. While not a perfect game by any means, it’s a game that’s launched an empire. And now, that empire is going portable.

Now, this isn’t Catan’s first foray into portability. 1996 saw the introduction of Catan: the Card Game, a small box, two-player version of the game. In 2002, the Catan: Portable Edition was released, a tiny plastic version of the base game. Then, in 2010, Rivals for Catan was released, another small box, two-player game based in the Catan universe. Each of these has its issues. Aside from the fact that the two-player games are only for two players, once the games are in progress, they turn into sprawling behemoths that take up almost as much (if not more) space than the board game they’re replacing. As for the Portable Edition, when I say it’s tiny, I’m not mincing words. The cards are miniature versions of the already small cards from the regular game. The plastic road pieces are about as long as the average thumbnail is wide.

When I…

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Alliterations with F

There's a short list of board game designers whose names alone will make me flip over a box. Joseph Z. Chen and Randy Flynn are firmly on it, largely on the strength of Fantastic Factories. It's that rare engine-builder I can hand to absolute beginners and watch them fall in love with, striking a perfect balance between easy-to-learn rules and deep strategic crunch.

So when their names turned up on a game called Frenzy Falls, I was curious before I'd read a single rule. A card game about waterfalls, about pools filling up past where they're supposed to? Sure, why not. I've been talked into stranger premises than that.

[caption id="attachment_332196" align="aligncenter" width="1000"] Photo from USAopoly[/caption]

Slip-n-Slide

Published by The Op, Frenzy Falls seats two to six players around a row of Pools, each one anchored by a Score card showing a water value and a point value. On your turn, you slide a card face-down into whichever Pool you like, trying to control exactly when it tips over. Once a Pool's water total reaches ten, it spills. Whoever's stacked the most influence icons there takes the Score card, and whoever's holding the most points when the cards run out wins the game.

What you can't account…

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Canvas - K. David Ladage

My colleague, Bob Pazehoski, wrote a review of Canvas back at the start of 2023. His assessment was that the game was midline: not bad, not great, just sort of there (3 stars). My friend Steve came up over a weekend and introduced it to my wife and I. We both thought it was gorgeous, fun, and engaging. If you want a good overview of the mechanics, please read Mr. Pazehoski’s review. But check it out for yourself! 

The table presence of the updated board from one of the expansions is amazing (sorry, this was Steve’s copy and I do not know which expansion did what to this game). The added depth of the Signature Style cards (also added in an expansion) is amazing, while not increasing the game’s difficulty. And the mechanics of creating the perfect painting are exquisite.

In the games we played, all of us would spend time reminding ourselves that the paint swatches at the bottom of each card were the game element, not the beautiful painting elements. I had to force myself to put in a piece of art which scored more points, but which did not meet my own aesthetics a couple of times. In the end, all of my paintings,…

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Yeah…we’re back on track.

After a so-so run with Masters of Crime: Incognito—the fourth game in the KOSMOS one-shot mystery game series—I waited a few months before attacking the fifth game, Masters of Crime: Mosquito. My wife and I carved out a Friday night, grabbed a laptop, and sent the kids off to bed early. Would Masters of Crime continue a downward trend with Mosquito, or would the road to recovery be lined with gold?

I’m happy to report—so, so happy to report—that Masters of Crime: Mosquito sits comfortably alongside the other three exceptional MoC titles, Vendetta, Rapture, and Shadows. And, like Shadows, Mosquito has an ace up its sleeve, by serving as both a murder mystery AND an adventure game by extending into two solid halves that features plenty of puzzles in a wide range of difficulties alongside a story that riffs on many great films of the last 30-40 years.

KOSMOS now sells all five of these titles as a five-pack. While Incognito is a bump in the road, it’s still worth buying all five of these titles at once if you are new to the series. Masters of Crime is the best one-shot cooperative mystery series on the market.

I’ll share a few thoughts below in this spoiler-free review.

Masters of Crime: Mosquito Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Hidden movement games occupy a strange corner of the tabletop world. Compared to juggernauts like deckbuilding, worker placement, and engine building, the genre feels like it has been locked in the crypt, occasionally rattling the door to remind everyone it still exists.

Nuns on the Run is a perfect example of that. Originally released in 2010, the game flipped the typical hidden movement structure on its head. Instead of many players hunting one, a single player searches for several invisible ones. Throw in a genuinely charming religious theme that somehow manages to poke fun without punching down, and you have something worth paying attention to.

The Lord’s Work This is Not

Our story starts with life in the abbey not going quite as planned. Most players are novice nuns who have very clearly not yet grasped what life in the cloth actually demands of them. Locked away somewhere in the abbey is a relic of their former life: a love letter, a bottle of booze, a box of cookies. The goal is simple: sneak out of bed, grab the key, retrieve their precious contraband, and make it back before anyone notices they are gone.

Standing between the novices and their contraband are the two nun pieces, both controlled by…

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Ever since I slept on Bestiary of Sigillum: Collector’s Edition a couple years ago, I decided that CrowD Games should be closer to the top of my list of favorite publishers. As a result, I’ve spent a lot of time with their catalog over the last two years, playing through every single game the team at CrowD would send my way.

With very limited exceptions, CrowD has always delivered the goods…and with the recent fulfillment of the medium weight strategy title Nippon: Zaibatsu (based on the 2015 game Nippon), I’m ready to shout it to the masses: people should be following CrowD’s every move.

About a year ago (around the time that the original Zaibatsu campaign went up on crowdfunding platforms), I began playing Nippon on Board Game Arena, mainly to see if this was the kind of game I wanted to back when the campaign for Nippon: Zaibatsu went live. I liked what I saw out of the 2015 original, enough to put down some money for a copy of Zaibatsu.

Then, life punched me in the gut. I was laid off from my full-time job, and I shut down any talk of backing not only this game, but buying any board games for a few…

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Nippon: Zaibatsu—2026’s updated version of the 2015 original, Nippon—is so hot in my gaming circles that I had the chance to play the base game three times over the course of a week, and it seemed like the game was popping up at game nights all over Chicago for the first couple months after it hit the market.

After drafting my initial review of the game, I learned that the game’s first expansion, Nippon: Genro, is hitting crowdfunding in late June of this year. A couple prototypes were floating around the US, so I reached out to CrowD Games to see if I could grab a pre-production copy to play for about a week, and I’m excited to share that CrowD obliged.

Nippon: Zaibatsu is a relatively easy game to learn, but it is a very difficult game to play well. By that, I mean that the game’s high volume of timing decisions make for a tricky gaming affair, and I’m surprised how often I had a plan to get all my ducks in a row during each play only to have an opponent snipe end-game turn order, or mid-game area control elements, or the perfect worker color for my consolidation plans just before I could.

Nippon: Zaibatsu may come across as a cutthroat area majority experience. Moving…

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From the rulesheet: “A curse has cast a shadow over the valley, causing the inhabitants to run from the villages and the animals to flee their nests. From the top of a ridge, a mysterious creature named Buh has noticed the desolation and decided to bring the light back. As they stroll through the valley, Buh uses their magic to seek out and restore the light. As darkness recedes, wildlife and the village’s inhabitants begin to return and revel in the sun’s life-giving warmth once again.”

Light Seeker is a two-player strategy game composed of 9 wooden cubes and a single meeple, called the ‘Buh meeple’ (which sort of resembles a cartoon badger). Each wooden cube has a number of dark sides, bright sides, and a couple of half-bright/half-dark sides. At the start of the game, the cubes are arranged into a 3x3 grid, dark sides up. The Buh meeple is placed atop the centermost cube.

On a player’s turn, they will be performing two actions from a list of two possible action types. The same action can be repeated if the player wishes. The two possible actions are ‘slide cube’ or ‘tilt cube’. Sliding involves moving a cube from its current spot to an orthogonally adjacent location without…

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Buy Trinket Trove from Amazon

When compared to big box games, it can be easy for avid gamers to overlook games that come in a small box. Fewer components, a thinner rulebook, and smaller table presence often leads to a lighter game, which can be seen as a negative by gamers who have large collections consisting of heavier games.

Thankfully, more and more small box games are offering increasingly varied, complex, and strategic experiences that are making them more appealing to gamers that traditionally look past them.

Trinket Trove, a ‘thinky’ bidding, set collection, and drafting game for 2-6 players from Rocco Privatera, Paul Solomon, and publisher Gamehead, makes a strong argument for the ‘small box, big game’ crowd.

Bidding For Your Burrow

In Trinket Trove, players collect various trinkets across 13 types, attempting to collect sets of different types to add to their character’s ‘burrow’ and earn points before the end of the game. Trinkets are collected and sets are built through the bidding and drafting process that makes up the core loop of the game.

Each round, players bid on available lots (groups of one or more trinkets), following the bidding order of the previous round (in the first round of the game, it’s randomized) to determine…

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