Designer David Bernal hasn’t authored many games yet, but two of his first handful had some exceptional ideas built in.

2024’s Koinobori had some nifty ways to jostle for end-game scoring tied to area majorities on a series of flagpoles built using cards. In that same year, Salton Sea arrived and it had my single favorite game mechanic of that year. In Salton Sea, action cards doubled as in-game money, so choosing when to spend cash also meant potentially losing one’s best cards.

But in both of those games, the overall design was just a bit lacking for one reason or another. With Bernal’s newest release, Nijar (a 2026 release from Perro Loko Games that will be published by Devir in the US), the most unique thing about it turned out to be the game’s setting: players run a 1920s pottery workshop, and manage a pool of craftswomen to fire plates, jugs and pots to sell at just the right time to earn points, not cash.

Like other Devir “medium box” productions, Nijar contains a ton of game in a reasonably-sized box. I’m just not sure Nijar is as strong as some of Bernal’s other designs.

Pottery 101

Nijar is a worker placement game for 1-4…

The post Nijar Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Gold Country, the latest Reiner Knizia resurrection from publisher Bitewing Games, looks like it should come with prospector costumes. To pull it off the shelf for the first time is to expect dirt under your nails and spit in your spittoon. It presents as a game for salt of the earth types, for those with a history of good, honest blue collar work.

The reality is quite different. Gold Country’s collar is as white as it gets. This is a stocks game, perfect for the MBA candidate in your life. It’s all about buying low, selling high, and churning out dividends. It’s about shorting the market to your benefit. This humble, enjoyable, forty-minute experience would make a great warm-up, filler, or cool-down for the people in your life who make Excel spreadsheets for 18XX games.

The real miracle is that this is a stock game just about anyone—and I do mean anyone—would be happy to play. It may be the most approachable stock game in the history of the medium.

Mine Every Mountain

The titular gold in that titular country is harvested from four mines, each…

The post Gold Country Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

I’m tailor-made to enjoy “weeknight” 18xx-style economic route building games.

I heaped praise on the game Railways of the Lost Atlas in my 2024 review, with the (at the time) new publisher Asterisk Games doing yeoman’s work with a system some people think of as stodgy, tired, and certainly bland-looking. “ROTLA”, as it is known here at home, is one of the best-looking productions in my collection and comes with a heaping amount of variety thanks to its flexible player count, short and long-form play format, and a hex map that is literally built by the players each time the game hits the table.

If you haven’t heard of Railways of the Lost Atlas, please read my previous review. When the game’s first expansion, Landmarks of the Lost Atlas, was announced, I didn’t even reach out for a review copy…I ponied up the cash to get the expansion along with updated versions of the game’s base rules and a solo mode rulebook, developed after the release of the base game.

If you liked Railways of the Lost Atlas, you have already backed and are working through the goodies in Landmarks of the Lost Atlas. And if you have not tried either, my feelings haven’t changed: for anyone who loves a good Euro and wants to wade into…

The post Railways of the Lost Atlas: Landmarks of the Lost Atlas Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

In the wide world of board game themes and gameplay, ‘Alchemy’ feels like one of the most commonly represented. This might just be my own bias though, as it turns out I have quite a few alchemy focused games in my own collection. From the widely popular Flamecraft to the hit bagbuilder Quacks to marble mayhem favorite Potion Explosion and more, I’d somehow become an accidental alchemy aficionado.

Maybe that’s why when Meeple Mountain was provided with a review copy of Grimbrew from Lucky Omen Studios, I quickly (maybe subconsciously) volunteered to provide a review for it.

Even though Grimbrew thematically has a lot in common with other alchemy themed games, it also separates itself in some unique and interesting ways.

Collect & Brew

As you might have expected, in Grimbrew, two to five players compete to collect the most points by gathering ingredients and brewing potions. Turns are as simple as the premise of the game.

On a player’s turn, they can:

• Take an ingredient from a shared market
• Brew a potion
• Rekindle flames

Active flames are required in order for players to brew potions and refresh the market (more on this in a moment). When taking the ‘rekindle flames’ action, players flip two of their five flame tokens from inactive to active,…

The post GrimBrew Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

From the rules:

“You are a winemaker in the heart of Bordeaux, guiding your vineyard from grape to glass. Every good winemaker knows time itself is an ingredient, and patience is as vital as ambition.

This philosophy shapes every decision you make in Bordeaux. Over 13 years (turns), you will assign Workers to Make Wine or Gain Resources, choosing a duration of 1, 2, or 3 years. Longer commitments mean more powerful actions, but it will take longer for that worker to be ready again.

As your wines mature, you chart a curated wine tour, connecting estates and guiding bottles into restaurants and shops where patrons can taste your craft.

When the final year has passed, your legacy is uncorked. Score points for your wines and resources, and discover which winemaker’s careful timing has produced the most celebrated vintage.”

Bordeaux defies easy categorization. There’s no card flipping, no dice rolling, no bag drawing. There’s just you, your available workers, the thing the game allows you to do, and the thing you or your opponents have decided you’ll have the ability to do. If you’re well-positioned, you may be able to do both. But chances are you’ll have to choose between one or the other. Everything you do is in the pursuit of victory points and, after 13 turns, the…

The post Bordeaux Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

I don’t want to belabor the point here, but I have real questions, like this: does the new game Hacienda (based on the 2004 version of Hacienda by Wolfgang Kramer) want the leopard-looking creatures on offer here to be pumas, or jaguars?

I ask because the rulebook interchangeably uses the terms for both (they are pumas on the manual’s cover description, but jaguars on page four), and technology tells me that the two breeds of cool-looking cats are definitely different. Another theme note: Hacienda’s new theme is tied to building an eco-friendly tourist destination in the hills of Argentina. For the life of me, though, Hacienda feels like a game where I am simply placing clumps of animal tokens on a map to score adjacency bonuses and piles of cute-looking capybara packs.

Hacienda isn’t nearly as complicated as I’m making it out to be. In fact, like other Kramer games—the German legend has, as a lead or co-designer, gifted the world with titles ranging from El Grande to Tikal to Wandering Towers to my all-time favorite Kramer co-design, The Princes of Florence—Hacienda is extraordinarily simple to teach, and his work here with Daryl Andrews (Sagrada) is sleek, with a playtime that might last 30 minutes or less with lower player counts, 45 minutes with the…

The post Hacienda Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Imported from Abroad

It’s nice to see a foreign game company pop its head up, especially when it comes from a country not often represented in the gaming community. Mozaic Games, from India, made its convention debut at Gen Con last year, bringing over numerous titles centered around the country’s rich heritage and culture. The company had sold out of nearly all its inventory by the show’s end, which is outstanding for an indie publisher at such a large convention.

Chai Garam, with its charming art and colorful presence, puts players in a busy mala, or market, running a chai tapri, or tea stand. I always think of the line from Spider-Man: Across the Spider-Verse that goes something like, “Chai is tea. Why would you call it chai tea? It’s just saying tea tea.” Players spend their turns gathering ingredients, serving customers, upgrading their tapris, and completing goals in an effort to reign supreme over the world of chai.

Top Tapri

Players continue taking turns until someone reaches 10 stars at the top of the favor track. On each turn, a player chooses one of two main actions: collect three ingredients from the market or serve customers using tea they have already brewed.

The post Chai Garam Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

“It seemed like a good idea at the time.”

That old adage, often spoken in jest with a hapless shrug of the shoulders, speaks to a day that begins like any other day where one ill-fated decision causes everything to fall apart, a veritable misplaced pebble cascading into an avalanche. That cold, bleak, wintry Sunday morning at the cafe was just such a day.

I’d arrived early to open the cafe for the day and my three employees had shown up soon thereafter. It was a Sunday, so expectations were very low. We typically didn’t get much traffic and, usually, I’d have to start sending people home early to save on labor costs. But, you never know how things are going to go. So, you’ve always got to be prepared.

About an hour after opening, a young man walked in with a camera in one hand and a trophy in the other. Upon stepping to the counter, he asked to speak with me, and the story he told me was so unusual that I will never forget it. His name was Ty and he was a Youtuber with a following in the millions. His passion was traveling to various, random cities, visiting their local establishments, and providing them with exposure on his channel. On this particular day, his mission…

The post Coffee Rush Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.