D.V.C., as wonderful and consistent and quirky a publisher as you’ll find, largely does its own design work. With the exception of 2020’s Rosetta: The Forgotten Language, all of D.V.C.’s games up till now have been credited to house designer Jasper Beatrix. In a just world, Jasper would be unable to walk down the street without being mobbed by fans, but there are two barriers to that: we certainly don’t live in a just world, and Jasper Beatrix doesn’t exist.

Not corporeally, anyway. Good ol’ J.B. is a pseudonym for a loose collective, a merry anarchic band of creatives who work together to make these wonderful games. They’re so prolific, and release games of such high quality, that the announcement of Pacts and the realization that it was not designed by Jasper Beatrix, was quite the surprise. This area-control game for two is the work of Ben Brin, a single corporeal designer.

Well. I assume.

I Pick I Pick You Choose

Pacts is an exemplar of I Split, You Choose, a mechanism whose promise is often let down by…

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SHASN: AZADI is a box full of gimmicks. Those gimmicks are equal parts corny and high-minded, clever and ham-fisted. The area majority mechanism that is used to tally points is, frankly, pedestrian and simplistic. But, in spite of it all, the game is ambitious, and I admire games that are high-minded, even when that highmindedness has flaws.

Hegemony this ain’t

And that’s a good thing. AZADI is trying for something explicitly political—it is about the construction of political blocs more than it is about forcing players to accept the roles and bounds of its simulation. From where I sit, Hegemony: Lead Your Class to Victory’s conception of political economy and class is at best misguided and ignorant. AZADI doesn’t presume to gamify and fragment class struggle, casting players as some fake-o thinktank concept of the “middle class” and the “state.” Instead, players are a political ideologue constructing their own ideology out of what will best get them into the big chair. More on this in a moment.

The way you win AZADI is by forming majorities. In the version that I’m reviewing, you have a modular dual-layered map with holes in it for player pieces. Each map tile has a crosshair hole  (volatile area) and a number reading something like 11/21. Players get points for having majorities, which…

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This is my first review for Meeple Mountain, so by way of introduction let me tell you that tile-placement games are my favorite. Carcassonne was my introduction to modern hobby games, and it's possible this created a soft spot in my heart for the genre. And if a tile-placement game also has a city-building aspect, as in Warsaw: City of Ruins, Neom, or Suburbia? That's a double win. Throw in a puzzle to be solved and wrap it all in a light- to medium-weight game, and you'll almost always have a hit with me, unless the game is mechanically flawed, bug-ugly, or offensive in some manner.

Enter Timber Town from Alley Cat Games. Timber Town is a two-player game where players are beaver architects competing to construct the best (i.e., highest scoring) town on opposite sides of the riverbank. Your eager beaver builders construct town components (in the form of tiles) upstream and then float them down the river for you to collect and place in your town. As the architect, it’s your job to place the tiles in legal and optimal scoring positions.

The trick is, the river is fast moving and components you (or your opponent) don't choose in a timely manner will fall over the waterfall, lost to you forever. This simulation is…

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I didn’t know there was a market for players looking for a dinosaurus skirmish game rich with history…but then the team at Ion Game Design handed me a copy of Dino Dynasty, their 2025 release designed by Ion’s Chief Creative Officer, Jon Manker. About a year prior, Manker had led a small group of media members through a demo of the game, and the most striking part about that walkthrough was the stunning dino art from artist Johan Egerkrans.

The work of Egerkrans, the author/illustrator of the book Dinosaur Dynasties, is the real star and reason to give the game Dino Dynasty a look. The game is an impressively streamlined version of more complex skirmish games, especially compared to some of the more rules-dense wargames I cover here on the site.

But the real question for me is the audience—while we had fun with our plays here, I can’t for the life of me figure out who the target audience is for the product.

This Biome Isn’t Big Enough for the Both of Us

Dino Dynasty is a very snappy “troops on a map” game for 1-6 players. The game’s incredible level of customization starts with the setup: there are more than 20 different playable dinosaur clans, 30 double-sided…

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I enjoyed my time with Corps of Discovery Duo, Joy Cormier and Sen-Foong Lim’s two-player version of Corps of Discovery. Or, at least, I would have told you I enjoyed it. I certainly had a nice time playing this cooperative deduction game for two. But when it came time to write this review, I found I didn’t have much positive to say at all.

It feels unfair, but it also feels right. Prior to writing about Corps, I had been having an excellent day, so I know I wasn’t moody. I even re-read this draft after taking a nice walk. I gave myself a little treat. I hydrated. I took a nap. When I returned, I found that I couldn’t argue with anything I’d written. Corps of Discovery Duo did not work for me in any meaningful sense.

As Lewis, Clark, Sacagawea, or York, two players have to work together to map their way west. In practical terms, this is done by playing cards with one of ten different items on them out onto the table, following both public and hidden rules for each item while doing so.

Here we hit our first bump. Why are we arranging items? Why aren’t…

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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 2025’s The Sandcastles of Burgundy, his 44th game. The Sandcastles of Burgundy (Sandcastles) stands out from all of Stefan Feld’s other designs in two notable ways. Firstly, this is Feld’s first foray into designing a children’s game. Secondly, this is Feld’s first co-design with his wife Susanne who, as an elementary school teacher, brings her professional experience with children to bear, working with Feld to simplify the game down into the experience it is today.

In Sandcastles, a foreign dignitary, Queen Crab, has announced her intention to come visit your kingdom. As a way to show her gratitude for you being such a gracious host, she has sent ahead some beach-themed decorations from her kingdom and has asked that you decorate your village in preparation for a beach party that she plans to throw when she arrives. Sandcastles…

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