Welcome to the secret life of bees! Within our global ecosystem, bees play a fundamental role. Flying from one flower to another to gather their priceless nectar, they also pollinate the plants they visit. This simple action ensures the growth of flowers and plants and makes an irreplaceable contribution to keeping the world’s environment healthy. (From the rulebook.)

I love bees. And I will forever defend them — especially when a wasp goes about sullying a bee’s reputation by masquerading as one. On more than one occasion I have entered into a heated discussion about the differences between bees and wasps and how one shouldn’t assume an annoying pest buzzing around one’s head is a bee. (Recently I was even reading a book and in it the narrator mentioned how bees were bothering them and I grumbled aloud to myself, “they probably weren’t bees, but wasps.”) So it’s safe to say I feel very passionately about bees…don’t say I didn’t warn you.

Beez is the…

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Ingenious is an abstract tile placement game designed by the prolific Reiner Knizia that was first published in 2004 and has, for the most part, remained in print since then*. In true Knizia fashion, Ingenious is an easy game to learn, but a difficult one to master.

*You might know the game Ingenious by another name, Axio. There is a whole bunch of legal trademark stuff that happened in recent years which I’m not going to get into in this review as my copy of the game came from KOSMOS.

Let’s take a look at how Ingenious is played.

[caption id="attachment_23652" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] A two-player game of Ingenious set up. Note since this is a two-player game only the white spaces of the board are used.[/caption]

Ingenious Gameplay

To begin, players start a game of Ingenious with six randomly drawn tiles on their rack (think Scrabble). On your turn, you’ll play one of these tiles to an empty space on the board, possibly score some points, and draw a new tile from the bag. It’s really as simple as that. What makes Ingenious an extra clever game is how tiles are scored.

But first, let’s discuss placing a tile on the…

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Qwinto, an official Spiel des Jahres recommended game and the spiritual successor to Qwixx, is a quick-playing, abstract roll and write game. If you’ve played Qwixx before, some of the mechanisms in Qwinto will feel familiar, but there is certainly more depth to Qwinto than its predecessor.

In the game, the active player rolls between 1 and 3 coloured dice. Then they will have the chance to write the result somewhere on their scoresheet. The other players may also write the value rolled on their sheet. All of this is done with the goal of writing the most numbers in all 3 rows. While the gameplay sounds simple in theory, the way rows and columns are scored, along with the decisions you must make as the active player, make Qwinto qwite the tricky game. (Sorry, I couldn’t resist.)

Let’s take a few minutes to dive deeper into how a game of Qwinto is played.

[caption id="attachment_25678" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Each player gets their own scoresheet and a pencil. (For some reason, the rules explicitly give players permission to share a pencil if necessary.)[/caption]

How to Play Qwinto

Qwinto is one of those roll and write games where every player is always engaged.…

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Publisher Scorpion Masqué is no stranger to the party game scene: their 2018 hit Decrypto ranks #1 amongst party games on BGG and their early 2020 release Stay Cool continues to sit on my list of top 10 favourite games of 2020. Their most recent party game, Master Word, takes some of the word-based deduction from Decrypto and the real-time speed crunch in Stay Cool, and blends it into an exciting cooperative game smoothie that plays relatively quickly — and works wonderfully over webcam.

In Master Word — a game for 3 to 6 people — players are working cooperatively to uncover a ‘master word.’ One player acts as the Guide (who knows what the master word is) while the other players are Seekers, who use clues to zero in on the secret word. Each round, the Seekers write down a number of clues then the Guide indicates how many clues are ‘good’ (read: on the right track). All players — Guide and Seekers alike — win the game if they’re able to deduce the master word by the end of 7 rounds. There are, however, a few ways in which players can lose, but before I get into those let me explain how Master Word is played.

[caption id="attachment_43730"…

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Webster’s Dictionary defines duple [doo-puhl] as having two elements. Duple, from the same publisher as Anomia, is a party game in which players must quickly turn two letters into a word that fits the round’s category. Duple plays very similarly to Anomia so if you’re already familiar with how it plays, then skip ahead to the Differences between Anomia and Duple section. For the rest of you fine readers, continue reading to learn how to play Duple.

How To Play Duple

To play a game of Duple, first begin by shuffling the orange Letter Cards with the Wild Cards, placing this deck of cards facedown. Then shuffle the yellow Category Cards (making sure the four All Play Cards are spread out in the deck) and place this deck faceup next to the Letter Cards.

[caption id="attachment_21868" align="aligncenter" width="730"] A game of Duple is easy to set up.[/caption]

A player begins their turn by drawing an orange Letter Card from the deck and placing it faceup in front of them. A player will only ever have one faceup card visible in front of them at a time so cards drawn on future turns are placed on top of their previous card, which forms their Play Pile.

[caption id="attachment_21867" align="aligncenter" width="730"]

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Demeter is a card-based roll and write game (or a “flip and fill” like Welcome To… or Ripple Rush) from publisher Sorry We Are French that follows the theme of their 2018 release, Ganymede. If you’re familiar with Ganymede, you’ll notice the artwork and graphic design are similar, but you don’t have to play one to jump in and understand the other.

In Demeter, the goal is to score the most points, but the route and strategy taken to achieve this will vary from player-to-player and from game-to-game depending on the cards drawn and the objectives in play.

Assembling your Expedition Team - Setup

Normally I don’t go into setup details in my reviews, but for Demeter there are a few things I’d like to point out.

[caption id="attachment_24531" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] A game of Demeter set up for one player. Each player gets a Scoresheet that they’ll…

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In 1986, long before it made its way across the pond to North America, Heimlich & Co. won the Spiel des Jahres award. Since then it has continued to be a staple among board gamers getting into the hobby, especially as a way to introduce children to this wonderful world. (In fact, Meeple Mountain’s own Kathleen Hartin didn’t love Monopoly or Sorry! as a child; her favourite game was Heimlich & Co.)

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They say you can tell a lot about a person from their game collection. No? Is that not a thing? Well here at Meeple Mountain we believe this to be true anyway. Get to know the Meeple Mountain team a little better as we invite you into each of our homes to peek at our collections.

[avatar user="agariepy" size="thumbnail" align="left" /]

Ashley Gariepy

My game collection, much like my other hobbies (music and sports), is varied. As such, I organize my collection primarily based on available space. Sure I’ve grouped some publishers and designers together, and maybe I have dedicated roll-and-write and two-player only shelves, but all that is mostly because it made sense spatially.

[caption id="attachment_25895" align="aligncenter" width="1024"] Part one of my collection.[/caption]

The smaller of my two Kallax shelves I look at more regularly than my larger one and so I put the games I love most there: my Ticket to Ride collection, my current favourite games to play, and my slew of completed Exit games — which I keep because they remind me of how much fun I had playing them. (Besides, if I hadn’t kept them then I would have never been able to write my Exit: The Game mega review.)

[caption id="attachment_25896"…

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Ordered gardens bloom

Blossom flutters in the draft

Water’s hidden worth

- Haiku by Meeple Mountain’s own Andrew Holmes*

Hanami (or ‘flower viewing’) is the traditional Japanese “custom of enjoying the transient beauty of flowers” (‘hana’). In most cases the flowers refer to those of the cherry blossom (‘sakura’). This custom involves more than simply looking at the flowers; hanami is celebrated by having an outdoor party beneath the blossoming trees, marking the beginning of spring. Because hanami is so important, an ‘o’ is often added before ‘hanami’ as a sign of politeness and respect.

Ohanami is a game for two to four players in which each player works to grow up to three personal gardens through card drafting. Each garden is represented by a column and a player may only add cards to a column on either end of it (the top or the bottom). Cards in a column must always be in numerical order so the number on a card determines where it could be placed. The colour of a card determines how the card scores at the end of the round.

Flower, Bird, Wind, Moon - How to Play Ohanami

To begin a game of…

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In this review only components from the Tutorial will be shown, although any potential spoilers will be hidden in a collapsible window with a Spoiler alert on it. In all other ways, this review is spoiler-free.

C'est la cité sur toutes couronnée,
Fonteine et puis de sens et de clergie,
Sur le fleuve de Saine située :
Vignes, bois a, terres et praerie.
De touz les biens de ceste mortel vie
     A plus qu'autres citez n'ont;
Tuit estrangier l'aiment et ameront,
Car, pour deduits et pour estre jolis,
Jamais cité tele ne trouveront :
Riens ne se puet comparer à Paris.

- Excerpt from the poem Quant j'ay la terre et mer avironnée by Eustache Deschamps (1346-1406)

Riens ne se puet comparer à Paris. Nothing can compare to Paris. In the 21st century, these words perfectly describe how I feel about the city; there is no place in the world that compares to it. That said, I’m not sure I would still feel this way if I travelled back in time to the 1400 Medieval Paris that Deschamps describes. The church bells ringing incessantly to mark the various calls to prayer throughout the day,…

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When was the last time you really thought about all that goes into making a nice hot cup of coffee…and no, I don’t just mean your effort to grind the beans or heat the water. In Coffee Roaster you’ll first roast your beans before brewing that perfect cup of liquid energy with (hopefully) all the right flavour notes.

Coffee Roaster is a bag-building game with a push-your-luck element that is a strictly solo experience. The game is played over two phases: Roasting and Cup-testing. During the Roasting phase, you build your bag by doing things like increasing the roasting temperature, roasting beans, adding flavour notes, and removing negative elements — like smoke, defective beans, and moisture — that could taint your cup of joe. You’ll continue to perform the steps of the Roasting phase until you are satisfied with the bag of tokens you’ve accumulated — and are confident in your ability to brew the most delightful (high-scoring) cup of coffee. At that point, you move into the Cup-testing phase where you draw ingredients from your bag to “brew” a cup of coffee and see how well you’ve scored.

[caption id="attachment_23671" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] A standard game of Coffee Roaster set up. Each game uses…

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Thebes is a game for 2 to 4 players in which players act as archaeologists in the early 1900s traveling around Europe and building up their knowledge for upcoming excavation expeditions. When they feel prepared to lead an expedition, a player will travel to an excavation site in Greece, Egypt, Crete, Mesopotamia, or Palestine and begin their dig, searching for valuable artifacts that will then score them points. Additional points can be earned if a player puts on exhibitions of these artifacts later in the game.

[caption id="attachment_23263" align="aligncenter" width="1920"] A game of Thebes set up for 2 players. Don’t let the many shades of brown, yellow, and green…

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Chronicles of Crime: Noir expands the app-driven 2018 hit with four new scenarios, new components, and a new theme. Dust off your fedora, throw on your trench coat, and don’t forget to take a jorum of skee as you jump into the role of a private detective in post-WWII Hollywood and Los Angeles.

This review assumes the reader is familiar with the Chronicles of Crime base game and only dives into what the Noir expansion introduces to its gameplay. If you’re unfamiliar with Chronicles of Crime, check out our preview to learn how the game works.

[caption id="attachment_20255" align="aligncenter" width="730"] Many components from Noir (shown with the hat icon) replace the components in the base game. However, you still need the Evidence Category cards, Evidence board, and Special Item cards from Chronicles of Crime. The app is also required to play.[/caption]

Chronicles of Crime: Noir Gameplay

In Chronicles of Crime: Noir, you’re playing a private detective so you don’t work for any police department (unlike in the base game). Unfortunately this means you don’t have the same access to field and medical specialists like you do in Chronicles of Crime. In some Noir scenarios, you might have allies…

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