Vampire: The Masquerade is a venerable series. Beginning with the Vampire: The Masquerade tabletop roleplaying game in 1991 as part of the wider World of Darkness setting, Vampire has grown to encompass numerous video games, RPGs, and now board games like Vampire: The Masquerade – Rivals. In the RPGs of Vampire: The Masquerade, players enter a detailed modern world of secret vampire societies, ancient clans, and The Masquerade, a set of rules passed down for generations to ensure the secrecy of vampirism across the globe.

Vampire: The Masquerade Heritage is an interesting addition to this universe. As a stand-alone experience, a game of Heritage involves players taking control of a singular clan with unique missions and actions. Players then attempt to simultaneously earn prestige by winning control over three small boards and completing the overall objectives listed at the top of the main board. To do this, players must acquire vampires with diverse skills and traits, and use them to enact plots.

The main mechanic to accomplish these goals is through the game’s tableau builder. A row of potential new vampires awaits below the game’s overall objectives, each with their own set of traits and a key skill. Traits include home region, disposition, and whether they are high or low born. Skills come in broad flavours like economy,…

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Jinja is a nice little worker placement game from Wizkids about constructing Shinto shrines across a mythical medieval Japan. The artwork is pretty, the board starts bare and eventually grows into a sea of different coloured shrines, and there is enough mechanical depth to make Jinja enjoyable on repeat plays. But is that enough to stand out in the crowded world of Worker Placement games?

Jinja sees players placing workers across Japan and on specific work tiles to gather resources in order to build shrines. Shrine construction is based on specific locations and a specific assortment of resources. Players need to be quick though, as there are very few open spaces in each region to accommodate new shrines, and particularly in large games the competition for resources, space on the worker tracks, and space on the board, will quickly become the core drive of the game. More often than not, turns will become exercises in minimizing damage and planning for the future.

Achieving Victory in Jinja

At the start of the game, players draw a random hand of victory conditions. These can range in difficulty and value from owning a certain size shrine in a certain area, to owning multiple shrines across multiple areas or owning…

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How does Dwarf Play?

Dwarf is a card-based worker placement game with some interesting mechanics at play. The mountain is a set of nine cards arranged in a three-by-three grid with three small decks of special actions below it. Each card in the mountain grid has an action listed on it, like mine three iron, or smelt iron into steel. At the start of each turn, two new cards are drawn from the mountain deck and placed…

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A mechanical sequel to 2018’s Lincoln, Struggle For Europe takes a simple mechanical idea, the use of a changing deck of action cards, unique to each side, and applies it to an area control wargame. The promise of a concise grand strategic game of WWII’s European theatre for two players using such innovative mechanics seemed too good to be true. I had to check it out. I’m glad I did, because I think I’ve found one of my new favorite wargames. And I like a lot of wargames.

How to Conquer Europe in Two Hours

Players take control of…

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There are some battles throughout history that stand out because of the sheer desperation of the Situation. Pavlov’s House is one of them. Part of the horrendous Battle of Stalingrad, Pavlov’s House was a four-storey apartment building that happened to overlook the key “9th January” Square. When the building was initially occupied and fortified by Yakov Pavlov, a sergeant of the 42nd Guards Regiment, and his platoon, they were ordered to hold the position at all costs. What followed were weeks of desperate siege, with German forces continually attempting to seize the fortified structure while the Soviet Army trickled supplies and reinforcements into the building. Eventually, after weeks of fighting, a full counterattack brought Pavlov’s house within control of the Soviet Army. They had made it. But will you?

Mechanically Fascinating Solitaire Gameplay

Pavlov’s House is a digital adaptation of the first game in David Thompson’s solitaire wargame series dealing with desperate defenses. In Pavlov’s House, players control command elements of the 62nd Soviet Army as they attempt to keep hold and then eventually relieve the key apartment block. This takes place over a series of rounds in which different decks of cards…

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When it comes to wargames, there are tons of factors that help place a game amongst its competition. It can certainly be hard for boardgamers to get into wargaming. What is the scale? What do units represent? Is this aiming to be a simulation, a war-themed game? What about the complexity, the amount of ‘chrome’ that adds minutia to increase the perceived realism of a game’s approach to a certain conflict? Some games revel in their complexity, others try their hardest to remove obstacles while retaining a feeling of authenticity. And then there’s Memoir ’44.

Memoir ’44, to me, feels like it shouldn’t work as a conflict simulation. The scale varies from scenario to scenario. At one time it encompassed the entirety of Omaha Beach, another the glider troop action at Pegasus Bridge, and another the Liberation of Paris. Its units, represented by figures of infantry, tanks, or artillery, can represent squads of commandos, companies of infantry, and every kind of tracked vehicle on the western front. It’s a simple game with simple mechanics, but it somehow manages to convey some of the most important aspects of 20th century warfare in 20-40 minute intervals. There is certainly a (massive) level of abstraction present in any scenario in Memoir ’44 but play…

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Board games are an awesome way of peering into another way of living. Even if it is gamified and abstracted, for a brief time sitting around the table everyone can don the farmer’s hat, the scientist’s lab coat, or the Monarch’s crown. Now with Devious Weasel’s latest release, you too can finally experience what it is like to be a two-mile tall, immortal frog-like creature that exists solely to gather the fragments from the Shards of Aeth, a shattered world. Or am I the only one with those fever dreams?

Descend From the Cosmic Sea Between Worlds and Get Eating

Cosmic Frog: World Eaters from Dimension Zero is a game of tile collection, combat, and theft, in which players take control of the titular amphibians and hop across the shattered remains of a planet, gobbling up diverse types of terrain in order to create the seeds of a new world. It’s not that simple though: the gods are mischievous and have each selected a champion frog to fulfill their wishes. So while you’re bounding about eating mountains and forests, you’ll have to watch your back. Your fellow world-eaters have no qualms about reaching into your gullet…

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War Room is an experience.

It’s a board game yes, but as a package it is so much more. It’s a social endeavour. It’s an all-day event. It’s plotting and planning with friends and acquaintances, poring over maps and comparing orders. It’s buying pizza for lunch, takeout wings for dinner, and having snacks on hand all day . It’s rolling buckets of dice and laughing at the absurd outcomes. It’s not the most strategic game of the Second World War that I’ve played, but it may be one of the grandest, the flashiest, and the most entertaining things I’ve managed to cram onto my table in a long, long time.

War Room, from the legendary designer of Axis and Allies, Larry Harris, is a grand strategic game of WWII combat for two to six players. Taking ample inspiration from Axis and Allies as well as Diplomacy, then mixing in some innovations in player engagement and a massive board chock full of components, War Room succeeds in blowing most of its similarly-sized competitors out of the proverbial chilly Atlantic Waters. It’s not a perfect experience, but the joy of getting to play a full game of War Room with a group of interested players is well worth any hiccups.

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]]> https://www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/war-room/feed/ 0 https://www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/all-bridges-burning-game-review/ https://www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/all-bridges-burning-game-review/#respond Thu, 27 May 2021 13:00:56 +0000 https://www.meeplemountain.com/?post_type=reviews&p=219038

Wargames generally take terrible situations and lay them out on the table for players to engage with. Sometimes these terrible situations, the pitting of person against person in bloody violence on a grand scale, is presented abstractly. Counters representing hundreds of soldiers occupy hexagons representing kilometers, and hours or days of violent conflict are represented with the roll of a die and the flip of a counter. There’s nothing wrong with these types of games. In fact, I think they’re excellent ways of demonstrating the complexity of human conflict in a manageable and understandable way.

After playing, engaging with, and enjoying a good wargame, it is hard to believe that a player could not say they know more about the conflict presented than beforehand (or at least the designer’s interpretation of that conflict, but that is another article altogether). Yet for how much I enjoy wargames for their ability to educate, to prompt reflection, and of course as a test of strategic or tactical thinking, there are times when I wish the more unpleasant side of what is represented is actually part of the design and therefore clear for all to see.

Enter the COIN series, COIN here referring to Counterinsurgency. Designed originally by Volko Ruhnke in 2012 with Andean Abyss: Insurgency…

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]]> https://www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/all-bridges-burning-game-review/feed/ 0 https://www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/eight-minute-empire/ https://www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/eight-minute-empire/#respond Mon, 10 May 2021 13:00:17 +0000 https://www.meeplemountain.com/?post_type=reviews&p=216119

Eight Minute Empire: Legends is almost right on the money. My wife and I played a series of rounds challenging the game to live up to its name, and while we never quite dipped to eight minutes, we had an absolute blast putting the game through its paces. Using area control mechanics with tableau building elements, Eight Minute Empire: Legends tasks 2 to 4 players with expanding their control over a configuration of fantasy islands while settling cities, recruiting monsters, and collecting magic vials.

While Eight Minute Empire: Legends might look like a fantasy wargame, there is much more to the experience than a first glance might suggest.  Building a fantasy empire requires controlling territory, establishing cities, and recruiting diverse forces to fight and build for a player’s cause.

How to Build an Empire in Eight Minutes

Eight Minute Empire: Legends is a simple game to set up and learn. The rules indicate that one player should set up the game, but my wife and I did it together. First a selection of maps are laid out, a starting city is placed centrally and a few units for each player are placed on…

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There is clearly something excellent tucked away behind Euphoria: Build a Better Dystopia’s many tracks and tokens. From the disparate tunnels dug by the citizens of the Wasteland, Subterran, and Euphoria itself, to the floating markets of the Icarites, a vivid image of a new, ugly, world emerges. Back alley deals recruit new workers to your cause, collaboration breeds understanding better left ignored, and digging reveals artifacts of a world now lost. A world of balloons and books. Euphoria is an excellent example of a heavy Euro game that manages to proudly display its thematic chrome, though it may do so unevenly.

Knowledge is Power

A worker placement game for 2-6, Euphoria tasks players with rising above the mediocrity assigned to them as citizens of the futuristic dystopia of Euphoria. The veil has been lifted, and the bemused acceptance with which everyone lives their daily life is no longer adequate for the player characters. They decide to use their newfound knowledge to lift up/exploit their fellows in a bid to better their own station in Euphoria.

In Euphoria workers are represented by dice, and their individual knowledge of the inner workings of the Euphorian…

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]]> https://www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/euphoria/feed/ 2 https://www.meeplemountain.com/top-six/top-6-risk-games/ https://www.meeplemountain.com/top-six/top-6-risk-games/#comments Sat, 20 Mar 2021 13:00:03 +0000 https://www.meeplemountain.com/?post_type=top-six&p=216132

Risk occupies an interesting space in the modern boardgaming world. Part of that staple of games that appeared to exist in nearly everyone’s living room regardless if anyone remembered buying them or not, Risk was often the first game of conquest that most of us played. Like Monopoly, Life, and Clue, Risk is often seen as outdated simply because of its membership in that group, but there’s reason enough that the classics became classic. Risk may have its issues, but the amount of simple entertainment that it can bring, especially to younger gamers just entering the wide world of wargames, is something that can’t be ignored.

Risk also has an element for customization to it. The core rules, adding units based on territorial control, maneuvering to attack enemy territories in succession, and the 3 attack and 2 defend battle dice, work fairly well to abstract all sorts of broad conflicts. Its success and relative simplicity seem to have birthed an incredible number of sequels and spinoffs. Unlike the retheming that happens with other classic board game spinoffs, like Monopoly, Risk games tend to include at least a few new mechanics to change gameplay up significantly. There is still a lot to love about the core Risk experience, and some variants have really gone out of their way to try…

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]]> https://www.meeplemountain.com/top-six/top-6-risk-games/feed/ 1 https://www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/the-shores-of-tripoli/ https://www.meeplemountain.com/reviews/the-shores-of-tripoli/#respond Wed, 03 Mar 2021 14:00:49 +0000 https://www.meeplemountain.com/?post_type=reviews&p=216113

The Shores of Tripoli is a card-driven wargame for 1-2 players from Fort Circle Games. Based on the first Barbary War or the Tripolitan War (1801-1805), players take on the role of the nascent US Navy or Tripoli as they struggle over the US’s refusal to pay tribute for protection against piracy in the Mediterranean. The US player must demonstrate to the Tripolitans and the Americans back home that the Navy can protect US merchantmen while the Tripolitan player must either do enough damage or gather enough tribute to make their refusal moot.

From the Halls of Montezuma to Your Gaming Table

Mechanically, this is a card-driven wargame. Each full turn, which represents 1 year starting in 1801, players draw 6 cards and add them to their hand. Cards can be played for their event or discarded to perform some standard actions. The US player can always discard to move frigates or build gunboats in Malta, for example, while the Tripolitan player can discard to build corsairs or else launch a pirate raid from Tripoli itself. Cards are played in 4 rounds, which represent the 4 seasons. First, the US player will play a card and carry out its ability,…

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