When was the last time you opened a game and were impressed with the components, like really blown away. Voidfall perhaps? Gloomhaven? Just about any game from Eagle-Gryphon games these days? So imagine my surprise and delight when I opened World Wonders, from Arcane Wonders–a $50 game with oodles of production value (at least in my opinion). Over 20 incredible wooden “wonders” (called monuments in the game, but each different and each with an impressive level of detail), dozens of cardboard tiles, a well designed and thought out insert, and an excellent rulebook–really one of the best I’ve read in quite some time.

But how does it play?

World Wonders Overview

In World Wonders, 1-5 players attempt to raise up their city / civilization, increasing their population, gathering resources, and most importantly…building monuments. The game ends after the tenth round, or when one player raises their population to twelve, although in my experience these two things usually happen very close together.

World Wonders is packed full of things you can do on your turn, which means that there’s always something useful to accomplish. Each player starts the game with 7 coins, and 0 each population, wheat, pottery, and engineering, marking them on their personal player board. Over…

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Two of my friends love Innovation. They play it constantly. Both backed the new edition while it was on crowdfunding, and every time I receive a review copy in the mail, they vibrate with the possibility that it might be Innovation Ultimate.

I sat down with one of them to give Aegean Sea a crack, since Carl Chudyk designs are often a bear to learn. It’s not that his games are all that complicated; the issue is that they are deeply uninterested in any notion of “intuitive.” That isn’t intended as a criticism. He’s a unique designer, and his idiosyncrasies are what make him distinct, but it is a barrier to entry. Anyone who’s ever tried to teach Mottainai knows.

Even with experience, we found ourselves struggling. On top of the unintuitive rules, there are no labels anywhere for the various and numerous tucked cards. Chudyk loves a tucked card, and in all of his other designs, the locations in which those cards get tucked. Not so here. What’s more, this is Chudyk’s first asymmetrical design.

There are five groups in the game—Athens, Crete, Ephesus, Rhodes, and Sparta—and each plays differently. Not like Root, not in mechanically distinct ways, but…

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During an interview on the podcast 5 Games for Doomsday, designer Mark Herman discussed two different approaches to historical board games. He said that games can work like simulations, recreating the events more or less as they happened, or they can work to put you in the headspace of that moment. To illustrate his point, he used one of his own games.

In Empire of the Sun, which depicts the Pacific Theater during World War II, neither player knows if the atomic bomb will come into play. It’s possible to go an entire game without seeing it. Why does that matter? In real life, neither Japan nor the vast majority of the U.S. military knew about the bomb, until suddenly they did. If either party had, they would have made different decisions.

 If Harry Truman knew about the bomb before he did, the United States Military and other allies wouldn’t have planned an invasion of the Japanese mainland. If Japan knew the United States had the capacity to instantly end the lives of some 80,000 people in Hiroshima, to say nothing of people who died later from hunger, injuries, or radiation sickness, they may well have surrendered earlier, or never entered the conflict in the first place. To play knowing that the atomic bomb is coming is to fundamentally…

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Hello and welcome to ‘Focused on Feld’. In my Focused on Feld 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 2011’s Trajan, his 15th game.

2011 was a busy, and career defining, year for Stefan Feld. Earlier that year, he’d released Strasbourg. Even earlier than that, the unassuming The Castles of Burgundy had appeared on the boardgaming scene, completely unaware of the mark in history it was going to make. If Feld had been flying under the radar, he certainly wasn’t anymore. The Castles of Burgundy took the world by storm, placing Stefan Feld squarely in the spotlight. It was a game that marked him as a designer to watch out for. And Trajan only served to solidify that status, proving that it is possible to catch lightning in a bottle a second time.

Overview

Using Ancient Rome as a backdrop, Trajan is a game that challenges players to maximize what little time they…

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If you have a chance to review any of my previous content, you’ll see a lot of glowing words attached to the reviews of games designed or co-designed by Simone Luciani.

To me, Luciani is gaming royalty. Grand Austria Hotel, Lorenzo il Magnifico, Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan, and Tzolk’in: The Mayan Calendar are some of the best games I have ever played. Luciani’s “T” game release with Daniele Tascini, Tiletum, was my pick for the best game of 2022.

With all of that in mind, there was never a doubt that I would play Anunnaki: Dawn of the Gods (2023, Cranio Creations), a co-design with Danilo Sabia. Sabia and Luciani also designed Rats of Wistar, which will soon make its way to gamers in the US.

I’m not going to lie to you: Anunnaki didn’t hit it out of the park, to use a baseball reference. It’s not that the game is bad—in fact, it is occasionally interesting, particularly with its action selection mechanism—but it is very likely that my standards for Luciani games have gotten too high. Grand Austria Hotel is the best Euro-style game I have ever played; as a film buff, when you love a film director and that director puts out middling fare, you…

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I love tableau building games.

Certainly, I love the classics, particularly Race for the Galaxy, Dominion, and Terraforming Mars. Ark Nova is nearly at the top of BGG’s game rankings for the same reason. Any time I can play a game where I can collect a bunch of cards to then play them to the table and trigger a bunch of powers, one-time effects, and end-game scoring bonuses based on set collection, I’m going to play it to see if I like it.

Ancient Knowledge (2023, IELLO) does a lot of things well. This new tableau builder, designed by Rémi Mathieu, keeps things so simple that the game can be taught using only its double-sided, poker card-sized player aid. But with nearly 200 different cards that can be built, Ancient Knowledge has a great variety in its cardplay and its system provides a few ways to win for creative players.

Across three plays (two at three players, one at two players), Ancient Knowledge has proved to be very entertaining. I just wish I didn’t have to house-rule the ending condition.

Goblets Are Gold

Ancient Knowledge is a hand management, card drafting tableau builder for 2-4 players. The game comes with individual and team competitive…

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I’m a lucky man in so many ways…and when it comes to getting access to older games, my friend John came through once again.

After I picked up a copy of Zhanguo: The First Empire (2023, Sorry We Are French) at Gen Con this summer, I wanted to try the original game, 2014’s ZhanGuo, to see what changes were made over the last ten years or so to bring the older game to modern audiences.

2014 wasn’t that long ago, but it feels like many publishers are digging up older games and giving them a somewhat-needed—or maybe, much-needed—facelift. I was excited to give the original ZhanGuo a spin. (Yes, the original game’s title had a capital G in the middle, which was changed to a lower-case G in the new version. While I’m guessing this was for historical accuracy, this change just means you’ll have to accept this minor annoyance for the purposes of this review.)

ZhanGuo (2014) is one of the heaviest tactical games I have ever played. That’s because it really is a strategy game—you’ll have to set out your goals almost before you begin to play, by studying the areas of the map that will pay out best between all of the randomized goals in each game—but a clever card mechanic dictates which actions…

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Navigating the Ruins

In Mayan Curse, players are explorers who have stumbled upon an ancient Mayan temple. The path to the inner temple is divided into several sections, each with a series of tiled rows containing different symbols. It’s a long sprint to get to the end of the temple, but that’s where the most remarkable treasure awaits! Along the way, explorers can pick up Mayan monuments and artifacts (called stelae) that reward them with knowledge, the all-important resource needed to win the game. There is a catch, however: there are three giant boulders precariously perched along the walkways, and as the explorers get further into the temple and make more of a stir, these boulders will inevitably be shaken loose and start rolling towards the entrance of the temple. You must make it out of the door before all three boulders reach the entrance, or else you’re sealed inside the temple forever and automatically lose!

The key to navigating this temple comes from the ancient stone floors. In each round, players will draw three sacred stones from a bag. These stones are decorated with symbols matching the collection of symbols on the temple floor. Players can then make up to three slides, bumping the physical location of the floor tiles around to create a pathway. Then, players spend…

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During Gen Con 2023, I picked up a review copy of Amun-Re: 20th Anniversary Edition from Alley Cat Games. Alley Cat has done us right here at Meeple Mountain. Bob (and I, separately) really enjoyed Tinners’ Trail, and I had the chance to cover last year’s strong-yet-component-fiddly economic Euro Autobahn. A few of my friends swear by Dice Hospital, a game I had the chance to try last year on Board Game Arena.

In all of those cases, I thought Alley Cat’s team did excellent work with the production and the extras; in each game that I’ve played (included Amun-Re), there are a few mini-modules included in each box. In the case of both Autobahn and Tinners’ Trail, the solo modes were excellent. With Alley Cat, theirs is a team I grow more and more excited about with each game.

So when I signed up to do a full play of Amun-Re at Gen Con, I expected to continue loving what I saw. Then the teach began, and our teacher (who had survived a long day at the demo table, given the look of fatigue) really blew it during our five-player game. Missed at least a half-dozen rules, a couple of them pretty significant. Kept bouncing between two tables, and it felt like…

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The Tetrarchy was the governing authority that ruled over the Roman Empire from approximately 300-350 CE. A short and rough summation: Rome had been experiencing all variety of issues. The Empire was crumbling, and fast. There were dozens of claimants to the title of Emperor, the borders were under siege, the currency was rapidly devaluing. I don’t think it would be unfair to describe things as going poorly.

The Emperor Diocletian, having established himself as the only legitimate candidate, decided in 286 to promote Maximian, his Caesar (the title, not the person), to co-emperor. They, in turn, appointed two Caesars. It was hoped that dividing the responsibilities of the empire between these four united individuals would solve many of Rome’s problems. It worked, for a little while, until those four men were no longer in power and their successors engaged in civil wars with one another.

There are no lessons to draw from any of this.

“Autokratoria” Is Greek for “Empire”

Tetrarchia is a cooperative game in the tradition of Pandemic. Instead of fighting diseases, players work to secure the borders of the Roman empire while fending off Barbarians. The round structure alternates between…

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According to Wikipedia: “The Sacred City of Caral-Supe, or simply Caral, is an archaeological site in Peru where the remains of the main city of the Caral civilization are found. It is located in the Supe valley of Peru, near the current town of Caral, 182 kilometers north of Lima, 23 km from the coast and 350 meters above sea level. It is attributed an antiquity of 5000 years and it is considered the oldest city in the Americas and one of the oldest in the world.”

The game of Caral, designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede (of Carcassonne fame), takes us back to a time in the titular city’s early history. The players take on the roles of builders tasked with erecting the city of Caral’s famed pyramids. As the game begins, the city is little more than barren patches of earth. But as the game goes on, the pyramids begin taking shape, creating a magnificent vista that any high priest could be proud of.

Overview

Caral takes place over the course of several game years, its pacing dictated by how quickly the players construct pyramids. The game is played on a spiraling track that is dotted with various Action spaces and Building Sites. At the start of a round, the Architect die is rolled and the Architect…

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What is Storm Over Jerusalem?

Storm Over Jerusalem (SoJ) is a wargame that simulates the Roman siege of Jerusalem in 70 AD. Emperor Vespasian’s son and future emperor, Titus, commanded four legions, while the city was defended by multiple Judean factions, including the Zealots. The siege began in April, just three days before Passover. This meant the city’s population was teeming with pilgrims. After almost five months, the Romans eventually overwhelmed Jewish resistance, sacked the city, and more importantly for the Jewish people, destroyed the Temple, the center of Judean worship.

According to the Jewish historian Josephus — considered a turncoat by his fellow Jews — over one million Judeans were killed and 97,000 were made slaves. The fall of Jerusalem effectively ended what became known as the First Jewish War, although it did not officially end until the capture of the mountaintop fortress of Masada in 73 AD. The successful termination of the Jewish War solidified the position of Vespasian, who had only come to power a year earlier, and ensured the continuation of the Flavian Dynasty.

Setup and Victory Conditions

The Judean forces begin the game occupying all city areas and fall under the overall command of one of two leaders, Simon bar Giora and John of…

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At a recent game night, we needed something that could play five or six people; we had five people and we were expecting a sixth, so the usual debate resurfaced: do we play one game, or split into two groups?

Ultimately, our sixth player didn’t arrive so we bandied a number of five-player titles around that could be played in under two hours. Usually, this is known by some of my friends as “Dead Man’s Land” because it can be hard to find a game that plays relatively quickly with so many players, and not all games that play up to five people play well at their max player count.

When the smoke cleared, the host pulled out his copy of Concordia (2013, Rio Grande Games). All of us had played recently enough that we remembered the rules, so save for a few refreshers on the scoring mechanics, everyone knew what they were doing.

A funny thing happened at the end of this particular play of Concordia: a number of us looked at each other and said the same thing:

“Why don’t we play this game more often?”

Rome!

Concordia is a 2-6 player hand management game which, as of this writing, sits in the BGG top…

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