My new friend Joëlle was nudging us along, but she had a tense look.

It was October 2022; we were playing a prototype of an upcoming game called Sky Team at the Le Scorpion Masqué booth at SPIEL in Essen, Germany. The setup was simple—we were working together to try and land a plane.

“We have seven rounds to land the plane,” Joëlle said through a mask while trying to shout over hundreds of other gamers walking around the expo hall. “This is the easy mode, so we should be OK.”

She said we should be OK, but her eyes didn’t seem to believe it. Besides, if any number of things went wrong, we would crash the plane and lose the game.

But we didn’t mess it up; in fact, we won on the very last action of the game. Between the teach, the handholding, and the final tug on the plane’s brakes, we finished our marketing meeting and the Sky Team demo in about 25 minutes.

I was impressed. A two-player dice placement co-op game that makes it feel like I’m really landing a plane and some nice little thematic touches to bring the experience home in a package that would retail for about 25 euros? I knew right then, and there that Sky Team was…

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A Very Brief History of Flight

In 1903, the Wright Brothers (William and Orville) achieved “first in flight” with a flight of 12 seconds covering 120 feet. That’s a shorter distance than an American football field…from side to side. It was the first documented controlled, sustained flight of a powered, heavier-than-air aircraft in history. Less than 5 years later, Wilbur Wright would win the very first Michelin Cup with a flight of 77.5 miles. Quite an improvement from a paltry 120 feet!

A little over 10 years after that famous first flight, in 1914, the first successful commercial flight was flown. Consisting of the pilot, Tony Jannus, and a single passenger, the flight took off from St. Petersburg, Florida in a craft manufactured by Thomas Benoist and touched down in Tampa, Florida 23 minutes later, a distance of about 17 miles.

For the longest time, prop-driven planes reigned supreme. It wasn’t until the invention of the first jet aircraft in 1939, a quarter of a century later, before innovation in aviation would see its next big bump.

Designed by Ernt Heinkel, that aircraft, the Heinkel He…

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“Ooh, Galaxy Trucker? I don’t know.”

“Yeah, it’s a tough one to get to the table.”

“NO WAY I’m playing Galaxy Trucker. It’s brutal!”

Look, Meeple Mountain has previously acknowledged that Galaxy Trucker IS brutal. And I’ll be honest: one of the quotes above is from someone who works for the game’s publisher, CGE (Adrenaline, Letter Jam, Pulsar 2849). Everyone knows how hard a game Galaxy Trucker is to put on the table, and it’s been that way for years.

Designer Vlaada Chvátil has made, to many, some of the best games of all time: Mage Knight Board Game, Dungeon Petz, Through the Ages, and the Codenames series (such as XXL, Duet, etc.). In the case of Mage Knight and Through the Ages, we just have to agree that a lot of the fun—or “fun” as the case may be—comes from a brutal teach and some brutal gameplay.

Galaxy Trucker was first released in 2007; the game is so tough to get to physical tables that my first experience with it was playing the app on an old Android tablet years ago. I loved it, but I probably loved it because the AI was forgiving and no one else got to watch my garbage spaceships break apart and get sabotaged by pirates…

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Founded in 1927 Pan American Airways, commonly known as Pan Am (or ​​Pan American World Airways), was a pioneer in passenger aviation for most of the 20th century. It revolutionized the industry by becoming the first airline to fly worldwide, and brought about innovations such as computerized reservation systems and jet aircraft. During its 70 year lifespan Pan Am represented glamour, luxury, and status, and helped shape the standard by which all other airlines measured hospitality and customer service.

But Pan Am the board game? That’s crazy talk right?

Pan Am Overview

In 2020, Funko Games released Pan Am, a board game set during the golden age of air travel, when Pan American Airways was on a growth curve that looked like the takeoff trajectory of one of its passenger flights. In Pan Am players each represent a small airline struggling to get off the ground. Over the course of 7 rounds you’ll use your engineers to purchase aircraft, acquire airports, and compete for Landing Rights in cities in North and South America, Asia, and Europe. All the while you’ll be watching Pan Am expand into your territory: slowly but surely taking over everything you’ve worked for (the game is called Pan Am after all). At the end of the game, the…

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The sci-fi strategy game Supernova, from Pandora Games, promotes itself in the age-old category of “easy to learn, difficult to master” in part because of a single game mechanic: moving your playing pieces in a spiral, as opposed to just moving them in a straight line inwards, towards a dying star located at the center of the game board.

It’s this one change that sets Supernova apart from other games; even when we agreed to review this game, a couple of the Meeple Mountain staff mentioned the similarities that Supernova has to games like Gravwell, a game which I have not played.

It’s also the one change that makes Supernova a difficult game to recommend. Read on to find out more!

[caption id="attachment_219193" align="alignnone" width="1920"] I'm excited to see the final version of player ships (prototypes shown here)[/caption]

“Ahh! My head just HURTS!”

That’s the line my wife yelped out loud as she was trying to figure out all of the variables that were going to factor into her current move. (It’s fair to say that she did not enjoy playing this game.)

However, I understand her frustration, and I think there are a few reasons that led to this moment. First, let’s…

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Let’s Get Started

Setup is pretty straight forward. Each player picks a player board as well as the different markers of the same color. All the Playing Cards are shuffled and 5 are dealt to each player. The Mission Cards (hex shaped cards) are also shuffled and 1 is dealt to each player and then placed at the top of their player board. Place all the remaining Playing Cards and Mission Cards facedown within reach of all players. You are ready to begin.

The goal of the game is to reach 10 points first. You gain points by building up your rocket on your player board to get to the right delta-V (change in velocity) that is required by your Mission Card. The size of the rocket you use  to finish the Mission Card will determine the amount of points you receive. If you don’t reach 10 points after finishing a mission, select a new Mission…

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Airplanes have always fascinated me.

When I was just a young lad, my grandfather would regularly design, construct, and decorate his own radio controlled flyers before taking them out into the field and flying them around. I have vivid memories of visiting with him and marveling at his handiwork. There was a massive 10 foot long Federal Express commercial plane hanging from his ceiling and hanging next to that were the crumpled remains of an aircraft that had not fared so well in a dogfight. Next to that was another plane, and another, and even more besides that.

I would sit there for hours in his workshop upstairs watching him meticulously cutting ribbing from balsa wood with an X-acto knife before sanding each and every piece by hand with the same delicacy and care that you typically reserve for a baby. In some ways, those planes were his children. That love and attention to detail shone through the final product. These were more than just model planes. They were glorious, functional works of art. I even had the occasion to go to the airfield with him one time to witness his creations in flight. It’s a memory I will always treasure.

Movies like The Memphis Belle, The Aviator, and Hayao Miyazaki’s amazing The Wind Rises have only served…

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