Any time a new game by Vital Lacerda is about to hit, my assorted tabletop gaming networks come alive.

There’s always a big negotiation on the front end. Who’s going to sink $150-$200 for the newest crowdfunding campaign? Are the hardcore collectors going to jump in or wait for someone else to pull the trigger before buying their own copy? As Eagle-Gryphon Games—the publisher of Lacerda’s games in the US—begins to send out shipping notifications, the hype machine ramps up.

Inventions: Evolution of Ideas is the newest Lacerda release, arriving at homes around the world right now. When I got a shipping notification for my review copy, I alerted a couple groups that I’d have my copy in time for game nights the following week.

“I’m innnnnnnnnn,” announced one friend, as creepily as that sequence of extra N’s would indicate.

“I can be at your house within the hour,” said another.

One friend toyed with an existing relationship. “I really want to play this one, but I have Valentine’s Day plans.” It sounded like he was open to bailing on the marriage to get a play in.

New Lacerda games bring out all the fans, and rightfully so. I’ve written six articles on the Portuguese designer’s heavy Euros, covering games such as Kanban EV (as well…

The post Inventions: Evolution of Ideas Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Kanban EV (2020, Eagle-Gryphon Games) gets to the table from time to time, thanks to a mix of the “Cafe Lacerda” game nights I do with friends every few months. Named for Vital Lacerda, the designer of games such as On Mars, The Gallerist, and Vinhos: Deluxe Edition, friends bring all their Lacerda games to someone’s house, then we fight to see which two or three of these games get to the table.

I recently decided to dig into the mini expansion for Kanban EV, SpeedCharger. I got it when I bought the “Upgrade Pack” with the base game a few years ago, but I had never played it. Like other Lacerda games, the base game is usually designed with such care that expansions are not necessary. After playing Kanban EV a few times, I was sure that I would never open SpeedCharger; designs this strong don’t need any extras.

But lately, I have been staring at my supposed “Shelf of Shame” and noticed that I don’t have many unopened base games. I do, however, have a few unopened expansions. I used SpeedCharger as an excuse to break out Kanban EV with players both new to the base game and those with some experience, and I have to…

The post Kanban Kontinued: The SpeedCharger Expansion Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

On the heels of reviewing my now-favorite Vladimír Suchý game, Evacuation (2023, Delicious Games), I decided to rip the shrink off the other Suchý game I picked up at SPIEL last year, Shipyard (2nd Edition). (I’ve been excited about this one for a while now.)

Shipyard is a dinosaur to a modern gamer, as it was first released in 2009. To some of my friends, the original game is a classic, but those friends have never been kind enough to introduce me. When I had the chance to grab the updated version, I jumped because I needed to know—does the original still work, fifteen years later?

The answer? It depends on how long you can stomach the wait to score points.

Ahh, the 1870s

Shipyard is a 1-4 player rondel and tile drafting game that situates players as shipbuilders in the 1870s. Over a series of rounds, players will take turns until a countdown timer expires, giving each player one final turn to finish building ships and send them on a test voyage—known as a  “shakedown cruise”—to impress local officials.

Each turn after the first turn of the game looks the same. Each player has a cube (or cubes, in a two-player game) on one…

The post Shipyard (2nd Edition) Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

In many years, the exceptional game Carnegie (2022, Pegasus Spiele) would have been my #1 gaming experience of the year. Beautiful board, a very interesting milestone system, lots of variability in the setup, and maybe my favorite action selection format of that year.

As it turned out, Carnegie was my second favorite game from 2022, eclipsed only by the stellar gameplay of Tiletum. (If I’m being honest, dice gave Tiletum the edge, because the tactical gameplay was just a better fit for me and that game.) That still means that any time I can get a chance to play either game, I’ll always bite.

The best thing about expansions: another reason to whip the original game out and get it back to the table. When I heard that an expansion was inbound for Carnegie—known as Carnegie: Departments and Donations—I made sure to grab a copy.

Here is the “worst” part about Departments and Donations: it doesn’t cleanly fit in the original box. Because it comes in a 9”x12” plastic sleeve with all of the new tiles, instructions and bidding sheets, it looks kind of sloppy now as it sits on my shelf as it sits on top of the Carnegie box.

For a game with easily the best-looking board from 2022, this is unfortunate. Luckily, everything…

The post Carnegie: Departments and Donations Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

There’s something Trojan about The Battle of Versailles. Let’s pretend that you are no more familiar with the Battle of Versailles than I was before learning about this game, and you have to guess, sight unseen, what the game is about. From the title, you’re thinking military conflict, right? Probably something from the French Revolution, or a lesser battle of WWII? But you want more information before you guess.

I tell you that The Battle of Versailles is a Card Driven Game, a CDG, the type of game associated with beefy GMT titles like Twilight Struggle and Empire of the Sun. I describe it as an incredibly tense, mean two-player game in which both participants pursue unique paths to victory. One side, the French, represents an entrenched old guard, an immovable object. The other side, the Americans, represent an unstoppable force, storming the barracks and calling for revolution.

“Wait,” you say. “The French and the Americans? They only fought during the French Indian War… Is there a Versailles in the Northeast United States?” There is not. Still, nothing else makes sense. You slam that button. “It’s a war game,” you shout, scaring small children nearby. I pull the box out from behind my back, where it has evidently been this entire time. The cover is baby blue…

The post The Battle of Versailles Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

When I picked up a copy of Evacuation (2023, Delicious Games) at SPIEL 2023, I had to admit—the thing didn’t look that special.

However, I am a sucker for anything with a big spaceship on the cover, so it had that going for it…and, designer Vladimír Suchý has made a couple games that I’m fond of, including Underwater Cities and the very good Pulsar 2849. Since Suchý crushed it with Pulsar 2849, I figured, hey, the guy seems to like complex space games, right?

On the strength of the review from our friends at ThinkerThemer, I got my copy of Evacuation to the table in recent weeks. Much like the tagline for the old game Mastermind—”Easy to Learn, Difficult to Master”—Evacuation is a straightforward teach, a game that could be taught in about 20 minutes.

But the consequences of the actions across the game’s tight playtime? This is the heaviest Suchý design I’ve played. (BGG seems to agree.)

The World is On Fire (Again)

Evacuation’s approach is straightforward. Our planet is in ruins thanks to rising temperatures, so we’ve got to get everyone off this rock and onto a more habitable planet, stat. (The rulebook’s version of events is much better than that,…

The post Evacuation Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

I don’t generally care for worker placement. Games that focus on that mechanic generally don’t have space for a whole lot of the particular kind of creativity that I look for. It doesn’t help that worker placement is usually paired with resource management, which I find tiresome. I would have had a tough time in the hobby ca. 2012.

Each genre on its own encourages and rewards efficiency above anything else, and that’s simply not my vegetable. The other problem, which is related, is the lack of interactivity. Yes, obviously, you can take someone else’s spot, but that doesn’t quite do it for me. There’s something too black-and-white, the course corrections are too obvious.

Barrage, by designers Tommaso Battista and Simone Luciani and published in 2019 by Cranio Creations, is a worker placement and resource management game. From the above, you’d have to assume that this isn’t promising. I myself was unsure.

Miracle of miracles: I love Barrage.

When the Levee Breaks

It’s the 1930s. The world has consumed all available fossil fuels. The sole remaining power source adequate for the Industrial Revolution is hydroelectric power. Each player is a nationalized hydroelectric company attempting to control power production in the Alps. Over the course of five rounds, you build dams, conduits, and powerhouses with which to produce power.

…

The post Barrage Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

As I noted in our SPIEL preview, the game that was my #1 most anticipated experience was Nucleum, this year’s heavy strategy game from Board&Dice. (Normally, this would be a “T” game co-designed by Daniele Tascini, but that’s not the case for 2023.) I have generally liked every game I’ve gotten from Board&Dice, and the last two—the strangely underrated Origins: First Builders and Tiletum, my 2022 game of the year—have been fantastic.

My source of excitement: Nucleum’s design pedigree. Co-designer David Turczi has been on a tear the last three years, and not just as a solo mode designer. The reviews for Voidfall are strong, the Imperium games (Classics and Legends) are well regarded, and even his lighter designs like the Vengeance: Roll & Fight games have been excellent.

And co-designer Simone Luciani is at a stage in his career where it seems like everything he touches turns to gold. Earlier works like Grand Austria Hotel (the best Euro I’ve ever played), Lorenzo Il Magnifico, and the Marco Polo games are classics, and future classics like Tiletum are never leaving my collection. Even the Luciani games I have liked but not loved (Golem, Darwin’s Journey) were still interesting, even if I am not itching to revisit them.

I was…

The post Nucleum Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

The post Brass Empire Game Video Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Admittedly, my tastes bend toward austere-looking games with a brown color palette, so I’m naturally predisposed to like a game that features tan, olive, brown, beige, ochre, and a smattering of puce. That said, this sucker has quite a lot going on under the hood.

This game is a reimplementation of one of the earliest published designs of Acchittocca (the design team of Flaminia Brasini, Virginio Gigli, Stefano Luperto, and Antonio Tinto–collectively responsible for Alma Mater, Egizia: Shifting Sands, and several other games in loose collaboration), Leonardo da Vinci. Codex Leicester has one more designer thrown in the mix for good measure, Changhyun Baek.

I haven’t played the original game, so you won’t find any comparing and contrasting here, though there are significant differences between this version of the game and the original, or at least that’s the sense I get from reading the original game’s rules.

But here’s a thousand-foot summary. Codex Leicester is a worker placement game with a high degree of interaction. Players start with a single workshop, which can be upgraded with various bits and bobs to make it more powerful, and they can also add a second workshop as the game moves forward.

[caption id="attachment_287152" align="alignnone" width="1125"] Workshops in action.[/caption]

What do you do…

The post Leonardo da Vinci’s Codex Leicester Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

[Disclaimer: I played this game a single time for this preview. (Normally, I complete a minimum of three plays before posting thoughts on a game like this, but our prototype version did not include the components required for solo and two-player games. My play took place with three players, using prototype components. This is a first impression, so please take this into consideration as you consider backing this campaign.]

Based solely on the fact that Tycoon: India 1981 (Zenwood Games, coming to Kickstarter on August 29th) was designed, developed, drawn and distributed by a team that hails from India, the game is an incredible achievement.

I don’t think I have played a single game since joining Meeple Mountain that was designed by a person of Indian descent. In and of itself, I find that mind-boggling, given the sheer population size. But that also means this is an opportunity.

So I’m going to seize it. If you are on the fence about whether to support Tycoon: India 1981, but want to support a small minority-owned publisher and are finding few options to do so this year, please give this game a look. The game has real flaws, and I’m going to call those out in this preview. Knowing that most of the prototypes I cover change a bit between the…

The post Tycoon: India 1981 Game Preview appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Planet Unknown does what it says on the tin, and it also manages to sidestep some of the pitfalls of the polyomino-puzzle genre. The game also got me thinking about the lie of reasonably predictable play (more on that in a bit).

The premise of PU *snicker* is that you’ve all found a planet suitable for life, and you’re going to explore it and put tiles on it to develop it. You also have a little rover you need to drive around with and pick up doo-dads. Everyone has a planet mat and a player board with a series of tracks on it, both of which can be asymmetric if so desired. I recommend playing with the asymmetry from the jump, as it adds fun wrinkles to the overall experience.

[caption id="attachment_284690" align="alignnone" width="1024"] The beginning of my planet.[/caption]

Draft kings

PU promises simultaneous play, which it delivers. All of the puzzle pieces sit in a lazy susan that the first player rotates around until they have a selection of two tiles they like, and then everyone else picks one of the two tiles that’s in front of their triangular player marker. Players place their tiles, and then the first player cycles, so everyone gets a crack at a piece they…

The post Planet Unknown Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

I’ve had the chance to meet some of the team at Gamelyn Games at past conventions. I always stop and stare.

How do these guys keep coming up with so many strategy games that basically fit in a handbag?

I’ve had the chance to play Tiny Epic Galaxies and Tiny Epic Quest. Both games were fine; I would give Tiny Epic Galaxies the edge in terms of gameplay, and Tiny Epic Quest the edge in production because all of the tiny meeples can be outfitted with swords and shields. For a game that can be played on an average-sized kitchen counter, the amount of game in the box is a marvel for the Tiny Epic series. Prices are just as fair, with those games costing me about $25 each.

Our Meeple Mountain team is working with Gamelyn to go “back catalog” and review some of the older Tiny Epic games that we have not covered previously for the site. I signed on for Tiny Epic Mechs (a game that I bought personally) and Tiny Epic Western, a review copy sent by the publisher.

After getting a round of plays in summer, I admit that I align very closely with the game’s current ranking on BGG. It’s a fine time, with an easy teach and a serviceable solo…

The post Tiny Epic Western Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.