Nestled between a mountain range to the west and a thick forest to the east lies a nameless, untouched valley with a river bisecting it. Natural resources abound: water, fertile soil, wood, stone. There are even rumors of gold deposits in the surrounding hills. It’s the perfect location to start a community and watch it thrive. It’s the perfect place for you to start your city.

In Reiner Knizia’s My City, nominated for the 2020 Spiel des Jahres, each player takes on the role of a city developer trying to put together the highest scoring city. Each player begins the game with an identical set of polyomino tiles in 3 different colors, as well as a player board; both of which will be theirs for the entirety of the legacy campaign. There’s also a shared deck of cards with each card featuring an image of one of the polyomino tiles on it.

The rules for My City are pretty simple. During each game the deck of cards is shuffled and then the cards are revealed one at a time. When a card is revealed, each player will add the corresponding tile to their developing city if…

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Did you know that New York City has five different zoos? I certainly didn’t.

Life in the big city has its merits: you’re surrounded by interesting people, there’s always something to do, and everything you could ever want or need is within just a few miles of your home. Well, almost everything. All of that industrialization and build-up comes at a cost. The rolling fields of grass and trees have given way to towering skyscrapers and housing developments. Sometimes in the midst of all of that concrete and steel you want to get in touch with nature again, to see and experience the world’s natural beauty, to step outside of the day-to-day experience. Sometimes you need a trip to the zoo.

Overview

In New York Zoo, the players take on the roles of developers as they work to construct animal parks and fill them with various animals and Attractions. Each player begins the game with an empty zoo board and a couple of animals. On their turn, they will either choose from a selection of polyomino tiles to add to their boards as animal Enclosures or choose from a selection of animals to add to their boards in an effort to fill their already existing Enclosures.

Along the…

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When I think about quilting, my mind immediately associates it with early America, women sitting around in sewing circles sipping on iced tea, idly passing the time in pleasant company and conversation. I’m sure I’m not the only one. But quilting is much, much older than that. In fact, almost as soon as fabric was invented, people began quilting with it. The earliest known example is a quilted garment depicted on a carved figure of an Egyptian pharaoh dating back to circa 3400 B.C. Mainly functional at its first inception, quilting quickly turned into an art form.

A quilt, by definition, is at least a minimum of three layers of fabric joined together with some kind of needlework. The needle is passed through all three layers in a series of stitches that results in a piece that has a padded appearance. But producing a quilt is much more than that. Like any art form, quilting takes years to master and producing an amazing quilt is a time-consuming labor of love and devotion.

[caption id="attachment_24690" align="alignnone" width="730"] My favorite quilt ever - created by Marty Galbreath (howyouseequilting on Instagram).[/caption]

Overview

Released in 2014, Patchwork quickly took the gaming world by storm. This two-player game…

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Buy Cosmic Colonies on Amazon.

Watch our Cosmic Colonies solo playthrough.

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Buy Cosmic Colonies on Amazon.

Watch our Cosmic Colonies video review.

The post Cosmic Colonies Solo Playthrough appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Ubongo! Fun-Size Edition is an abstract speed game in which players race to complete tangram-like puzzles using polyominoes (Tetris-shaped pieces). Played over 8 rounds, you score points for completing your puzzles and for being the fastest to do so. At the end of the game, the player with the most points wins.

[caption id="attachment_18964" align="aligncenter" width="730"] Each player receives their own set of 8 polyomino tiles and a unique puzzle card.[/caption]

Ubongo! Fun-Size Edition is a smaller, less complex version of the original, Ubongo. While the concept remains the same, there are some rule changes. In this review I will only be focusing on the Fun-Size Edition of the game and not going into an in-depth comparison between its gameplay and the original.

Ubongo’s Fun-Sized Gameplay

Every round, players start with a new puzzle card that they will be playing their tiles on.

[caption id="attachment_18963" align="aligncenter" width="730"] Puzzle cards are double-sided: A side (easy puzzle) and B side (more difficult puzzle).[/caption]

When all players are ready, the round begins and they race to fit their tiles onto their own puzzle card’s light-coloured placement area.

[caption id="attachment_18961" align="aligncenter" width="730"]

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Curators, from Worldshapers Games, lets everyone finally live out their childhood dreams of museum management. In this lighter Euro title, players will be using the game’s clever action selection system to build exhibit wings and procure artifacts to fill them while keeping their eyes on the visitor count and the budget.

Hiring Sprees

In a game of Curators, each player will be vying to have the most number of victory points at the game’s end. Those victory points will come from a few different sources: broadly, cash on hand and how well the museum is constructed and stocked.

Easily the main attraction in Curators is the way players select their actions (called allocations). Each player receives an identical set of 5 discs showing the 5 allocations in the guise…

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Cats. Catty cat cattingtons. Bird-botherers, fish-filchers, dirtbox-dwellers and ‘The Smell’.

Believe it or not I actually like cats.

And with a game as gorgeous as this it’s hard not to. The Isle of Cats is lovely from the box lid down, filling you with the warm satisfaction of a cat purring on your lap.

Which is just as well, because the plot is barmy as a sack of kittens. No amount of beautiful artwork can convince you that you’re rescuing cats from imminent destruction by Lord Vesh Darkhand*.

Perhaps it’s a good thing. I mean, if you genuinely felt you were enacting a feline Dunkirk then you’d have to wonder what happens to those left behind… Don’t beat yourself up, they probably had it coming – this used to be the Isle of Birds.

*Yes, that’s his name. Yes, it’s a bit stupid. No, it has no impact on the game so let’s move on.

The Isle of Cats

The Isle of Cats is the latest game from UK designer Frank West and publisher The City of Games, sharing the same universe as The City of Kings, Vadoran Gardens and the upcoming Rising Blades. But other than the shared narrative setting there’s no connection between them.

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How to Play

Before starting to play, you need to set up your boards. This isn’t something I normally go over, but in this case it’s particularly important. First, you pick which of the two available cities you are all remembering: Kyoto or Singapore. All the boards (with the exception of the Scoring Board, and Action Board) should be flipped to the agreed upon city side. Next, all the individual Image Boards, the Common Map Board, and the Action Board should all have their compass pointing in the same direction (I like to call this “Board Game North”). Since this game revolves around building a central map, the orientation of the boards is especially important.

[caption id="attachment_19306" align="alignnone" width="730"] Here’s how the boards would be set up for a two player game.[/caption]

Remember Our Trip is played over 12 rounds and each round can be broken into three phases: select, place, score. It should be noted, these aren’t the…

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Seattle is a town that knows its fish. Whether you’re slammin’ salmon at the Ballard Seafood Fest, chowing down on clam chowder at your favorite Ivar’s location, or just checking out the crab boats that line Salmon Bay, the town by the Sound is a hub for all things piscine. And there’s no seafood store more iconic than Pike Place Fish Market, the infamous stand where the fishmongers throw the customers’ orders across the length of the storefront while tourists cheer.

That makes Seattle the perfect setting for Talon Strikes Studios’ latest offering, Public Market. This medium-heavy title has players navigating a variable turn order, collecting sets, and placing polyominoes in their quest to be the most successful sailor and salesperson.

I’m Sailing Away

Back when I mentioned Public Market in our 2020 preview, I said that the cover art was so beautiful that I’d be willing to buy an empty box just for the lid. While the cover is by far the largest and most luscious piece, the illustrations throughout this game are delightful.

Cool blue tones line up against gingham-checked card backs. Chalk-white line drawings that look like they were pulled from a natural history museum somehow mesh with pleasantly plump and mostly realistic fish. The overall feeling is a sort of non-specific nostalgia, a sense…

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Cities: Skylines is one of the latest titles from KOSMOS and it’s also the second board game to be adapted from a Paradox video game. Unlike its distant cousin, the dynasty-building Crusader Kings, players need not be familiar with the PC game, as the board game version steps into a well-established genre that includes popular titles like Sprawlopolis and Suburbia. This fully cooperative game can accommodate between 1 and 4 prospective urban planners, so grab your zoning permits and get to work!

[caption id="attachment_17227" align="alignnone" width="730"] A budding metropolis[/caption]

You can also check out our video review of Cities: Skylines.

Happiness is a Warm Card

Like many city-building games, Cities: Skylines asks its players to balance a variety of real-world problems, like crime or overpopulation, in the pursuit of utopia. The resultant sprawl will be measured in its residents’ Happiness, a specific attribute that can be raised or lowered through various actions. Completing the city is the primary goal, but having a higher Happiness at the end is a definite plus. Players can compare their ending Happiness to a chart in the rulebook to rank their city.

But first they’ll have to build it, a process…

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You can also check out our written review of Cities: Skylines.

Buy Cities: Skylines from Amazon

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Join me if you will for a bit of time travel. No, not the sort that would give theoretical physicists a headache; just the mental kind. The date was October 7 2014, and the Kickstarter platform was growing in popularity, especially for board games. Indie game publisher Foxtrot Games announced the campaign for a quaint tile-laying game called Lanterns: The Harvest Festival (henceforth shortened to Lanterns). Full of gorgeous artwork and vibrant colors, Lanterns was set in Imperial China where players acted as artisans decorating the palace lake with floating lanterns. It featured easy to learn rules, quick gameplay, and kept every player engaged by giving them a card even on other player’s turns. Lanterns would go on to become a beloved staple in my family, and possibly yours.

Fast forward to 2019 and Foxtrot is at it again, this time taking the familiar gameplay of Lanterns and extending it directly upwards along the z-axis by introducing fireworks! This new version, a roll and write game called Lanterns Dice: Lights in the Sky, features the same lush artwork as its big brother but also includes polyomino tiles and big chunky gorgeous dice. Make no mistake: this dice game has some hidden depth. Let’s take a look at Lanterns Dice: Lights…

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