Project GIPF is a series of eight abstract strategy games designed by Kris Burm. Each game features a hexagonal playing area and involves a dwindling of either pieces or playing area mechanic. The way they approach these elements is not only unique, but combines what I feel are the best qualities in most abstracts: simple rules that reveal complex game play. 

If you’ve never heard the games within Project GIPF, GIPF, TAMSK, ZÈRTZ, DVONN, YINSH, PÜNCT, TZAAR, and LYNGK, I encourage you to seek them out, either in cardboard and bakelite or digitally online. They are well worth your time.

Today’s game: GIPF

[caption id="attachment_296563" align="aligncenter" width="500"] GIPF: The box[/caption]

GIPF is the first in a series of abstract strategy games known as the GIPF Project. Designed by Kris Burm and released in 1997, GIPF is one of those wonderful games that can be taught in under a minute, yet need careful study to win.

To win, you need to either capture all three of your opponent’s GIPF pieces or have your opponent unable to make a move. 

Playing GIPF

The playing board is a hexagon, with four intersections along each edge. These extend to an emphasized point just past the white border. Two straight lines come from each…

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The King of Tokyo Monster Packs are four monsters, each sold separately, that come with some special game-changing bits and pieces. From towers to build and conquer, to extra dice, these monsters add some spice to your King of Tokyo games.

Cthuhlu

Ph'nglui mglw'nafh Cthulhu R'lyeh wgah'nagl fhtagn

[caption id="attachment_295782" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Cthulhu Box[/caption]

"A monster of vaguely anthropoid outline, but with an octopus-like head whose face was a mass of feelers, a scaly, rubbery-looking body, prodigious claws on hind and fore feet, and long, narrow wings behind."
     –from "The Call of Cthulhu" by H. P. Lovecraft

If you’re going to introduce new monsters to The King of Tokyo, where better to start than with The Great Old One, the cosmic entity that is Cthulhu? After all, it existed for eons before any other so-called “mythical creature” ever took to Earth.

King of Tokyo Monster Pack: Cthulhu (known as Cthulhu for the rest of this review) comes with components for both King of Tokyo and King of New York. However, I will only be covering the King of Tokyo components for this review.

Along with the standard Evolution cards, Cthulhu comes with Cultist tiles. Whenever the Cthulhu player rolls four of a kind, they can take a…

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King of Tokyo: Origins is a dice-chucking game that pits monster against monster in the age-old battle for Japan’s biggest city. The winner will either be the first person who reaches 20 points, or be the last monster standing.

Set Up

All players take a cut-out of a monster and sets it in the plastic stand. They then take the accompanying monster’s score tracker, setting the wheel in the upper left (Points) to zero and the wheel in the lower right (Health) to 10. 

[caption id="attachment_295759" align="aligncenter" width="500"] King of Tokyo: Origins[/caption]

[caption id="attachment_295760" align="aligncenter" width="498"] Mechamster and Cosmic Joe[/caption]

Set the board on the table in reach of all players—or don’t. The board only has a circle for the attacking monster to stand in. That’s all. Simply placing your monster in the middle of the table will have the same effect.

Shuffle the deck of cards. Throughout the game, you’ll be able to purchase these to gain either a temporary or permanent bonus. Place three cards face-up and the remaining cards to the side.

[caption id="attachment_295762" align="aligncenter" width="500"] A sampling of cards[/caption]

Randomly choose a starting player and…

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Return to the beleaguered city of Tokyo—now with the addition of Tokyo Bay—as our monsters slug it out once again for domination and to claim victory. 

If you’re new to King of Tokyo, I went over the setup and gameplay in my recent review of King of Tokyo: Origins. (Known from here as KoT: O) That game comes with four monsters, each lacking in special abilities and rendering them disappointingly interchangeable. King of Tokyo: Monster Box (KoT: MB), a fully stand-alone game, solves that problem in a big way. 

Let’s start with some of the basics, though. 

[caption id="attachment_295770" align="aligncenter" width="500"] King of Tokyo Monster Box box[/caption]

KoT:MB comes with its own big deck of monster cards. 

[caption id="attachment_295771" align="aligncenter" width="500"] A sampling of the many Monster cards in the box[/caption]

From my games, these can be mixed in with the KoT:O cards if you want even more options.

KoT:MB also comes with two sets of dice, one in black & green and one in orange & black. The orange set was initially included in the King of Tokyo Halloween expansion. There is no difference between these sets of dice. If…

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Let’s get the obvious out of the way: I love Ingenious. For me, it is THE gold standard by which I judge all other abstract games that claim to scale beyond two. I was amazed the first time I played it with more than two players—there was no difference in the gameplay or scoring. There is an elegance in the way the game expands so effortlessly to additional players.

I think you can tell how well-loved and how well-played a game is by the condition of the box. Take another look at the photo above, with my original Ingenious box next to the new one. Since 2011, that box has traveled with me to game nights, to-and-from work, and has been loaned out to friends. It has earned every scratch, tear, and rip.

That’s how much I love Ingenious and why I’ve pushed it on anyone who has expressed half an interest in the game. And they’ve all come back as serious believers.

[caption id="attachment_295462" align="aligncenter" width="600"] My well-worn 13-year-old copy of Ingenious next to the new, second edition box[/caption]

Playing the Game

In my recent review of Horrified: American Monsters, I asked readers of that review to go back…

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Expeditions, designed by Jamey Stegmaier of Stonemaier Games, is a game set a few years after his game Scythe takes place. In Expeditions, a meteor has crashed into Earth, releasing an ancient corruption into the lands. Players take on the role of explorers who, along with their animal companion, make their way above the northern borders of the Scythe map to rid the world of corruption and seek Glory and fame.

[caption id="attachment_295727" align="aligncenter" width="555"] Expeditions: Ironclad Edition[/caption]

If you’ve played Scythe before, some of the components in Expeditions will look familiar—and in both games, the goal is still to be the player with the most points. How you earn and score those points, however, is very different, making Expeditions a game that easily stands on its own.

Let’s get it to the table so I can show you what I mean.

Set Up

Instead of a formal board, Expeditions is played through a honeycomb of 20 hexes that connect, at most, along three edges. These hexes are divided into three zones, the Southern, Central, and the Northern lands. The Southern hexes are laid out randomly, face up, with three of the six tiles placed adjacent to the Basecamp board.

Shuffle the Central and Northern hexes, then…

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"If you're going to make a sequel, do it right and make the same damn movie all over again."
-- Joe Bob Briggs, King of the Drive-In Movie

In 2019, Prospero Hall released Horrified, a cooperative game (co-op) that made Meeple Mountain’s Most Anticipated Games of GenCon 2019 list and won two of our Diamond Climber Awards of 2019 (Best Coop Game and Best Thematic Game). In her review, my former Meeple Mountain colleague, Ashley Gariepy, (Hi Smash!) said Horrified was “an incredible cooperative game that is easy to learn and teach and can be enjoyed by gamers and non-gamers alike.”

Let’s see how 2021’s Horrified: American Monsters stacks up against its predecessor, shall we?.

[caption id="attachment_295159" align="aligncenter" width="558"] Horrified: American Monsters[/caption]

How to Play

When I re-read Ashley’s review of Horrified for this review, I realized her descriptions of the setup, gameplay, and challenges were interchangeable with Horrified: American Monsters. If you’re unfamiliar with how Horrified games play, check out Ashley’s very well-written review of the original game and come back to find out more about the American Monsters edition.

The American Monsters

As you may already know (or have just learned from Ashley’s review), the original Horrified featured monsters who appeared…

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Oliver Roeder has an interesting background. After completing a Ph.D. in economics focusing on game theory, he became a writer for FiveThirtyEight.com, the ABC News website that looks at American politics. (538 being the total number of officials in the Electoral College that decides the winner of the Presidency) While there, Roeder wrote about crossword puzzles, Chess, and was the editor of their weekly online puzzle.

He recently took a new job with The Financial Times, leading the paper’s Data Journalism team. There he’s written about Fantasy Football, Backgammon, and Poker.

In between those jobs, he received a grant to write Seven Games, (W.W. Norton, 2022) a book about, you guessed it, seven games. The book’s subtitle, “A Human History”, is misleading, but only slightly so. 

Roeder provides a brief history of each of the seven games he covers (Checkers, Chess, Go, Backgammon, Poker, Scrabble, and Contract Bridge) and then focuses in on a single person, someone who became obsessed with the game—and had the programming skills to create a computer program capable of playing the game. And beating human opponents.

Just as each of these seven games provides a different set of mechanics and decision spaces, each of the programmers discussed had to improvise a new way of creating…

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Agri-cola hits the spot
Twelve full ounces, that’s a lot
Twice as much for a nickel, too
Agri-cola is the drink for you!

— with apologies to the old time radio advertisers for Pepsi Cola. (And, yes, I know it’s pronounced A-grik-a-la, not Ag-ri-cola, but I didn’t learn that for a long while so Ag-ri-cola stuck in my mind.)

My Meeple Mountain friend and colleague, David McMillan, is a huge fan of designer Uwe Rosenberg—so much so he started this series to have reviews of all of Rosenberg’s games here on Meeple Mountain. I’m happy to contribute a review of Agricola to the cause.

[caption id="attachment_295137" align="aligncenter" width="509"] Agricola: My slightly worn box[/caption]

Agricola is the Place to Be

When Agricola was released in 2007, it caused quite the stir. Although not the first board game to use the worker placement mechanic (that honor goes to 1999’s Bus or 1998’s Keydom, depending on who you ask), Agricola was one of the first games to catch the wider public attention.

So, why am I covering a game that’s almost 20 years old? In part because it’s a classic game and, in part, because I think Agricola is still worthy of your time and attention.

Allow me…

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In the world of Mycelia, players work to be the first to empty their boards of sparkly dew drops. They’ll do this with the help of cards, each featuring a Fun-Guy (or Gal) with special abilities. Join me at the table to see how this all plays out.

[caption id="attachment_294805" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Mycelia: The Box Art[/caption]

Don’t Spore Me the Details

Players are each given a player board (one side being the same for all players; the other varies from player to player). One of the three, double-sided, starting dewdrop tiles are drawn and a side is chosen. All players will then place 20 blue plastic dewdrops on their boards, matching the pattern shown on the chosen starting tile.

[caption id="attachment_294806" align="aligncenter" width="534"] Board Set Up[/caption]

All players start off with six identical cards, each featuring either a dewdrop movement ability or the number of leaf counters they can take on their turn. They’ll each shuffle their cards and draw three to play this round.

[caption id="attachment_294810" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Each player starts with the same set of six cards.[/caption]

From the deck of playing…

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Dear old Grandpa. He’s gone to his reward, leaving us his farm in Stardew Valley. We won’t have long to mourn his passing, though. He’s only given us a year to fulfill four goals and restore the Community Center. It will be a busy four seasons, spent making friends and collecting all the resources we need, all while contending with the evil Joja Corporation.

Knowledge of the video game is not necessary to play or enjoy Stardew Valley The Board Game (known here as SV: B as opposed to the video game, SV: V). The rules, objectives, and gameplay are complete without any previous knowledge. I will say, however, that my first play of the game was made more enjoyable by the one person in the group who had played SV: V. Her running commentary on the objectives, resources, and especially the characters, helped make for a fun evening.

I’ll discuss some differences between the cardboard and video versions of the game at the end of this review.

[caption id="attachment_293787" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Stardew Valley: The Board Game[/caption]

In keeping with the non-confrontational aspects of the video game, SV: B is a cooperative game. To win, players will need to work cooperatively to meet the conditions on all four…

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The Fox Experiment – David McMillan

Have you ever backed a game on Kickstarter without knowing anything about it solely based on the game’s designer pedigree? This was the mistake I made with The Fox Experiment. I’d meant to read the rulebook. I had every intention of watching some videos. I swear that at least going to the game’s entry on BGG was on my to-do list. Before I knew it, the campaign was over and my pledge had been collected.

Fortunately, some accidents are happy ones.

This past weekend, I finally had a chance to get my copy of The Fox Experiment to the table and it was delightful. That first game was…rough. I quickly learned that there was a vast difference between reading the rules and applying them. After a few rounds, though, things began to fall into place and I was gleefully rolling dice, breeding pups, and fulfilling research projects without a care in the world.

I quite like this game and I look forward to the opportunity to explore its inner workings even further in the future. 

Ease of entry?:
★★☆☆☆ - Not an easy onboard
Would I play it again?:
★★★★★ - Will definitely play it again 

Read more articles from David McMillan.

[mm-productlinking…

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We play a lot of games here at Meeple Mountain. Some of them are brand new, not even on shelves yet, and some of them are classics. But no matter who's playing, or what, we all have our favorites. Here's a list of the best games we played this year, including a few games that might surprise you…and no, they're not all from 2023!

Root

Andy Matthews

Last year I joined a gaming group which skewed towards heavier games. This allowed me to indulge myself with games I might not normally play with my other groups…games like Root. This is a “battle royale”, set in a forest, where the players are cute and fuzzy creatures like birds, cats, mice, rabbits, and raccoons. And Leder Games has added many more factions like otters, badgers, moles, rats, and even lizards.

You might say 2023 was the year I went all in on Root. Thanks to a great group and amazing and varied games, I decided to pick up all the expansions. Root is such a satisfying challenge because no two gaming sessions are ever quite the same. While everyone plays within the same basic framework, each faction has their own unique play style and win conditions. This rewards people who play Root more often.…

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