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 2006’s Rum & Pirates, his 2nd game. Rum & Pirates is notable as Feld’s first ever collaboration with publisher alea.

In Rum & Pirates, the notorious pirate Red Corsair and his crew have made port at their secret pirates’ den somewhere in the Caribbean. After so much time crammed together on a ship, they’re ready to stretch their legs and get up to some good old fashioned cavorting, carousing, and capers. The Captain’s crew are loyal and follow him around wherever he goes, for as long as they’re able to stand. Get enough rum into a man’s belly and the inexorable force of gravity becomes his master.

The gutters in the pirates' den are absolutely littered with drunken sailors.

On their turns, players will move Red Corsair along an open path from one location to…

The post Focused on Feld: Rum & Pirates Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

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 2024’s Civolution, his 41st game. This game marks a couple of firsts for Stefan Feld. For one, it’s his first ever collaboration with publisher Deep Print Games. Secondly, Civolution is Stefan Feld’s first foray into the realm of classic science fiction (unless you’re counting 2014’s Aquasphere, in which case it’s his second). Regardless, as you’ll soon see, there’s no arguing that Civolution is his heaviest game to date.

Overview

In Civolution, players take on the roles of deities that are taking the final exam in their Civilization Building 101 class. The exam is being proctored by a highly-developed AI called Agera. Over the course of the game, players will be tasked with things such as exploring the map set before them (populating it and exploiting it for its resources) and developing their civilization to…

The post Focused on Feld: Civolution Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Ticket to Ride: South Korea - K. David Ladage

One of the beautiful aspects of Ticket to Ride is the versatility of the core rules. Adding elements for new maps is a breeze! They have added tunnels and stations (Europe), stocks (Pennsylvania), passengers (Germany), a tech tree (United Kingdom), and exploitable resources (Heart of Africa). The game has been reimagined for smaller player counts and table footprint (New York, London, etc.), there is a print-and-play version that was created for the COVID crisis (Stay at Home), and they recently added a Legacy Campaign version to the series.. Every time they create a new map/expansion for the game, my friends and I are excited all over again to see what is coming next.

South Korea has a map where the track colors are grouped into districts. There is a district board where players are competing for up to ten points in each of the eight districts. In addition, you have three cards that allow you to add a one-time bonus of +1, +2, and +3 to an action: you can draw +1, +2, or +3 more cards (train cards or tickets) on your turn, you can gain +1, +2, or +3 more status in a district with your play, and…

The post Quick Peaks – Ticket to Ride: South Korea, Men-Nefer, Run Run Run, Tapas, Fibonachos  appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Isle of Cats Duel - K. David Ladage

There are games that do not really need a two-player adaptation because they play very well at that count. Then there are games that cannot be played at all with two players and, if a couple is going to enjoy the game, it needs one. Isle of Cats falls into the middle of this spectrum: it is a game that can be played at two players, but that player count will not deliver the best experience (to be honest, the base game plays at two players better in the Family mode than the Normal mode).

The Duel version of the game is excellent! It plays very well, offers some good decision space without being a heavy game. My wife and I were able to get into the play quickly, and everything we knew of the original aided in our introduction to this trimmed down version. We might find ourselves playing this more than the original, as good as that is.

If I have a complaint, it would be that the game plays in four rounds, but the mechanic to keep track of those four rounds does not use the ship token and movement as it is handled in the base game. The…

The post Quick Peaks – Isle of Cats Duel, Quacks and Co., Prey, Circus Flohcati, Torii appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

From the rulebook:

“‛RESAFA’ takes place during the 3rd century AD in the area of today’s Middle East. Resafa now lies in ruins in modern-day Syria but at this time it was a fortified desert outpost which flourished as a stop along important caravan routes.

In the game, players represent merchants who are establishing their businesses in Resafa. They build workshops which produce goods, resources and camels. They also build gardens between their workshops which help generate more resources. They visit nearby trading centres to buy and sell goods that they transport using their camel caravans and they can also build trading bases in those locations. Resafa had no local sources of water so it depended heavily on large water tanks to collect the spring and winter rainwaters to make the area habitable. Players also build water tanks and canals to distribute that water where it is needed.”

Overview

In Resafa, players begin the game with a set of cards that they will use to perform actions on their turn or, when flipped 180 degrees, a different set of actions. In addition to the two action icons printed on each card, the tops and bottom edges of the cards have one of four possible colors assigned to them. When a player selects a card for its action, they…

The post Resafa Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

From the rulebook: “Scholars of the South Tigris is set during the height of the Abbasid Caliphate, circa 830 AD. The Caliph has called upon the keenest minds to acquire scientific manuscripts from all over the known world. Players will need to increase their influence in the House of Wisdom, and hire skilled linguists to translate the foreign scrolls into Arabic. In this Golden Age of wisdom and knowledge, be mindful not to neglect one in pursuit of the other”

In Scholars of the South Tigris (Scholars), players will be vying to score the most victory points by the game’s end. Players begin the game with a collection of Action cards and dice. Through the placement of these cards and the assigning of these dice, players will be traveling the world to collect scrolls, hiring translators to translate these scrolls into Arabic, and using the knowledge contained therein to increase their power and improve their standings in the game’s various guilds.

Of course, this is a high-level overview of the game. If you’d like to learn more about how the game is played, read on. Otherwise, feel free to skip to the end to find out what we think of Scholars.

Setup

Scholars is played around a central main board that is broken up into several distinct zones. Along…

The post Scholars of the South Tigris Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Have you ever been walking through the woods, enjoying nature, when you hear a weird rustle in the leaves? Or perhaps it’s a branch in the canopy above you making a sudden noise. Or maybe it’s just a general feeling that something is there, just off the path, watching you from the underbrush. Whether its intentions are good or bad are entirely unknown. All you know is that you are not as alone as you thought you were.

If you’ve ever had this experience before, chances are you were just mere feet away from a pixie. In the game of Pixies, players take on the roles of…

Well, who knows really? The story above is something I created out of whole cloth. Aside from the delightful images of weird little creatures created out of natural objects (think Little Big Planet meets Marcel the Shell With Shoes On and you’ll have an idea of the aesthetic), there’s not a lot of theme or story to go around. At its heart, Pixies is a pure abstract. Albeit, it’s an abstract with some ridiculously cute artwork.

Overview

In Pixies, the players will take turns drafting cards out of a lineup and then placing them into their tableaus following some…

The post Pixies Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

The Dwarves: Big Box - Andy Matthews

Up until 2022, I’d never heard of The Dwarves, a hugely popular German five book fantasy series, which spawned a video game and a board game. And I certainly never expected to play it. But my game group wanted to inject some cooperative action into our game nights and The Dwarves was picked.

The goal of The Dwarves is to work your way through a scenario deck of cards, while protecting your lands from invading orcs, trolls, and elves. Players may also complete side quests which can provide valuable bonuses or cause trouble in Girdlegard (the dwarven homeland). At the beginning of every player’s turn the hero marker advances can trigger new enemies to emerge, cause drama in the dwarven high council, or cause negative effects to the side quest deck. In typical coop game fashion there are multiple ways to lose, but only one way to win.

My group had a good time playing The Dwarves, and even spent some time afterwards talking about different approaches we might take in our next play. While I don’t think The Dwarves is going to win any awards, it’s a solid game and one we’ll be playing again. 

Ease of entry?:
★★★☆☆ - There were…

The post Quick Peaks – The Dwarves: Big Box, Breaking Away, Century: Spice Road, Oh My Goods!, What the Fog? appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

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 2010’s Spiel mit Lukas: Dribbel-Fieber, his 11th game. One of two games in Queen Games’ Spiel mit Lukas line of games, Dribbel-Fieber was Stefan Feld’s very first and, so far, only co-design (co-designed with Wolfgang Panning).

From the moment that I latched onto Stefan Feld as a designer who I wanted to collect, I knew there were two titles that it was going to be next to impossible for me to obtain. The first, Strasbourg, was long out of print and apparently so good that nobody wanted to let go of it. The second was Spiel mit Lukas: Dribbel-Fieber (or, simply, Dribbel-Fieber for short), a game that didn’t see a large print run, was only available in German, was long out of print, and was highly sought after for its rarity. I had a good…

The post Focused on Feld: Spiel mit Lukas: Dribbel-Fieber Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Flip 7 - Andy Matthews

I love it when a game "hides" the premise in plain sight, like Flip 7 from The Op. It's a lightweight (and I do mean light) press your luck game that has you flipping over cards from a shared deck and deciding "do I stay or do I go?". Number cards earn you points, action cards do special things, and if you ever "Flip 7" cards you earn a sweet 15 point bonus and end the round. But if you flip over a number card that you already have in front of you, then it's a bust for you.

You'll earn points based on the numbers on the cards; their values ranging from 0-15. With the exception of the 0, each card is worth its face value and there are that many cards in the deck: three 3 cards, ten 10 cards, etc. But there's also a handful of action cards which can be both angel and demon (depending on who's receiving them). The Second Chance card lets you skip a "bust", the "Freeze" card helps you stop a runaway leader, and the "Flip Three" card forces a player to flip over three cards even if they might bust!

I played with 3 players and it hummed along…

The post Quick Peaks – Flip 7, Among the Stars, Civolution, Sausage Sizzle! and Free Ride: USA! appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

Nashville, TN - There are a lot of different Boardgame Box services that have sprung up over the last few years, but none of them has provided the consternation caused by the newest service on the block: Boardgames4U. We spoke to local gamer Gomer Gustafson about his recent experience with the service.

“When I saw that Boardgames4U was a mystery box service, I kinda got excited. I’ve been doing LootCrate for years and I usually get some really cool stuff from that so I was on board from the get-go,” Gustafson says. “At $15 per box, it was a temptation I couldn’t resist. I mean, their website had pictures of games like The Castle of Burgundy and Underwater Cities on it. $15 for a copy of one of those games? Yes, please!”

And then Gustafson began his long wait. This is typical for Boardgame Box services. Most offer monthly plans that will automatically bill you and then send you a new game each month with additional one-off options for people that are testing the waters before they commit or just purchasing a gift for a friend or a loved one. Gustafson went all in at the $150 annual commitment—a $30 savings if he had chosen to go month to month.

“I remember it was around the middle of June or…

The post Boardgame Mystery Box More Mysterious Than Anticipated appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

From the rulebook: “It was our darkest hour. All the warnings, all the screams of the desperates. Nobody wanted to hear them. Until it was almost too late. Until only burned soil was left. We couldn’t save ourselves, but the trees could. As if they knew that their time for action had come. They showed us what mattered. We understood them and connected with them. Now we know what to do and we support them as good (sic) as possible with the little technology that [is] left. But also with a new, more natural technology, the Arbors showed us. We need green energy and oxygen, to turn burned soil into live-giving green. You can find it everywhere in our new and promising world of Overgrown…”

In Planta Nubo, the players tend the sky gardens atop the canopies of the Arbors. Flower beds produce flowers which are harvested, carried away, and turned into the green energy that keeps civilization running. The soil left behind is fertile ground for planting new forestation which, in turn, creates the life-sustaining oxygen the planet so desperately needs. Each element of the system feeds into the next in a self-perpetuating cycle.

Zoomed Out - A Brief Overview of the Layout and Some General Concepts

At its heart, Planta Nubo is an engine-building game governed by…

The post Ave Uwe: Planta Nubo Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

In classic mythology, the hydra was a many-headed demon that proved very hard to kill. As if its poisonous breath and tainted blood weren’t enough, a hero attempting to slay a hydra would have to contend with its heads not just  regenerating, but doubling, just as quickly as they were lopped off. Back then, the hydra was a friendless, angry beast.

The modern hydra is a much friendlier, more jovial hydra. Much of that is due, no doubt, to the hydra’s affection for the loveable, peaceable otter. Nothing pleases a hydra more than making its otter friends happy and, if there’s one thing that makes them happier than anything, it’s shiny stuff.

In Reef & Ruins, from Carla Kopp (Way Too Many Cats, Roar and Write!), players take on the roles of otters directing their 3-headed friends (represented by three 6-sided dice) as they search through the ruins of wrecked ships and the surrounding reefs for treasure. If they’re feeling particularly generous, they’ll even impart some of their magical essence into their finds to make them even shinier, enhancing their overall value for the end game.

Each round, a player will roll the three dice and players will use those dice however they wish across their three sheets: Ship Ruins, Enchantments, and Reef. Everything a player does…

The post Reef & Ruins Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.