[caption id="attachment_310938" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Nonaga: The (Small) Box[/caption]

As my colleague Andrew Lynch points out in his review of XOK, we here at Meeple Mountain have an appreciation for games published by Steffen Spiele. We know their games are going to have good quality components and a clever set of rules. That their games come in small boxes means they can be carried around easily and (mostly) set up in small spaces.

Nonaga is no exception. Between setting up the components and going over the few rules, you’ll be playing a minute after you open the box.

Set It Up and Play

Arrange the 19 discs in a hexagonal shape with four discs per side. You’ll each choose a color, then arrange your three pieces at opposite corners of the hex, with each player’s pieces forming a triangle.

[caption id="attachment_310936" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Nonaga Setup[/caption]

When you take your turn, you’ll first move one of your pieces along a straight line until you come to the end of that row of discs.

[caption id="attachment_310942" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Moving a piece[/caption]

Then, you’ll take a disc that can be freely removed from…

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[caption id="attachment_310952" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Passo: The Box[/caption]

PASSO one in a series of small box abstract games from Steffan Spiele. We here at Meeple Mountain have an appreciation for these games, as they combine good quality components with simple rules and a clever twist. Let’s see if PASSO keeps up this tradition.

Setup

Players will choose to play either red or black and take the 5 wooden disks in their color.

Then take the 25 tiles and create a 5x5 square grid, leaving a gap between the tiles.

Each player will then place their 5 discs along the back row closest to them. 

[caption id="attachment_310953" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Passo setup[/caption]

And that’s it.

Playing the Game 

On a turn, you’ll move one of your discs, either orthogonally or diagonally. Moves can either be made forward into the board, horizontally, or backwards towards yourself. When you do so, you can land either on an empty tile or on a tile with no more than two other pieces (yours or your opponent’s) on it. 

When you move from a tile that becomes unoccupied after your move, you’ll remove it from the game. However, if you move a disc from the top of a stack of…

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[caption id="attachment_312159" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Einfach Genial 3D: The Box (Ingenious 3D, German edition)[/caption]

Reiner Knizia’s Ingenious was released in 2004 and immediately became one of my favorite games. It’s a game I’ll pull out to introduce people to the idea of modern board games. From the hex-ended dominoes to the long runs of colors on the board, to the quirky scoring mechanism (your lowest scoring color is your final score), Ingenious struck the right balance between the familiar and the new. It has easily lured friends to the table and made them curious for more.

The box for my copy (featured in a photo of my review of the Second Edition of Ingenious) is battered and torn. The tape along the back of the board wore through years ago, meaning we have to keep pushing the two halves of the board together whenever we play. 

It is a well loved game.

In December 2024, Board Game Geek announced a new 3D version of the game. BGG’s blog editor, W. Eric Martin, posted the news, followed by a video review of the game. The catch, however, is Einfach Genial 3D has not been released in the US—and, currently, there are no plans for…

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[caption id="attachment_311102" align="aligncenter" width="600"] TOKAN: The Box[/caption]

TOKAN is a two-player game of capture. Each player has 15 tiles that are divided into three different types, each having a variation on a shared ability. It’s easy to teach, quick to play, and is intriguing enough to warrant multiple plays each time you open the box.

As a capture game, the goal is to have the highest stacks of pieces—with your pieces on top—when the game ends. How you go about doing so is what makes TOKAN unique. 

Setup & Play

First, players choose to play either black or red. Then you’ll take all 30 tiles and place them face down on a table and mix them up. Create a 5x6 grid from the tiles, turn them over and you’re ready to play.

[caption id="attachment_311103" align="aligncenter" width="600"] A random setup[/caption]

On a turn, you’ll move one of your animal tiles orthogonally and place it on top of another animal. You’d like to capture your opponent’s animals, but you can place a tile on top of a pile of your own pieces. (This can come in handy at the end of the game.)

Each player’s tiles consist of 3 Mice, 7 Jackals, and…

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[caption id="attachment_310923" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Volterra: The (Small) Box[/caption]

Volterra is an abstract from Steffen Spiel, one of my favorite small box game publishers. In keeping with their other games, this box contains polished wood pieces that form a game with simple rules and an interesting twist. Let’s get it to the table so I can show you what I mean.

Playing Volterra

Take the 20 wooden tiles (10 light and 10 dark) and create a 4x5 checkerboard. You’ll each place your pawn on the tile in the middle of the board that matches your color. 

[caption id="attachment_310926" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Volterra Setup[/caption]

And that’s all there is to the setup.

In Volterra, all tiles are referred to as Towers. This is true of a stack of tiles or individual tiles. 

On a turn, you’ll take two actions in whichever order you choose:

• Move your pawn to an adjacent Tower, orthogonally or diagonally, of your color
• Choose a Tower of your color that is both next to your pawn and has at least one edge exposed. Move its topmost Tower, or topmost two Towers, atop another Tower that is orthogonally or diagonally adjacent to it. (This can cover either of…

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WaldMeister is an abstract game from Gerhards Spiel und Design, the German game designers who made beautiful wooden games. My introduction to Gerhards Spiel was Urbino, a game so simple and sublime that I was immediately willing to try anything the publisher produced.

My review copy of Urbino came direct from Germany, which meant getting copies involved overseas shipping. Now, Gerhards Spiel has arranged for US distribution with The Wooden Wagon, a store in Massachusetts that specializes in wooden toys. (My thanks to Chuck for sending me a review copy of WaldMeister.)

Note: Gerhards Spiel games can also be found at The Brooklyn Strategist, a small board game café in Brooklyn whose inventory manager, our own Andrew Lynch, orders directly from the publisher.

Color or Height?

Place the wooden board with a diamond-shaped collection of hexagonal holes on the table between both players.

[caption id="attachment_310639" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Such a beautiful wooden board.[/caption]

Give each player a matching set of 27 hexagonal pieces. These come in three different variations of green (light yellowish, Kelly, and dark) and in three different sizes (short, medium, tall). Players then decide if they’re playing for Color or Height.

If you’re playing for Color, it will help if you separate your…

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[caption id="attachment_310585" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Festival, the Box[/caption]

Festival is a game for 2-4 players where you’re placing firework tiles, each in one of four different colors on your player board, to have them match the patterns shown on objective scoring cards. Have the highest score at the end and you’re the winner!  Festival is a quick, colorful game, but is it worth playing? Read on to find out.

Lighting the Fuse

You’ll start by giving each player a player board in one of the game’s four colors. Each side represents a famous world city, so choose your favorite and place it in front of you.

[caption id="attachment_310581" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Yellow Australia side and Red Paris side[/caption]

Then take the 7-point scoring card for your color and choose one of the two patterns, one on each side, that you think you’ll be able to replicate most easily. Place it to the left of your board. 

[caption id="attachment_310582" align="aligncenter" width="600"] The Blue (London) board, with the Blue 7 point card and two objective cards[/caption]

Each player then…

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XOK, pronounced “shock,” is a two-player abstract game from recently acquired Helvetiq imprint Steffen Spiele. The Steffen Spiele logo is a thing of joy. There is no surer indicator of a game’s qualities than that little three-by-three grid. Whatever the particulars of the game, it’s going to be made of wood, it’s going to be abstract, it’s going to be for two players, and it’s going to have straightforward rules.

That is all certainly true of XOK, in which you and your opponent attempt to build an uninterrupted school of ten fish on a surprisingly tiny board. Seriously, every time I set XOK up, I am struck anew by the petite play space. It must have something to do with how substantial the box feels. Thanks to its black coloring, this travel-friendly box seems larger than it actually is, so that little blue cloth mat, covered in hexagons, isn’t what I expect. Neither, to be fair, are the adorable fish. The sharks, beefy hexagons with slots cut out to represent their mouths, are a bit hexagonal to be evocative to many, but they’re a dead ringer for Whale Sharks if you ask me.

XOK Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

A few weeks ago, a few friends of mine needed a game recommendation. They had about 40-50 minutes to kill. One of them was in the mood for something heavier, or at least something with really satisfying decisions. Another wanted something interactive. The other three wanted something without too many rules. Though I wasn’t playing, I had a requirement too: given that they had 40-50 minutes, it had to be quick to teach.

As luck should have it, the answer was close at hand: Through the Desert, finally back in print after far too long. Full of satisfying trade-offs, deeply interactive, and taking less than five minutes to teach to a table full of comfortable gamers, the second greatest of Reiner Knizia’s tile-laying masterpieces was the cure for what ailed us.

Through the Desert couldn’t be much simpler. First, players take turns adding their Leader camels, one by one, to any valid space on the board. Those placements feel arbitrary the first couple of times you play, but every camel you place for the rest of the game will have to form caravans by branching off of your matching leader. You quickly learn that those five placements are the most impactful decisions you’ll make.

Through the Desert Game Review appeared first on Meeple Mountain.

In recent years publisher EmperorS4 has been a reliable source of interesting small-box games, their Hanamikoji series being a standout.

Hanamikoji is one of the best two-player games around, and for my money it’s easily the most memorable I-cut-you-choose game I’ve ever played, at once uncompromising and comedic. Geisha’s Road added new cogs to Hanamikoji’s original tug-a-war battle; it lacks the same lacerating edge but is more thoughtful and knotty. Meanwhile Shadows in Kyoto is the adopted sister, more of a Hanamikoji-flavoured take on Stratego than a blood relation, and slightly weaker for it.

2024 brings a new baby to the family in the form of Kimono Memories. It’s an altogether softer experience from the plots and subterfuge of its elder sisters whilst still retaining some of the same features in its chubby little face. This fundamental difference might put you off or you may find the friendlier gameplay more inviting.

A Snapshot

This time round, you and your opponent are photographers, visiting Kyoto and trying to amass the best photo portfolio of traditional kimonos, the national dress of Japan. 

As with Hanamikoji and Geisha’s Road there are a series of battlegrounds you’ll be vying to win, although in this case it’s not the favour of individual geisha you’re looking to gain but photos…

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So let me introduce you to Knitting Circle.

Knitting Circle Overview

In Knitting Circle, your goal is to earn the most points by creating completed clothing: combining garment cards, yarn tiles, and scoring buttons into a finished product. But it’s not as easy as it might sound. Make sure your garment meets one of the approved patterns or else you’ll earn the dreaded “ugly sweater” pin and lose points at the end of the game. Mix in the Advanced Request cards and your eyes will be seeing rainbows for hours after you finish each game.

Let’s briefly touch on setup, and then jump straight to the gameplay. Just be aware that each…

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[caption id="attachment_305366" align="aligncenter" width="764"] Umbrella: The Box[/caption]

Umbrella, by Flavien Dauphin and Benoit Turpin, published by Lumberjacks Studio and Pandasaurus Games, is a simple, elegant game that has recently earned a place on my abstract shelf. Let’s see if it lands on yours as well.

The concept is easy enough: you’re trying to rearrange your 4x4 field of colored umbrellas to match the patterns on one of your scoring tiles. Do so, and you’ll place one of the limited number of scoring tokens on your player board. When someone has claimed the last token, the game ends. Whoever has the most points wins.

Of course, the rules make doing so something of a challenge, so let me explain how to play Umbrella.

Falling On My Head Like a Memory

Each player has a board whose center, recessed area, is a 4x4 grid. You’ll place wooden discs with colored umbrellas on the matching, pre-printed spaces on your board. Above this area is a long open space where you’ll place one of the narrow scoring tiles. Players will also receive four square tiles with patterns on a 4x4 grid that matches your umbrella playing area. You’ll place these in two piles, one each on the two leftmost spaces, making sure the…

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Cozy.

It’s an up-and-coming literary term these days; used to describe a softer sort of book: fantasies, mysteries, etc. where the stakes are relatively low, and readers are given plenty of reasons to fall in love with the characters and their lives. Some of my favorites are Becky Chambers’ sci-fi novel The Long Way to a Small, Angry Planet, Travis Baldree’s Legends & Lattes, and Mia P. Manansala’s Tita Rosie’s Kitchen mystery series. But in the past few years, board games have been picking up this flag and proudly waving it. With titles like Calico (a game about making quilts for cats), The Whatnot Cabinet (collecting trinkets and arranging them), Flamecraft (artisan dragon helpers in a small village), and now River Valley Glassworks (a game about collecting river glass).

You might know that I’m a big fan of other games from this team: including French Quarter, and Three Sisters. I was so interested in River Valley Glassworks that I backed it on Kickstarter. This game is aimed squarely at games like Azul, but should resonate with gamers of all ages and experience levels. So let me tell you why I love it.

River Valley Glassworks Overview

In River Valley Glassworks players are collecting…

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