[caption id="attachment_311521" align="aligncenter" width="600"] Revive: The Box[/caption]

Intro

Five thousand years ago, The Devastation took hold of the planet as temperatures dropped. Ice replaced the planet’s once thriving ecosystems. Thick ice. Deep ice. Civilization, or rather, those few surviving tribes, went underground to await The Great Thawing that they hoped would one day come.

Or something like that.

The rule book for Revive is short on backstory—short as in non-existent. With regard to gameplay, however, the narrative is as unclear as it is unnecessary. This is an exploration/deckbuilder/worker placement game, pure and simple. But, does a lack of backstory mean the gameplay wasn’t well-thought out as well? Read on to find out! 

Setup

In Revive, you’re working to rebuild the planet and restore your tribe better than your opponents. When the game ends, you’ll review your progress, tally your scores, and the player with the most points wins. 

Each player will have a slightly asymmetric faction board to represent their tribe. You’ll populate the central area of this board with seven meeple and five scoring tokens. Along the left edge, you’ll place three big buildings and five smaller buildings.

That faction board will fit into the left side of your…

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Modern Euro-style strategy game design is in full swing.

I know that some of our peers in the media and content creation space have bailed on the concept of medium-weight Euros. These types of strategy games are sometimes getting too complex without matching the elegance that similar games possessed even five years ago. However, 2024 has been a banner year for games that shake up the formula just enough to warrant a second or third look.

A case in point: Men-Nefer (2024, Ludonova), the newest design from German P. Milián, who has given us Bitoku, Bitoku: Resutoran, Sabika, and Bamboo. Bamboo was lighter fare, a game that ultimately proved to be more interesting as a production than a decision space.

Both Bitoku and Sabika proved resilient within my gaming circles, particularly with the turn mechanic of Bitoku and the rondel element of Sabika. I’ve held onto both games because I had so much fun exploring each one, even if I think they will be really hard to table on a consistent basis. You know greatness when you see it, right? For the players in my game-o-sphere, Milián is clearly onto something.

Milián’s success continues with Men-Nefer, a thematic sibling to Sabika, right down to a…

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My very first review for Meeple Mountain covered the 2020 Eagle-Gryphon Games (EGG) release Rococo: Deluxe Edition, based on the original Rococo, released in 2013. Rococo, featuring players taking on the role of dressmakers in late 18th-century France, is great and the deluxe version is gloriously exotic, with some of the most beautiful components EGG has ever produced…which is saying something, since nearly all the EGG games I have tried feature handsome production elements.

I had one major complaint about the Rococo: Deluxe Edition release…here’s the quote from my original review:

“My main issue with Rococo Deluxe? The “Deluxe” part. $110 for a game like this is frankly ridiculous. Why is there not a Rococo Peasant version for, say, $50? I would buy that right now.”

The only reason I don’t own a copy of Rococo: Deluxe Edition is the price. That’s it. So, imagine my surprise when I learned that two of the three original designers of Rococo—Louis and Stefan Malz—built a game in the Rococo universe that is roughly 75% base Rococo, in a package that will retail in the $60 USD range.

You’d buy that, right?

For me, it’s a no-brainer. La Pâtisserie Rococo, the new version of the game available now via crowdfunding, uses most of the framework from the Rococo base game…

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To warm up for a few plays of the recent expansion Nucleum: Australia (2024, Board&Dice), I got the base game to the table to ensure I remembered all the edge case rules around tile placement, network restrictions, end-game scoring, and how to power buildings. I asked two of the guys from my strategy group to join me, and we all committed to watching a teach video to ensure we had all the rules down.

“Nucleum is hard, man,” one player said during the second turn (!!) of our first re-entry play, a reminder of the dozens of times we said that when playing the base game in 2023.

He was right. He is still right. Nucleum IS hard. Of course, that’s the deal when you try to play a lot of hard, heavy strategy games—it’s hard to remember all the rules, it’s hard to build a winning strategy, and it’s really hard to get games like Nucleum to the table. (Oh, to dream of having a neighbor who lives across the street, always looking for a friend or two to play the copy of Voidfall they have already set up in their professional gaming space. If you know anyone like that in Chicago, please call me!)

Nucleum is a tough cookie, but the arc is so satisfying…

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At this stage, I will essentially review anything published by Capstone Games. Clay Ross and his extended network consistently pull in gems that have a certain kind of buzz for the Eurogame design elements I love. Between the “Iron Rail” series of cube rails games, the Terra Mystica family of products, and a little-known zoo simulation game called Ark Nova, Capstone has gotten it right much more often than other publishers.

Stephens (a 2024 release designed by the Portuguese design duo known as Costa & Rȏla) is the latest in a long line of medium-weight Euros with a handsome production, a relatively low playtime, and a simple turn structure and cardboard money chits. (I used the included money for the first of my three review plays before pivoting to poker chips.) It has a novel reset/clean-up system that, in the right hands, leads to snappy play and lots of chances to gather income that will be used to further other in-game goals.

In the wrong hands, this system leads to one of the few problems a Euro design can possess—the ability to actually do everything a game has to offer. Many of these games push hard on finding an ending that ensures that players have the chance to only do some, maybe most, of a…

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“So…what did you think?”

Along with three members of my review crew, we had just wrapped up our first four-player game of Asian Tigers: A Story of Prosperity (2024, published by PYTHAGORAS and distributed in the US by Mayfair Games). There was a very long pause before anyone answered my question. I always ask other players for their opinion first before launching into my thoughts.

The opinions ranged wildly. One player loved it, another was still processing the rules load even at the end of our game, for reasons that we’ll come to during a discussion about the game’s scoring elements. The guy who won this first play was most conflicted of all. Winner’s bias is real, we all agreed, so he was in the best position to say whether he loved it or not.

“I really like this one,” he started. “There’s a lot to process with the rules, but ultimately I focused on the area control elements, and that worked out. I just don’t know how often I could see myself getting this to the table.”

This review of Asian Tigers: A Story of Prosperity has proven to be the toughest review I have written this year, in terms of determining a final score. For almost every element of the game that I liked, there are…

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I stopped by the Arcane Wonders booth at SPIEL 2024 to check out the new game Kraftwagen: Age of Engineering. I was excited about it from the get-go: the cover art looked great, and the box offered one additional stand-out detail—the name of the designer, Matthias Cramer.

That’s because Cramer designed Glen More II: Chronicles, one of my all-time favorite games. While other games use a rondel mechanism to dictate turn order, I think Glen More II does rondels better than any other game I have tried. The combination of Cramer’s name here mixed with the fact that Kraftwagen: Age of Engineering is also a rondel game had me pre-sold on the idea that this would be worth a look.

The new version is based on Cramer’s original game, Kraftwagen, published back in 2015. While I have not played the previous game, two other people in my network had, and both indicated that while that first game was pretty good, there were some elements that rubbed them, as hardcore strategy players, the wrong way.

One of those two people, my buddy John (he of the Dusty Euros series), joined me for a demo of the new Kraftwagen at SPIEL to see how it played. And after our three-player demo game, John and I both agreed…

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Man, I love a good mobster theme.

That starts with my love for the mainstream Mafia movie canon. Sure, everyone loves the Godfather films…the classics are classic for a reason. Ditto for Goodfellas, Casino, and nearly everything done by Martin Scorsese. I have a preference for flicks like The Untouchables or newer takes like Gangster Town, The Departed (based on a Hong Kong film called Infernal Affairs—which I think is the better film), Public Enemies, and any of the older flicks reminding us of Prohibition-era crime.

I love gang, mobster, and crime themes, to the point where my wife knows that if there’s a new TV show coming out that gives her “those ‘Narcos’ vibes” (her words), I’m going to watch it. Anything featuring illegal drugs, booze, drive-by shootings, and infamous real-world crime figures is a 100% go for my personal viewing tastes.

My appreciation for mobster themes carries over into board games. Whether it is Scarface 1920, La Famiglia: The Great Mafia War, Speakeasy Blues, or The Godfather: Corleone’s Empire, I am all the way in if a game gives me the chance to celebrate the music of the 1920s and 30s, force opposing gang associates to “swim with the fishes”, or drive a car bomb into a neighborhood.

Given this history, it should come…

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I sat down with The Morrison Game Factory having nary a clue as to what it was about. An old toy factory, I’d surmised from the name and art, but that was about it. There wasn’t much to go on in the box. An old catalog, a short letter, a page that felt like one of those activity sheets children get at chain restaurants, and a repair log were the only clues. I started doing the only thing you can do at the start of one of these games, patiently sifting  through everything until something clicked.

Story

The first few minutes of The Morrison Game Factory are a heady rush. The game starts slow, as you sift through all the random bits available, but the feeling of progress accelerates rapidly, and culminates in a moment that exists in my memory as though it were a scene in a Brian DePalma movie. I am John Travolta, spinning around in that chair.

Piecing together what to do with the scant bits of information I had was exciting. Why exactly it was exciting, I won’t say. Discovery is…

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[caption id="attachment_301571" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Artefacts: The box artwork[/caption]

Three years ago, French game designer Franck Bovet contacted us about reviewing an advance copy of his game Artefacts. The flexibility of the modules and the way they allowed you to customize the game to your liking intrigued me, so I agreed to review it. The game arrived and I had a screen sharing session with Franck to go over the basics of the game. It was clear he had put a lot of thought into the game and was proud of how all the elements worked together.

His initial Kickstarter campaign ended early, so I had to postpone my review…by three years. But now Artefacts is back, with more components added since my review copy was shipped out. Franck recently told me I have the only copy of Artefacts in the US, which is quite an honor.

Please remember that the photos used in our exclusive US review are both from a prototype and are three years old. See the Kickstarter campaign—starting in June 2024— for the updated components.

Game Zero: Overview

At first glance, Artefacts might appear to be just another tank battle game. However, taking a second look shows it is much more than that.

This is…

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I am a big fan of the publisher Devir (and more technically, the in-house Devir Games line), and I am increasingly falling hard for what I refer to as “medium box” experiences.

My definition of “medium box” gaming: a lot of game in a small box, something that you can play in about 90 minutes, possibly solo but certainly with almost any hobby gamer, in a physical package that is literally bursting with components paired with rich gaming experiences for a price that lands in the $30-$40 range.

Salton Sea (2024, Devir Games) is another of these medium box experiences. But by no means is it perfect. In fact, a full third of its mechanics feel extraneous to the point that I’m not sure I would attack that part of its gameplay if I was interested in consistently winning.

But Salton Sea nails the “medium box” mentality I seek with Devir products. Salton Sea has a manufacturer’s suggested retail price (MSRP) of $40. It plays solo, and the box is the same size as Devir’s other medium box games such as The Red Cathedral. And it has one mechanism that might already be my favorite gaming mechanic of the year.

Not the Val Kilmer Movie

The Salton…

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In Factory 42 you’ll play as a Dwarven Overseer, working in some kind of Steampunk-ish Soviet-era mines. Don’t think too hard about it because, to be honest, it really doesn’t matter. This is a straight-forward worker placement game, albeit one with an extra mechanic that is worth looking at.

Since important areas of the game run into pseudo-Soviet-era Bureaucracy, let’s take a point-by-point look at the game.

[caption id="attachment_300406" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Factory 42: The Box[/caption]

The Bureaucratic Run Down

• You win by having the most points at the end of the game.
• You gain points by acquiring rosettes and taking actions to convert them into points.
• You get rosettes by completing Government Contracts and through certain actions.
• You complete Government Contracts by having mining carts containing resources shipped to you.

[caption id="attachment_300413" align="aligncenter" width="500"] Resource cubes[/caption]

• You get those resources by Requisitioning them, then adding them to the common pool of resources.
• However, the Common Pool of resources must first go through the Tower of Bureaucracy. Some resources will pass through, while others will get stuck in bureaucratic red tape and not be available.

[caption id="attachment_300408" align="aligncenter" width="389"]

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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…

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