Meeple Mountain News Updates

My first foray into the world of Clank! was through a playthrough of Clank! In! Space!: A Deck-Building Adventure at a mini gaming retreat in Minneapolis. It was a harrowing time as my odds constantly seemed against me as the bag filled up with my previous Clank! cubes. In the… Read more »

Although it's rare for me to play tabletop roleplaying games in person anymore due to the geographical restrictions of my player group, there are occasions that I'm able to dust off the physical components and play a game in the flesh. When that happens, I bring out all the goodies—hardcover… Read more »

Above and Below Redux Above and Below may have a special place in many gamers’ hearts. I’ve heard from different folks that it was the game that introduced them to “euro” mechanics, and it was nominated for numerous Game of the Year awards, including BGG’s Golden Geek, the Board Game… Read more »

Little Pigs, Come Out and Plaaaay Castle Raisers generated a lot of buzz at Essen 2024. Though I wasn’t in attendance, this was hailed as an “easy to learn” game with a depth of decision space. The game has since been fine-tuned in development and is aiming for a big… Read more »

A Brief History of HeroScape Heroscape was something I admired from afar during my youth. The original Hasbro/Milton Bradley-branded Heroscape ran from 2004 to 2008, with big, mismatched characters that I remember seeing on the shelves of KB Toys and Toys "R" Us. The main innovation was interlocking plastic hex… Read more »

The year 2025 marks the 40th anniversary of Dr Reiner Knizia’s career as a board game designer – his first published game, Complica, was released in a magazine in 1985 (although he’d self-published games before then as well). Since then, Knizia has designed and published over 800 games and expansions,… Read more »

This is the fifth volume of Perfected Game Mechanics (Volume 1, Volume 2, Volume 3, Volume 4), a series exploring games where, be they wonderful, amazing, inspiring, or even flawed in some ways, managed to utilize one particular mechanic with sheer perfection. That one mechanic is not going to be… Read more »

From time to time, I reach out to partners to see if there are older games from their collections that are available for review. Over the last two years, I have worked with the team at Eagle-Gryphon to profile a wide swath of games in their legacy catalog—sure, there are… Read more »

The guys in my Wednesday gaming group started a push to play more of the old, dust-covered games at the bottom and backs of our respective game closet shelves. The premise was simple: let’s try to remember why we keep all these old games when all we ever play now… Read more »

I’ve only ever been to one haunted house. I think I would have been about eight, though it’s hard to be sure. It was a docile and low-budget affair at a local orchard. Quintessential New England. If I were to walk through it now, I would likely find it charming,… Read more »