In the Hall of the Mountain King

EvEvanstar4.6

On a turn you either purchase a new card which goes into a card pyramid, causing the new card and all cards below it to stock with resources if empty, or you spend a set of like-resources to place a tetris tile on the central board and then score depending on the materials used. The tiles sometimes overlay bonus resources which you collect, or they cover statue pawns which get placed back on top of your tile. At the end of the game you score most of your points depending on what rings of the board you re-positioned your statue pawns to, moving them from tile to tile by spending wagon resources. The game has some neat design elements such as having one resource that allows you to gain the effect of one of the spell cards on the side of the board, which will be replaced by another spell once players collectively use it three times, or special conversion spaces that you can activate if you are connected to, depending on how many sides of the tile have been connected. I also generally like games where players are carving out their own little areas of a central board. Player interaction is fairly minimal, since you can't link your tunnel to someone else's. I found the experience of play to be a little slow for the amount of planning I needed to do. At the end of the game I felt that I hadn't been able to accomplish much and that my process of play hadn't resulted in a very exciting experience. I would be willing to play it more to see if the pace picks up with multiple plays, but I don't know that I'd push to get it back to the table. :star: Art, Iconography and components functional :star: Clever or interesting mechanisms :star: Reasonably low downtime between turns with mildly AP players :nostar: Multiple plays stay interesting :star: Low or mitigatable luck elements :star::star::nostar::nostar::nostar: Raw enjoyment

MeMestremutenstar5.0

Rating: 2/5 Production value: 3/4 Is the game in my collection/Love to have?: 0/1

Mario López Menésstar6.5

Multi-layered game with polyominoes, resource management and more. PROS - The troll pyramid mechanism is really cool, and forces players to optimize their resources in a clever way. - The game allows different strategies and all of them are capable of winning. - Every game should be different just because of your initial trolls and, more importantly, because of the different spells and workshops available. - The art and production (deluxe edition) are amazing. CONS - There are many things going on in this design, so the first play is probably gonna be confusing. - Bad luck can ocasionally lock you out of a resource, and while there are other ways to win it can feel bad to be locked out of one of them.