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Votes for Women: Campaigning to ratify the Nineteenth Amendment

By Meeple Lady | December 14, 2023 | Comments 1 comment

This review of Votes for Women is featured on Episode 134 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features HerStory, Detective Rummy, Steam Up and Don’t Talk to Strangers.

There are very few board games where I can imagine myself in. Did I, as a young Filipina lady growing up in Los Angeles, ever dream about trading in the Mediterranean or breeding sheep in the German countryside? No, of course not. But joining in the women’s suffrage movement and being eternally grateful for those people who helped usher in my right — and many other women’s rights — to vote? Sign me up! That’s a game I wholeheartedly support. Votes for Women, a game that came out in 2022, is equally educational and enjoyable.

And if you are the type of gamer that thinks, oh, this game is just so political (an actual review I’ve seen online about this), well feel free to skip ahead. Just move along, sir.

Votes for Women is a card-drive game that plays 1 to 4 players in about 60-75 minutes.

Votes for Women, designed by Tory Brown and art by Brigette Indelicato and Marc Rodrigue the second, is published by Fort Circle Game, which designs historical games with a particular focus on United States political and military history.

Indeed, the women’s suffrage movement that ended with the women’s right to vote in the United States happened just a little over a hundred years ago. That is not too long ago in the grand scheme of American history, and something we should work hard to not let the younger generation forget and take for granted.

Votes for Women is a card-drive game that plays 1 to 4 players in about 60-75 minutes. I’ve only played this game as two players — one for the suffrage movement and the other for the opposition — but you can play this game with either two suffrage players and/or two opposition players.

Each side has their own deck of cards for gameplay. Buttons also let you reroll dice.

Having that kind of flexibility is great because I foresee this game as being introduced to gamers and non-gamers alike. And having teams for two suffrage players can make the barrier to entry for playing this CDG less daunting. Additionally, the rulebook is 12 pages. How amazing is that? How many historical games can you say has a rulebook that’s easy to follow?

The game is beautifully designed, with a map of the U.S. and many wooden pieces that include an array of campaigners, green checkmarks, red X’s, influence cubes, and an assortment of dice. The game also includes a historical supplement and copies of historical documents during that time. Pretty neat for those who want to learn more about this!

The goal of the game is two-fold. The suffragists want to push to Congress the 19th Amendment and campaign to have 36 states ratify it. The Opposition will try to prevent Congress from proposing the amendment or if they fail to do that, have 13 states reject the amendment. Each side receives their own deck of cards to play during the game, which, if you’ve ever played other CDGs, eliminates the fraught decision making with playing cards that would benefit your opponent. The tension in this game comes from the tug-of-war campaigning across the U.S.

Cards are phased with events during the early, middle and late part of the movements, complete with snippets of history and/or historical figures in the flavor text. This shows that a lot of research and care went into the development of this game, and not just slapping a theme on a tried-and-true mechanism commonly seen in wargames.

Game play goes for six turns, in which there are 6 rounds for each turn. On each round, the suffrage player or the opposition player plays a card either for the event, to campaign, to organize or to lobby. Players start with 7 cards each turn.

The opposition (pictured) and suffragist side both have campaigner meeples.

Playing a card for an event is just that. Follow what’s written on the card and then end your turn. To campaign, players roll a specific dice based on how many campaigners they have on the board, and then they add cubes to those regions that the campaigners are in. To organize, players discard a card and collect a number of support buttons based on how many campaigners they have on the board. And lastly, to lobby, players roll a specific die and if they get a 6, they can either remove or add a congressional marker to the track on the board. The suffragists need 6 of these to achieve one of the victory conditions, whereas the opposition doesn’t want the suffragist side to send the 19th amendment to Congress.

Only 9 state cards are randomly in play for each game. There are 12 altogether.

There are state cards also in play. If a player places a fourth influence cube in a state that’s in play, they gain the state card and can use its benefit on a future turn. There are also strategy cards that also offer a benefit that players can bid on at the start of a turn using support buttons.

There is a lot of strategy in the order of the cards you play. The suffragist side is also racing to send the 19th Amendment to Congress as it’ll lock down states who vote for it once four cubes are placed into that state. The opposition side, though clearly on the wrong side of history, feels like it has an uphill battle fighting against the two suffragist movements, which are represented by the purple and yellow cubes. For the suffragists though, either cube works toward their influence goals. The suffragists also start with two campaigners on the board, increasing the amount of resources and the ability to campaign across the map.

Winning strategy cards can give you special abilities to help your cause.

If the game reaches the end of turn 6, and the suffragists haven’t sent the 19th Amendment to Congress, they immediately lose. If it did get sent to Congress, and neither side has placed all their x’s or checkmarks onto the board, players enter Final Voting where they will go state by state w;ho’s undecided and roll a die to see who wins that state. If there are influence cubes on that state, they’re added to the dice roll.

The player who places their final X or checkmark wins the game. If I’m being honest, it’s such a great feeling when the Suffragists win, and it’s pretty defeating when the Opposition wins.

I love how the game comes with replicas of historical documents from the era.

For those people not familiar with the United States’ geography, this game can be a little difficult to navigate but the game provides a reference sheet to help you with states’ locations.

There’s a beautiful quote from the game designer Tory Brown included in the game’s historical supplement book. It reads “I created Votes for Women as a love letter to one of the most successful movements in American history.” Votes for Women is a wonderful love letter that everyone should dive into.

I got a chance to meet Tory in person at SDHist Con, and it was such a pleasure hearing her talk about the design process and what inspired her. And just a few days ago, the convention announced that Votes for Women is the winner of this year’s Summit Award.

I got to meet Tory Brown during SD Hist Con this year!

And that’s Votes for Women! This is Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter, Instagram and Tiktok as Meeple Lady, or on my website, boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening and don’t forget to vote! Bye!

Fit To Print: Read all about it!

By Meeple Lady | October 25, 2023 | Comments 0 Comment

This review of Fit To Print is featured on Episode 140 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Legacy of Yu, Sea Salt & Paper, Flamecraft and Rise.

As someone who started their career in the newspaper world, it’s rare to see a board game with that exact theme. So, when I saw the Kickstarter for Fit to Print, I immediately backed it. When it finally arrived on my front door, like the morning edition of the daily paper, I was so excited to get the game on table, to see if this tile-laying real-time game captures the essence of what it’s like to assemble the front page of a newspaper before the time runs out.

Fit to Print, designed by Peter McPherson and with charming woodland creature artwork from Ian O’Toole, co-published by Flatout Games and Alderac Entertainment Group in 2023. It plays one to six people, in about 30 minutes. It’s a fast-paced and hectic puzzle (in the funnest way possible), the perfect game to squeeze into that small time frame when you’ve got a game day deadline. See what I did there?

In Fit to Print, players take on the roles of editors-in-chief assembling the front page of the tiny town of Thistleville’s newspaper to be balanced with news stories, photos and advertising. All of these items are represented in over 130-plus unique block tiles, which are placed in the middle of the table face down. The game goes through three rounds: Friday, Saturday and Sunday, with each subsequent newspaper front page getting larger.

Time to assemble the front page! Deadlines matter here!

The rounds are split up between the reporting phrase and the layout phase. Players can decide before playing if they want a frantic, standard or relaxed game, with the timer set at 3 minutes, 4 minutes or 5 minutes for the round. When gameplay begins, players simultaneously flip over tiles in the middle of the table (with one hand one at a time) and individually select which piece to add to their cardboard desk, and when a player decides they have gathered enough tiles to fill their front page, they move onto the layout phase of the game (all the while the clock is still running in case you forgot) and lay out tiles on their front page board. And yes, each player gets a cute little cardboard desk you assemble and take down with each game.

The whole setup for my front page, complete with a little cardboard desk.

How you place these tiles matters on your board as they’ll score points at the end of each day. News stories come in three varieties: sports and entertainment, news, and business technology, respectively pink, blue and green tiles. Articles also come with moods: good news or bad news. The same types of tiles do not like sitting orthogonally next to each other. Photos want to be separated from other photos, as well as ads. The exception to this is news stories. You can place different types of stories next to each other, but you won’t score any points for placing business stories next to each other.

Just like real life editorial design, you want to maximize your space, and if you are unable to perfectly piece all the elements of your front page (or worse, didn’t get enough tiles to fill the space, which happens all the time), you’ll be penalized with negative points. The person with the largest continuous white space will receive the biggest penalty. Alternatively, if you take too many tiles, you’ll also get negative points but luckily, you’ll have them on your desk to publish in tomorrow’s front page.

Players also begin with a centerpiece, which has to be placed anywhere above the fold and covering the star printed on the board. The centerpieces offer different ways to score points if you meet their qualifications. Photos score points for news stories it’s adjacent to. You also want a balanced front page. Too many sad stories vs happy stories, and you’ll be docked points. Lastly, ads give you revenue, which will be added up after three days, and the person with the least revenue goes bankrupt, goes out of business and is ineligible to win.

One of my best front pages! Look at how few open spaces I have!

Fit to Print also comes with advanced modes such as player powers and adding a breaking news deck, which places unique restrictions and bonuses for the day. The rulebook also comes with a family mode to reduce complexity, as well as a solo mode that comes with scenarios to track achievements. Lastly, the game also comes with rules for a newsroom mode, which supports 4 to 12 players in teams of 2. Within each team, one player is the reporter and the other the layout editor, and teams are spaced apart around 12 feet. I haven’t tried this yet but I can imagine the frenetic chaos of the reporter picking up tiles from a centralized table.

So how does Fit to Print stack up? It’s so freaking fun. That polyomino puzzle is a mechanism many of us are familiar with, but amping up the gameplay with the real-time aspect of it — genius! Every time I’ve played it, I like to yell out things like “30 seconds left” during gameplay, to which someone inevitably yells “Shut UP!” and a few other colorful words that I won’t be repeating for our family-friendly podcast. Once that clock starts for the round, the excitement fills the room and everyone is hyperfocused on picking up pieces to collect on your little cardboard desk

Fit To Print has been a hit every time I’ve played it.

Sometimes your eyes are bigger than the allotted space for your front page. But then Sunday rolls around, and that extra space somehow exponentially makes A1 so much harder to fill up and fill it up well!

One of my friends described it as Galaxy Trucker with the misfortune of having your ship getting blown to bits. Here, you just scrap your front page after scoring your points and get ready for the next day’s edition. And the game’s artwork is just so cute and the characters endearing. I have a fondness for Boris Erenstein, the grizzled news reporter who started out as a copyeditor and has 20-years of journalism experience behind him. He looks like the type of guy who would make deadlines, even if you have just three minutes left. If you love real time tactile puzzle games, Fit to Print is for you.

And that’s Fit to Print! This is Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on all the socials as Meeple Lady, or on my website boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!

Red Cathedral: Building church walls in Russia

By Meeple Lady | February 18, 2022 | Comments 2 comments

This review of Red Cathedral was featured on Episode 118 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Lost Ruins of Arnak, Cat Sudoku, Dice Miner and Dale of Merchants.

In 2020, an unassuming board game that came in a box about the size of a medium hardcover book was released and it quickly became one of my top 10 board games I played for the first time in 2021. Red Cathedral, published by Devir Games and designed by Isra C. and Shel S., packs quite a punch with its medium-weight euro and dice rondel, two mechanisms I enjoy in my board games.

The Red Cathedral box is much smaller than most other euros.

Players take on the role of architects charged with building the Red Cathedral. Each player will build different portions of the monument, and using your influence with the clergy and guilds, you’ll attempt to earn the Tsar Ivan the Terrible’s favor.

The setup of the cathedral depends on how many players are playing, and you can randomly choose one of the building plan cards the game comes with, which tells you how to build out the cathedral, complete with tower heights that consist of at least one base and one dome, and variable sections in between. For each section of the cathedral, a random workshop tile is placed on it (and I’ll explain what these do later in the game).

Each game comes with multiple cards to set up your cathedral based on number of players.

Each player has their own player board and matching banners. These boards represent how many materials and resources you can hold in order to build sections of the cathedral. The more banners you get out onto the cathedral walls, the more storage you’ll have. Each player also starts with 3, 4 or 5 rubles depending on if they’re first, second, etc.

Lastly, a majority of the game also involves the market board, where five different colored dice sit in a rondel wheel separated by four groups: the craftsmen’s guild, the teamsters’ guild, the merchants’ guild and the clergy. Before we begin, points in this game are calculated by Recognition and Prestige. Initially, it takes five recognition points to get to 1 prestige, but as you score more in the game, this gap eventually becomes one to one. You can score either point through various actions in the game.

This setup seems like a lot, but in reality, setup goes fairly quick and the cathedral wall cards are small cards, so this game is not a table hog by any means. There’s a lot of variability in setup as well as there are multiple cards you can choose from for each of the different guilds for each game.

Here’s a random setup for a three-player game.

On your turn, you carry out one of three actions: Claim a cathedral section, build sections of the cathedral, or acquire resources from the market.

When you claim a cathedral section, you remove one of your banners from your player board and place it on an available cathedral card. You then take the workshop tile that’s on the cathedral card and place it on an empty workshop space on your player board and pay the rubles cost printed on this space. If you have no rubles available or simply don’t want to pay, you can place the workshop tile face down into that space, but the tile will not give you bonuses when you use the space later.

Each player gets their own board, which holds all your resources.

A face-up workshop tile will give you a benefit when you later use the market action to acquire resources. Strategically picking which sections you want to build comes into play at the end of the game, where majority control will net you more points.

When you build sections of the cathedral, you take up to three resources from your player board and place them on cathedral cards. Each card has requirements for its completion, and if a player delivers all those items, they collect the recognition points and/or rubles. That cathedral card is then flipped over to represent it being complete, removing the resources that were sitting on it to place back into the bank, while leaving the player’s banner to show who finished the section.

Once a section is complete, a player can then decorate that section by delivering jewels on their turn, and not necessarily to a section that they themselves finished. Decorating the cathedral will net prestige points.

The last action is acquiring resources from the market. This is my favorite thing about this game, as it requires using strategy and timing to collect what you want! Pick one die to use on the wheel, move that die however many spaces around each section of the wheel based on the pips showing and where they land, they may perform any market actions in that space. A die cannot land on a space where there are three dice already so that limits which one you’ll choose.

The market rondel is my favorite mechanism of Red Cathedral.

When you land, you obtain resources from that spot multiplied by the number of pips on the die used. A player can additionally use influence or activate a workshop tile. To use influence, you look at the guild card that’s in that quadrant and use one of its two actions. To activate a workshop tile, you look on your player board to see if the die you used has a workshop tile on it. If it does, you gain resources based on where the die in the workshop tile is sitting on the wheel. At the end of your market turn, you roll all the dice in the section you landed on and end your turn.

The game ends when six cathedral cards are completed, and the player gains 3 prestige points for triggering the end. Then all other players have one last turn. Everyone then moves their score counters back to the closest prestige point and scores 1 point for every 5 leftover materials, Now comes the cathedral scoring. Each section completed is 2 points, plus 1 point for each ornamentation on it. This number comes into play for scoring the majority for each tower. Each player then counts the number of banners and ornamentation in each tower, and if they have the most, they score the full value of that tower. The second receives half, and the third receives half of that.

The person with the most prestige points wins the game. Calculating tower majorities might get a little unwieldy at the end but overall the game is a solid tight euro that allows for a lot of variability in later games. Red Cathedral isn’t too tough to teach as there are really three main actions on your turn, and the iconography on the cards is easy to understand. Plus, the market rondel is such a clever mechanism that I don’t see too often in euros, and most importantly, the box is so small compared to other euros of the same caliber. I’ve had a lot of fun playing this throughout 2021.

And that’s Red Cathedral! This is Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as Meeple Lady, or on my website boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!

Hanamikoji: Getting charm points with the geishas

By Meeple Lady | December 16, 2020 | Comments 0 Comment

This review of Hanamikoji was featured on Episode 102 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Forbidden Desert, Sorcerer City, Chai and Just One.

There was a time in my life when my two-player games sat unplayed on my shelves. But since 2020, the year that none of us could’ve ever predicted, many of those games have since hit the gaming table.

Hanamijoki, first reviewed by Ruth in Episode 18, is one of those delightful two-player games that have come into the rotation. Designed by Kota Nakayama and artwork by Maisherly and Mashiro Misaki, Hanamijoki is an abstract area majority card game that features gorgeous and colorful Japanese style geisha artwork.

One geisha is holding an umbrella, one playing a flute, one pouring tea — each scene is unique in activity and color. This version I have is published by EmperorS4 but this game is now being published by Deep Water Games.

Hanamikoji comes in a small box that’s easily transportable.

This small portable box, which is about the size of a small paperback, includes 7 geisha cards, 21 item cards, cardboard victory markers and cardboard action tokens — 4 for each player. Though the game comes with few components, it packs a big punch with its tension-filled back-and-forth gameplay. And you don’t need a lot of table space to play this game, which is good these days as many game tables have evolved into multi-purpose spaces within the household.

In Hanamikoji, players are working to gain the favor of the seven geishas by collecting their favored performance item, in this case, cards that match the geishas’ symbol. The seven geisha cards are displayed in between the two players, and this is where most of the gaming occurs as cards are placed above or below each geisha card based on which player plays them. Each geisha card has a number on the top left of the card, which indicates their charm points and equals the number of matching item cards for that geisha. The geishas range from 2 to 5 charm points.

Hanamikoji is played over three rounds. One item card is randomly removed at the start of each round. Players begin a round with a hand of six item cards, and on their turn, they draw an item card from the deck and spend one of their actions playing cards from their hand. For those actions, there are exactly four of them, and each player gets the same set to be used in any order by the player on their turn.

Hanamikoji action tiles — Each player has the same identical four action tiles.

The four actions are represented by cardboard tiles, and if a player uses that action during the round, they flip it over to the non-colored side. So, what are these actions?

The first one is choosing 1 card from your hand and placing it face down in front of you. This card will remain a secret and will be scored at the end of the round to go toward that geisha’s charm points.

The second action is choosing 2 cards from your hand and placing them face-down in front of you, and these cards will not be scored during this round.

The third action is choosing 3 cards from your hand and placing them face-up in front of you. Your opponent then selects one of these three cards to place in front of a geisha on their side, and you get to place the other two cards in front of a geisha on your side of the table.

The fourth action is selecting four cards from your hand and placing them in two piles of two cards each face up. Your opponent then selects one set of cards to place underneath the corresponding geisha, and you take the other ones to place in front your geisha.

Players go back and forth taking one action each until they’ve exhausted all their action tokens. Players flip over secret cards that score, and count which player the geisha favors based on the number of item cards each player has given them. The victory markers on the geisha card will then move toward the player who gains her favor.

Hanamikoji cards — Players play cards on their side of the board to gain charm points.

Players aim to win 4 geishas or 11 or more charm points. If there is no clear victory in the first round, players play until three rounds are over. In between rounds, the victory markers do not reset, but instead stay toward the side of the player who curried the geisha’s favor the previous round. If nobody gets the 4 geishas or 11 or more charm points after three rounds, the player with more geishas wins the game.

This game is tense! You’re initially presented with limited information, as the round progresses, more and more cards are revealed but there’s still are still hidden cards from the one your opponent saves and the one removed from the game.

You also have to make calculated guesses regarding which cards to play or save for a future action because you don’t want to get cornered into giving your opponent only good options because those are the only cards left in your hand.

Hanamikoji is quick to set up and easy to learn. It doesn’t take up a lot of table space, plays fairly quickly at 15-20 minutes, and is compact for easy travel, for when we all decide to travel again. Lastly, even though the game seems deceptively easy, there’s a lot of strategy to explore.

It’s one of the best “I cut/you choose” game mechanisms where you still feel like you have some sense of control over your destiny instead of being at the complete mercy of the other player. And the lovely artwork is just so pleasing and calming — when you’re not racking your brain about which cards to play.

And that’s Hanamikoji! This is Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as Meeple Lady, or on my website boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!

Backgammon: Let’s go play at the bar!

By Meeple Lady | April 22, 2020 | Comments 5 comments

This review of backgammon was featured on Episode 85 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Raiders of the North Sea, Snow Tails, Banned Books and Orleans.

Every so often, I’m watching a movie or TV show and a backgammon set shows up. I immediately pause the program to examine whether they’re playing correctly or it’s just being used as a prop.

For myself personally, backgammon for many, many years was just a game that existed. A game that people always randomly had in their house, probably a gift from their grandparents or a friend. It’s a game I’m surprised that a lot more people don’t know how to play, considering how old it is. It’s ancient — with its roots tracing back to nearly 5,000 years in Mesopotamia. I finally learned the game as an adult, and it has been one of my absolute favorites ever since. I keep my set in my car so I can bust it out at any time. And people, I have.

Backgammon is a classic two-player game that combines strategy and luck. It’s played on a board, often built into a mini little suitcase, and two players sit across from each other. Each player has fifteen pieces, also known as checkers, two dice in their matching color and a dice cup. Players must move all their checkers around the board in one direction into their home area, which then they can start bearing off the pieces.

This is the opening setup for backgammon.

The problem is: your opponent is moving in the opposite direction and can hit you, forcing your checker to start its journey home all over again by entering at your opponent’s home board, which is the farthest area from your home board.

When you open your case, you’ll see the board is made up of 24 long points, which look like long skinny triangles, and the board is divided into four quadrants. For the purposes of this review, I’ll call the points spaces instead so it doesn’t sound like we’re constantly talking about victory points this entire time. Checkers sit on a space and move in a horseshoe pattern around the board. Your home board is the set of 6 spaces closest to you, and your opponent plays the mirror image of the same board. Each quadrant on the board has exactly 6 spaces each.

There is a standard setup for the checkers at the start of the game, then players begin by rolling one die each, and the player with the higher die goes first. They move their piece or pieces exactly according to what’s rolled, in one direction toward their home board. For example, if a 2 and 4 were rolled, the player moves one piece two spaces, and another piece four spaces, or they may move the same piece two spaces and then four spaces.

To be able to move into a space, it has to be empty, or have your checkers sitting in it, or just one checker of your opponent’s sitting in it. If there are two or more checkers of your opponents sitting on the space, it is blocked and you cannot land there.

This is the white player’s opening move, moving one piece 5 spaces and another piece 1 space.

If there is one checker sitting there that belongs to your opponent and you decide to move in, their piece gets knocked off and goes to the bar, which is usually the middle fold of the case. Your opponent must then roll into an open space in your home board, which has their starting spaces.

On future turns, players take turns back and forth, plopping their two matching dice into their own dice cup and rolling. Players continue until one person bears off all their checkers from their home board. A player cannot start bearing off their checkers until they’re all in their home board, and even then, the player must be able to roll high enough to get them off the board. The first player to complete that is the winner.

There is a lot of back and forth in this game, and while it’s true that a couple of bad rolls could set you far behind, there is strategy in how you move your pieces. You want to move them in pairs, so that no one checker is sitting by itself, practically inviting your opponent to come hit you. You also need to understand when to make a run for it, moving all your checkers past your opponent. Sometimes, it’s advantageous to keep a few behind so that you can hit your opponent when the opportunity presents itself.

There’s also something to be said about building a wall of defense in your home board, so that if you do hit an opponent’s piece, they will have a hard time rolling into their starting area because you’ve blocked off many of their opening spaces

There is also the thing about doubles. Rolling doubles will result in four actions of that same number. For example, a roll of two 6’s is very powerful because you get 6 points of movement — four times!

Most of the game you’re hoping for doubles, while taunting your opponent by rage-shaking your dice cup near their face. It’s very fun.

This doubling cube can raise the stakes on your game.

For those who want to raise the stakes, try using the doubling cube. The doubling cube is a marker representing what the two players are betting. It begins at 64 at the start of the game, and when one player is feeling lucky in their progress, they can move it to 2, meaning if they’re playing for dimes, the winner will now be receiving 20 cents instead.

The other player can agree to the 2 or just end the game and pay the 10 cents. The doubling cube’s sides double from 2 to 4 to 8 to 16 to 32 to 64. Players have to take turns increasing the doubling cube; the same player cannot keep raising the stakes of the game.

If your opponent wins the game, and you haven’t taken a single checker off the board, you’ve been gammoned, and this doubles the stakes. If your opponent wins, and you still have a checker on the bar or in the home board of your opponent, then you’ve been backgammoned — and this triples the stakes. I’ve seen some epic games where someone had been backgammoned and paid a hefty sum to the winner!

I’ve had my backgammon set for years and it shows! I must’ve purchased this for less than $10 at Target many, many years ago. It has been great to me.

In all, backgammon is a quick, fun 2-player game that’s easily transportable and you can pretty much play anywhere. It has a self contained playing area with its suitcase setup. It’s also very easy to find an inexpensive copy, and chances are there are even a few sets at Goodwill. Just make sure all fifteen checkers are included.

And that’s backgammon. This is Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as Meeple Lady, or on my website, boardgamemeeplelady.com. May you always roll doubles, and I’ll see you at the bar! Thanks for listening. Bye!

Teotihuacan: Building a pyramid and ascending

By Meeple Lady | May 10, 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

This review of Teotihuacan was featured on Episode 60 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Dragon Castle, Blue Lagoon, Iron Dragon and Circle the Wagons.

What was the most complicated game that came out in 2018? I actually don’t know the answer to that question. But I can tell you which game was most complicated to say for a lot of people, so much so that there were video tutorials on its pronunciation. I grew up in LA and was surrounded by all types of languages. So seeing and saying a word like Teotihuacan comes pretty naturally to me. But in case you needed a tutorial, the word is luckily spelled exactly how it sounds, which isn’t always the case with Aztec words.

This average-sized box comes with an insane amount of components, which makes each game unique.

Teotihuacan: City of Gods was published in 2018 by NSKN Games. It’s designed by Daniele Tascini, who has also published The Voyages of Marco Polo, Council of Four and one of my absolute all-time favorites, Tzolk’in.

In Teotihuacan, which plays in about 90-120 minutes, players play as powerful noble families trying to achieve everlasting glory while planning the construction of the pyramid. In its essence, the game is a giant rondel, with, when completed, a gorgeous pyramid sitting in the middle.

The board is incredibly busy, which is a detriment to the game. People see that beautiful pyramid and then slowly back away when there’s a million things they seemingly have to decipher on the board.

I’m here to tell you to come on back and don’t be freaked out by board!

This board is way to busy, which can make the game more daunting than it is.

There are 8 action boards on the entire board. Instead of worker meeples players use dice to represent their workers, and the pips on the dice indicate which power level that worker is at. On a player’s turn, they can take a normal turn by advancing one of their dice 1, 2 or 3 action spaces in a clockwise direction.

After moving that worker, that player must perform one of three possible actions on the action board they’ve landed on. They can either collect cocoa, worship or perform a main action.

Cocoa is needed to enter an action space where there are other dice present and if you want to take a main action. To collect cocoa, you count the number of different colored workers already present on the action space, and you receive that number of cocoa plus 1.

If you decide to take a main action on an action board, you must pay cocoa equal to the number of different colored dice on that action location already there. Each action board has a different main action.

Three of the action boards are locations where you receive resources to build houses and/or pyramids. Those resources are wood, gold and stone. When you land on an action board, how strong your worker dice is determines how much you’re receiving. Also, when you land on a location that already has your dice, you’ll also receive more resources because your workers are more powerful there.

Another action board allows you to pay gold in order to receive a technology or benefit for the entire game. If you have two dice there, or you enter the location with a 4- or 5-level dice, you can pay gold for higher-level technologies. Many of these technologies will trigger when you activate a certain action board.

Even though there are a lot of dice on the board, this is by no means a dice game.

Another action board allows you to use wood to build buildings. The earlier you build these, the more victory points you’ll score, but the houses are relocated from Building Row on the Main Board, which comes to play during the scoring round.

The last two Action boards deal with the pyramid, either selecting decoration tiles that sit on steps of the pyramid, or building the pyramid itself with resources you’ve collected. The pyramid tiles are study square mah-jong-type tiles and are just delightful to play with. Taking either one of these actions moves you along the pyramid track.

Now instead of performing a main action, you can always worship. When you worship, you enter an action board’s worship space and claim a discovery tile, which are benefits or masks for end-of-round set collection victory points, or you can go up a temple track. If you want to do both things, you’ll have to pay with cocoa. There are three temple tracks in the game, from which you can receive more benefits or masks as you advance on them. When your worker worships, that dice is locked until you pay to free them on a future action or until someone pays cocoa to bump you off if they want to worship as well. Also, during your turn, you can unlock all your dice for free, but that’s all you do on your turn.

After performing a main action, at least one die will level up. This is how you get more powerful workers that move around the board. Once you hit level 6, you ascend. You then advance your marker one step on the Avenue of the Dead and select a reward on the Ascension wheel, which includes unlocking a level 3 dice for the board. Your die that ascended then starts at Level 1 again and at the Palace Action Board. When a player ascends, they advance the white disc on the Calendar Track.

Tracks galore in Teotihuacan, whether you’re going up the pyramid track or one of the temples shown here.

The calendar track controls the pacing of the game. A normal round consists of everyone taking their turn, and then advancing the white disc. When the white disc reaches the black disc, an eclipse is triggered. Players gets VPs for their step on the Avenue of the Dead (which is multiplied by the lowest visible number on the Building Row on the main board), and for their step on the Pyramid track (which is multiplied by 4, 3 or 2 points depending on if it’s the first, second or third eclipse.) The player farthest along the pyramid track also gets 4 points, and the pyramid track is reset for the next phase.

Players also get points for collecting sets of masks and each player must pay 1 cocoa for each of their worker that’s a level 1 to 3, and 2 cocoa for their level 4 and 5 workers. The game continues for three eclipses, with fewer rounds each eclipses to trigger end-of-round scoring, and the person with the most victory points wins the game.

Some have said Teotihuacan is a re-skin of Tzolk’in. The time mechanism and sheer genius of Tzolk’in is unmatched, even by Teotihuacan. I feel like Teotihuacan is more forgiving, whereas Tzolk’in is straight up mean, which I love. You can always enter a space in Teotihuacan; what you receive or action you take is determined by whether you have enough cocoa.

Look at our glorious pyramid! But that also means that the game is suddenly over.

But Teotihuacan is still a solid game and worthy of its predecessor. The beauty of this game is managing your workers around the rondel as well as the timing of when to level them up. I enjoy the variability of each play. The game comes with a lot of components, from the cool pyramid tiles to a bunch of sturdy cardboard tiles. I just wish the board wasn’t so busy with unnecessary artwork.

And that’s Teotihuacan! This is Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as Meeple Lady, or on my website boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!

Escape Plan: Grabbing the loot and running

By Meeple Lady | April 24, 2019 | Comments 0 Comment

This review of Escape Plan was featured on Episode 59 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Monopoly Deal, Village, Ticket to Ride: New York and Piepmatz.

We’ve all watched countless heist films. A group of skilled individuals lay out a plan, execute said plan and grab the loot. And then what’s the saying? The best-laid plans of mice and men often go awry.

Well, then shoot, Plan B. Hide the loot and lay low – for now.

But now the time is up, and we’ve all got to grab our hidden loot and get out of the city.

Welcome to Escape Plan, the latest game designed from Vital Lacerda, with artwork from Ian O’Toole, published by Eagle-Gryphon Games in 2019. Escape Plan picks up right this moment of the heist narrative: players have three days to evade the cops, get their money and get the heck out of the town.

Escape Plan, published in 2019, is Vital Lacerda’s latest game.

Lacerda himself has said that he just adores movies and is constantly inspired by them when designing board games. And Escape Plan manages to capture the tenseness of those heist films we’re so familiar with, all the while figuring out the game’s puzzly inteconnectivity that is a signature of Lacerda’s board games.

Each day has six phases: players get their income, the police start to close the exits, the city gets revealed, change turn order, player take their turns, and then prepare for the next day. At the start of the game, you don’t know which one of the three exits is the correct one, and you also don’t get to see where different locations are on the board because the city hasn’t completely been built out yet.

I really enjoy this aspect of the game because it forces you to make decisions with the new information and locations presented to you at the start of each day.

On your turn, you either move or rest. That’s it. Simple, right? But wait, it’s a Lacerda game! When you do a move action, you move 1-3 spaces on the board, try and avoid the police, and visit a location. The most common locations to visit are businesses and safehouses, where you can either collect end-game VPs or up-front cash to help you with your getaway.

Eachh player gets their own board, which tracks their income and has spaces to hold their contact cards, asset and equipment tiles.

Each player receives a different escape plan and a player board, which holds asset and equipment tiles, and contact cards, as well as tracks your income, wounds and executive actions, which are free or paid actions you can take during your turn at any time. The more of certain actions you complete, the more locations on your player board unlock, thus increasing your capacity to hold all these various items.

Your income goes down goes the more locations you visit, as you drop off a cube from your player board to indicate you’ve done an action there.

There are also various locations on the board that assist with movement (the subway stop and helipad), the convenience store (where you can purchase equipment to evade the police or you can raid lockers for money if you have a key), and the clinic and hospital (where you can heal your wounds.) There’s also the chapel where you can decrease your notoriety.

Notoriety is a huge element of the game. Doing just about anything will increase/decrease your notoriety, which re-calculates after every single action round. Notoriety is a track that allows you possibly get more money at the lockers and unlock asset tiles, but it essentially puts a target on our back because when you cross certain thresholds on the notoriety track, all the other players will move the police toward you. And that’s not good in this game.

Notorious!! Having the most notoriety is good and bad, but probably mostly bad.

Also not good is getting caught by the police. When you enter a hex with police on it, nothing happens. But when you leave that hex, you will get wounds.

Players can also employ biker gangs to help evade the police or reduce notoriety as an executive action.

Lastly, if you decide not to move on your turn, you can rest. Resting means you flip back your contact cards and equipment tiles on your board, as well as the First Aid tile. Those items are now all available again. And you can only rest once per day, a total of three times in the entire game. But since you have so few actions, I wouldn’t advise taking this action unless you absolutely have to.

The game does an excellent job of making you feel the weight and pressure of being hunted. There are so few actions in the game, about 12-15 actions total, that every single step has such huge effects on the game.

You’re constantly looking over your shoulder and wondering if another player’s actions will send the police over in your direction.

Everyone starts at the center of the board, but the city isn’t built out yet.

Do you risk looking for more loot or just run over to the exit as soon as you can? Well, if you delay, once someone exits, each action will cost each player one more dollar, and depending on when you exit, that costs more as well. The first person to exit pays nothing.

If you don’t exit the game, you’re just out of contention from even potentially winning the game. For those who escaped, they count their cash in hand and money they’ve collected from visiting locations, and the person with the most money wins the game.

The game board is double sided and scales differently for player counts. For fans of Kanban, the character of Sandra shows up in Escape Plan and is the automa for the 1-player game. I just realized that Sandra is Lacerda’s wife’s name, and that made me chuckle. Cool beans, I think.

A sampling of the contact cards and equipment tiles. And some gas cans when you really need to hoof it through the city.

Overall, I just love this game, and probably his lightest to date, but, and that’s a big but, it’s still a Lacerda game, which means it’s still a heavy game and there are a lot of rules to remember. The rulebook is written well and clear and the iconography is great, so it’s just a matter of if you want to invest time in learning this game, which plays in about 60-120 minutes.

The first time I played this game, it was over in about 90 minutes, and it felt really short for one of his games. But the more times I played this game, the richer game play has become. The game shines when people are actively trying to send the police over to your opponent’s neck of the woods when the options are there for placement.

The theme for Escape Plan works well for the mechanisms, and because of that, it seems more intuitive and easier to pick up than his other games. I also love the variability of each game because the board will be built out differently each time.

And that’s Escape Plan! Thanks, Eagle-Gryphon Games, for giving me a copy of this game. This is Meeple Lady for the Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as meeplelady. Or on my website, boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!

1846: The Race for the Midwest: A good introduction into 18xx

By Meeple Lady | February 25, 2019 | Comments 1 comment

This review of 1846: Race for the Midwest was featured on Episode 54 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Otys, Wingspan, Lanterns: The Harvest Festival and Gizmos.

If the world of 18xx is something you’ve been interested in but never knew where to start, check out 1846: The Race for the Midwest.

Published in 2016 by GMT Games, 1846 is a great introductory game into the world of 18xx.

The rulebook for 1846 is a little daunting to go through on your first go-around. I’d highly recommending finding someone who can teach and run the game so that your first experience is as smooth as possible. There is quite a lot to keep up with, and having a game of all inexperienced players could potentially turn you off from these types of games. And that would be unfortunate, because 18xx games are fantastic.

Well, fantastic if you love super crunchy, math-heavy, puzzly and economic games that manipulate the stock market and can be sometimes kind of mean. There’s a whole bunch of 18xxes in the wild, and if you learn one 18xx, many of the other games are built upon similar concepts with slight tweaks in gameplay, so really, you’ll be ready to jump into all the other train games soon enough.

We are building routes and collecting incomes! Choo-choo!

In 1846, 3-5 railroad tycoons are competing to earn money and build the best stock portfolio by investing in and operating railroad corporations within the Midwest during 1846-1935. Players begin the game with $400 and begin first drafting private corporations that may provide some income for the first part of the game. The drafting here is important because many other 18xx games start with an auction, and if you’re not a player with any 18xx experience, a misstep at this starting auction can be brutal.

In 1846, each round consists of a stock round and two operating rounds. Game play continues until players break the bank, and the person with the most cash in their personal stock and the value of their stock shares wins the game.

A large component of 1846 is that each corporation has their own treasury, which is used to lay down tracks or upgrade tracks and purchase trains, and this treasury is completely separate the player’s personal stock portfolio and bank. The crux of the game is balancing when to infuse money into your corporation to do actions, or pay fully yourself and other stockholders out, either action affecting the stock price of the corporation.

During a stock round, players taken turns buying stock from the stock market or a share from a corporation’s treasury, paying the market price for it.

Taking the Grand Trunk, or as affectionately like to call it “Grand Funk,” Railway to victory!

Players can also purchase the President’s certificate, which is two stocks of a corporation, and launch that corporation and put it on the map. You can get to select its initial stock value. Each corporation has exactly 10 shares. The person holding the most shares is the president of the corporation.

Then comes two Operating Rounds. Each operating round consists of issuing share to the market to raise capital, and then laying down one yellow tile onto the board. The player can also lay down a second yellow tile or upgrade one tile. All tile lays and upgrades cost money, depending on the cost printed on the empty hex or the preprinted which it replaces. Upgrades must be done in a specific color order: yellow, green, brown and gray, and the new tiles must preserve its type (city or not) and the orientation of the previous tracks laid out.

City tiles have spaces for tokens to be placed by corporations for a cost. These tokens have the potential to block other corporations from going through your city, which is bad news for running your route.

What is running your route? Depending on what type of train you have at the start of the operating round, this determines how many hexes you can reach and how much revenue you’ll be receiving for that operating round.

Next comes the payout. To pay full dividends, divide revenue by 10 and pay this amount to each shareholder for their personal bank.

To pay half dividends, divide total revenue by two. Round this amount down to the nearest $10 and retain it in the corporate treasury. Divided the remainder 10 and pay this as dividends to each shareholder.

1846: Race for the Midwest in all its glory. Those cubes aren’t part of the game; we used them to more easily calculate our routes.

Depending on what the corporation pays out, this will determine if the price of the corporation stock goes down one, stays the same, or jumps once, twice or three times.

After you complete a corporation payout, you may purchase trains to use for the next round, if your corporation has money, as trains get very expensive, very quickly.

And thus begins the brain-burnery dance of running your corporation so that others will invest in it so you have money to do things and increase the price of your stock, while making money for yourself so that you can purchase stock in the hopes that it’ll become valuable later in the game.

GMT Games’ 1846: The Race for the Midwest is a great introductory game into the world of 18xx.

Game play continues until the bank breaks, and 1846 usually takes 4-5 hours to play. Each player cashes out their shares at the current stock value, and adds to their cash on hand, and the person with the most money wins the game. Money left over in a corporation’s treasury does not count toward anything in the end.

If you like route-building and economic stock games, and have more than a few hours to devote to a game, then 1846 could be for you. And you really, really have to not care about what the board look like as well. Because, more often than not, the board and hexes for an 18xx are really boring looking and plain, and 1846 is no exception. This game however has excellent components, all thanks to the high quality production of GMT.

And that’s 1846! Choo-choo! And this is Meeple Lady for the Five By. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as meeplelady, or on my website, boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!

Lisboa: A Masterpiece from Vital Lacerda

By Meeple Lady | October 29, 2018 | Comments 2 comments

This review of Lisboa was featured on Episode 46 of The Five By. Check out the rest of the episode, which also features Mr. Jack, Lords of Waterdeep, Apocrypha and KLASK.

Lisboa is a game published by Eagle-Gryphon Games, designed by Vital Lacerda, with gorgeous artwork from Ian O’Toole. It plays 2-4 players, and even though the box says 60-120 minutes, my experience is it plays a little bit longer than that with maximum players.

Before we begin, Lisboa is by far one of the most complicated games I’ve ever had to teach, learn and play. In real life, rules explanation can take about 30 to 45 minutes. So if heavy games are not your bag, feel free to skip ahead five minutes. I totally will not be offended.

Lisboa is gorgeous, from outside the box to the game itself.

Lisboa is beautiful, crunchy and has a little bit of everything that a heavy gamer like myself enjoys. The game has area control, set collection, card drafting and tile placement. And probably most importantly, you get to decide your end-game scoring conditions.

The purplish-blue board game, whose color scheme is reminiscent of the Portuguese tiles the city is known for, is set in 1755, when Lisboa was struck by many natural disasters: an earthquake, fires and a tsunami, pretty much leveling the city. And now we’re all tasked with helping the city recover economically. We are taking turns to clear rubble, build ships and sell goods, get permits to construct public buildings, and set up shops so that the city can prosper. And we all want wigs. Lots and lots of wigs, which are VPs in this game.

The board is divided into two main parts: one side shows all the actions you can do on your turn, and the right side is filled with rubble and street locations for storefronts and public buildings.

The right side of the game features the city of Lisboa, where players are tasked to remove rubble, and build storefronts and public buildings.

What the game boils down to is its multi-use cards, and players picking from one of two actions with those cards from their hand of five cards. You can either tuck the cards into your portfolio, or play cards into the royal court to meet with the king, prime minister or master builder. These two main actions, either tuck or play, however, unlock a spiderweb of many, many other actions.

If you decide to tuck a card, you receive the reward or penalty for tucking that card. And then the card either gives influence for later or some permanent ability. You then can sell goods on an open ship or trade with the nobles, which will require goods. There are four goods in the game: gold, cloths, books and tools. Each noble wants a specific type of good, but all of them will take gold. If you trade the nobles, you can perform two different state actions if you meet the required good for that particular noble.

There are six different state actions you can choose from: recruiting officials (which you place on the board and will affect how other players meet with nobles), acquiring a plan (which you need to build public buildings), building a ship (which gives you influence and wigs when people sell goods to your boat), producing goods (if you have a storefront on the map), meeting the cardinal (which gives you Clergy tiles and benefits), and getting royal favors (which allow you to follow someone’s noble visit).

If you decide to not tuck your card, but instead play a card, you can visit a noble or gain the benefit from the treasury card. To visit a noble, you have to pay influence, and depending on who you visit, you can build a store (which is calculated by the rubble left at that intersection), take a decree card (criteria that will score you wigs at the end of the game), or open a public building (which requires to you already have a building permit of the same color in your possession and workers on the board).

Here are a few of the decree cards that score you VPs at the end of the game if you fulfill them.

As more stores are built in the city, it becomes less expensive to take that action because the rubble slowly get cleared. Rubble cubes are randomly placed at the start of the game so at the intersection of each storefront location, the price is calculated based on how many cubes are still there and which color, with beige being the most expensive and blue the cheapest. When you build, you remove one cube, and then pay the cost of the remaining cubes. And this is how you can collect sets of rubble on your player board, which will then unlock more spaces for cards to tuck and progress the game.

Also, when you satisfy the requirements and build a public building, you then gain the rubble the public building will sit on, and then if there is a storefront along that street where the public building was just placed, then the storefront scores VPs. In all, a storefront can score up to three times, if public buildings are placed on the north, east and west sides of the board.

So after you either tuck a card or play a card, you carry out the actions that correspond with the tucking or playing, and then you take a card from one of the face-up piles and your turn ends. The game is played out over two identical periods. The first period ends when someone collects two sets of rubble or three of the four piles of cards are depleted. The second period ends when someone collects four sets of rubble or three of the four piles of cards are depleted as well.

Lisboa manages to keep other players engaged even when it’s not their turn. As with other Lacerda games, there’s an option to follow another player’s main action. At the end of the game, you score any decrees you’ve collected, the various streets are scored according to who has the most storefronts on that street, and you a couple other items such as ships, influence and money.

I love teaching this game, especially when I have the giant tweezers with me!

The interconnectivity of all these actions is what I love most about Lisboa, which I believe is a masterpiece. Each action isn’t difficult per se, but there are a multitude of microsteps that need to first happen in order for you to do something large like, build a public building.

And that’s the super quick overview of Lisboa! This is Meeple Lady for the Five By Games. You can find me on Facebook, Twitter and Instagram as meeplelady, or on my website, boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening. Bye!

Building pyramids in Mexica, and a new podcast!

By Meeple Lady | September 26, 2018 | Comments 5 comments

Two entries in one week? Well, folks, I have some news! I’ve joined a group of talented folks on their podcast, The Five By, and today is my first episode with them. Go subscribe! Each episode is about 30 minutes, where 5 different co-hosts give 5-minute game reviews. I’ll also be posting the podcast episodes and the text of my segment here, if I haven’t already talked about the game on the blog. This episode features Near and Far: Amber Mines, Dinosaur Island, 1775: Rebellion, Mexica, Spirits of the Wild! Enjoy!

Mexica is a game designed by Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling. It was originally published in 2002 by Ravensburger and Rio Grande Games. Now it’s made by Iello. Mexica is the third game in the Mask Trilogy, after Tikal and Java.

Mexica is a game for 2 to 4 players, and plays in about 60 to 90 minutes. It’s an action-point selection game with area control. What’s cool about this game is that unlike many other area controls, you’re actually building out the districts on the map. What’s excellent about this game is the pyramids! Solid, study, meaty pyramids of varying heights, from 1 to 4 levels. Super excellent components. It definitely has great table presence and just gorgeous to look at.

The game is played out over two periods, which are played out exactly the same way. Players receive their first set of 9 pyramids, and the other 9 will be available in the second phase. Any pyramids not used in the first period will be added to a player’s supply for later.

Look at the gorgeous components in this game! Pyramids and canals galore.

Player also receive a Pilli Mexica, which is your little meeple. All the Pilli Mexicas start at the temple in the center of the board. The entire board is a grid system, and players use their action points to orthoganally move your Pilli Mexica meeple, construct canals, build bridges, place pyramids, and found a district. Each player has 6 action points to spend during their turn, and can do any number of these actions based on their various costs of doing them.

Before the game starts, you shuffle 15 calpulli tokens and randomly select 8 of them to use for the first period. The next 7 will be used later. Tokens will have numbers for a district size, and prestige points for the player who founded the district, and points for anyone in the district when it’s founded.

These tokens which districts to build during a particular phase. The district has to be the exact size of the number in yellow.

So how do you build districts? On your turn, you can spend 1 action point to place a canal that’s either a single or double square onto the board. Canals can only be placed on open spaces and can only touch other canals diagonally at a corner. As game play continues, these canals will segment areas of the board. The surrounding lake and the temple in the middle also act as borders for districts. When an area is completely closed off by water, a district can be founded.

In addition, your meeple must be sitting inside the district on a square to found a district. When you found a district, which costs 0 action points, take an available token that exactly matches the district size and place it on an empty space inside the district.

Once this is set, the token can never be removed from the place, and this district cannot be broken up on future turns. You then receive the amount of prestige points on the token, and if anyone else happens to be inside your district, they receive the smaller secondary number.

Players can also score prestige points at the end of the period by building pyramids to establish majority. The number of action points to spend to build is equal to the level of the pyramid you’re placing on the board. 1 point for a 1 level, 2 points for a 2 level, etc. To build a temple, your Pilli Mexica must be inside the district you’re placing it in.

The pyramids come in multiple levels, each with a pip on top to show how many level it is.

At the beginning of the game, before any districts are founded, it’s much easier to do this, but you run the risk of your pyramid not being inside a high-value district. Once districts start filling up the board, then you’ll have to become more strategic in how you move your meeple and put down temples.

Once a temple has been placed on the board, it cannot be removed or upgraded. I like how the pyramids have pips on the top of each of them, so that you’re not spending your entire time counting each level. It’s not the number of pyramids that determine majority; it’s the number of pips, which represent the total temple levels.

Another way to get around the board is building canals. Canals enable meeples to enter a district that has already been segmented off. Canals also allow your meeple to travel via an imaginary boat down canals. You’re basically bridge hopping and spending action points to do that. The lake also counts as a body of water when you do this action.

There’s also one last action to collect action point tokens, which give you extra actions for a future turn.

You have 6 action points on your turn, and these are the various actions you can take.

The first period of the game ends when all 8 calpulli tokens are taken placed on the board, or when one player places all 9 of their temples. Scoring happens again for every district founded. Determine which players have the most, second-most and third-most majority in that district, and prestige points are handed out based on the calpulli tokens in that district.

Everything on the board stays on the board. The rest of the calpulli tokens are revealed, everyone gets 9 more pyramids, and the game continues just like the first half.

On the cover of the rulebook, there’s a subtitle that calls Mexica “a game of placement, blocking and majority.” In other words, this game can be all kinds of mean! Meeples cannot pass through each other, so you can completely block a person from exiting or entering a district. That person then has to spend 5 action points to magically teleport to any location on the map, which, when a person has only 6 action points per turn, is a pretty hefty cost.

For people who don’t like games that can be mean, Mexica would not be for you. Also, having 6 action points to choose from can also bring out AP in some players. The person with the prestige points at the end of the game is the winner.

Mexica also has a 2P variant that allows you to place a number of neutral temples across the board to act as competition when scoring up majorities. And that’s Mexica!

This has been Meeple Lady for The Five By. You can find me on Twitter, Instagram and Facebook as Meeple Lady, and on my website, boardgamemeeplelady.com. Thanks for listening!