-
2 months ago | 
meeplemountain.com | Justin Bell |Justin Bell
Katmai: The Bears of Brooks River (2025, Osprey Games) is one of those rare tabletop experiences that is a river of contradictions. It’s got a bumpy, long title that sounds more like a book than a board game. (This is not a surprise, given that Osprey is a publishing house that is a subsidiary of the company that first published the Harry Potter series.) However, when referred to as simply “Katmai”, my kids loved saying the word “KATMAI” to no one in particular.
-
Jan 16, 2025 | 
meeplemountain.com | Justin Bell
A few months ago, my wife and I went to a restaurant and sat at the bar. It was raining in Chicago that night, so the bar’s televisions that were set to broadcast a live baseball game were instead showing that channel’s rain delay broadcast—footage of an old Cubs-Reds game from 1987. The footage was fascinating. In-between pitches, the camera panned wide to shots of fans sitting at the game, watching.
-
Dec 31, 2024 | 
meeplemountain.com | Justin Bell
Wait…ANOTHER review of a game in the Horrified series? Yes, it’s true, and by now, we know our Horrified stuff around here—check out our reviews of the base game (Horrified: Universal Monsters), Horrified: American Monsters, and Horrified: Greek Monsters for the evidence, as well as an overview of how these games play if you are new to the series.
-
Dec 31, 2024 | 
meeplemountain.com | Justin Bell
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 are the newest, shiniest things in shrink. Right on the spot, the Dusty Euro Series was born, and I’ve enlisted multiple game groups to help me lead the charge on covering older games.
-
Dec 31, 2024 | 
meeplemountain.com | Justin Bell
Each of the last 3-4 years, it feels like there’s a tabletop designer or two who is simply everywhere for a few months. (We aren’t counting Reiner Knizia here, since he seems to release or re-release a game every 20 minutes or so.
-
Dec 7, 2024 | 
meeplemountain.com | Justin Bell
At most of my game nights, I try to start the evening with a lighter game that can be taught, played, and discussed in about 30 minutes. On a recent night with my Wednesday crew (a group that focuses on a mix of lighter fare and goes back 10+ years in Chicago), I wanted to whip out Caution Signs, the new party game from Danielle Reynolds and Scott Brady, published by Wacky Wizard Games. To get ready, I unleashed this game on my two kids, ages 10 and 8.
-
Dec 7, 2024 | 
meeplemountain.com | Justin Bell
Near the end of my first pass of the rules for the new Board&Dice strategy game Windmill Valley, something caught my eye: ”Expert Variant.”The rules for this lighter-weight game were breezy up to this point, so I was surprised to see that there was a supposedly harder version available to spice things up a bit. Windmill Valley normally wraps when someone triggers a series of final turns, tied to moving a player’s action wheel a certain number of revolutions.
-
Dec 5, 2024 | 
meeplemountain.com | Justin Bell
I sat down with my kids recently to try the new family game Little Alchemists from Czech Games Edition. It’s based on the game Alchemists, both of which are designed by Matúš Kotry, with the latter squarely aimed at serious strategy gamers. The family version has cute box art and a bright, screaming “Ages 7+” stamped on the box’s side runners. I was excited to see if my two kids, ages 10 and 8, would lean in or out on this new design.
-
Dec 3, 2024 | 
meeplemountain.com | Justin Bell
Are you a fan of the tabletop classic Pandemic? The cooperative “firefighting” classic designed by Matt Leacock was first released in 2008, before a number of Pandemic spinoffs and legacy games began to hit the market. I think Pandemic: Legacy Season 1 is the best legacy game I’ve ever played, and after I worked through two different campaigns, I retired. I knew, right after finishing my second campaign, that I loved Pandemic so much that I would never want to play it any other way ever again.
-
Dec 3, 2024 | 
meeplemountain.com | Justin Bell
I’m a huge video game junkie, spending nearly 40 years of my life grinding on the Sega Master System and the Atari 5200 as a child before moving up and around the ranks of every system you can think of through to modern-day consoles like the Nintendo Switch, Xbox One and PS5. I love video games, but I usually don’t like video games ported into other formats. Movies based on video games? Usually, no thanks. TV shows based on video games?
