Once upon a time, I was learning about the difference between lived experiences and observed experiences. The teacher split the class in half. One group sat back and recorded what they saw, while the other group had to run up a staircase, breathing only through a straw. Then the class switched roles.
Unsurprisingly, the observers didn’t quite grasp how difficult the task really was until they experienced it themselves. And that lesson came back to me when I sat down to play Tearable Quest, designed by Shintaro Ono, with art by Sai Beppu, and published by Allplay in 2025.
Because on the surface, Tearable Quest looks like nothing. You get a sheet of paper absolutely littered with icons like swords, spells, slimes, goblins, bows, and so on. Your job is to rip out only the icons you need to score points. Each round introduces a different monster with specific scoring requirements, alongside a boss card that’s always available to be tackled, tied to its own icons. Over three two minute rounds, you’re trying to earn the most points by carefully tearing out exactly what you need to match those recipes.
And I do mean exactly.
You can’t have extra icons present in your piece. You can’t have half an icon. It has to be a clean, precise tear of only what’s required. Which sounds easy until you actually try it. The timer starts, you identify what the recipe is, then look down at the sheet. The paper is cluttered, the icons you want are never conveniently grouped together, so you end up carving these awkward zig-zag paths through the paper, trying to isolate just the right pieces without ruining everything around them. To make matters worse, if you flip the sheet over you’ll find treasures that boost your score and curses that bring it back down, adding another layer of consideration to every rip.
Now, Tearable Quest is not just about precision, it’s about speed. You’ll be halfway through a tear, trying to grab one more icon for maximum points, and suddenly you realize there are only a few seconds left. Do you commit to your rip and risk everything, or do you play it safe and just lock in what you have? That tension, that split-second decision-making, is where my heart started to flutter and a smile crossed my face.
And all of this ripping and tearing is happening on a single sheet of paper that has to last you all three rounds. If you go too hard too early, you’ll massacre your page, and you might not have anything usable left in the later rounds. But if you’re too cautious, you fall behind. It creates this surprisingly compelling push and pull between greed and restraint that I wasn’t expecting at all.
That’s where the lived experience hits. From the outside, Tearable Quest looks like a throwaway gimmick. Ripping paper as a game mechanic sounds more like a novelty than something you’d actually want to play. But once you’re in it and the clock is ticking and your hands fumble as you try to make clean, efficient tears, you start to notice how awkwardly fun the game is. You’ll curse how big your thumbs feel. How unpredictable ripping paper can be. How badly you want just one more icon before that timer runs out. You’ll feel jubilant that you managed to complete your rip before the timer runs out, but you’ll flip the paper over and find 2 curses, rendering your score nil. Oh, the hubris…
The art plays a big role in selling the experience. Sai Beppu’s illustrations are bright, cartoonish, and disarming in a way that makes the whole thing feel playful rather than ridiculous. You’re still an adult sitting there gleefully ripping up paper, but the game leans into that energy instead of fighting it, and it works wonderfully.
There isn’t a huge amount of variety here. There are two different sheets to play with, four different monsters (you’ll use 3 during each game), and half a dozen bosses. There are some bonus cards to mix things up, but the core experience doesn’t really change. You’re always doing the same thing, ripping, optimizing, and hoping you’ve left yourself enough icons to work with for the next round. It’s always a bit frantic, certainly a bit messy, and very consistent in the experience that it offers.
That consistency is part of its charm. It’s light, it’s quick, and it never feels like too much. You’re not going to build a whole game night around Tearable Quest, but it’s really easy to fit into the beginning or end of one. Because it’s so light and fast, It’s the kind of game you’re almost never going to refuse, even if you’ve already played it a few times.
Tearable quest is charming and genuinely unique. I can’t think of anything else that turns ripping up a piece of paper into the main event and actually makes it fun. And honestly, it doesn’t really need to be anything more than that.
Disclaimer – A copy of 3 Witches was provided by the designer
One of the things I love about trick-taking games is how effortlessly they get to the table. You generally get a deck of cards and deal most if not all the cards out. The teach is usually something along the lines of “It’s a trick-taking game, but here’s the twist…” and you’re off. The bones of trick-taking games are familiar: follow suit, win tricks, claim victory. Sure, each game brings its own little wrinkles that make each one unique and interesting, but the foundations of the games are usually comforting and intuitive.
3 Witches is not that game.
Or rather, it eventually is. But before you can enjoy the clever little mind games, you need to wrap your head around a teach that feels less like “here’s the twist” and more like “Let me read to you this complex spell from a potion making textbook”
To begin a round of 3 Witches, shuffle the 18-card deck and deal all the cards evenly to three players. Everyone checks their hand and whomever is holding the Elixir card declares that fact. That player doesn’t automatically control the round, though. In fact, they’re now the last player to bid.
Starting with the player to the left of the Elixir holder, they have the option to bid or pass. When it comes to bidding, a player can bid to win either 3 or 4 tricks. If they bid 3 tricks, the subsequent players have an opportunity to bid 4 and take control of the lead position, or pass. Any player who bids 4 tricks automatically ends the bidding round.
Whoever wins the bid becomes the Lead Witch for the round. The other two players form a temporary alliance as the Lesser Witches. The Lead Witch places the bid card in front of them to signify their role. And then the wyrdness begins.
Each trick in 3 Witches is played in a very particular order:
The Lead Witch plays two cards:
One face up (this establishes the lead suit)
One face down (kept secret for now)
The first Lesser Witch must follow suit if able.
If they cannot follow suit, they pass for the moment.
The second Lesser Witch plays a card (following suit if possible).
If the first Lesser Witch had to pass earlier, they now play a card.
The Lead Witch reveals their face-down card.
Now the trick is resolved, but not quite in the usual way. Winning the trick isn’t simply about playing the highest card of the lead suit. 3 Witches uses a small value formula involving the combination of cards played. For example, if two cards of the same suit are involved, they combine their values. The same happens if the two cards played are the same value. If the two cards played are different suits and different numbers, then only the highest value of those cards counts toward determining the winner. Compare the final values, and whoever is higher wins the trick. Also the Lead Witch always wins ties.
It’s clever. It’s quite unintuitive. And the first time you play, everyone will be absolutely glued to their player aids.
After a trick is resolved, the winner gets a bit of control over the tempo of the round.
If the Lesser Witches win the trick, they return one of the Lead Witch’s cards to the Lead Witch’s hand.
If the Lead Witch wins, they secretly choose one of the two cards they played and return it to their hand face down.
That’s right, the Lead Witches cards cycle back. This mechanism gives 3 Witches its delicious tension. Every trick is not only about winning or losing; it’s about which card you want to reclaim and how that will influence the remaining tricks.
Each round lasts for exactly five tricks, then scoring happens. If the Lead Witch makes their bid exactly (the three or four tricks they called, absolutely no more and no less), then they score 2 points. If the Lead Witch misses their bid, each of the lesser witches score 1 point each.
Then, shuffle, redeal, and start the bidding phase again. The game continues until one player hits 5 points, at which point the coven crowns its leader.
3 Witches is a game of temporary alliances and working together to control the narrative. Because each round is only 5 tricks, and the Lead Witch needs to win 3 or 4 of those tricks, the lesser witches need to work together to force the Lead Witch into losing, or, winning too hard.
I know some people find the phrase “knife fight in a phone booth” to be a cliché and overused way to describe close quarters conflict. So instead, I’ll say that 3 Witches is a fistfight in an elevator. At 18 cards, it’s much easier to count cards and deduce information based on what the other two players have already played. More than once during my plays I was able to path out exactly how I could win a round as a Lead Witch, if, and only if, two specific cards were in the same hand.
There’s a ton of smart design in 3 Witches. From the minute 18 card deck that really encourages players to count cards, to having 5 suits with 3 to 4 cards each, to the player with the elixir being the last one to bid, so much of the game design and rules shows that there has been a lot of thought put into every aspect of this small card game. Everything is so finite, so considered, it’s really an impressive showcase of design work by Corey Young.
Contributing to that “wrestling match in a broom closet” feeling is the fact that each round is only five tricks long. The moment the first trick hits the table and cards start revealing themselves, you can feel the decision space tighten. Your options constrict. Unsettling certainty creeps in. As the Lead Witch, you might struggle to lose even a single trick. At the start of a round you might feel chuffed holding two 5s, but the moment you accidentally scoop a trick you were trying to duck, the panic sets in. Suddenly you’re not trying to win, you’re trying to win precisely.
And that’s where 3 Witches feels most exciting.
The 18-card deck means information moves fast. With so few cards in circulation, you can count, deduce, and sometimes even map out the exact path to victory. More than once I’ve sat there as the Lead Witch thinking, This works… but only if those two specific cards are in the same hand. It becomes much less about hoping and more about calculating.
There’s a ton of smart design packed into this tiny box. Five suits with only three or four cards each. The Elixir holder bidding last. The cycling card mechanism that prevents clean attrition. Everything feels deliberate. Considered. Tight. It’s an impressive showcase of design work by Corey Young. The production by AllPlay is svelte too. A tiny box of cards and 12 cardboard chits makes 3 Witches a game that feels far bigger than its footprint.
I also love how dynamic the table politics feel. The Lead Witch changes every round, which keeps the semi-cooperative tension fresh. Winning as a Lesser Witch feels easier, but in doing so you’re handing a point to a rival. Taking the Lead Witch role is thrilling because you can leap ahead with two points. But if you fail, both of your opponents inch closer to their victory. Every bid feels loaded. Every trick feels consequential.
I really appreciate 3 Witches. I love how sharp it feels, how finite and intentional every decision is. It’s not an effortless teach, and I suspect that the strict three-player count will keep it from ever becoming a universal classic. But in the right setting, with those who enjoy kickboxing in a cardboard box, that is to say, counting cards, weaving in and out of tight margins, and that delicious feeling of trying to thread a needle under pressure, 3 Witches absolutely sings.
Disclaimer: This review is based on plays of 7 Wonders Dice on Board Game Arena.
Ah, the roll and write. First comes a successful board game. Then comes the card game version. Then comes the roll and write cash in. 7 Wonders is no different, albeit it’s taken quite a bit longer to get here than some of the other examples I’m referencing, *cough CastlesofBurgundycough*.
In 7 Wonders Dice, you’re competing with your neighbours to earn the most points by managing your resources and utilizing the whims of the dice most effectively. If you’ve played a roll and write before, you’ll recognize the scorepad fairly well. Half a dozen coloured sections for you to scratch off, half a dozen different ways to score, and dozens of tiny symbols that promise synergy and cascading combos, which is my favourite part of a roll and write, if I’m being honest.
The player boards, much like in the full game of 7 Wonders, are slightly asymmetric. Each one is themed around a different wonder, and will offer players different rewards when they progress their wonder. Some of the symbols on the main mat are slightly different too, making different coloured dice more valuable to some players than others.
The dice part of 7 Wonders Dice is the more interesting system. At the top of each round, 7 dice are put into a box, and the box gets shaken, Boggle style. The box is slammed down, the lid lifted, and inside will be the dice sitting in one of the four quadrants. Each player gets to select one die, pay the cost based on which quadrant it’s sitting in, and do the action depicted on the die, paying any resource costs listed on the space they want to action on. Following similar themes from its big brother, the blue are straight points, the yellow focuses on economy, the reds have you competing against your opponents, and the greens give you special abilities.
7 Wonders Dice comes to an end when someone has completed 3 sections of their board, and that may happen sooner than you think. The wonder itself only has 3 stages and can be taken at any time by any dice. The yellow and white sections only have 6 spaces, and that white dice can let you take 2 actions in a specific colour, potentially ending the game faster than you’d think was possible (although you do need to unlock the white, black, and purple dice before you can do any of their actions).
Image Credit: W. Eric Martin @W Eric Martin via BGG
At the core of your decision process is going to be money. Every space costs resources, but you can always buy a resource for 1 dollar. You can spend a turn to earn a resource, giving you a permanent discount of 1 for the rest of the game, but how many turns do you want to burn taking resources? Inevitably, you’ll find yourself a coin short at the most inopportune times. I’m not a big fan of this system, as all 6 of the resources are completely arbitrary. Every resource offers a discount of 1 to every other space, and because this is so powerful, pretty much everyone’s first 3 rounds are going to be just taking resources, which is less than interesting.
Speaking of inopportune timing, you’ll probably also curse the dice a lot. Once you exhaust all the options of a particular dice face, that die face is now useless to you. The yellow die offers 3 spaces for both camels and treasure boxes. If you take that camel 3 times in a row and exhaust that half of the pavilion, any future camels that get rolled are functionally a dead die for you. Conversely, you might be waiting round after round for a specific symbol, only for it to finally show up, but in the 3 coin quadrant and your purse only has 2 coins remaining. Bad luck.
7 Wonders Dice lacks the universal appeal and strategic depth that launched the original to its stardom. It also doesn’t have the endless replayability that makes 7 Wonders Duel a top 10 game for me. I would never say there’s anything wrong with 7 Wonders Dice, it’s a perfectly serviceable roll and write game, but it’s not very interesting on repeat plays. The first time, you’ll be tickled in seeing the familiar icons and systems with a fresh coat of paint and some novel reworkings. But after a couple plays, I never felt like any game was particularly different from the others. I don’t think there is a particularly high skill ceiling, as in most games, you’ll be able to achieve most of each section in each game. It lacks the trade-offs and branching paths of bigger roll and writes, such as Hadrian’s Wall.
I will say that I enjoy 7 Wonders Dice a lot more as an “easier 7 Wonders” than the completely arbitrary 7 Wonders Architects, but that was a very low bar to clear. The simultaneous action selection does make this game flow quickly, letting you knock out a 4 player game in under 20 minutes. Sometimes you’ll earn a bonus that lets you do a bit more on your turn, but those are a far cry from the bombastic cascading turns of something like That’s So Clever or Draft & Write Records.
7 Wonders Dice is an enjoyable, but pretty unremarkable roll and write game at the end of the day. You aren’t building a civilization, drafting cards and watching your empire slowly grow. You’re ticking off boxes, watching your decision space shrink over time. I wouldn’t ever say no to playing it, but I’d be hard-pressed to choose it over either of the first two 7 Wonders games, let alone any other roll and write that I already have sitting in my closet. If you’re new to roll and writes or want a lightweight 7 Wonders appetizer, this game might land for you. But If you already own a few entries in the genre, there’s very little here you haven’t seen before.
Growing up, I was a console gamer. I didn’t really have a game-worthy PC until after 2010, meaning I skipped over a lot of the old PC favourites, one important one being the Civilization franchise. That is to say, tech trees are not a part of my gaming background. I’m not ignorant to tech trees, but it’s not a mechanic that I’ve spent a significant number of hours with.
For the uninitiated, a tech tree is a hierarchical visual representation of the possible sequences of upgrades a player can unlock. Think, you have to invent Mining before you can invent Masonry. You need to discover both mathematics and construction before you can discover engineering. You need to learn how to walk before you can run type of thing. In Beyond the Sun, designed by Dennis K. Chan and published by Rio Grande Games in 2020, the entire main game board is taken over by this 4 tier tech tree, that players will crawl up, unlocking new actions and special abilities to give them an edge in their quest for dominance over the stars.
One of the first things that grabbed me was how Beyond the Sun uses dice. At the start of the game, your player board is packed full of inert crates. As the game progresses, those crates are unlocked into crew members, and later upgraded again into spaceships with power values ranging from one to four. All six resources in the game are represented by different faces of the same die. Instead of rummaging through a supply looking for the right ship, you simply rotate a die to the face you need. It’s elegant, intuitive, and I absolutely love it. It’s the kind of design choice that once you see it, you’ll wonder why any other game bothers with piles of chits when they could be using dice instead.
As I mentioned above, most of the real estate on the table is taken up by the tech tree board. Starting with the first four techs laid out face up, the rest of the tech slots are covered with blue advancement cards. Along the far left side of the board are the basic actions that everyone has access to, and on each player’s turn, they’ll take their little action pawn and place it into an available action slot, blocking it from other players. Simple worker placement stuff, really. Most of the actions revolve around researching other techs, deploying and moving ships around the planet board, or colonizing planets.
I really appreciate is how production works. At the end of every turn, you choose to produce either crew or ore. Production starts modestly, but can be improved by removing discs from the bottom of your player board. In many games, production is an action in its own right. An action that eats a full turn and often feels obligatory. in Beyond the Sun, it’s folded neatly into the rhythm of play. The result is a game that keeps moving, where turns feel productful and players are rarely left feeling like they’ve ‘wasted’ a turn while other players are zooming on ahead.
Each of the techs belongs to at least one of four categories, commerce, military, science, and economics. Each of those categories will generally feature abilites that cater to something specific, like military techs will generally revolve around ships and movement, while scientific techs will generally assist you in researching more techs. Many techs are a blend of two, perhaps offering the military heavy line of techs a much needed science boost. What’s most interesting is that the person who takes the action to research any new step of the tech tree, gets a choice of 2 cards to lay on the board, a tactical advantage for sure! Everyone who comes after them are just following in their footsteps. This makes the big tech tree dynamic and different in every game.
Running alongside the tech tree is the system map, made up of eight planets, four of which are represented by cards that grant special bonuses and can be colonized for even more bonuses. Gaining majority strength on a planet lets you place a production marker, increasing your income and sometimes triggering an immediate benefit. Of course, that control is fragile. If another player seizes the majority, your marker is kicked back to your board, and the sting of losing income is very real. Interaction here is indirect but sharp, and it’s often where the game feels most openly competitive.
If you manage to have the prerequisite number of ships on a planet, you can take a colonize action, which removes that planet from the board, and the ships you used to pay for it. That planet goes into your personal supply, with an additional income disc, and your ships get slotted back onto your player board. That might sound like a negative, but in reality it’s a boon. You see, when you take your crew income, you take one crew from every column that you’ve revealed along the bottom of your row, and if crew make their way back onto your board, you’ll probably be able to get all those spent ships back as crew with a single action or two. Yay for efficiencies!
By now, it’s probably clear that Beyond the Sun is a game of two halves: the tech tree and the colonization map. Neither is clearly more important than the other, and ignoring either is a fast track to falling behind. That said, the relationship between them isn’t always as seamless as I’d like. Advancing technology doesn’t always meaningfully enhance your spatial presence, and strong planetary play doesn’t necessarily open new research avenues. The systems coexist, but they sometimes feel like parallel paths rather than deeply intertwined gears.
In the end, Beyond the Sun is a game I adore. I love how clean the systems are, how the dice do so much heavy lifting, and how every turn feels purposeful without feeling bloated. At the same time, that split focus between research and planetary expansion can leave the game feeling a little disjointed, like two excellent ideas politely sharing the same table rather than fully embracing each other. Still, every time I play, I find myself thinking about the different paths I could have taken, different technologies I wanted to see come out, different planetary gambits might try next time. And that lingering feeling, that urge to come back and do it all again, perhaps just a bit better, puts Beyond the Sun in a rare position. A game that requested again and again, which is the best achievement a game could aspire to.
I adore Lost Cities. It’s the perfect 2 player game for my wife and I. Competitive without being directly mean, random enough to make your risks feel like you’ve hit the lottery if you win, but also don’t really feel too bad if they don’t pan out, and I end up with a bucket of negative points. In my opinion, it’s my favourite game designed by Renier Kenizia. What I didn’t know until somewhat recently was that in the same year that Lost Cities came out, Schotten Totten was also released. Schotten Totten has players manage a hand of cards, playing them to your side of a line, trying to claim control of either the majority of the spaces, or three consecutive spaces. From an abstract view, it’s pretty comparable to Lost Cities, but when it comes to how the games feel, they couldn’t be more different.
A deck of Schotten Totten consists of 54 cards, numbered 1 to 9 in six different colours, and 9 stone tokens. The stone tokens are laid out in a line between the players, the deck is shuffled, and each player is dealt 6 cards. On your turn, you play a card to any of the 9 stones, and then draw a card to replace the one you just played. Any card can go on your side of any stone, but each stone has a capacity of 3 cards per side. Once a stone is full, it’s evaluated, and whoever has the stronger showing on their side of the stone claims it for themselves.
The strength of your side is determined by which cards you put on your half of the stone. A colour run is the strongest, 3 consecutive cards of the same colour. Then, three of a kind is the next strongest, 3 cards of the same value. Then any flush, three cards of the same colour, then a run, 3 consecutive cards of any colour, and finally, a sum. 3 non-consecutive cards of different colours.
Schotten Totten is a masterclass in tension in a 2 player game. It’s incredibly tactical, as you only have access to 6 cards at a time, the likelihood of you drawing a run or flush is fairly low. This forces the player to place cards and hedge their bets that the next card they need is going to show itself eventually. At the start of the game, you’ll place a card here and there, but before you know it, suddenly every card you play is starting to remove options from the future. You have to play a card, but doing so might mean closing off the opportunity for a run on a particular stone. Using a red 5 for three of a kind on one stone means the red 3 that was waiting for the red 4 to show up might end up being a weaker plain red flush instead of the powerful flush run you were hoping for. Before when the 9 stones looked like a wide open field, suddenly the battle line has become clogged and claustrophobic.
One way you can put the screws to your opponent even harder, is if you can prove that there is no way for your opponent to win a stone from you. Say you have three of a kind on your side, and your opponent has a yellow 9 and grey 8. All 3 of a kinds beat all runs, so you can just claim that spot as your own. Not only does that add to your victory conditions, but it also removes a potential schluff spot from your opponent, as once a stone has been called, you can’t play any more cards to that stone. Now, if they need to burn a card from their hand as they search the deck for cards they actually want, they’re going to have to make further sacrifices on their other stones.
For all its tactical brilliance and excitement, Schotten Totten feels quite a bit more confrontational than Lost Cities. In Lost Cities, it’s possible for both players to come out positively on a single colour, should they both choose to chase that suit. Schotten Totten is a zero-sum game. In order for you to win territory, your opponent has to lose it. And honestly, that just feels bad. It’s the kind of bad feelings that makes me not want to play a game with certain players, such as my spouse. I realize that the reasons I prefer Lost Cities will be the same reasons that someone else with slightly different proclivities will prefer Schotten Totten.
Schotten Totten is a great game, but it’s a great game that demands a certain temperament. It thrives on denial, pressure, and the quiet cruelty of watching your opponent’s options evaporate one card at a time. For players who relish that kind of direct confrontation, it’s a masterclass in tight, tactical design that has aged remarkably well and that perfect package of endlessly replayable in a real small box.
For me, though, I’ll always reach for Lost Cities first. I value the tension of risking points without the discomfort of taking something away from the person across the table, especially when that person is my wife. That preference doesn’t diminish what Schotten Totten accomplishes; if anything, it highlights just how precisely it delivers its intended experience. Nearly three decades on, few two-player card games generate as much sustained drama from such a small deck. Schotten Totten knows exactly what it is, and for the right pair of players, it’s pure tactical perfection.
A copy of Maul Peak was provided by the publisher for review purposes.
The 2 player game field is a crowded one. From all the excellent Duel games (7 Wonders Duel, Splendor Duel, Dorfromantik: The Duel, and so many more) to the excellent 2 player games not based on multiplayer games (Lost Cities, boop, Santorini, Hive, Fox in the Forest, and so much more). And this isn’t even getting into multiplayer games that simply play excellently with only 2 players, it makes any 2 player only game have some stiff competition when vying for shelf and table space.
Maul Peak is the stand-alone sequel to Skulk Hollow, both designed by Eduardo Baraf and Keith Matejka. with art by Dustin Foust, Sebastian Koziner, and Helen Zhu, and published by Pencil First Games. In Maul Peak, one player takes on the role of the Grizzars, a tribe of bears with various abilities, while the other player takes on the role of a titan. A towering behemoth, emerging from its lair to lay waste to the land. Feeding into the asymmetry, Maul Peak features 4 different titans to play as, each one having their own abilities, victory conditions, and maps for the Grizzars to climb on. Not to mention an excellently sculpted giant wooden token, unique to each titan.
A druid and its spirit companion face off against Sabaso
The gameplay is simple. One player takes actions (usually by playing a card) until they’ve reached their action limit. They draw new cards and the other player does pretty much the same. Most of the actions each player can do is based on the cards they have in their hand. For the Grizzars, the cards will have you moving on the 3×3 map, leaping from the ground onto the monster (moving your meeple from the ground map onto the titan map), preforming melee attacks to damage the beast, and gaining rage tokens, which can be used in a myriad of ways, but perhaps most importantly, for summoning more Grizzars to the battlefield.
The titans, on the other hand, are much more varied. Saboso freezes characters, and can imprision them within his chest. The giant spider Veblyn lays webs, forcing the Grizzars to discard cards to escape her sticky traps. Quagra is a four-headed hydra who turns the Grizzars against themselves. Each of these titans have their own, unique decks of cards, and force the Grizzar player to adapt their strategy based on the monster they’re facing.
The goal for both players is to defeat the other, by either fully damaging every appendage of the titan, or wiping the map of all Grizzar tokens, although the titans do have an extra win condition, unique to the titan that you’re playing as. The variability is impressive, as the four titans all feel like different challenges to overcome, and you can and should swap sides to experience each titan from both sides of the conflict. If you happen to own Skulk Hollow too, then it’s exponentailly more variable, as the Grizzars can take on the titans from Skulk Hollow, and these beasts can challenge the Foxen too.
I personally found the rulebook a little hard to get through. There were these helpful little boxes all over the pages letting you know how Maul Peak differs from Skulk Hollow, which I imagine would have been incredibly useful, if I were at all familiar with that game. But i wasn’t so I kept on stumbling over the boxes and ended up with several rule questions as I sat down to my first game. There was enough ambiguity to cause confusion, which is a shame for a game as rules-light as this. I will say that once we got through that initial learning curve, the gameplay was pretty smooth. Take your actions, pass to the other player. They take their actions, play passes back to you.
Maul Peak is much more tactical than strategic. What you can do is heavily limited by the cards you have in your hand. There are moments where you have a window of opportunity to further your objective, but if you aren’t holding the right card, you might just be up the creek without a paddle. The titan player starts off intimidatingly powerful, but once a Grizzar starts putting a dent into some of its abilities, as once you fill a titan appendage with blue hearts, they can no longer use the associated ability, suddenly the titan’s deck is full of dead cards.
There are lots of moments in Maul Peak that feel like a war of attrition. Saboso deals one damage to the bears. The bears leap, leap, and do a melee action for one damage. Saboso wacks the bear off, dealing one more damage. The bears summon a new character with a full health bar, leap up and damage Saboso for 2, disabling its whack ability. Saboso mends the whack ability and then whacks the bear off, dealing one more damage. Again, it’s tactical, if you have the cards you need, you can slowly progress your goals, as can the other player. I rarely felt like there were a ton of choices to be had, though, as the optimal option was often very apparent. After a couple of rounds like the one above, the turn to turn gameplay can feel very repetitive.
It is exciting, as the game comes to a close, however. If you’re down to one bear token left, and the titan has a mere two hearts remaining. Who will draw the correct cards first? Did you make the right call to destroy the grey bear earlier in the game, or should you have smote the green one from the map instead? The decision you made 15 minutes ago has suddenly come back to bite you in the butt.
If he can’t whack me, I’m safe on his body!
Maul Peak is a good game, even if it doesn’t quite muscle its way to the front of an already crowded two-player shelf. Its production is excellent: the titan meeples are striking table presences, the artwork sells both menace and personality, and the Grizzars’ Brother Bear meets fantasy adventuring party vibe is oddly charming. The asymmetry is the real hook here, and the four titans do a lot of heavy lifting in keeping the experience fresh, especially if you’re willing to swap sides and see how differently each matchup plays out.
That said, Maul Peak is a fairly simple, highly tactical affair. Your options are often wholly dictated by the cards in your hand, and while the push and pull of attrition can be tense at times, it can also drift into repetition once you’ve seen the core loop a few times. Still, at around 45 minutes, it rarely overstays its welcome, and its straightforward rules makes it an approachable entry point into asymmetric conflict games. If you’re looking for a beautifully produced, head-to-head duel that emphasizes short term adaptation over long-term planning, Maul Peak is well worth the climb.
