IN THE HALL OF THE MOUNTAIN KING Review: A Game Of Mountainous Proportions

Review copy provided by Burnt Island Games

In the Hall of the Mountain King released last year from Burnt Island Games as a Kickstarter campaign that attracted more than 4000 backers.

The game, designed by Jay Cormier and Graeme Jahns, involves digging into the heart of the mountain and recruiting trolls to join in the effort. Players enlarge their network of tunnels, recruit ever-stronger trolls, and restore the former glory of the mountain by uncovering statues and placing them on pedestals or altars in newly-built great halls. Honour is the currency of victory, and you will want to accrue this by successfully balancing your goals in the mountain.

The King of the Trolls will be the player who most wisely calculates how to allocate resources and to recruit trolls that contribute to their cause.

If you’re looking for a tile-laying, network-building bundle of tabletop charm, then In the Hall of the Mountain King might be something to look into. I definitely enjoyed my time with the game as it weaves story and gameplay mechanics together into one coherent and enchanting box.

Grab it off the shelf, plop it on the table, and get started.

STORY

The war was generations ago. Our hated Gnome rivals drove us from our ancestral home beneath the mountain, and we have been wandering the wilderness, scratching out survival in the cold and the dirt. But now something has happened; we feel it in our bones. Without the soul of our people to sustain it, the mountain has collapsed, taking our revenge for us. The surviving Gnomes have fled, and the rubble of our ancient halls calls out for we trolls to come home. So we shall go. By claw and by hammer and by sweat and by spell we will return to our home and our home will return to us.

What’s not to love here? Evil gnomes, exiled trolls, a treacherous mountain waiting to reveal its treasure to the prodigal race, and all of the digging that will certainly be required. It’s just a wonderful lump of storytelling that upends traditional fantasy tropes and explores what happens when one of the most fearsome species of earthy creatures steps out of the filthy light and back into the pure darkness where their relics, their history, and their future awaits.

Players will command the four troll clans—Mud, Fire, Ice, and Moon—and endeavor to be crowned the Mountain King. It will take careful planning, cunning recruitment, and the digging savvy to get it all done before the competing trollsmoots.

Yes, trollsmoot is a word in this game. That should be reason enough to play it.

GAMEPLAY

Gameplay for ItHotMK alternates between player turns that progress through four steps:

1. Using spells and workshops

2. Recruiting trolls or digging tunnels

3. Dedicating a great hall

4. Moving statues

Hidden underneath that simple system, however, is a cunning game of resource management and spatial puzzles. Finding the right path through the layers of mountainous rock is difficult, as it requires careful consideration of where buried statues are, what tiles could later become a great hall, and what strategies will your neighboring opponents take when responding to the same obstacles.

For example. spells can help to galvanize the momentum of a turn by removing required resources or doubling up on an action—or one of many other options. Workshops can provide critical actions that aid in storing resources or trading them out. The other two steps enable players to score honor as they either reintroduce great halls to the underground kingdom or position statues back onto pedestals and altars.

And it’s up to the players to discover what combinations of those four turn phases will result in the best tunnel network and the highest victory point total.

It’s an awesome mix of polyominoes, cascading resource cards, and other mechanics that make In the Hall of the Mountain King a unique game that feels very different from most of what I’ve played in recent years. It was a novel gaming experience that really tied theme and gameplay into a unified whole.

And the cascading trollsmoot, in particular, builds toward a crescendo at the end of the game when a glut of resources and full player board collide into a glittering hoard of possibility as players figure out how to utilize the largest pile of resources toward the greatest progression of honor and map exploration. It’s fun, it’s clever, and it gets me excited to play again.

VISUALS

One of the reasons I enjoyed In the Hall of the Mountain King so much is the lore-building that exists between all of the cards, the actions, and the game components. This is a world where trolls restructure the very stone around them through brute force, ancient magic, as well as sheer will and determination.

Like a blacksmith hammering away at a glowing bar of metal until it becomes a piece of exquisite craftsmanship, the trolls dig and toil in their subterranean kingdom until it becomes a shining, statue-laden system of tunnels and great halls, reminiscent of the race’s golden age in times past.

If you’ve got the deluxe edition of the game, you feel that history and that universe whenever you pick up the wooden and plastic resources, when you hold the spiked crown that signifies the ruling head of the troll clans, and when you cast spells to make your vision a reality.

The mechanics are well-oiled and a joy to interact with, but it wouldn’t be as memorable of an experience without the matching visuals to really ground you in the world. Well-lit tunnels of golden hues replace dark and dim stretches of mountain earth and resplendent halls rise up to reclaim the lost space.

Of course, all of this is even better with the box inserts and high production value. This is a game that’s pretty to look at, a riot to play, and a cinch to put up.

The art from Kwanchai Moriya and graphic design from Joshua Cappel really bring In the Hall of the Mountain King to the next level.

REPLAYABILITY

Depending on the player count, you’ll be able to play on two different sides of the map, which will affect how you’re able to navigate the subterranean world and it will change the arrangement of workshops, rock layers, etc. So that’s an exciting aspect for players to enjoy because the game will look and play differently when the player count changes.

Also, the spell deck is large enough to guarantee that games will be influenced by unique combinations of spells that alter what’s possible. If you consider the optional player powers that are available with the Champions deck, then those troll abilities further increase the replay value by adding novel mechanics for the players to experiment with.

One of the most obvious contributing factors to the replayability of In the Hall of the Mountain King, though, is the diverse combination of mechanics that allow for more than one player strategy. One player might focus on getting statues onto pedestals as quickly as possible before other players. Another player might rely on a smaller number of statues located in the highest-scoring regions on the map. And yet another player might organize their tunnel digging to create great halls for a different source of honour, and therefore victory points.

With the variable game setup, the intertwined mechanics, and the spell deck, this troll tale increases its value by a lot. And, if that’s not enough, players can always consider the small expansion pack that includes rules for solo and cooperative play.

WHAT IT COULD HAVE DONE BETTER

When I first started playing the game, I wondered if the resource-management was too lean—since only recruiting trolls produced resources, typically—or the game was too short—since you only recruit six trolls before the game starts to wind down—but most of my concerns were unfounded.

The game is paced nicely and everything fits pretty seamlessly in the overall design of the game.

However, I would have liked a mechanic to wipe away spells faster. If a spell is used three times, it disintegrates and is replaced, but there were spells that we encountered during our playthroughs that just weren’t helpful for long periods of time. Having the ability to either periodically refresh the spells or wipe certain ones would have made some of the gameplay tenser as players struggled to cast certain spells before other players.

The starting troll selection can be difficult. In one game, I didn’t have access to Runes from the beginning of the game, which prevented me from using Spells for a while until I was able to recruit a troll that gave me the valuable resource. A player’s inability to collect a particular resource can prove challenging. It’s still possible to win, but it can also derail a game. I’m not sure how to fix that without interfering with the trollsmoot mechanic that currently exists, but it’s a weak point that I noticed during play.

For the most part, though, In the Hall of the Mountain King succeeds in drawing inspiration from multiple genres of board games and forging them into one special blend of trollish happiness.

VERDICT

The theme oozes out of In The Hall of the Mountain King. It seeps into every facet of the gameplay mechanics. And it’s so fun and captivating to play as a race of fantasy creatures so often delegated to brutish, unintelligent roles. The trolls here are as complex as the game, with different clans focusing on a wide array of resource gathering, spellcasting, and restoration.

While the architectural bent of the game, which in terms of the narrative involves reviving the long-lost glory of the troll kingdom, is not expressed as vividly as the mountain excavation and troll recruitment, it all comes together nicely for a light-hearted and diverting stroll through a mish-mash of gameplay mechanics that all somehow work superbly in relation to each other.

Everything that surprised and impressed me about In the Hall of the Mountain King was also present—though in a totally separate context—in my first play of In Too Deep, the current Kickstarter project from Burnt Island Games.

So I’m confident that the next game from the publisher will be equally superlative. And I’m not too worried about the interlude because I’ll be able to bring In the Hall of the Mountain King out again to play with friends and family, all the while digging tunnels, recruiting trolls, and moving statues in an effort to be the King under the Mountain. Just a much bigger king than you were probably thinking…