"MUTANT MEEPLES" vs "NEAR AND FAR"

MUTANT MEEPLES

Mutant Meeples is a 2012 board game designed by Ted Alspach and published by Beziér Games and Pegasus Spiele. The game has been inspired by Ricochet R...

Mutant Meeples is a 2012 board game designed by Ted Alspach and published by Beziér Games and Pegasus Spiele. The game has been inspired by Ricochet Robots by Alex Randolph. Mutant Meeples is a game for two to six players. The game is played on a rectangular grid of 18×18 squares. The game has a private detective setting, where a series of crimes happen in a city, and Meeples under the players' control have to reach the crime scene. On each round, one square on the board is randomly chosen as the crime scene, and the players have to figure out how to get a Meeple there to solve the crime. The twist in the game is that the Meeples do not move freely, instead they use "Super Speed", where once they move, they don't stop until they hit an obstacle (a wall, the edge of the board, or another Meeple). All players first figure out a possible solution in their minds. Once a player has found a solution, he/she announces it. A solution can involve one to three Meeples, each of which can have up to ten moves. After this, an hourglass is flipped, and the rest of the players have this time to figure out a shorter solution. After the hourglass has run out, the solutions are tried out, from shortest to longest. The first player whose solution works solves the crime, and flips the token of the Meeple that arrived on the crime scene over, marking it as having joined his/her team. Meeples on a player's team cannot be used by that player any more, but can be used by other players whose teams they are not already on. Thus the game becomes more difficult over time. The first player to get six of the eight Meeples on his/her team wins.

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NEAR AND FAR

Near and Far is a board game for 2 to 4 players designed by Ryan Laukat and published by Red Raven Games in 2017. In this map based storytelling board...

Near and Far is a board game for 2 to 4 players designed by Ryan Laukat and published by Red Raven Games in 2017. In this map based storytelling board game, players seek fame and fortune and the eventual discovery of a mysterious last ruin. The gameplay blends resource management with a storybook, with players controlling heroes that equip and provision themselves in a town, and then set out to explore the map, setting up camps and completing quests. The game is a sequel to Laukat's Above and Below, which is set in the same fictional universe (Arzium). The game can be played as an ongoing, 10 game campaign, with each session being played on a different map. The game was originally sold via a Kickstarter campaign in July 2016, raising over $520,000 from over 7,000 backers. Players begin in a town, hiring allies and obtaining supplies such as coins, gems, and food from different buildings. They can then explore the world by using one of 11 different maps. The game comes with an atlas of spiral bound world maps, with each flip of the page revealing a different map that can be the board for a particular game. Players will set up camps on the map, gain resources, defeat threats, and explore story locations through the use of a separate storybook. When a player reaches an adventure location, another player will read the story, which ends by giving the player two choices, and a skill check which must be passed to give rewards. Players win by scoring the most points, many of which come from artifacts, which require certain resources to build. There are four play modes to the game. There is a tutorial scenario, an arcade mode which eliminates the stories from play, a character mode which has different stories for eight unique characters attempting to find a lost ruin which holds an artifact that will fulfill their heart's desire, and a full campaign mode with far reaching story elements which uses 10 of the game's maps in different play sessions.

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