Board Game Geek Avg Player Rating: 8.6
Players: 2 to 5
Published: 2019
Content Notes: Kickstarter Deluxe Edition of In the Hall of the Mountain King Board Game by Burnt Island Games. Includes core game (Deluxe Edition) and all unlocked stretch goals. Please note: unless otherwise stated paid add ons from the Kickstarter Campaign are not included.

The war was generations ago. Driven from our ancestral home beneath the mountain, 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. Our enemies 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 song we will return to our home and our home will return to us.

As a respected leader, gather a following of trolls from the Mud, Fire, Ice, and Moon clans. Dig tunnels clad in stone, iron and heartstone. Carve out spacious galleries as great halls. Unearth the statues of the ancients, and with the help of the clans return them to places of glory near the mountain’s heart. The surging cascade of trolls returning home will grow ever mightier as our kingdom is rebuilt, rising and crashing forward until one leader rises above the rest to be crowned the Mountain King!

 We are trolls, returning to our ruined ancient mountain home. We compete to excavate out the mountain, earn honor, and become the Mountain King! Honor is earned for digging tunnels and great halls, for building pedestals for statues, and for raising the lost statues of our ancestors back to places of glory close to the mountain’s heart. 

Rules are simple. Turns are:

1. (optional) Cast 1 spell and/or activate 1 Workshop

2. Recruit 1 Troll or Dig 1 Tunnel.

Recruit 1 Troll:

Dig 1 Tunnel:

3. (optional) Dedicate a great hall.

4. (optional) Move statues.

How to Win

At the end of the game, you’ll score honour points for your tunnels, for your great halls, for the pedestals and statues you’ve placed, and for leftover resources. Highest score wins!

Play as Trolls rebuilding your abandoned kingdom under the mountain; with muscle and magic you’ll unearth riches, dig out collapsed tunnels, and carve out great halls as you raise the toppled statues of your ancestors to their places of honour at the heart of the mountain. Gameplay is driven by the innovative cascading production system. Timing and tactics are key as you work to restore your home to its former glory and win the crown!

Working on the same gameboard with the other players (but beginning at your own entrance), you’ll dig a competing network of tunnels by spending increasingly valuable materials to lay polyomino tiles onto the map. You want to extend your tunnels to connect with buried gold and materials, with workshop locations that can transform resources, and especially with toppled statues. Statues are key to scoring, and you’ll spend carts to move them through the tunnels to prime scoring locations near the heart of the mountain.

A major aspect of the game is the Cascading Production; you begin with a line of four Trolls, and every Troll shows the combination of resources (gold, stone, iron, marble, carts, runes, and hammers) that it produces. When a new Troll is hired, place it above two other Trolls, forming a “pyramid”. The new Troll activates, gaining its resources, and any Trolls beneath it ALSO activate, gaining any resources that they have room to carry. In this way as you hire more Trolls, you gain bigger and bigger windfalls of resources as the end of the game nears. Timing of your hiring turns versus your building turns is important, as you try to maximize your cascades while making sure you get the Trolls you want from the shared market and also stay competitive on the map.

The game ends shortly after the last player hires their sixth Troll; Then the player with the most Honour (earned for digging tunnels of increasing quality, for excavating Great Halls, and for moving statues closer to the heart of the mountain, especially onto matching pedestals) is crowned the Mountain King and wins!

— from the publisher

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