Both Meeples and monsters are two elements you often see in games. Meeples are those cheerful colorful wooden miniatures that act as pawns and play different roles in all kinds of games. The classic peasants, the noble knights, damsels, telemarketers or simply meeples. In Meeples & Monsters, meeples are not only the central game component, but also an important part of the theme and a prominent mechanism. Players deploy their meeples – which they keep in a cloth bag – to defeat dangerous monsters and bosses. Do you know how to fill your pockets well or will you get the sack in this bagbuilder full of wooden rulers?
We do not know exactly which game first introduced meeples, the wooden figures, to the gaming world. Carcassonne made the figures at least and perhaps even indispensable in games. So popular that games even built their entire theme around these dolls. The meeples are now almost as iconic as pawns, dice and cards and now come in all shapes and sizes. Dragons? Meeples of those exist. Coffee cups? Of course. Windmills? Do you even need to ask? Meeples & Monsters contains a whole bunch of these figures. Not unique ones, by the way, but a whole bunch of different colors and they play an important role. Not only in the course of the game, but also in the decoration of the game. The illustrations on the various playing cards contain the characteristic shape of meeples, making all illustrations resemble the wooden guys.
Meeples & Monsters is a bag builder combined with some light elements of a worker placement (especially in terms of action choices). The term bagbuilder may not mean as much to you as a deckbuilder, but the principle is the same. Instead of a deck of cards, players assemble a bag. Think of something like Quacks of Quedlinburg where players collect different chips in a bag in hopes of pulling the correct chips from their bag during a round. This game has no blasts, but from their pocket the various meeples they collect during the game. Players then use these meeples to perform actions on the game board or to attack monsters. In doing so, they do need to take into account the color of their meeples, as they have different abilities and powers that players can use.
Each turn, a player draws a number of meeples from the bag. At the beginning, players have only white and gray meeples in the bag.
White meeples can be used for basic actions, but the gray meeples are of no use on their own. During the game your bag slowly fills up. With the meeples acquired, you perform various actions on the board. These actions include upgrading your meeples, adding new meeples to your pouch, fighting monsters by sending meeples to monster cards, or even upgrading the city by building tiles and unlocking new actions. At the end of a player’s turn, meeples they have drawn are set aside and they draw new meeples. When the bag is empty, the corresponding player refills it with all his meeples placed aside.
Monsters attack players by placing meeples. All meeples represent a certain power and players can temporarily and permanently make their meeples more powerful. When enough attack power is deployed, the monster is defeated ne players receive points and possibly other bonuses. At some point, enough monsters are defeated that the final bosses appear which also marks the end of the game.
During the game, players score victory points not only by defeating monsters, but also by completing missions. At the end of the game, players get even more victory points by defeating the final bosses. The player with the most victory points wins!
The game concept of Meeples and Monsters appeals to me. The mechanic where you pull items out of your pocket and use them to select your actions in a worker placement-like manner is interesting, but the elaboration could be polished up a bit. During the game you collect many meeples and eventually all meeples are useful, but the efficiency is in the combinations. This still leaves the game somewhat lacking in complexity. Many actions will repeat themselves, which makes the game duration feel long. This may sound very negative, but I that this game has a lot of potential in the basics, making me long for more depth.
