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Description
Play as trolls rebuilding your abandoned kingdom under the mountain in In the Hall of the Mountain King. 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 honor 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 game board 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. The 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 honor (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!
Year Published
2019
Transcript Analysis
Browse transcript mentions, sentiments, pros/cons, mechanics, topics, quotes, and references.
Total mentions: 5
This page: 5
Sentiment:
pos 4 ·
mix 0 ·
neu 1 ·
neg 0
Showing 1–5 of 5
Video 3dGZTX_OyGE
Chairman of the Board general_discussion at 1:38 sentiment: positive
video_pk 11314 · mention_pk 33244
Click to watch at 1:38 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Elegant resource management as you build a tower of trolls
- Easy-to-teach structure with deep decisions
Cons
- May feel repetitive after many plays for some players
Thematic elements
- Resource management and subterranean discovery
- Mountain king cavern with subterranean exploration
- Tactical puzzle-driven placement
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- polyomino tile placement — burrow into the mountain by placing shapes to uncover statues
- resource cascade — placing new pieces causes cascading resource effects as you build a tower
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- mandala still utterly fantastic
- one of the best two player games i've made
- it's so so good and repeated plays are not changing that at all
- my god is this game fantastic even better than i remembered it
- it's got that real novelty factor and that physicality to a party game that does make people remember it
- the scoring does feel a bit too tight
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video Y1maitqW1gE
Going Analog quiz_show at 10:42 sentiment: neutral
video_pk 10655 · mention_pk 31445
Click to watch at 10:42 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
neutral
Pros
none
Cons
none
Thematic elements
- tactical placement
- mythic hall/kingdom
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Mechanics unknown.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- we pick Canadian board game designers who are real life friends against each other
- this is the board game quiz show
- your final score is 12 out of 20
- you can stop watching and go play a game
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video t-JQ9ACyRvk
The Broken Meeple top_10_list sentiment: positive
video_pk 8810 · mention_pk 25967
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Elegant and smooth gameplay despite medium weight
- Clever resource cascading with trolls
- Good rule book with straightforward four-step turns
- Beautiful table presence with polyominoes
- Unique mechanic for push-your-luck elements
- Filler magic cards create tension
Cons
- Long setup time
- Needs a setup insert for faster game prep
- No purpose-built studio available for review
Thematic elements
- Nordic/Fantasy Theme
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
Mechanics unknown.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- it's a unique twist on a genre that has you know like i say i love deck building but it has been bloated with a lot of uh entries
- it's a breath of fresh air it's like oh no one's really tried this before
- thank you viewers because you kept banging on at me to play this game finally i did and you were right
- my god do i i mean i love coffee i love coco but man do i hate the stuff i have to play this game
- it's like inside out the board game as in the pixar movie which is vastly underrated
- wow for someone like me who loves like variety as the spicer life this is certainly one where you've just got so many different ways to tailor the game
- tainted grail is one of the best story world settings for any campaign game i have played forget dissent forget gloomhaven
- gameplay imperium is sound it really is a good fun deck builder it would be so much higher on this list if it was just a bit more streamlined
- this is a really streamlined game that works with six players you don't get many of those
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video dVaso5Qv2pY
The Broken Meeple top_10_list at 6:03 sentiment: positive
video_pk 4518 · mention_pk 13275
Click to watch at 6:03 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Excellent resource management system that's very tight
- Clever spell card system adds variety and interaction
- Recommendations from fans were spot-on
- Great game to play with enthusiastic recommendations
Cons
- Luke initially avoided it for a while
- Requires proper engagement to appreciate
Thematic elements
- Dungeon/cave exploration with treasure hunting
- Mythological mountain/volcano setting
- Adventure-based tableau building
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Resource management — Tight resource management with troll card pyramid system
- Spell cards — Spell cards all players can trigger, limited to three triggers before removal, creating player interaction
- Statue movement — Moving statues closer to volcano center for victory points
- Troll cards pyramid — Players gain resources from placed troll cards and all cards below it in the pyramid, constrained by storage capacity
- Tunnel building — Players build tunnels through a map while collecting loot
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- It's that great banter game that's just great for like a good party setting
- The game needs to be quick and snappy and that's the way it should work
- When I got the game myself and finally got it out and played it with fellow gamers it was brilliant
- I don't see this really rising further up the top 100 though I think this is going to be its peak
- If there's a slight flaw at this game it's that the card system needs a little bit of tweaking it can get quite swingy
- The fans recommended this game and the fans were right
- It's kind of like that awesome experience that you only get to experience every now and again in a blue moon
- I found brian board to be a big surprise one of those big exceptions to the rule
- It's that great sort of climactic tension where throughout the game you're trying to figure out who is not on our side here
- It's a really clever system there's a decent amount of dice mitigation you know every time you roll those dice you are there racking your brains
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Video H_bq_QeqHmI
Chairman of the Board game_review at 0:00 sentiment: positive
video_pk 458 · mention_pk 1349
Click to watch at 0:00 · YouTube ↗
Overall sentiment (raw)
positive
Pros
- Engaging cascading resource system that rewards efficient planning
- Paced for a breezy 90-minute play time with quick turns
- Strong incentive structure via the Troll pyramid and top-row access
- Spell cards add flavor and impactful choices
- High replayability thanks to many trolls and spell possibilities
- Solid production and polyomino-style tunneling feel
Cons
- Art style may not appeal to everyone
- Requires a large table and ample space for multiple pyramids and tiles
- Decision space is deep and can be thinky; efficient play is required to avoid wasted turns
Thematic elements
- Mining resources, statue transfer, and central heart-of-the-mountain scoring
- Underground mountain mining in a volcanic setting
- Euro-style puzzle with thematic tunnel-building and stockpile management
Comparison games
none
Mechanics (from transcript analysis)
- Great halls integration — Place great halls on your network for base points and a potential end-game bonus.
- Public resource tokens (gem tokens) — Gem tokens are public and limited; depletion triggers replenishment dynamics and competition for access.
- Pyramid drafting of troll cards — Drafts from a ranked carousel/pyramid of Troll cards; lower rows free, higher rows unlock better bonuses but cost coins.
- Resource cascading / board-driven gain — Placing a Troll or building fills multiple resource tracks below, creating satisfying multi-resource turns.
- Spell cards with token costs — Use spell tokens to activate powerful effects; third-use cards rotate out and are replaced.
- Statue dragging onto platforms — Drag statues along a track to platforms; end-game points scale with platform placement and distance to center.
- Tunnel building — Spend resources to extend tunnels; size determines points and rock type influences scoring.
- Workshops to convert resources — Allocate workshops to convert one resource into another, enabling strategic cycling and timing.
Video topics + discussion points
No key topics recorded for this video.
Quotes (from this video)
- the resource system this kind of cascading mechanism
- pacing in this game is fantastic
- spell cards add so much flavor to the game
References (from this video)
No references stored for this video.
Transcript Navigation
Showing 1–5 of 5