Meeples & Monsters, a game by Ole Steiness from AEG

Reviewed by Ryan Miller

When Meeples & Monsters was originally described to me, words like “deck” and “building” were pasted together with the word “game” to form a strange Frankenstein’s Monster that I could not escape in my head. While I’m thankful that my active imagination veered from the reality, I can’t help but wonder if I’ve missed out on a bunch of other rad board games through this dubious labeling. You see Meeples & Monsters, henceforth called M&Ms, features no traditional deck building components. Magic: The Gathering this ain’t.
M&Ms features two decks, none of them for customization. The first deck contains deadly monsters to be heroically slain and the second features extra points if you slay them a specific way. None of these traditional cards are used to build anything, save your score at the end of the game.

What you are building instead is an army. This of course is where the titular meeples enter the chat. Initially, your meeple army has plenty of room for improvement and is comprised of ten whole peasants, and three of them completely unusable. The game refers to the useless three as corrupted meeples. Over the course of the game, you’ll take your available dudes and shake them out of a bag and spend them for various actions.

So what could these peasants possibly do to stop the incoming monstrosities? In most instances the answer is “Not much.” However, they still have uses. In the beginning you’ll find the best use of the peasant meeple is to replace them with better units. That said, due to the nature of acquisition in M&Ms, it’s hard to outright replace them. If you aren’t careful, you’ll end up with more peasants to dilute your army.
At the start of your turn you’ll dump a number of meeples from your bag to spend as you see fit. They may be spent in a variety of ways. They might fight a monster, acquire more meeples, or buy a building that gives you options for even more and different meeples. They might also be spent to make other meeples more powerful.

One of the things I really like about this game is that the meeple isn’t just representative of a peasant, knight, or whatever else this fantasy setting allows because they also represent your total actions for the turn. Early on, you’ll have a maximum of four actions(ie four meeples from your bag) but that will expand as the game continues. Thanks in no small part to the three unusable meeples, you might even start the game with a singular action.
The strengths of this game and where I had an absolute blast was developing a strategy to build my army in such a way that benefitted me. You may start off with only peasants, but as you build your army you’ll have not only more options, but stronger units. Stronger units can fight more powerful monsters for more points and rewards. You have to be careful though because it’s easy to accidentally add more peasants to spread out your more desirable options.

Another thing worth mentioning is the presentation. The pieces within are excellent. The meeples are the painted wood cut we’ve all come to know and love, each board is a thick and durable cardboard, and each card features an awesome(not to mention clever) cartoon monster or hero. The box also features a plastic mold for pieces that allow for an easy clean up, a feature that always wins me over.

I can’t say the game is quick, but I imagine this will change with subsequent playthroughs. I really did enjoy this game and it probably ranks with the some of the best games I’ve played all year. If you’re looking for a game with well crafted pieces, replayability, a solid rule book, and a cute fantasy setting, give this game a look. It’s definitely worth your time.