In the Hall of the Mountain King

9th February 2022

It's Wednesday night and we're round Simon's for some gaming fun. The evening's game was In the hall of the Mountain King.

Ask yourself: What is it that trolls like to do? Live under bridges perhaps; no. Chase goats maybe; no. What about make trouble on the internet; no. What trolls really like to do is dig tunnels (The fancier the better.) and move statues!

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What's in a game?

• Board: In the Hall of the Mountain King comes with a double-sided board and the player count determines which side is used. Regardless of this; both sides depicts a mountain surrounded by wilderness and features a square grid that contains a large number of icons and is divided into 5 zones.
  Heart of the Mountain: This fiery spot sits at the centre of the board and is surrounded by 5 bands of colour which form the game's 5 zones. The furthest zone away is dark grey, the next is light grey, then red, orange and finally yellow which is the closest band.
  Buried resources: Across the board are a number of these icons on spaces.
  Rubble spaces: These spaces will hinder players as they expand through the mountain.
  Start spots: There are player starting spots throughout the dark grey band.
  Statue spots: There are also starting spots for statues littered throughout the dark grey band.
  Workshop spaces: These are empty spaces upon which players can build workshop if they get the opportunity.
  Pedestal track: Outside of the grid is this track which keeps tally of which type of pedestal have been built in each zone. There 3 types of pedestal and thus 15 spaces.
  Score tracker: Finally a score tracker runs the perimeter of the board.
• Player board: There are one of these long rectangular for each player in their colour and every board contains information on the pricing structure/scoring for tunnel tiles as well as listing turn actions and the scoring for statues/pedestals.
  Along the top row are 4 indicators for card positioning and finally, the central area has a storage space to place resources.
• Tiles: The game makes uses of numerous types of tiles.
  Gate Tiles: These are small tiles that fit on a single space on the board, there are 4 of them in player colours and they represent the starting spaces for players.
  Great Hall tiles: These square and rectangular tiles of varying size display artwork for different types of rooms, they go from 2x2 up to 4x4.
  Each tile has an altar space which is a blue/orange/white circle. Each tile also displays two different VP scores - more on this later.
  Tunnel tiles: These are sort of like tetramino shaped tiles except they come with a varied number of blocks ranging from 2-5, some of which have holes in them called anchors. They allow players to see the colour of the square and thus the zone beneath the anchor.
  Workshop tiles: These single space tiles will be placed by players on the workshop spaces during the course of play. Workshop tiles have special abilities which can be utilised by players.
• Cards: There are various types of cards that In the Hall of the Mountain King makes use of.
  Spell cards: Each of these cards contains a spell that will benefit the player who uses it in some way.
  Troll cards: These cards are subdivided into even more types! The top half of each card features a picture of a troll and the bottom half will display resources.
  Starter troll cards: There are 4 sets of the 6 starter cards in each player colour. The starter cards feature 2 rows of resources delineated by a dotted line
  Troll card: The subdividing continues! The standard troll cards are further divided into type 1, 2 and 3. The higher the type, the more resource symbols the card will contain and therefore produce.
• Tokens: In the Hall of the Mountain King also makes use of various tokens.
  Coronation tokens: There are 2 of these round card tokens, valued at 5 and 3 VPs respectively. As well as scoring for players, they trigger the game end.
  Pedestal point tokens: These small square tokens are used in conjunction with the pedestal track on the board, consequently there are 15 of them, valued from 1-4 VPs each.
  Pedestal reminder tokens: That's right, the game has tokens to remind players to do something and that something is to do with pedestals! These tokens are each coloured blue/orange/white.
  Resource tokens : Yep, In the Hall if the Mountain King also makes use of lots of different types of resources, 7 to be exact.
  Stone: Little grey wooden cubes are used to represent this resource.
  Iron: These are little black wooden cubes.
  Heartstone: These little wooden cubes are red.
  Carts: These brown wooden tokens are actually shaped a little like carts.
  Hammers: Green wooden tokens shaped like... hammers!
  Runes: These are actually translucent acrylic purple gem shaped tokens.
  Coins: Standard round card currency tokens.
• Draw bag: A bag used to blindly draw pedestal tokens.
• Meeples: There are 2 types of meeple the game makes use of.
  Statues: There are 3 types of statue in the game, they are coloured blue/orange/white. Blue statues represent ice and at the top, are shaped a little like an ice crystal I guess. Orange represents fire and has a flame shaped top, while the white statues are shaped like a crescent moon.
  Pedestals: Pedestals are identically shaped and come in the same three colours as statues.

That's it for components and In the Hall of the Mountain King uses a lot of them!

There's certainly a good amount of wooden tokens and meeples here, the acrylic crystals are also a nice addition.
None of the other components struck me as being poor quality and they're typical of what is expected in a modern game.
There are a couple of minor quibbles though.
The pedestal points tokens are a bit small and fiddly to handle
The second is a bit of personal grumble - which is that all the carts are brown but depending on where the carts are acquired from will represent different colours. Carts in a player's central area can be used for any colour of statue. But carts from icons on troll cards can only be used to move statutes of a certain colour - which is indicated by the colour of the icon used to acquire the cart! Makes sense... right? Maybe not? Surely it would have been useful to include some carts of the relevant colours?

There isn't a great deal of art in the game, mostly on on the spell and troll cards but it's all well illustrated with bold colours and and is fairly varied. There are 4 types (Or clans.) of troll cards and 3 types correspond to the blue/orange/white colour motif that runs through the game and I quite like how those trolls cards have a colour pallet to match it their types.
Having said that; the starter cards all feature the same piece of artwork that has been coloured matched to each player colour which is a little disappointing.

For the most, the game's iconography is actually straightforward and easily understood. Only the aforementioned issue with carts being a small problem. If the cart icon has a coloured background then a cart that is sourced from that icon can only be used for that colour of statue.
Luckily it's not a gamebreaker although it's finicky rule to remember.

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How's it play?
Setup

• Board: Which side of the game board that is used will be dictated by player count.
  Statues: The board must be populated with statues. Randomly choose the colour of the first statue and put a statue meeple of that colour it in any statue space, then randomly select a statue from the remaining 2 colours and place it in the next statue space going clockwise. Finally place the final colour of statue clockwise after the second statue.
  Now that there's a pattern of 3 colours, repeat the pattern going clockwise until all statue spaces are occupied
  Pedestal point tokens: Randomize the tokens face-down and place them in the 15 spaces on the pedestal track. Then flip them face-up
• Workshop tiles: Shuffle the workshop tiles into a face-down and stack and draw 2 per player plus 1 more and place them out face-up. The remaining tiles have no use in the game.
• Tunnel tiles: Sort the tunnel tiles by type.
• Spell cards: Shuffle the spell cards into a face-down deck and deal 3 face-up. These 3 cards are called the spell book.
• Bag: Put all the pedestal meeples into the draw bag and give it a vigorous shake.
• Troll cards: Sort the troll cards by type and shuffle them into respective 3 face-down decks, then deal cards from the deck according to their type. When they are all placed, they should form a sort of ziggurat shape so they don't line up in columns, they are known charmingly as the Horde.
  Type 1: Deal 5 type 1 cards and place them in a row at the 'bottom' of the ziggurat.
  Type 2: Deal 4 of these cards and place them in a row directly above the type 1 cards but vertically positioned between the cards from the row below.
  Type 3: Deal 3 type 3 cards and also place them in a row above the type 2 cards, again vertically positioned between the cards from the row below.
  Pedestal meeples: Randomly draw 4 pedestal meeples from the bag and place them on the row of type 2 cards.
  Pedestal reminder tokens: Place 1 of these on each card in the type 3 row.
• Coronation tokens: Depending on the player count put out 1 or both of these tokens.
• 1st player: determine a start player.
• Player boards: Give each player the player board, gate tile and starter troll cards in their player colour
  Gate tile: In turn order, each player should put their gate tile on to one of the starting spots on the board.
  Starting trolls: Each player should shuffle their 6 starter cards into a face-down deck, draw 2 and then should put 1 of the 2 cards into any of the 4 allotted spaces above their player board.
  Now draw another card and again put 1 of them into the 3 remaining spaces. Repeat this until all 4 spaces are filled in a row. This is the beginning of each players Trollmoot and as further cards are added will eventually resemble a pyramid.
  Each player should now have 1 card in their hand and 1 card left face-down.
  Resources: Each player gains the resources listed on the bottom row of the 4 cards they put into their playing area. Once the resources have been gathered, partially slide the cards under the player board so that the bottom row of resources are hidden.
  Bonus resources: The first player does not gain any bonus resources! However, all other player do. They will gain resources from the bottom row of 1 or 2 of the cards they didn't put into their play area depending on their position in the turn order.
  Regardless of whether players gain bonus resources or not, the 2 un-played starter troll cards are discarded out of play.

Phew! We're ready to go now.

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On to play
Play during In the Hall of the Mountain King will have active player performing 4 actions before play moves clockwise to the next player.

• Spells and workshop: The active player may perform one or both of these actions.
  Spells: The active player may spend a rune token to use the ability of any one of the 3 revealed spell cards by placing it on the pertinent spell card.
  Once a spell has accumulated 3 runes, it's discarded and new spell is drawn from the deck.
  Workshop: The active player may make use of one workshop's abilities which is connected to their tunnel network. It can be used as many times as it is connected to any tunnel network - even that of another player.
  Typically workshops allow players to swap around resources, any gained this way are placed into the storage on the active player's board.
• Dig or recruit: The active player must perform only 1 of the 2 following actions.
  Dig: This involves spending resources to acquire a tunnel tile and place it on the board, there are obviously some restrictions and quite a few rules here.
  ​The cost of purchasing a tunnel tile is equal to the spaces it occupies, i.e., a 4 space tile costs 4 resources. This can be paid in only stone or only iron or only heartstone and not any mix if the 3. Players can trade any 4 resources for 1 of their choice at any time. When a tunnel tile is bought, it immediately scores VPs depending on it's size (Except the 2 space tunnel which scores nothing.) and the type of material used to construct the tunnel. Stone scores the least and heartstone scores the most as indicated in the bottom right corner of the player board.
  Next, the active player must put the tunnel tile on to the board; all positioning of and measuring of these tiles is done orthogonally. A tunnel tile can be rotated or flipped anyway the player chooses but must go adjacent to the active player's gate tile or a tunnel tile connected to the active player's tunnel network. Furthermore, there must always be at least 1 space between the networks of all players - no 2 networks can connect.
  If the tile covers any rubble spaces, the active player must spend hammer tokens equal to the rubble spaces being covered.
  If the tile covers any buried resources icon(s) or a statue meeple, the player gains them. Resources are placed into the storage space on their player board and statues are placed back on the same space on the game board but now on the tunnel tile.
  If the tile has been placed adjacent to an empty workshop space, the active player may place one of the available workshop there.
  If the tile that has been place has an anchor point on it and the active player has a pedestal in their storage then they may put the pedestal on the anchor spot, this can only ever be done just after the tile has been placed. There's a further restriction, each zone can only ever contain 1 pedestal of any colour. Since there are 5 zones, there can only be 5 pedestals of one colour in the game at any time and only 3 (One of each colour.) in each zone. There can be a maximum of 15 pedestals in the game which matches the 15 spaces on the pedestal track. Speaking of which, when a player puts a pedestal on the board, they immediately gain the pedestal point token from the space that matches the zone where the statue was placed and the statue's colour. This should be kept face-down in the players storage and revealed during scoring.
  Recruit: The active player may recruit one of the trolls from the Horde and depending on which level the troll is recruited from, it may cost 2 or 5 coins.
  If a type 1 troll is recruited, it costs nothing, if a type 2 troll from the middle row is recruited, the 2 troll cards beneath it must be bribed​ with 1 coin each, thus 2 coins. If a type 3 troll is recruited, then the 2 trolls beneath them must be bribed and then the 3 trolls beneath the the 2 must also be bribed for a total cost of 5 coins. all bribes are placed on the troll card itself. If a troll card acquires 4 coins, it's removed from play and replaced.
  When the active player takes a troll card, they also get anything on the card, including coins. So for a type 2 troll that would be the pedestal on it and on a type 3 the pedestal reminder token means they can take the pedestal of their choice from the bag.
  After a troll card has been taken, it is immediately replaced from it's relevant deck. For type 2 trolls, new pedestals are randomly drawn from the bag and for type 3, the reminder tokens are placed on them.
  Now the player must put the troll card into their Trollmoot. When doing this, it must go position above 2 other troll cards and overlap their top corners. Thus the 2nd row of a Trollmoot will contain 3 cards, the 3rd 2 troll cards and the top row will contain a single troll card, who become the chieftain of the Trollmoot. When the active player gains their chieftain, they can take one of the coronation tokens if there is one available.
  Additionally, when a card is added to the Trollmoot, it is activated, this means that the player acquires the resources listed on the card. Not only that, the 2 cards beneath the card are also activated and then the 3 cards beneath the 2 are activated and so forth in a cascading effect. This means that when the chieftain card is placed, it will activate all cards in the Trollmoot.
  When resources are acquired this way, they are placed on the troll card that generated them and not on the storage space on the player board. This is important to remember because if a troll card is already contains a resource it produces, then the player does not acquire it.
  This means it's a good idea to use resources on troll cards before those on the storage or to use workshops to cycle resources off of troll cards.
• Great Hall: The active player may place 1 great hall tile per turn into their network by placing it on top of their tunnel tiles. However, the player's tunnel network must contain an area at least as large the great hall tile to accommodate it. E.g., a tunnel network must contain an area at least 3x3 in to to accommodate the 3x3 great hall tile.
  Every great hall tile has an altar space and 2 differing VP values. The 2nd value is what the tile is worth if a statue of any colour is placed on the altar space
• Move Statues: The active player spend cart tokens to move statues.
  Cart tokens that come from the players storage on their player board can be used to move statues of any colour.
  Cart tokens that come from troll cards can only move statues that match the colour of the cart icon on that troll card. I.e., the cart token on a troll card with a white cart icon can only be used to move a white statue - even though the cart token itself is brown!
  Each cart token spent allows the active player to move a statue to anywhere on another tunnel tile (Or another space on the same tile - only 1 statue can ever occupy a single space.).
  This can involve putting the statue on a pedestal of matching colour which doubles the statue's VP value.
• Next player: when the active player has completed all 4 phases, play progresses clockwise to the next player.

Okay, that's it for the main rules.

Endgame
The endgame is triggered when there no coronation tokens left to acquire.
The current round is completed and 2 more rounds are played.
Players then calculate VPs, a player's VPs may come from the following sources.

Score tracker.
Statues - depending on their position in the 5 zones and doubled if the player managed to place them on a pedestal.
Great hall tokens in a player's network - with or without statues.
​Pedestal points for placing pedestals.
Coronation tokens.
Unspent resources; these can earn points. Every 3-of-a-kind scores an extra VP.

Points are tallied, highest score wins.

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Overall
Despite having quite a few rule to remember and sounding quite complicated, In the Hall of the Mountain King is actually pretty straightforward in practice and many of the rules are obvious when in action.

​There's definitely a couple of finicky rules though, and again - it's to do with the carts and pedestals. It feels like an unnecessary complication to have these differently coloured carts to move statues.
The rule that restrict pedestals to 1 per colour in each zone also feels a but cumbersome. I know why the rule is there: It encourages competition in a game that otherwise has little interaction between players.
​Players will want to be the first to get a pedestal as close to the Heart of the Mountain as possible. It locks out completing players and offers a big scoring opportunity.

It means that players are put into a balancing act of needing build their tunnel network but also acquire resources to make this expansion happen. Clever placement of tiles will earn players some resources but recruiting trolls is the best way to get them and you'll note that digging and recruiting are pretty much the only 2 mutually exclusive actions in a turn.

There's more to tunnel tile placement too, pedestals and thus statues have to go on anchor spots and it's these need to be as close to the centre of the board as possible, sometimes it'll be tricky to get it right, or it'll require not getting something else. Being able to avoid rubble spaces helps as well.
Resource management also has more to it. Spending resources from troll cards first is prudent, as is using workshops to change them into other resources - because they go back on to the storage space and not the troll card. It does involve trying to think ahead about what resources can be acquired and what will be needed.

This brings me neatly to the Trollmoot/Horde elements of the game, with their overlapping and cascading mechanics for both buying cards and acquiring resources they almost feel like a different game to the tile placement taking place on the game board.
I have to say that I like the cascading mechanic, it's simple but provides some interesting decisions for players to make. Building up a Trollmoot, like much of In the Hall of the Mountain King requires a little forethought.
If my calculations are correct, the cards in the centre columns will be activated the most. Players will want to identify and prioritise what resources they'll need in their Trollmoot setup. Additionally, deciding where to place a troll card will determine what resources the player immediately.

I do also have some concerns about the game, I found using the tunnel tiles, creating pedestals and moving statues more of a chore than satisfying and the game it didn't quite gel with me.
I'm also not sure how much value there is in replaying the game. The player and statue starting positions and workshops may vary but mostly the board's resources stay unchanged. And while the card mechanics are good, the cards themselves only vary in which resources they provide.

In the Hall of the Mountain King is another one of these games that does nothing really wrong and I've got nothing against the game. If someone else wanted to play it I would happily join in but somehow it's missing that special something that makes me want to play it again.