In the Hall of the Mountain King

Description

--- "In the Hall of the Mountain King" is a competitive strategy game where trolls rebuild their mountain kingdom through tile-laying and cascading troll production for maximum resource windfalls and honor. Key mechanics include: - *Cascading production* Hire trolls forming a pyramid; new trolls activate themselves and those below, yielding escalating resource gains from gold, stone, iron, marble, carts, runes, and hammers. - *Tile-laying expansion* Spend materials to place polyomino tiles, digging competing tunnel networks from personal entrances to connect buried gold, materials, workshops, and toppled statues. - *Statue transportation* Use carts to move statues through tunnels to prime scoring locations near the mountain's heart, ideally onto matching pedestals. - *Resource transformation* Access workshops to convert resources; balance hiring turns for trolls from shared market against building to maximize cascades and map control. - *Honor scoring* Gain points for digging quality tunnels, excavating great halls, and advancing statues closer to the heart; game ends post-sixth troll hire, highest honor wins the crown. "In the Hall of the Mountain King" is a competitive board game where players as trolls collaboratively yet rivalrously restore an abandoned mountain kingdom on a shared board, starting from individual entrances. Core gameplay revolves around an innovative cascading production system: players begin with four trolls producing specific resources (gold, stone, iron, marble, carts, runes, hammers); hiring additional trolls from a shared market places them atop two others in a pyramid, triggering activation of the new troll and any capacitated subordinates below for compounding resource surges. Players spend these resources to lay polyomino tiles, excavating tunnels to unearth riches, link workshops for resource conversion, and reach toppled ancestor statues—crucial for scoring. Carts transport statues via completed tunnels to honorific central pedestals, ideally matching types. Timing pits troll acquisition against expansion to secure desired workers and map primacy. The game concludes shortly after the final player's sixth troll hire, crowning the troll with most honor—earned via tunnel quality/length, great halls, and statue proximity/pedestal matches—as Mountain King. ---