The moles have gathered for their annual Mountain Maker tournament to decide who’s the Top Tunneler of the year. It’s up to you to outsmart your opponents and take away this prestigious title!
2-4 players, ages 9+
Playing time: 45-60 minutes
Designers: Jim DiCamillo & Patrick Marino
Artwork: Elena Muñoz
Publisher: The OP
https://theop.games/
The play area of Mountains out of Molehills consists of a two-level game board, with the moles moving on the bottom floor in order to modify the top floor to their advantage.
Each game round starts with a drafting and planning phase: in turn players are going to choose the cards they need from an open display and afterwards they stack the cards face down in the order they want them to be played. When everyone has finished planning, players take turns playing one card at a time and moving their mole accordingly, creating molehills on the top floor while passing. Depending on the round, molehills are limited in height, otherwise they topple, adding dirt on surrounding molehills, possibly causing a chain reaction.
When all cards are played and all molehills are stable again, points are awarded to the moles who control the molehills.
After six rounds the game ends, and the mole who scored the most points in the competition is declared the ‘Top Tunneler of the Year’.
Mountains out of Molehills is an accessible card programming game that comes with top notch components, like the standees and the sturdy plastic hill pieces. However, I do feel the execution could’ve been a bit better since the hills tend to fall over as the game progresses, and since this game most often comes to the table with children, this unfortunately happens sometimes.
That aside, the gameplay is smooth with quick turns and perfect to introduce people to the card programming mechanism, and the fun art and theme make Mountain out of Molehills an appealing family weight game.
Tabletopping 