Mountains of Madness (game)

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Mountains of madness
Game data
author Rob Daviau
graphic Miguel Coimbra , Rob Daviau
publishing company Iello , Devir , Hobby Japan
Publishing year 2017
Art Board game
Teammates 3 to 5
Duration 60 to 90 minutes
Age 14 years and older

Berge des Wahnsinns ( Mountains of Madness ) is a cooperative board game by the American game designer Rob Daviau , which was published in French, English and German by Iello in 2017 . It is based on the horror story Mountains of Madness by HP Lovecraft and is about an expedition to Antarctica in which the participants gradually go insane.

Style of play

The theme of Berge des Wahnsinns is an expedition by a research group to Antarctica, where the group encounters the ruins of a huge city. The researchers explore the city and find various relics and artifacts, but at the same time they are falling more and more into the madness that affects the communication skills of the expedition members. Participants must successfully complete the expedition without suffering too many injuries. If the expedition is unsuccessful, the players as a group lose the game.

In addition to the instructions, the game material consists of:

  • seven game boards with the route to the mountains of madness and storage space for the cards,
  • five double-sided printed player boards for the participants of the expedition,
  • a toboggan panel,
  • an airplane figure,
  • an hourglass,
  • six leader brands,
  • a penalty die,
  • 36 encounter tiles (coast, rock face, city, edge of madness, escape),
  • 66 mad cards,
  • 11 relic tokens, including four find and ruin tokens and three knowledge tokens,
  • 48 equipment cards (boxes, weapons, tools, books, arcane equipment),
  • 11 relic cards (find, ruin, knowledge) and
  • 15 injury cards.

Game preparation

At the beginning of the game, the game board is placed in the middle of the table and each player chooses a character with a player board, which he places in front of him. The encounter cards are sorted according to the different types and then randomly placed on the corresponding spaces on the game board. The Injury Cards, Arcane Equipment and Relic Cards are each laid out as a face-up deck. The equipment forms a face-down pile, on which injury cards are placed face up on the pile according to the number of players. The madness cards are sorted according to the level of madness and laid out separately in a face-down pile. Depending on the number of players, each player receives starting equipment consisting of three to five cards, which they take in their hand and are not allowed to show to the other players. The hourglass, the relic tiles and the penalty die are laid out. Finally, a starting player is determined who receives the sled board with the six leader markers and the airplane figure. Depending on the number of players, he distributes no card or one madness card of the first level to the other players and himself.

Game flow

Phase per game round
  • Aircraft phase
  • encounter
  • evaluation
  • Retighten
  • Rest (optional)

The players play four to five phases in each game round. You start with an airplane phase in which you have to decide together which direction your next train should go. In the first round you start your plane on any coastal space, after that you must move to any neighboring space with or without a tile in each round. The group can stay on the same level, ascend one level or descend one level. After the discussion, the leader decides which space to move to and places the airplane figure on it. If there is a tile on the field, the leader takes it and places it in front of him. If the players move to a field without a tile, they must complete the tasks listed there. As soon as the group has reached the “edge of madness” level, they can no longer descend and must flee. In the airplane phase, the leader can discard one or more of his leader tokens, thus allowing another player to ignore his madness cards for that round.

After the players have parked their aircraft, the encounter phase begins. At the beginning of this phase the hourglass is turned over and if the leader has taken a tile, it is turned over. In this phase all players must use the madness cards they received and follow the relevant instructions. The encounter tiles and the empty spaces each show two to three tasks that must be completed by the group. For the fulfillment the players have time until the hourglass runs out. During this time they have to get the required equipment, to do this they discuss with each other and also about their available cards, but are not allowed to show them. As soon as a teammate puts items of equipment or injury cards from his hand face down on the sled, communication between the players ends. The other players are allowed to place more cards, but no longer communicate with one another - if this happens, they must discard a leader token. After the hourglass has expired, the leader can decide whether to discard a leader token and thus start the discussion again.

When the hourglass has expired, the evaluation phase begins. The leader reveals the cards on the sled and compares them with the challenges. The challenge is considered passed if the total values ​​of the cards correspond exactly to the required values; if they are higher or lower, the players fail. If at least one of the tasks is successfully completed, the players receive the reward indicated on the tile:

  • Relic: The leader looks for the corresponding relic from the deck of cards and gives it, together with the corresponding relic marker, to any player who also has to take a madness card. If the leader takes the relic, he cannot play any more leader tokens later in the phase indicated.
  • Search: The Search ability allows players to examine a field on the mountain before traveling there. To do this, the leader reveals any tile and the players have an hourglass cycle to memorize the information.
  • Arcane Equipment: The leader selects a card from the Arcane Equipment and puts it on the equipment pile.
  • Healing: Players can remove (heal) an injury card from the discard pile.
  • Praise: The leader can take back up to two leader tokens.

For each failure of the match the players are penalized. Either a player chosen by the leader draws a madness card or the leader rolls the penalty die. If a player has to draw a madness card, he always takes one that is one level higher than any existing card and exchanges it. If he has already reached madness level 3, he may no longer be selected by the leader to receive a madness card (according to the optional expert rule listed in the rule, the player keeps several madness cards). If all players are already at Insanity Level 3, the leader discards a leader marker or puts a discarded leader out of the game. If the leader rolls the penalty die, the following punishments can occur:

  • Accident: The players take two injury cards from the corresponding pile and place them in the equipment discard pile. If there are no more injury cards available, the players have lost the game.
  • Confusion: The players determine the difference between the total value and the challenge value and discard that many cards from the equipment pile. If there are not enough cards in the equipment pile, a leader token is removed from the game.
  • Loss of trust: the leader discards two leader markers from the sled board or takes one marker out of play if there are not enough markers available. When there are no more leader tokens in play, the players have lost the game.

By discarding a leader token, the leader can choose to ignore the result of the roll and roll again.

After all rewards and punishments have been carried out, the cards played in the phase are discarded and the encounter tile is removed from the game. In the subsequent draw phase, all players can replenish their hand cards according to the number of players. If there are not enough equipment cards to draw, the leader decides how to distribute the cards without looking at them. By playing a leader marker, the leader can increase the hand card limit per player by one card. When all players have received their cards, the leader can optionally decide to rest. To do this, he takes one leader marker from the game and gets all markers from the discard pile back onto his sled. In addition, the discard pile and the draw pile of the equipment are merged and shuffled. At the end of the round, the leader passes the sled sheet to the player on his left, who is then the leader of the next round.

End of game and evaluation

The game can end for various reasons. Players lose immediately if:

  • the last leader token must be removed from the game,
  • when the players have to draw an injury card and the deck becomes empty.

If the players manage to reach the third escape tile at the end of a round, they have escaped the mountain. In this case, however, you will still lose the game if the number of relic cards you have collected is less than the number of injury cards in the draw and discard piles of equipment cards and the players' hand cards. The players win if they have as many or more Relic cards as Injury cards. Using the difference between relic cards and injury cards, players can measure and evaluate the success of the mission.

Expenses and reception

The game Berge des Wahnsinns was developed by Rob Daviau as Mountains of Madness and was published in an English, a French and a German edition at iello for the 2017 International Game Days in Essen . The German version of Hutter Trade is distributed in German-speaking countries. At the same time the game was published in Spanish by Devir and in Japanese by Hobby Japan.

supporting documents

  1. ↑ a b c d e f g h i j k rules of the game ( memento of the original from January 13, 2018 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link has been inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. for mountains of madness at iello / Hutter Trade @1@ 2Template: Webachiv / IABot / www.hutter-trade.com
  2. ↑ Versions of Mountains of Madness in the BoardGameGeek database; accessed on July 1, 2017.

Web links