allows a player to tailor her hand for the next turn's commodity-offering phase by refreshing it to 9 cards instead of 6, then discarding down to 6.
      Overall, I would recommend MEUTERER to gamers and casual gamers alike. Given the relatively short playtime, surprising depth of strategy, tight theme, and low cost, this game ranks as one of the biggest bangs for your buck.

     Mike Bialecki temporarily resides in Salt Lake City where he is the host of the modest Grad-School Gamers website.

MEUTERER
a review by Craig Massey

"Can you understand this, Mr. Byam? Discipline is the thing. A seaman's a seaman. A captain's a captain. And a midshipman, Sir Joseph or no Sir Joseph, is the lowest form of animal life in the British Navy!" - Captain William Bligh - Mutiny on the Bounty

     Adlung Spiele churns out card games in amazingly large amounts. Most look and feel like many typical card games, but in general have fantastic artwork and an interesting twist or two. One of their latest games, MEUTERER (Mutineer), designed by Marcel-André Casasola Merkle, goes beyond the concept of a card game and turns it into what many would label and recognize as a board game, only played with just cards.
      A few years back, Marcel-André Casasola Merkle came out with VERRATER (Traitor), the predecessor to MEUTERER. VERRATER used a mechanism of allowing each player to secretly choose a different role throughout the game. The different roles each allow the player to take different actions in order to score victory points. At the time VERRATER was lauded as a game with a refreshing and unique mechanism and a game that you couldn't pass up. The buzz died down fairly quickly and VERRATER seemed to lose a favor. Since then, we have seen another game, OHNE FURCHT UND ADEL [aka CITADELS -ed], use the same mechanism very successfully and now MEUTERER comes along to give the mechanism another push. The results are a game that is quite fun and challenging to play.
      The object of MEUTERER is to score the most points over eight rounds while sailing a merchant ship across the high seas through an archipelago and selling commodities. Each round, players choose a different role on the ship, each with its own abilities. Roles include the captain, first mate, merchant, load-master, cabin boy and the captain's worst nightmare, the mutineer (Meuterer's version of Captain Bligh's midshipman).
      The board is made up of twelve island cards laid out in a circle. Each island is worth victory points when a captain or mutineer successfully sails the ship to one of them. The islands also serve as locations where players can sell the appropriate commodity with most islands accepting one commodity type and a couple accepting all commodities.
      At the start of the round the captain, who is the only role that is open knowledge, starts the play by offering a share of his victory points to whoever might decide to choose the cabin boy. He then continues the round by playing a card from his hand. Cards played are either conflict cards or commodity cards. Then in turn, each player plays a card from his hand or passes. Once a player passes, they take the remaining cards representing the other roles on the ship and secretly choose one, sitting out until the remaining players finish playing their cards and choose a role.
      Once everyone has played all of the cards they wanted to play and selected a character, the Captain determines where the ship sails to next by counting the number of cards remaining in his hand. The ship will sail from its current location on the circle of islands to the new location determined by the Captain if he successfully defends his post.
      Next players reveal their roles for the round. If someone chose to be the mutineer, then a struggle for control the ship ensues. The mutineer also chooses an island for the ship to sail to based on the number of cards left in his hand. The Captain may now play additional conflict cards as can the first mate, cabin boy and mutineer in player order. If the captain and first mate have the most conflict cards then they control the ship and it sails to the island chosen by the captain who scores the amount of points the island is worth, giving the promised amount to the first mate for his loyalty. If the mutineer and cabin boy have the upper hand in conflict cards, then the ship sails to the mutineer's destination of choice he gains victory points. He also becomes the captain for the next round.
     After the mutiny is resolved then commodities are sold. The cards played during the round are now used to determine who gets to sell commodities at the islands. The more players selling a particular commodity, the fewer the points scored unless a player happens to be the merchant who gains the benefit of selling his commodities at the highest price no matter what.

Finally, all of the cards played are discarded as well as the roles and new cards are distributed. At this point, if a player selected the role of the load-master, he gets extra cards to choose from to best prepare his hand for the next round.
      The game takes two or three rounds in order to get the hang of it, but once you do, the amount of decisions and choices a player must make really starts to get interesting. How far should the captain sail the ship this round? How many points should be given to the first mate? Does it even pay to remain captain? Each player has to balance the amount of cards played verses how much information about their hand they want to give away as well as deciding when to bail and grab the most appropriate role for the round. Stay in to play one more card and a player is likely to control the commodity trade, but that means less choice when it comes to selecting a role. And then there is the whole decision of when to overthrow the captain and start a mutiny. A successful mutiny usually means a fair amount of points, but a failed mutiny usually puts you behind in the race for victory.
      The game offers much in the way of deductive reasoning and bluffing based on the information gathered from the card play and roles chosen. It also offers a decent variety of strategies to pursue. After several plays I have not seen a guaranteed winning strategy which is a good sign. At first I thought being the captain throughout the game or at least for a large chunk of it would win, but another playing where I tried it dashed that idea as I was soundly trounced by players selling commodities for far more points than I was getting as captain. I also initially thought that the luck in the draw in the cards would be a problem. It turns out not to be a huge issue since you can always increase your card selection with the load-master or by dumping useless cards in a round to draw more during card replenishment.
      MEUTERER plays in about an hour for four players. It also plays for three players. I have not tried it with three and to be honest, I'm not sure how well it will play for three given the dynamics and interaction between the card play and selecting the roles, but my guess is it will be quite a different experience. The game also comes with a variant involving a pirate ship that I have not had the chance to play yet either.
      When it comes down to it, I really like this game. Given that you are essentially paying the price of a card game and getting a game that plays much more like a board game with lots of interesting choices, bluffing and agonizing decisions, it is hard to come up with a reason not to buy this game. You'll get more than your money's worth out of it. MEUTERER is a most worthwhile addition to the game collection and one that should see plenty of play.

     Craig Massey is from Wakefield, MA and is the Boardgame Chairman for the Strategic Game Society. He enjoys a huge variety of games and plays with several Boston area groups and was recently turned down for the job of captain on a merchant ship and instead offered the cabin boy position, which he promptly declined.

THE HILLS RISE WILD!
a review by Larry A. Welborn

     THE HILLS RISE WILD! is hillbilly mayhem at its best. Released by Pagan Publishing in 2000, this game is H.P. Lovecraft meets Deliverance. Be forewarned, this is a bloody game. Characters will die horrible deaths at the hands of other characters. Evil gods may kill their devoted followers. There are no good characters in this game. Each player controls a 6-character faction that attempts to gain control of a copy of the Necronomicon, a book of powerful and unspeakable magic. The characters will then attempt to summon their evil god to destroy the other factions and rule the world.
      THE HILLS RISE WILD is a hybrid between a standard board game and miniatures and accommodates 2 to 4 players. The game comes with eighteen, 6-inch by 6-inch tiles that can be arranged in numerous ways to provide a different board each game. The tiles are reasonably thick and are nicely illustrated with a top-down view of trees, bushes, buildings and fences. The game also contains mystery cards, 24 characters and various markers, a small tape measure, a 20-sided die, rulebook, and faction sheets. The characters, depicted both living and dead, must be cut from a sheet and assembled, so give yourself some added time prior to your initial playing. Each living character, once assembled to a base, (a penny is recommended) stands upright and has a unique appearance along with important information about the character. When a character is killed, it is replaced with a flat corpse counter that is also unique in appearance.
      Each character has the following attributes: Life represents the number of hits a character can take before dying. Ammo is the number of times a character can fire a

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