Stupor Mundi

It is time to head back to early medieval times and bask in the glory of Frederick II, the 13th Century Holy Roman Emperor. His contemporaries called him 'Stupor Mundi' ('the wonder of the world'), and many historians consider him Europe's first modern ruler. Quined Games, alongside designer Nestore Mangone - known for Darwin’s Journey (ThunderGryph) and Shackleton Base (Sorry We Are French) - want to help us explore the Emperor’s reign via this highly interactive eurogame which places us as one of his vassals. Do we stay loyal to the Emperor or do we seek allies from ashore?

In Stupor Mundi you are working to build your castle and gather allies to pave a path that either follows Fredrick and his plans or moves against him. At the core of the many mechanisms of this game is a clever card-selection mechanism. It uses deck building as its main action selection, but with a twist where you can play the card to a slot to pick one of two actions (later you can pick both). Also as you acquire new cards, unlike many deck builders, the newly acquired card is triggered as if played and then also goes straight to your hand. This is fun and also powerful, which feels great.

There are many other mechanisms to this game but, other than the deck building and action selection, none of them are new or have a novel implementation. This brings me to my first big point about this game. Yes it is a euro, and plays like many other euros. It doesn’t reinvent the wheel much or add many new things to, let's be honest, an already crowded space in euro games. But what does it do? It shines. The game is simple to teach with some crunchy decisions that affect not only you but, crucially, other players too.

This is also where one of the mixed opinions about this game comes in: player interaction. Depending on which allies you seek - the main source of victory points in the game - will place you in a position to interfere with other players' plans. You may take an ally that wants Frederick's castle to have multiple towers but another player might have an ally that wants him to have more towers than Frederick. These types of interactions create an ebb and flow, as players enable edicts that manipulate the Emperor and directly affect other players' scoring opportunities. Some people have said they love this but others hate it, saying it is hard to plan for. For me, this is a strong positive that adds much needed player interaction in what might otherwise have come across as a vanilla euro.

Based on this, Stupor Mundi has attracted mixed reviews from people online, and seems to have been overlooked in the board gaming space, tho' the title doesn't help: few gamers have much Latin so many read the title as something along the lines of Stupid Monday. The theme also sometimes feels counter-intuitive, as the Emperor seems very easy to manipulate and have him build as you see fit. That said, it is a shame that this game has got little in the limelight as it is well designed, fun to play and looks great. The artwork fits the theme and the production quality from Quined is top notch. A clever storage solution for the game with beautiful game pieces makes it a huge hit in my eyes.

If you enjoy euro’s with a clever design, highly interactive and great production, I highly recommend you add Stupor Mundi to your collection.

(Review by David Breaker)

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