Stupor Mundi

Stupor Mundi was the name given to the Holy Roman Emperor Frederick II, and it meant the wonder of the world. He was an industrious and forward-thinking leader. In the game Stupor Mundi you play vassals of the great leader. You build your own castles and develop your own kingdoms, while at the same time you can influence Frederick’s progress in building his castle.

This is your player board. You have a site for building your own castle. There are two types of construction material - grain and stone. You will be producing, buying and selling them throughout the game. Completing different structures give you different benefits. Building walls increases your storage capacity. Completed wall sections, i.e. wall plus the towers at both ends, generate income every round. Towers give you space for recruiting allies, and allies give you points every round based on specific criteria. Building sections of the keep gives you strong powers, one of  which is being able to perform 6 instead of 5 actions every round. 

The action system is interesting. This part of the game is a deck-building game. You have a deck of 10 cards, and every round you will draw a subset. On your turn you play a card to perform an action. That card must be inserted into one of the slots below your player board. If a card is played face-up, you perform the action on the card. If the card is played face-down, you perform an action on your board. If you look at the screenshot above, the card back (yellow) shows two soldiers holding spears. The icons these spears point at are the options you have. I find this clever and also funny. I imagine the two soldiers muttering, yes sir you can do this, and this. During the game it is possible to buy action cards. This is the deck-building aspect. Cards you buy will be stronger than your initial cards. 

This is the main board, showing five different port cities. On your turn you always have the option to sail or to stay. Ports offer different rates for buying and selling goods, different allies, and different action cards. If you want to sail far, you need to pay extra. Trading is important. Selling high and buying low is an effective way to get the resources you need for construction.

This is Frederick's castle. This somewhat simulates a player board. How much money, stone and grain Frederick has can be affected by the players. The construction progress too can be influenced. One funny thing about this game is you can undo his construction. Thankfully your own construction progress does not get undone. Players want to break down Frederick's walls and towers mainly because of the allies. Some allies score more points if the player has more of a certain structure type than Frederick. So if you have that ally, you want to tear down the boss' structures. But if another player has that ally, you want to help the boss build quickly to prevent your opponent from scoring more points. Sad to say this, but the boss becomes a tool and a victim in office politics. 

Frederick's status changes through edicts, those tiles on the right. Certain things that players do allow them to issue edicts, and there are always three to choose from. Edicts specify which aspects of Frederick's castle you can change, and usually you get to choose whether to increase or decrease. 

This is a board for specialists. Every player has some, and Frederick has one too. Some actions allow you to advance a specialist. Depending on where they are, you gain certain privileges, for example scoring points whenever you recruit an ally. When your specialist moves to the next space, you lose the privilege on the previous space. However the spaces on the right are usually more powerful. Frederick doesn't actually make use of his specialist. It is there just to see whether the players have a stronger specialist than him. Again, this is related to ally scoring. 

I find Stupor Mundi fascinating. I would classify this as a development game. Generally you are producing resources, and also buying and selling them, so that you can afford to build structures. Completing your castle is your main storyline. What I find interesting is the many ways you can enhance your abilities. Different structures you build will give you different strengths. Which ones do you go for first? Do you work towards unlocking your 6th action as soon as possible? Do you try to get some allies quickly and milk them for points as early as possible? Do you invest in better action cards early? I like how the many elements are closely integrated. If you want to buy and sell efficiently, you must build walls in order to increase storage. Choosing where to slot an action card is not always easy to decide. Using a slot means reducing your action options for the rest of the round. 

The specialist advancements is fun to manage. It's a timing puzzle. If you think you will be doing a certain action a lot in the next few rounds, it will be best to have your specialist on a space that gives you a discount or a bonus when you perform that action. 

You don't directly attack your opponent, but you will be competing for allies and action cards on the main board. Since you can influence Frederick's status, you want to do it in such a way that you deny your opponents from scoring the full points from their allies. Manipulating Frederick's status is not something you get to do often. If you can deny your opponents, it will usually be a pain for them to change the situation back to one that's favourable to them. You need to consider carefully which allies to take. You don't want to spend a whole lot of effort only to find that your ally is quickly rendered useless. 

I was nasty and did my best to disable Han's allies. See the red crosses above three of his four allies. 

By late game we both had all our towers and walls built, but we did not complete our main keeps.

Our game ended when we ran out of edicts. We fooled around with our boss' castle so much that it was in shambles and he had no money left, just a large stockpile of unused stones. So much for being the wonder of the world when he had such corrupt and scheming vassals. 

Stupor Mundi is largely in the mould of the heavy Eurogame. You score points here and there. You collect resources and spend them to build something. However I find the package as a whole brilliant. It keeps you agonising about putting together enough resources for the next construction. There are many ways you can improve your capabilities, and you have to prioritise which ones to go for. There are tactical opportunities to pursue, but which ones do you want to commit your time and energy to? There is a constant struggle between wanting to do things which improve your abilities, and wanting to do things which get you points.