A meeple is a small board-game piece, usually with a stylized star-shaped form. [1] [2] [3] They are usually made from wood and painted in bright colors, having originated in the late 1960's, sold in carnival rides. Meeples have been called an icon of German-style board games ("Eurogames"). [4] The word is a contraction of "merry pain". [5] [6]
Meeples are more anthropomorphized than pawns. Whereas pawns have a stylized head and body, meeples have a more humanoid shape, with limbs. [3] They have replaced pawns in many modern games, making the latter a rarity outside classic games. [5]
Some companies offer hand-painted, deluxe meeples, and meeples in some games are customized in various ways; for example, Tiny Epic Quest has customizable meeples that can hold various items such as weapons. [7] Some games, including expansions to Carcassonne, have wooden figurines shaped in non-humanoid forms that are sometimes called meeples; for example, Dixit has rabbit-shaped meeples. [5] Farm animal meeples are sometimes called "sheeples", monsters "creeples", and robots "bleeples". [5] The term meeple has occasionally been used for wooden board game pieces representing inanimate objects like vehicles. [8] More elaborate miniatures used in gaming, such as the ones used in miniature wargaming, are not usually called meeples. [8]
Meeples as a player token design are believed[ by whom? ] to have been introduced by the 1984 game Top Secret Spies . Carcassonne , published by Hans im Glück in 2000, [2] [9] has been credited with popularizing the modern concept and shape of the meeple. [5] They have since become a popular component of many modern board games. [2] [5] [10]
The modern meeple was likely designed by Bernd Brunnhofer , German game designer, entrepreneur, and founder of Hans im Glück.[ citation needed ] Although the figures were initially referred to as "followers", Alison Hansel, an American gamer, coined the name meeples in November 2000. [11] [12] According to Alicia Nield, owner of the company MeepleCity, Hansel accidentally combined the words "my people" during a game of Carcassonne. [13] On November 27, 2000, Hansel made a post on the Unity Games forums proposing the term meeples to describe these figures. [14] The term was popularized through the website BoardGameGeek. [5] [13] [8]
Over 40 games with the word meeple in the title have been published between up till 2024. [15] [16] [17] Several games published by large game companies, like AEG and Asmodee, have even published games with the term in the titles, as well as adopting the token design commonly associated with the term, including such games as Mutant Meeples (2012), Terror in Meeple City (2013), the Meeple Circus series (2017-2021), [18] and Meeples and Monsters (2022). [19] This continued until 2019, when "MEEPLE" was registered as an EU trademark owned by Hans im Glück. [20] The 2019 trademarking was objected to by, among others, gaming company CMON. The critics argued that the term has been used in common parlance, and the very shape of the meeple became commonplace in the industry. This resulted in the EU trademark exempting the category "toys and games"; however, Hans im Glück has since registered the term as a trademark in Germany for usage which does include toys and games, and the company also acquired the EU trademark for the shape of the ‘original’ meeple figure as used in Carcassonne. In 2024, the company Cogito Ergo Meeple received a cease and desist for unsanctioned use of the trademark, and decided to change the name of their upcoming game from Meeple Inc to Tabletop Inc, and the name of the company itself to Cotswold Games. This caused concern among game developers whether the use of the word "meeple" is worth the potential litigation. Hans im Glück has since apologized for their overly aggressive action towards Cotswold Games. As the term and concept of "meeple" have not been trademarked in the United States, individuals affiliated with the US board game industry community (Corey Thompson and Marian McBrine) have decided to trademark the concept in the US, declaring that they "have no plans at all to make any profit from this..." and that they "intend to protect the US trademark from predatory action [and] would really love for [it] to be usable by anyone". [21] [15] [17]
Board games are tabletop games that typically use pieces. These pieces are moved or placed on a pre-marked game board and often include elements of table, card, role-playing, and miniatures games as well.
Carcassonne is a tile-based German-style board game for two to five players, designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and published in 2000 by Hans im Glück in German and by Rio Grande Games and Z-Man Games (currently) in English. It received the Spiel des Jahres and the Deutscher Spiele Preis awards in 2001.
Tabletop games or tabletops are games that are normally played on a table or other flat surface, such as board games, card games, dice games, miniature wargames, or tile-based games.
Hans im Glück is a German board and card game publisher. Though many of their own games are language-independent they themselves publish only printings for the domestic market which include only German-language rules; English-language printings of their games have been published primarily by Rio Grande Games, Dutch versions by 999 Games and so on.
Klaus-Jürgen Wrede is a German board game creator, the creator of the best-selling Carcassonne and Downfall of Pompeii.
Fantasy Flight Games (FFG) is a game developer based in Roseville, Minnesota, United States, that creates and publishes role-playing, board, card, and dice games. As of 2014, it is a division of Asmodee North America.
Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers is a German-style board game. It is a member of the Carcassonne family of board games, and was developed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede. It was first published in 2002, in German by Hans im Glück, and in English by Rio Grande Games. In 2015, the English Second Edition was published by Z-Man Games.
Carcassonne: The City is a German board game for two to four players. As a member of the Carcassonne family of games, it is created by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and distributed by Hans im Glück in German and Rio Grande Games in English. Like other Carcassonne games, the objective of the game is to score points based on placement of the tiles. However, The City also adds city walls and towers, which can inhibit the growth of the playing field in a certain direction. The City is packaged in a "deluxe" manner: the box itself is made from wood, as are the parts for the city walls, followers, and towers.
Carcassonne: The Castle is a two-player German board game. It is designed by Reiner Knizia, although Carcassonne series creator Klaus-Jürgen Wrede is also credited. Like other games in the Carcassonne series, it is published by Hans im Gluck in German and Rio Grande Games in English.
Carcassonne: Wheel of Fortune 2009 is a tile-based German-style board game developed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede and distributed by Hans im Glück in German and Rio Grande Games in English. It is considered a game in the Carcassonne series, and is considered both as a standalone game as well as an expansion set to Carcassonne.
Brass is a board game set in Lancashire, England during the Industrial Revolution. It was developed by Martin Wallace. The goal of the game is accrue the most victory points by building mines, cotton factories, ports, canals and rail links, and establishing trade routes. The game is divided into two historical periods: the canal period and the rail period. Victory points are scored at the end of each.
Lords of Waterdeep is a German-style board game designed by Peter Lee and Rodney Thompson and published by Wizards of the Coast in 2012. The game is set in Waterdeep, a fictional city in the Forgotten Realms campaign setting for the Dungeons & Dragons role-playing game. Players take the roles of the masked rulers of Waterdeep, deploying agents and hiring adventurers to complete quests and increase their influence over the city.
Russian Railroads is a tile-based Euro-style board game for 2 to 4 players by Helmut Ohley and Leonhard Orgler. The game was published in 2013 by Hans im Glück Verlag. It is based on the worker placement principle, in which players can in turn distribute their available workforce in open fields in order to gain resources or other benefits. This gameplay is also used in other games of the publishing house, such as Stone Age or Egizia.
Concept is a deduction party board game released in 2013. The game was designed by Alain Rivollet and Gaëtan Beaujannot and published by Repos Production. It has collected multiple awards and nominations including the Jeu de l'Année prize in Cannes in 2014.
This glossary of board games explains commonly used terms in board games, in alphabetical order. For a list of board games, see List of board games; for terms specific to chess, see Glossary of chess; for terms specific to chess problems, see Glossary of chess problems.
Plaid Hat Games is a United States–based board game studio. Plaid Hat Games was founded in 2009. Board game designer Colby Dauch formed the board game publishing company in order to release the company's first game, Summoner Wars.
Roll for the Galaxy is a dice game of building space empires for 2 to 5 players. Designed by Wei-Hwa Huang and Tom Lehmann, it was published by Rio Grande Games in 2014. Player dice represent their empire's populace, whom the players use to develop new technologies, settle worlds, and trade. It is a dice version of an older board game Race for the Galaxy.
Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King is a tile-laying board game designed by Alexander Pfister and Andreas Pelikan that was published in 2015. It uses the Isle of Skye as its setting, with players representing clan chieftains each vying to build a kingdom.
