Monday, 28 September 2026

Glen More II Chronicles

Matthias Cramer · 2019 · GateOnGames

Players

2–4

On the box

90–120min

At our table

110min

Weight Demanding· 3.01 out of 5

Text in the game None

What it is

Glen More II: Chronicles is a tile-laying euro game about building your territory in seventeenth-century Scotland. Each of you leads a clan and grows your own village in front of you, tile by tile, starting from a castle and a stretch of river.

Tiles are bought from a circular track in the middle of the table, and turns don’t go around the table: whoever is furthest behind always plays next. Taking lots of modest tiles means you play often, while jumping ahead for the one you really want means you sit and watch for a while. Each tile you place also activates the ones around it, and that’s how your village produces wood, stone, grain, livestock and whisky.

Points are scored at four moments, and always compared with the others: clan members at the castle, whisky, historic sites and characters are worth how many more you have than whoever has the fewest. At the end, whoever has the biggest village loses points for every tile more than the smallest one. The Chronicles are eight modules, each in its own little box, which you combine to change the rules from one game to the next.

How it plays

Every game is different thanks to all the chronicles you can bring in, but one thing is always true: don’t assume that more tiles means more points. Big villages are penalised at the end, so the best tiles are often the ones that go on top of a tile you’ve already placed. Your village doesn’t grow, and all the tiles around it get activated again.

Keep an eye on the river too, which splits your village into a north side and a south side. Spreading out on both sides doesn’t pay: keep your tiles close together, so they get activated more than once.

The nugget

Two of the eight Chronicles aren’t by Matthias Cramer but by two guest designers. Highlander was designed by Klaus-Jürgen Wrede, the creator of Carcassonne, who wrote on the game’s Kickstarter page that he said yes straight away because he liked the original Glen More so much, and was happy they went along with his rather unusual idea about the mountain. The Penny Mobs, the criminals, are by Arve D. Fühler.