Meltwater - A Five Second Board Game Review

Meltwater is a neat two player wargame about tactically trying to starve your opponent in the middle of the now nuclear wasteland of Antarctica

Meltwater is a fascinating idea.  After a bitter world war, only the Soviets and the US are left. They are stranded on a decaying Antarctic continent, but instead of trying to live together, they try to destroy each other entirely.  It’s pretty grim and the mechanics take this a step further by having your primary means of combatting the enemy being to starve them out.  

The game manifests itself as a somewhat low luck 2-player wargame where all of the combat and moves are deterministic and only the way the island deteriorates is random.  This makes every turn an absolute puzzle with a lot of interesting possibilities, but also a lot of analysis paralysis.  It doesn’t really play like anything else I’ve played in this space. Unfortunately, it is also fairly clunky and unintuitive in spots.  Although I personally had a decent amount of fun in my plays and would like to explore the system further, I would only recommend Meltwater to two-player game aficionados who are comfortable with both its nihilistic subject matter and puzzle-like game play.