Meltwater

About the game

What is Meltwater?

“Restraint? Why are you so concerned with saving their lives? The whole idea is to kill the bastards. At the end of the war, if there are two Americans and one Russian left alive, we win.” ~Gen. Thomas Power, U.S. Strategic Air Command 1957-1964 19XX: The unthinkable happens. The world is scoured clean in nuclear fire. The oceans are poisoned for generations to come. One last patch of habitable land remains: Antarctica. The remnants of humanity huddle together in a fragile patchwork of research stations and refugee ships. But even here, the Cold War survives. And our civilization may not. In Meltwater, two players take command of the shattered remains of the superpowers, struggling for control of the ice. Simple diceless mechanics let players displace, corner, and isolate their opponent’s survivors. Here, hunger is a crueler weapon than gunfire, and the barren tundra can only support so many souls. And every turn, radioactive contamination pushes in from the coastline, shrinking the available space and forcing the belligerents closer and closer together. In the end, there is only either submission or annihilation, and whatever world is left. —description from the publisher

How it plays

Mechanics

On the shelf

Categories

Questions players ask

Questions to bring to BoardGameBrain

• How do setup and the first turn work in Meltwater?
• When does scoring happen and what ends the game?
• How should the table resolve an unusual timing or rules interaction?