Mombasa (board game)

Mombasa is a board game designed by Alexander Pfister and first published in 2015 by the German company eggertspiele, with further editions released by Pegasus Games and R and R Games. The game is set among rival nineteenth century trading companies operating in Africa, and it combines deck building with worker placement as its core mechanisms. Players buy shares in the various trading companies represented in the game and work to expand those companies to their own advantage, all while trying to assemble the single most valuable investment portfolio by the game's end. Success depends on balancing which companies to invest in against the deck of action cards each player builds over the course of play, since the cards a player acquires determine which actions and expansions become available to them on later turns. Mombasa was well received on release and is counted among Pfister's more prominent designs, cementing his reputation as a designer whose games pair distinctive historical or economic themes with layered, interlocking mechanisms rather than simple, single-track strategies.