THE GAMES JOURNAL - Spielemuseum.at · WIN The Games Journal now also available as eBook! For all...

INTERNATIONAL EDITION: IN THIS ISSUE WE PRESENT 54 GAMES

THE GAMES JOURNALwww.gamesjournal.at

ISSUE 481 - JULY 2015ISSN 0257-361X

Volume 39

OUR REVIEW u BROOM SERVICE

2 ISSUE 481 / JULY 2015 www.gamesjournal.atColor codes, target groups, features, icons and GABIS areexplained on page 5 and at the bottom of pages 46 and 47

You have always wanted to delve into the world of magic and to brew potions or ride high up in the air on a broomstick? Then you are exactly right with Broom Service, because here you can do exactly that, brew potions and deliver them within the realm to princesses, dragons and magicians.Broom Service is the sequel game to the popular game of „Wie verhext“ by Andreas Pelikan. Contrary to “Wie verhext”, you play on a board on which you deliver your po-tions for a profit using your witches and Druids, and the first player is not forced to be brave.

You take up the roles of gatherers, witches, druids or fairies. Your goal is to brew po-tions and deliver them all over the magic realm for a profit with your Broom Service. But take care, sometimes clouds block your passage and you must remove them with magical means before you can deliver your potions.In each round you have ten role cards to choose from and you choose four of them for the current round. Those role cards al-ways provide one brave and one cowardly action. The brave action is very rewarding, but you run the risk of being left empty-handed. When choosing a cowardly action you are never left empty-handed, but they are less rewarding. Whoever has most victory points at the end of seven rounds, wins the game.

Andreas Pelikan opens the box and shows us the nicely designed game board that fea-tures five different landscape types - there are forests, prairies, hills, mountains and also water. On those landscapes you find round and square towers in different colors and cloud spots, which are empty at the start. He also summoned a lot of other com-ponents from the box - there are figurines, playing pieces, event cards and role cards in four different colors as well as various clouds and colorful hexagonal tiles.

The designer recommends - for your first game of Broom Service - to choose the ba-sic game with the red flags on the castles on the board, that is, the front side of the board. All players choose their favorite color - blue for me, and we all take the cor-responding role cards and playing figurines which are placed on the large castles. After I chose blue, there is red for Clara, yellow for

Anita, black for Günther, and as Andreas is also playing, he very restrainedly chooses last and takes the last remaining color on offer, green.Now Andreas hands out one potion of each color and one magic wand to each player. The markers for victory points are placed on the little witch on the track for victory points. The event cards are laid out ready for use - should there be fewer than five play-ers, there are between one and three en-chanted roles in each round, which can be played, but do cost three victory points, as explained by Andreas.Now we have seven rounds to try and to brew as many potions as possible and to deliver them for a profit to the population of the realm. At the start of each round a new event card is revealed. Such an event card can provide victory points for you at the end of the round, but take care, bad planning by you can leave you with penalty points.

But before we can start Andreas has to ex-plain the roles in detail:

The realm of Broom Service is populated by ten different characters who bear re-ally funny names and can do two different actions each. You can choose for of those characters for each round. To brew potions you need ingredients - for this purpose you can choose one of three different gathering characters, which give you different potions and/or magic wands.The herb gatherer Krautvornix gives you - when played bravely - two green potions and one magic wand, but only one green potion when played cowardly.Wurzelsepp the root gatherer brings two magic wands and one potion of orange col-or, when you play him bravely. Should you opt to play him cowardly you can choose between a wand and an orange-colored potion.The last gatherer of the trio is Fruchtzw-ergi the gatherer of fruits. He gives you two purple potions and also one potion of your choice for brave play. For playing him cow-ardly he gives you one purple potion.

To move around on the game board and maybe deliver potions at the same time you must choose one of the witches.Witches Heidi (With of the Prairies), Hy-azinthe (Witch of the Hills), Walpurga (Witch of the Forests) and Bernadette (Witch of

the Mountains) let you fly into an adjacent region of the same color. If you play them bravely, you may also deliver a potion.Druids offer another opportunity to get rid of your potions and to collect a few vic-tory points. There are two different types of druids, which may deliver potions to regions for which they are experts. Should they be brave druids, you even score three extra points. For hills and mountains you play Gipsdir, the Druid of the Peaks and can, should your figurine be in place, deliver a corresponding potion. Talismanni, the Dru-id of the Valleys, is used when your locations is on the prairies or in a forest.And, finally, there is Donna Wetta the Fairy of the Weather. With her help you can magic away the troublesome clouds. To to do you discard as many magic wands as the small

white star indicates. Now you have a clear path to travel across the land. The collected lightning bolts from clouds will earn you important additional points at the end of the game. In case you manage to play the Weather Fairy bravely, you will earn three additional victory points.

Which leaves us now with one question only: To whom and how do you deliver your potions?Only witches and druids are allowed to de-liver potions. Should you choose a witch for the job, you can only deliver a potion when you played bravely. If this is the case you travel to the respective area - but, take care! This area must be adjacent and free of cloud and you can never move across wa-ter. When you have arrived in the new area you take a look around and find yourself a tower that, on the one hand, corresponds to a color in your personal stock, and on the other hand, is located in the new area or on a neighboring border. If you have a suitable potion, you can now deliver it to a suitable tower and take your reward.Druids must already be in a suitable region to be able to deliver. The Mountain Druid delivers on hills and mountains, the Valley Druid delvers to towers in woods and in the prairies. If you did play a druid bravely, you rake in three extra points.

Rewards for delivering a potions are always victory points, and could sometimes also be magic wands. Those wands you simply pick up and play continues. There are two different kinds of towers, round towers and square towers. Square towers have a high demand of potions and you can do deliver-

DELIVERY BY BROOM STICK

BROOM SERVICEPOTIONS IN MOTION

A cute excursion into a land full of magic that has something to offer to the casual player as well as to the experienced frequent player.

Kati Knoll

WIN The Games Journal now also available as eBook!For all information on that check our website.www.gamesjournal.at 3ISSUE 481 / JULY 2015

OUR REVIEWtBROOM SERVICE / 40 LINES FOR MEEPLES

40 Lines for Meeples Dagmar de Cassan, Editor -in-Chief

Already last month I have mentioned our Game Designer Meeting of many years‘ stan-ding. That our initiatives for game designers are successful is clearly stated in the success of our designers; our two most successful game designers have won this year’s Ken-nerspiel des Jahres with their game BROOM SERVICE. Our most cordially congratulations on this wonderful achievement. Already last month, too, I have mentioned that among the winners of the awards in the Austrian Game Award there are eight games by Austrian designers or artists. 2015 is the year of Austrians in games. Please support us, too, and recommend those games with Austrian origins or participation.Austria seems to be turning into a country where not only great musicians and and wri-ters are renowned but where game designers are becoming part of the cultural landscape.Some information on the Game Designer Competition: This year we will again publish two games for our Games Charity.In our data base LUDORIUM you can find all prize-winning games.Take a look and find games that you are mis-sing in your collection, http://www.ludorium.atIf you like our WIN? Until we have caught up with our delay, we do not accept new subscri-bers! The reading is free for all our visitors,http://www.gamesjournal.at. Our Games Companion GAME BY GAME 2015 is available, http://www.gamescompanion.at þ

ies there at any time, you simply put your delivered potion back into general stock. The round towers can only take one deliv-ery, but usually give you higher rewards. Po-tions delivered to those towers are put on the towers and indicate that no more deliv-eries are possible there.

After seven rounds the game ends. Now you add to your score special points for lightning bolts and remaining resources. If you managed to collect most points, you win. In case of a tie you win with most re-sources.

Armed with those information we can be-gin; all players choose their roles and after they made their choice, Andreas reads out the first event; „Gefällige Gebiete - Protect-ed Places“.Günter is starting player, chooses the Herb Gatherer and reads out the top text on the card: „ I am the brave Herb Gatherer and want to create two green potions and a magic wand”. As he is an experienced „Wie verhext“ player, he of course playes bravely and hopes for the big profit. Now all other players in turn must choose the Herb Gatherer if they have it in hand and decide on brave or cowardly. Günter is still hoping, because Anita and Clara don’t have the Herb Gatherer in hand and simple say „pass“. Then it is Kati’s turn and she decides on cowardly - she is afraid of the last play-er - and reads out the bottom text on the card: “ I am a cowardly Herb Gatherer and brew a green potion instantly”; she takes a green potion and and her turn passes. This decision was absolutely right, because An-dreas also has the Herb Gatherer, decides on brave and takes two green potions and a magic wand. But flying high can result in a fall - Andreas is now the starting player for the next round and has to decide if he takes the risk or is content with less. As he also is an experienced player, he of course chooses the cowardly Hill Witch and moves immediately into an adjacent hill area. In the last but one position Clara is happy af-ter an appraising look at Kati and chooses brave, as she believes to be a good judge of persons and thinks she is the last one in the round aiming for the hills. But she is wrong - Kati is the bravest Witch of the Hills and may deliver a potion after her arrival in the hills. In this way all cards are played, until all play-ers have played all their cards. Finally, the victory points according to the event card Gefällige Gebiete- Protected Places are as-signed and a new round can begin.

Each player chooses four roles from his deck of ten roles and Kati reads the new event card: „Wie in alten Zeiten … As in the days of old“. In those good old days each player

was a brave one, so now each player who plays a card for the first time has to play it bravely, and this goes for Kati, too, of course - she needs wands and plays the brave Herb Gatherer and is lucky - none of the other players did select Krautvornix and so she wins the big price. But must lead again bravely and is out of luck for the round: She plays the brave Weather Fairy. Andreas plays her cowardly, as three players are be-hind him. He removes a cloud with three lightning bolts, and pays six magic wands into general stock. Anita is the last player of the round and plays the brave Weather Fairy, calls out “Donna Wetta” and and ac-quires a lightning bold for two wands and is rewarded with two extra points for being brave, which she instantly marks on the vic-tory points track. The round is complete and Anita is the starting player for the seventh and last round.

Most unwanted or unlucky events events happen in the last round, because we al-ways must follow suit if we have the in hand that was lead and if someone plays the Druid before you have acquired a suitable potion you are left empty-handed. But in this last round we are lucky, because each player who decides on playing his role cow-ardly, can - thanks to the “Schwarzmarkt - Black Market” choose three victory points instead of the cowardly action. Anita plays the Witch of the Forest at the start, Kati is al-ready loudly complaining about this choice, as there is a prairie between her and her wood; well, bad luck, the risk was too high, the sequence for her big plan is destroyed. But luckily, she can opt to take three victory points for playing cowardly and thus is not left completely empty-handed. Günter plays the brave Mountain Druid for his last card and hopes for a profitable outcome, but Andreas is also standing on a mountain and delivers a purple potion there with his Druid and finishes the game with three extra points.

At the end of the game you add up your lightning bolts: Andreas owns five of them and scores 19 victory points, Kati receives only 15 points for her four bolts. Anita, Günter and Clara collected three light-ning bolts each and score 9 victory points for them. So Andreas wins with 80 points, closely chased by Kati with 78. Günter and Clara share 3rd position with 73 points and five resources each, and the last place goes to Anita with 68 points.

If you are already experienced witches and druids in Broom Service, the game offers some variants for the basic game, which I will mention briefly now:

OUR REVIEW u BROOM SERVICE


Storm Clouds:Those clouds can be used on both sides of the board and offer additional options for more victory points and actions to all play-ers. They are shuffled together with the nor-mal clouds and randomly placed.

Mountain Tiles and Amulets:Those items are an option for the board side used in the basic game and must be used when playing on the back side of the board. Both tiles are randomly placed on the cor-responding mountain spaces. If you enter a space with such a tile you instantly imple-ment the corresponding action or take an amulet of the color. Those amulets award additional points at the end of the game.

Forest Tiles:Forest Tiles must be used when you play on the back side of the board. You place them on the spaces provided for them in forest re-gions. The forest tiles offer additional once-only advantages which you can use at any time of your choice during the game.

Hill Tiles:

Finally, there are Hill Tiles, too. Those are, in analogy to the forest tiles, always placed on the hill regions when you play on the back side of the board. There are two different types of hill tiles. On the one hand, there are five stone circles - if you enter one of those,

the “turbo” in your broom ignites and you fly to the corresponding stone circle in your destination area. Upon arrival there you may deliver a potion immediately, should you have played a brave witch. On the other hand, there is a tower of orange color, which does not ignite your turbo, but offers seven victory points instead.

Broom Service is the sequel game to the well-liked card game „Wie Verhext“ by An-dreas Pelikan. The addition of the game board is very well executed and introduces a new element to the game which notably enhances the game experience. The addi-tional variant options introduce levels suit-able for each type of player. Beginners can improve their play and experts can also en-joy the basis game, because the fun in play-ing is great in each of the versions. However, the game is not suitable if you are a timid player with weak nerves, because you need to cope with interference from other players with your plans. As we have entered a new era for the game mechanism, in Broom Service even the starting player can choose to play cowardly and thus face only small risks. But exactly this choice be-tween brave and cowardly is what introduc-es the challenge and thrill to the game. All in all, a round, complete and felicitous game from our Austrian dream team of designers, Andreas Pelikan and Alexander Pfister. þ

Kati Knoll

INFORMATIONDesigner: A. Pelikan, A. PfisterArtist: Vincent DutraitPrice: ca. 30 EuroPublisher: alea/Ravensburger 2015www.ravensburger.de

Role selection, collectingUsers: With friendsVersion: deRules: de en frIn-game text: yes

Comments: Board game version of Wie verhext * Basic mechanisms remain, somewhat simplified * Attractive design * A game for all kinds of players

Compares to:Wie Verhext

Other editions:English/French edition

EVALUATIONM

y ra

ting

:

PLAYERS:2-5AGE:

10+TIME:75+


OUR REVIEWtEL GAUCHO / GABIS

GAMES BUYER INFORMATION SYSTEM - GABIS

STRUCTUREEach game review also features an evaluation which can help you to find the game that best suits your tastes. The color accompanying each game title represents the USER Group. The headline also contains icons for age and number of players. The BAR in the evaluation box displays color codes for up to 10 features of a game.

USER GROUPWe have defined 4 target groups (color accompanying the head line)

Kinder: Games for children an educational games. Adults can play in a guiding function.Familien: Children and parents play together, all have the same chance to win and have fun.Freunde: Young people and adults play together as equalsExperten: Games with special demands on rules and playing time. Especially for game geeks

Please note for the user groups Children, Family and Friends: Children who love to play can be ahead of their peers! Please note that our target group “families” does not imply the classical concept of „family games“! Furthermore, our user groups can overlap. The choice of suitable games always depends on your playing partners and your fun with games!Games that are especially eligible for Solo play or for 2 play-ers or Large groups of players are marked with an icon.

FEATURESEach game targets preferences for different features in a player, therefore each game is not suitable for each player. We have listed 10 features players note when deciding on a game. Only if a player finds his preferred features in a game he will enjoy the game. The color code marks the dominant features. Educational games train the highlighted preference.

Empty boxes: This feature is neclectable or not present One colored box: This feature is present, but not essentialTwo colored boxes: This feature is present and important in the gameThree colored boxes: This feature is dominant and essential

Chance:The game is influenced by dice, cards or any other form of random generator

Tactics: Take decision, short-term planning, planning based on one move

Strategy: Think ahead, long-term planning, planning for several moves

Creativity: The player has to provide words, phrases, images and other creative efforts

Knowledge:Cultural and educational knowledge, long-term memory

Memory: Remember, learn by heart, short-time memory

Communication: Talk to each other, negotiate, inform

Interaction: Influencing each other, bluffing, auction

DexterityMotor skills

Action:Body movement, balance and reaction

ADDITIONAL INFORMATIONVersion: The edition of the game on which the review is basedRules: This lists the languages in which rules are available or are included in the game, often even more translations can be found on the web.In-game text: A YES marks a game with language-dependent components that cannot be played without translation or knowledge of the language

As so often I was looking for a new game to play. While I was looking through the new games that had arrived recently at the Aus-trian Games Museum, I noticed EL GAUCHO.

The cover of the game box depicts a Van-quero who is catching cattle with his lasso. As I wanted to give my husband a treat - he loves Western films - I suggested that we try the game. He agreed instantly. In El Gaucho players try to assemble herds of different types of cattle and to have the maximum possible number of cattle in each herd.

In the game box you find 60 cattle tiles, 9 dice, 32 playing pieces (8 in four color each), 4 money indicators, 1 starting player mark-er, 1 fence made up from four gate parts and, finally, one board.The fence is placed on the board on its square (Dice Rodeo).Nine dice are placed onto the Dice Rodeo

space.The board shows four rows on which play-ers can acquire new cattle.There are also six different special areas on the board. In each of those areas each player can place only one of his figurines. The six action areas, that is, actions are: Sort, Wish, Immediate Sale, Steal Cattle, Raise or Replace Gauchos and Secret Cattle.

Cattle tiles show a tall and a small number, and you place cattle tiles openly on each of the four pastures at the start of the game. For each type of cattle there are cattle tiles showing values of 1 to 12 (tall number) and in each pasture you place cattle tiles until the total value of those tiles equals or tops 20.The remaining cattle tiles are set down as a face-down stack next to the board.

El Gaucho is played in rounds. The starting player is provided with the starting player marker; then he takes all nine dice and throws them into the Dice Rodeo area.He decides on two dice and can use them to acquire cattle from the pasture or use them for an action in one of the six areas.

If a player wants to acquire cattle tiles he can choose from those options:

Using a die he can place a Gaucho upright on a cattle tile if the die shows the same number of pips that are indicated by the tall number on the cattle tile.

He can use the other die to place a second Gaucho on another cattle tile.

You can also use a die to place a Gaucho on a cattle tile when the number of pips on the die equals the small number on the cattle tile. In this case, however, the Gaucho is asleep. If you want to acquire this cattle at the end of a round you must first raise this Gaucho.

As yet another option a player can add the results of both dice and place one Gaucho on a cattle tile with either the small or the tall number corresponding to the total val-ue of both dice results. The disadvantage in this option is that the player can only imple-ment one action.

When the starting player has used his cho-sen two dice for one or two actions the next player in clockwise direction can choose and then use two dice to do one or two ac-tion. The last player only has a choice from three remaining dice.

To place a Gaucho on one of the special ar-eas for Immediate Sale, Wish or Sort, a play-er must use a die result of 1, 2 or 3.The area for Steal Cattle can be used with a die result of 4.

With a die result of 5 you can place a Gau-cho on the area that allows you to raise or replace Gauchos.A die showing 6 as a result allows you to place a Gaucho on the area Secret Cattle.

When each player has used two dice in turn you check all pastures if in one or more of all four pastures Gauchos are standing or lying on all cattle tiles.

When all cattle tiles in a pasture are occu-pied by Gauchos and there are standing Gauchos among them, players who own those Gauchos take the cattle tile on which their Gaucho or Gauchos are standing. Gau-chos go back into the personal stock of each

DICE RODEO FOR CATTLE HERDERS

EL GAUCHOCATTLE BUSINESS ON THE PAMPA

EL GAUCHO is a very good game, sitting exactly on the border between family game and a game for somewhat more experienced players.

Maria Schranz

OUR REVIEW u EL GAUCHO


player. Cattle tiles on which Gauchos are ly-ing down, remain on the pasture together with the Gauchos on them. This also goes for pastures in which all tiles are occupied, but where all Gauchos are lying down. In pastures in which there are still cattle tiles without any Gaucho at all, nothing hap-pens, this pasture remains unchanged for the next round in the game.

After all players have taken all possible cattle tiles, players now form herds of cattle. There are different types of cattle and you can use all cattle of one type for a herd. Cattle tiles can be sorted into a herd either in ascending or in descending order. In the consecutive rounds of the game new cattle of the same type can only be added on the right-hand side of the herd, that is, row of cattle tiles. When the sorting order, ascend-ing or descending, cannot be adhered to with a new cattle tile, a player has to sell all cattle of this type with the exception of the tile that could not be added. He begins a new herd with this cattle tile.

When all players have assigned their newly acquired cattle tiles to their herds, the pas-tures are refilled with new cattle tiles from the stack, again you place cattle tiles until the total value of tiles in the pasture equals or tops 20. Please note: This refilling does not only happen for completely empty pas-tures, you also replenish pastures in which Gauchos are sleeping.

At any time in his turn a player can use Gau-chos which he has placed into one of the six

special areas in a previous round:The area Immediate Sale allows you a player an instant sale of a herd, which earns him five Dollars more than a forced sale.The area Wish provides a player with an imaginary additional die, so that he can im-plement up to three actions in this round or three dice at his command to acquire cattle tiles.

A Gaucho placed into the area of Steal Cat-tle allows a player to take a cattle tile from the herd of another player and add it to his heard of the same type. The player who was the victim of this theft receives as many dol-lars on the money track as the cattle tile was worth.

In the area Raise/Replace Gauchos a player can use his Gaucho to raise/wake up two of his own sleeping Gauchos on cattle tiles. Another option for this area is to replace one opposing sleeping Gaucho with one of your own Gauchos, who is then placed up-right on the cattle tile.

The area Secret Cattle always holds four cattle tiles. If a player achieved a result of 6 with one of his dice, you may place a Gau-cho into this area. This Gaucho then allows a player to take one of the cattle tiles in the area and to place it into any pasture and to put a Gaucho on it immediately. In case the tall numbers of two tiles in the area not ex-ceed a value of 4, a player might even take two tiles from the area and place them on pastures and put a Gaucho on them.

In this way the game continues until the face-down stack of cattle tiles has been used up. At the end of the round when this happens a round without rolling dice is played, in which only Gauchos in the spe-cial areas are used. Then you take all cattle tiles from all pastures on which you have a standing-up Gaucho, sort the cattle tiles into your herds as usual, sell all herds and win if you are the richest player.

El Gaucho basically would be a very good family game. The simple rules and the relatively high element of chance do leave enough room for some strategic planning, so that you are tempted to characterize the game as one fitting into the category “with friends”. The actions Stealing Cattle and Re-placing Gauchos, too, could appear to be too complex or incalculable for some play-ers, so we conclude again that the game is a tad too difficult for typical families.

On the other end of the scale the game is not complex enough for an expert game and the standards for a game “with friends” are just barely met.

Interaction is relatively high, on the one hand due to the occupation of cattle tiles by other players while one could make use of them in person. The Steal Cattle action, too, provides some interaction.

The area of Dice Rodeo is a very good mech-anism, as it provides a protected area for the dice waiting for selection by players.


OUR REVIEWtEL GAUCHO / EXPEDITION NORTHWEST PASSAGE

The rules are clearly structured and easy to understand and therefore provide a fast and easy access to the game. As soon as you have made yourself familiar with the special areas, players begin to optimize their moves in the game with the help of the actions provided by those special areas.

The relatively short playing time still pro-vides enough time for tactical and strategic decisions and the element of being an-noyed or riled can be rather high in some games.Graphical design and components are very pretty and provide a nice ambiance.

I can recommend the game to all casual players, but not necessarily to expert play-ers, due to the rather low in-game depth. All in all this game is a very good game, which has only one disadvantage: Nobody will look for such a game from its publisher Argentum Verlag. The typical Argentum customers will be expecting a game with a much higher level of complexity.

Conclusion: El GAUCHO is a very good game, but I am afraid that is will not sell well because buyers expect rather complex games from this publisher. þ

Maria Schranz

While I am writing this review the tempera-ture outside is ranging around 35 degrees in shadow. So it is nice to be at the Polar Cir-cle in my mind and achieving at least some mental cooling effect.

The theme of the game is one of the most mystery-laden ocean passages in all the world - the Northwest Passage. Since the Portuguese seafarer Magellan sailed around South America in 1520 to pass from Atlantic to Pacific and thus discovered a new route to Asia and India, there was also a search on for a northern route.

Setting aside the interest in discoveries in which Sir Francis Drake and also James Cook indulged in those times, there was and is also still today a focus on economic interest. After all, the route to Asia through the Suez Canal stretches over 21.000 kilo-meters and is thus longer by nearly 50%. If you take the route through the Panama Ca-nal you lose four days which means about 20.000 $ additional cost for a freighter. So you can imagine how important it seemed to find a feasible route within the so far un-explored regions. And this adventure keeps going strong into today, as since 1969 only two trade ships managed to pass along the northern route. Only since 2008 the route was free of ice for several weeks in summer, due to the changing climate. By the way, Austrian Arved Fuchs also secured a place for himself in history books, as he mastered the passage with a sailing boat. We go back to the year 1845 when the Brit-ish Admiral Sir John Franklin set out with two ships and 128 crew members, under order of the Crown, to find and chart this sea route. This endeavor ended in disaster. He disappeared with all hands, and no-one managed to find a trace of him or his expedition. Countless attempts have been made to discover what happened to his expedition, and all were in vain. Even Roald Amundsen tried in 1903 with a reconnais-sance mission of three years to discover the causes of the disaster. Now from the back-ground to the game:

Now French publisher Matagot and de-signer Yves Tourigny have picked up the topic and - in my opinion - masterfully pre-sented the problem. Matagot is only active since 2005 and has - with Takenoko, Cap-puccino, Nofretete, Cyclades und Chrono’s - already published quite a few very inter-esting games. He designer is known to me only from his game „Blue Print“, but, anyway, with North West Passage he has created a masterpiece.

The Game: Two to four players find a game board showing Greenland for a starting place and the Pacific at the West Coast of Alaska and Canada for a target. The area is split into three marked regions, which influ-ence the victory points to be had during the game. The further away from the start-ing harbor, the more victory points can be accrued. Each player is given his personal tableau, a ship, a sled and seven crew mem-bers, which are placed on the ship at the start of the game. The board provides an area for play with ca. 100 squares representing uncharted terri-tory. By and by you place exploration tiles and thus create the landscape. There are 64 tiles that cover two squares on the board, and there are always for of those tiles on display. The rest is put into a bag and you draw randomly from the bag when one of the tiles on display needs to be replaced. In addition to those tiles there are 36 tiles that cover one square and are stacked in six stacks on the board. Those tiles are meant for additions in case gaps are forming in the course of the game.

The essential component of the game is a sun disc in two parts which represents in a very simple but effective way the weather conditions in the Arctic. At the start of the game, the biggest part of the area, about 90%, are free of ice so that you can navigate your ship without any problems among the ice floes and islands. During the game the temperature changes with every round and the open ocean freezes over more and more. A ship that does not reach the south-ern half in time is captured in the pack-ice and immobilized. This forces you to switch to your sled for transport. But take care! If the weather changes again, sleds together with their crew can sink irretrievably in the polar sea. In this way the atmosphere, set by the topic, is excellently reproduced.

FROM ATLANTIC TO PACIFIC

EXPEDITION NORTHWEST PASSAGESEARCHING FOR THE FRANKLIN EXPEDITION

You can really immerse yourself in the topic and feel the delight in discoveries yourself. The changing placements offer new challenges again and again, the topic has been resolved with innovative solutions.

Rudolf Ammer

INFORMATIONDesigner: Arve D. FühlerArtist: Dennis LohausenPrice: ca. 28 EuroPublisher: Argentum Verlag 2014www.argentum-verlag.de

Worker placement with dice, collectingUsers: With friendsVersion: deRules: de en fr nlIn-game text: no

Comments: Simple rules * High element of chance * All the same more room for strategic planning

Compares to:Worker placement games using dice

Other editions:English and French editions from Argentum, Dutch edition from The Game Master

EVALUATION

My

rati

ng:

PLAYERS:2-4AGE:

10+TIME:60+

OUR REVIEW u EXPEDITION NORTHWEST PASSAGE


How do you acquire victory points? In each of the ten rounds of the game the active player has up to eight options for actions. You can take a two-square tile and add it to your stock. There is no limit to the number of such tiles that you can stock. To pay for this option you move one of your seven crew members from the “available” space into the “resting” space on the respective vehicle, ship or sled. Another option is to renew all four tiles on display by discard-ing them and drawing new ones from the bag and then to take one tile from the new display into your stock. This option costs the move of two crew members from available to resting. The third option is to place a tile from your stock on the board, it must be placed orthogonally adjacent to a tile that holds either your ship or your sled. The cost for this is one crew member. You can also transfer any number of your crew members from your ship to your sled, as actions can only be done by crew members present on the respective means of transport. Transfer between vehicles is only possible if they are located on the same tile. There is also the option to move your ship or your sled onto an adjacent square. This again costs you moving one of your crew from available to resting. The first five options all serve the purpose to explore unknown regions and to advance further into the Arctic.

The tiles that you place show, now and then, pictograms; there are four different types of pictograms. When such a tile is placed you put the corresponding marker on the pictogram. They show Stone Cairns, Inuit (Eskimo), Straights or Remains of the Franklin Expedition. When your ship or sled reaches such a square with a marker you may take this marker. But the price for such a marker is high: To take Inuit or Stone

Cairns you need two available crew mem-bers and for Straights and Remains you actually need three crew members. This yields the corresponding number of victory points, multiplied by 1, 2 or 3 depending on the region of the board where you picked up the marker. More points on the “Kramer” track can be acquired by completing an is-land, the amount depends on the number of tiles that are necessary for this, stated on a table on the board.

If you want to do several actions in your turn, the actions get more expensive, by one additional crew member per action. SO you must consider carefully if it might be better to wait until your next turn.When you finally run out of crew members to pay for another action you pass your turn - the order of passing your turn determines the turn order for the next round.

Now a climatic change is happening. The sun disc is moved on and thereby triggers a partial freezing of the polar zone. Woe to the ship that at that point did not reach open water on time. It is irretrievably frozen into the pack-ice.

After 10 rounds we have arrived at a final scoring. If you did reach Canada, that is, the North West Passage and are the first to ar-rive, you score 15 points, the others in or-der of arrival 10, 6 and 3 points. The same goes for the return to Greenland, with the restriction that the last one to arrive does not score points. The rules explicitly state that it is not absolutely necessary to reach the Northwest Passage, as the main aim of the game - as mentioned in the sub-title of the game - is the search for the Franklin Ex-pedition. It is essential to return within the ten rounds of the game and to collect as

many markers as possible. This again aligns the game closely to reality, as in the course of time many explorers met with accidents in their search for the expedition. The rules also take this into account, you lose two points for each ship or each sled that you had to leave behind as well as for each crew member that you lost.

The collecting of markers is generously re-warded at the end of the game. For each set of different markers you score six points and for the majority in each category of markers you can rake in between 9 and 13 points. In this scoring, too, the player in last posi-tion receives nothing. The exact scores are stated on the individual player boards. This again puts the focus of the game clearly on collecting markers and not on finding the Northwest Passage.

I have rarely met a game that dealt with a given topic in such an exact and profound way. The target group for the game, in my opinion, is to be found between families and friends. The game is real fun and if you are now interesting in doing the journey yourself - there are cruises of offer for prices between 10.000 and 20.000 Euros! Bon Voy-age! þ

Rudolf Ammer

INFORMATIONDesigner: Yves TourignyArtist: Stephane PoinsotPrice: ca. 40 EuroPublisher: Matagot SAS 2013www.matagot.com

Tile placeUsers: With friendsVersion: multiRules: de en fr nlIn-game text: no

Comments: Rare topic * Exemplarily implemented * Good components * Variable game play

Compares to:Tile placement and gathering games on historic topics

Other editions:Currently none

EVALUATIONM

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OUR REVIEWtVIENNA

„Wien, Wien, nur du allein ….“ A famous song on Vienna stating that Vienna alone should be the city of one’s dreams, but is it also the city of board game dreams? So far, the really interesting crop - as regards to games and playability - has been a rather meagre one. Basically, there have only been Wien/Vienna editions of “Monopoly” and “DKT”, in the recent past Vienna versions of “Cluedo” and “Catan” joined the club. On top of this, we noticed the quiz - guessing - assessing game “Wiener Sammelsurium” - based on the book by the same name, writ-ten by Harald Havas”; the still actual “Wien!” on the other hand is a version of “London: The Board Game” and “Ganz Wien” is more or less targeting the rather non-games-playing uses of the Viennese public trans-port system. One reason for the nearly com-plete blank for Vienna on the play-games map might be that designer and publisher enter dangerous grounds with such a proj-ect. As is well known, Viennese people love to moan, grumble, complain and nag a lot and the so-called “golden Viennese heart” can turn out to be rather bitchy and mean, and therefore it could happen that a board game with a Viennese topic might met with some nagging malice.

Lo and behold, a typical Viennese is ap-proaching, let’s hear what he has to say about this board game:

„Aha, ‘Vienna’, something new again, and by a German publisher. That’s what I call cou-rageous! And this Johannes Schmidauer-König surely is a Kraut, too. No? Oh well, he comes from Upper Austria. Well …. Don’t know him, has he published something else before? He did? Ah, well,’ Dog Royal`, a version of ´Dog`, this ´Mensch ärgere Dich nicht` version with cards. Really, he is a pia-nist? So, a multi -talented person - well, let’s wait and see!”

But why ‘Vienna’, here in Vienna you should speak German, Song Contest or no Song Contest. Is probably only meant for tourists anyway. What’s the topic? We are meant to assume the role of a shitty - what?! - Ah, no, a shifty man about town and aspire to climb the social ladder in Vienna. As we have just arrived in Vienna, we take a coach to move about - what do you mean, a coach?! - The Viennese rolls his eyes - “in Vienna a coach is called Fiaker; so, we move across Vienna in

a Fiaker and try to win favor with important persons in many different locations to win more influence with their help. Influence, why camouflage things - it’s the usual vic-tory points that we are after again.

Let’s fold open the game board: This looks like Brügge, well, small wonder, the graph-ics of the board have been done by Michael Menzel again. But it looks a bit paler, Brügge is the better design of the two. And there are lots of tourist attractions - Riesenrad/Ferries Wheel, St. Stephen’s Cathedral, Cas-tle Schönbrunn, and so on. Comes across a bit haphazardly thrown together. Well, it is a dice game, after all” - the Viennese laughs loudly over his well-placed pun - “but, look, how nice, on the back side of the board you have Vienna at night, that would have pleased Rainhard Fendrich a lot, may God rest his soul. Oh, he is not dead yet, I got him mixed up with Udo Jürgens! He is the dead one! And look, that’s funny - there’s light in nearly all the windows, but not in the City Hall, here we go, lazy magistrates. But it’s a pity, too, somehow - the illuminated ball-room has a certain allure. And the Riesenrad is completely in the dark, too, they could have illuminated a cabin or two. Do you re-member, Mitzi, the two of us on the Emper-or’s Meadow and the Riesenrad behind it?” - The Viennese glances sentimentally at Mitzi who takes a sip of Grüner Veltliner - “just a moment, Riesenrad in the 19th century? Ah, yes, that works out, they built it in 1897, but then they could have called the game “Vi-enna at 1900”, that would really have been a given.

Schorschi, unpack the 44 character cards! Oh no, they only show ten different im-ages, well in Brügge Menzel did take a lot more trouble, there is something differ-ent depicted on each of the 165 cards. Or maybe the publisher was too stingy; typical German, the have money for Greece and then they begin to economize in a game called´Vienna’“ – the Viennese laughs heart-ily at his own “successful” flippancy - “and what do we have on those character cards? Probably Klimt, Mahler, Schnitzler, Otto Wagner and so on? No, only some general characters, well, at least there is a Pomp-füneberer (undertaker), and this one here could be the Zombie version of Emperor Franz Josef“ - again the Viennese laughs at this „felicitous“ flippancy - „come on, why

didn’t they take some of the typical Vien-nese blokes for their templates, there was an exhibition on those only two years ago at the Wien Museum, for instance the washer woman, the lavender women, the ‘Pülcher’ (small-time criminal), or the shoemaker’s apprentice or the market vender, and so on?

Anyhow, let’s take a closer look at this game board: A road is winding its way like a snake from the top left-hand corner to the bottom right-hand corner, from Prater to a Heuriger, with the Ringstraße in-between, compris-ing a total of 24 squares and a special case. Well, that at least is a somewhat logical se-quence, if you would move from Prater to

Schönbrunn and finally to a Heurigen in Mauer. But why did they not take the map of Vienna and - after moving along Prater-straße - did a tour around Ringstraße - after all Ringstraße celebrates its 150 Years An-niversary this year - and finished off with a detour to St. Stephen’s Cathedral? Because, a logical connection between the various squares and their individual functions is not really there. At Naschmarkt, for instance, you receive two coins, whereby in real you should pay something at a market. And, furthermore, the squares are only marked with their names, the buildings are not de-picted. Well, let’s play with the night side of the board, this makes me less angry about the design.

Now, Ferdl, you take the red dice, because you are drinking a glass of Zweigelt; Mitzi with her Grüner Veltliner can play green, and I take blue, because that’s the status I’m in anyway … and Schorschi with his Coke gets black. Nice that our drinks do fit the colors so nicely, because otherwise we could not remember, who plays which col-or. Or, stop - in a game for four players we do only need four of the five dice, let’s take the fifth dice of each color for the victory points track and put the victory marker down on the table, so that we know who, or better, what color we are. To continue: ‘The player who was in Vienna most recently, takes the starting player card.‘ Do they want to make fun of us? This doesn’t really work, so we have to do this otherwise - Schorschi, roll the die for the starting player.

WIEN 1897

VIENNADICE PLACEMENT AS IN KINGSBURGLAND

Vienna concentrates a good and proven dice-placement mechanisms to its essence, supplemented with a few new ideas. There is no big variety in options for different ways to play, but that does not matter due to the short playing time. Unfortunately the vibes of the topic could not be transplanted properly, at least from a Viennese point of you, I am tempted to say “of course not”.

Harald Schatzl

OUR REVIEW u VIENNA


And how does the game work, now? Well, the same way as in ‘Kingsburg’, can you still remember? That game, by the way, has recently been re-published as ‘Kingsport Festival’! Anyhow, all of us roll their four dice and then place them, in turn order, on the squares on the board, of course with dice values corresponding to the numbers printed on top of the squares. To make up a number we can only use the sum of two of our dice, but in some of the squares two different numbers are provided and for some dice results you can even choose among several squares. On top of this, you can never move back on the track, ever. If you did already place dice on ‘Seven’ you cannot place a die or dice on ‘Five’ anymore. Just like in ‘Egizia’, where you could move your ships forward on the Nile only, too. Well, never, unless you pay a coin. If you pay a coin you can also re-roll any number of your dice, or rotate a die by one point up or down, for several coins you can do that several dimes. My complements, this really fits our ‘oh, that’s okay’ mentality perfectly, we usually take liberties with things, too; and something can always be worked out, especially for or with money.

And what can the individual squares do for you? First ‘Kriau’: You receive one coin or one victory point and may relocate the policeman to another square which is then blocked for this round. A ‘Gendarm’ in Vi-enna” - the Viennese rolls his eyes again - “If Kottan gets to hear that he would put Schmidauer-König through a cross-exam-ination” - and once again the Viennese en-

joys his own joke most - “and this is how it continues throughout the game, receive money or spend money, accrue victory points and at 25 the game ends. But wait! Squares with a lightning bolt symbol are the exception, they implemented instantly while all others are implemented at the end of the round - when all players have no dice left anymore - in the sequence of their position on the read. And you can always place a die on the square for ‘Geheimbund’ , even several times, and you get one coin for each die on this square. Which ‘secret union’ is that Geheimbund meant to be? Maybe the ‘Geheimbund der Samariter’?” - again a loud laugh at his own joke from the Viennese - “they would have done better to call the square ‘Salzamt’, because you can always pay a visit to ‘Salzamt’ (a hypotheti-cal administration office in Viennese lore, where you lodge complaints that you know are in vain).

There are five squares that are a little bit dif-ferent, the squares on which you receive a red card: At Stadtpark you acquire the posi-tion of new starting player, at Secession you switch into an extra fast Fiaker that allows you a double move at every turn; at Helden-platz you find a rapier with which you can turn all your one-pip results on dice to any number of your choice, and and at the uni-versity you receive a piece of Sachertorte. Sachertorte at University” - the Viennese is rolling his eyes again - “What the use of that there? Students should concentrate on studying and not gorge themselves on sweets, dawdling and wasting time. Any-

way, the Torte gives you a white extra die which is obviously meant to represent the whipped cream on the cake.

And then there is Empress Sisi, which you can pick up at Burgtheater. Well, that too, is not very plausible, she was constantly travelling the world - Madeira, Korfu or Ge-neva; her last trip did not go well with her, but she surely was a very beautiful corpse. But in her sixties she surely was not looking so fresh and blooming as on her card in in game, but on that card she’s looking more like Romy Schneider anyway. It would have been better if they had placed the Sisi card at Kapuzinergruft and had taken Katharina Schratt or Adele Sandrock for Burgtheater. And what can Sisi do for you? She assists you with influence and brings you one of three different symbols, Krone, Kreuz und Bürger-hut - Crown, Cross and Citizen’s Hat. ‘Krone, Kreuz und Bürgerhut‘ - that’s really trite, but for all I care, the cross at least goes well with Vienna, as death is nearly the most impor-tant thing here, but crown and citizen’s hat? ‘Wein, Weib und Gesang‘ - that would have been the proper trilogy for Vienna.

And with a roll of six you can buy character cards in all four of the coffee shops, those cards can give you more influence than Sisi, and those cards cannot be taken away from you. For this influence you can acquire victory points at Pestsäule, Stephansdom, Schloss Belvedere and Gloriette. You just check both your neighbors who has more or less symbols of the respective kind and then get two or three points for each ma-jority, not unlike the military scoring in ’7 Wonders‘. At the end of the road you find Tiergarten and Heurigen where you need to place any kind of double result on dice. At the Tiergarten you filch from your fellow players and at the Heurigen there are points available for your own red cards. And that’s it, we can begin!”.

– three glasses of wine later -

„Well, well, it plays rather nicely, after all. And Schorschi did win, surprisingly, despite the fact that he only ever collected coins and thereby collected the five points from that square of value 8, several times! We should have more often placed the Kieberer (Gen-darm) there or filch from him at Tiergarten. Mitzi with her crowns ended up in close sec-ond place behind him, she got a bad break because Ferdl also played for crowns, On the other hand, if only one player was col-lecting crowns, he would probably have won the game after four rounds. And, fur-thermore, the poor girl rolled her dice badly, oh well, that’s normal for a dice game, and


OUR REVIEWtVIENNA / KANBAN

Vital Lacerda is ... clearly unable to design a simple game and after VINHOS and CO2 his new creation, KANBAN, confirm his atti-tude for complex games with a lot of “sub-games” routines. And for us, players who like complex games, these are very good news.

KANBAN: I heard of this name when I was young: I had just got my University Diploma as Transport Engineer and I started work-ing in a big Company producing trailers for trucks. Being the youngest Production Engineer of the Company I had to follow some courses and our “teachers” wished to explain how to optimize the “flux” of the materials on the production lines to try to arrive at the concept of a service “just in time”. They called this system the “Kanban” (a Japanese word for “Banner” or “board”) and it is now deeply used in all the automo-

tive world. Toyota, for example, was (and it is still) a leader of this system. To explain it in simple words, the responsible of logistics compile a series of Kanban and apply them on all the goods moving between the stor-age and the production chains, or between suppliers and storages, etc. and once the transport is done the Kanban goes back for registration.

A LONG WHISTLE ADVICES THAT FAC-TORY DOORS OPEN: LET’S GO

The game hopefully does not use so many banners but give us a close look at an Au-tomotive factory where we are “Engineers” responsible of the different sectors. The ma-terials inside the box are of very good qual-ity, but the set-up is quite long because we have to place a great number of items and markers on the board, so while our workers are doing this job let’s make a little trip on the factory (or game’s board, if you prefer).

(SEE PICTURE 1)

We see SIX different Departments:

1 - TECHNICAL OFFICE: here we will design our new projects. In game terms we always

have 8 different “project tiles” available, and each of them shows one of the 5 different models of cars that the factory may pro-duce: more than half of them also shows a colored “improved part” for that model (mo-tor, brakes, etc.)

2 - STORAGE: here we will be able to store new parts of the cars and we will pick up the ones that we need for our projects. Those parts are symbolized by six colored cubes (black for the chassis, blue for the transmission, red for the motor, orange for the “turbo”, yellow for the suspensions and white for the brakes) and you need a “kan-ban” card in order to refill the storage, if nec-essary.

3 - PRODUCTION LINES: here we find 5 pro-duction chains, one for each model (red, yellow, green, blue and black) and we have to feed those lines with components (the colored cubes) taken from the storage in order to complete the new cars

4 - TEST and INNOVATION: this depart-ment receives all the cars coming from the production chains. They are tested and eventual “improved” if the right designs are appointed. An internal oval track is used to place the new cars behind a white Safety Car. 5 - ADMINISTRATION OFFICES: they are used to take “high” decisions. In game’s terms here we may gain Victory Point (VP) at the end of each “turn” if we satisfy the con-ditions of the four OBJECTIVE cards placed here. There is also a Factory Objective tile (randomly selected during the set-up) that will be used only in the final VP count but that is very important to guide the strate-gies of the players.

Each of the above five areas has place ONLY for two Engineers (probably the Company’s management does not wish that the play-ers lose time discussing and therefore limits their presence) therefore in total we have 10 cases that form a sort of “Action track” where we will move our Engineer to visit the different departments

6 - The SIXT and last sector of the board is used to keep track of the CERTIFICATIONS that each players gain in the different de-partments and of the TIME BONUS that

for me the dice were not rolling well, either and the prospects were none too good.

The whole this is very restricted, reduced and slimmed down to coins, victory points and a few cards, but on the positive side there is now unnecessary to and fro as of-ten with the converting of resources into this or that or this which in the end results in victory points, after all. As a consequence, gameplay is rather dry and sober, which is a blatant contradiction to Vienna. Anyway, a little bit of tactic cannot go amiss and you should be able to finish a game within half an hour, well, maybe, if one were to be a bit more sober. When the proclaimed and promised ‘atmospheric intensity’ would re-ally be there I might even acquire the game. Tourists, on the other hand, will be aston-ished too: A glossary on the location in the game is completely missing - they will never believe that there is really a Café in Vienna by the name of Griensteidl, setting aside the fact that it was demolished in January 1897. And the ‚Heurige‘ has been mixed up with ‚Henrige‘ in Germany.” þ

Harald Schatzl

COMPONENT LOGISTICS

KANBANAUTOMOTIVE REVOLUTION

A very interesting and engaging game on car manufactu-ring, but mainly for expert players

Pietro Cremona

INFORMATIONDesigner: J. Schmidauer-KönigArtist: Michael MenzelPrice: ca. 25 EuroPublisher: Schmidt Spiele 2015www.schmidtspiele.de

Worker placement with diceUsers: With friendsVersion: multiRules: de enIn-game text: no

Comments: Box size due to board * Backside of the board shows “Vienna at Night” * Relatively few rules * Symbols easily understood * Of relaxation interest to experienced players

Compares to:Kingsburg, Kingsport Festival, Egizia


EVALUATION

My

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OUR REVIEW u KANBAN


players will collect during play

And finally there is SANDRA: our General Manager. Before starting the game the play-ers have to decide if she will be “good” (San-dra Cenoura) or “nasty” (Sandra Vara) and this attitude will influence the game from the beginning. My suggestion is to always use ...Sandra “Nasty” Vara as the game will be more competitive! (And in the following notes most of references to our Boss will be for Sandra Vara).

HERE WE ARE: OUR OFFICE IS CROWDED AS USUAL WITH PLANS AND PAPERS

I will not bore you with the set-up opera-tions as we will discuss each details along this review: but you have to know that at the game’s start you will receive 3 “Objec-tive” and 2 “Kanban” cards. The formers will address your strategy for the turn and the latter will be used (of course) on the stor-age department when necessary. You have a personal mini-board where you will place your bonus tiles, your projects and your fin-ished cars: at the game’s start each of those tracks has one case “closed” by a padlock as you are not yet certified for that task, but during the game you may completely free your board certifying your Engineer and therefore you will be able to use each case.

(SEE PICTURE 2)

The First Player is randomly selected: he will place his “pawn” (a colored wooden mini-meeple) on one of the 4 cases in the First Level of the “Certification” track. Each of the SIX levels of this track has 4 cases and most of them show a BONUS. The first three cases of Level 0, for example, assign a bonus to the player that select it: a book or a resource jok-er or a time marker, while the fourth case will not give bonus but will allow you to be the First player. (Remember: Books will help you in getting new certifications, Jokers may be exchanged for any resource and time mark-ers move one step forwards your marker on the Time Track reducing the penalties that Sandra may inflict to you, as we will see). Finally each player will select a “project tile” and a colored cube of his choice.

Now, in turn order, the players place their Engineers (a standard colored wooden meeple) in one of the 10 cases of the “Action track”, knowing that the actions will flow from left to right: the first to play therefore will be the Engineer on the leftmost case of the “Action track” and so on. Each depart-ment has 2 cases: the one on the left will give you TWO actions while the other will allow to play THREE actions. So if you want to play first in each Department you have to put your Engineer on the left space and to accept to get an action less. The 2 Adminis-tration cases will allow you only 1 action (left case) or 2 actions (right case) but you may

take those “actions” in any one Department of your choice: so if desperately needed an item from a blocked department you may get it from the Administration. Sandra is also moved inside the factory (starting on turn TWO: our Boss likes to sleep a little more in the morning) on the FIRST LEFT-MOST FREE case of the Action track. Sounds complicate? No, it isn’t, but before moving your Engineer to a specific Department you have to program your strategy and try to follow it also in the following rounds.

At this point actions are taken, starting with the player whose Engineer is on the left-most case.

WORKERS ARE LOOKING AT YOU AND YOU HAVE TO PROGRAM THEIR JOB

I will not enter in all the details of the game, as I would like to keep you reading this long article till the end, so I will follow a “logical” path with you. But before we walk inside the factory I need to give some extra informa-tion:

(1) - You may use a max of 4 ACTIONS in each Department: I already told you that we have only places with 2 or 3 actions so extra actions are taken using the available time bonus of the TIME track. In other words you may use 2/3 “regular” actions and 2/1 bonus actions in each Department.


OUR REVIEWtKANBAN

(2) - Every Department has a “Certification track” were a colored marker for each player is placed at the beginning of the game. You may use your actions to “work” on the de-partment or to advance the certification marker (each action spent here rises your marker 1 case). When you pass the third case of this track you get a CERTIFICATION and you move your “pawn” on the follow-ing block of the certification track, eventu-ally getting the available bonus. Please note that you may also use your collected books to freely advance in the Certification track of the actual department.

(3) - During play you should try to get as many RED SEAT TILES as possible (available in many ways inside the different depart-ments) to be used for the Direction Meet-ings.

All is clear? OK. Did you already wear your helmet?

Well, so we may enter the factory and start-ing in the TECHNICAL OFFICE: here you may collect project tiles (1 per available action) or advance on the certification track. Tiles of the first (rightmost) column grant you a TIME BONUS (and you advance your marker one case on the Time track), while those on the second row grant you a BOOK (that you place on your personal board for later use). Depending on the Strategy that you

planned you will pick up the tiles with the needed car’s color.

We may now move on the STORAGE/LOGIS-TICS department: here you may select one of your “Kanban” cards and use one action to put it down and refill the storage with cubes of the displayed colors. For an action you may then pick up all or part of the cubes of one color, placing them on your personal board. Again you may also spend actions to improve your certification.

In the PRODUCTION LINES we may use the cubes (remember, each color is a “part” of the car) to feed the “chains”. For any cube that you place (only one per color is allowed on each chain) you introduce a new car from the reserve inside the chain and you PUSH the other cars towards the exit. Each car that exits the department grants 1 or 2 VP.

The TEST and INNOVATION department is the most complicate to explain. Cars that exit the production lines are placed on an “oval” circuit behind a white car. They are now available for purchasing. To purchase a car you need to spend a project of the same color (that is discarded) and pay 1-2-3 ac-tions (this depends on the positions behind the white car). This is simple, but in this de-partment you may also IMPROVE a car with better components: to do that you need a project tile with the same color of the car

that you decided to improve and which has an icon printed on it (motor, brakes, etc.) and you have to pay a cube of the same color (black for motor, etc.). Your project is not discarded, but is inverted and placed on side of your board to immediately give you 2 VP. When you improve a car the colored cube that you used is placed on the board and may grant you a few extra bonuses (time, books, jokers, VP) so this should be the initial aim of the game: you absolutely need to get at least 2-3 improved designs by the end of the third turn.

(SEE PICTURE 3)

If you also purchased (or if you will purchase later) a car of the same color of an improved design you become the lucky owner of a TESTED DESIGN. Having a good number of tested designs is important to gain extra VP during the administration meetings, but it is vital to win the game.

Sandra is a very hard to be please and there-fore during the first turns of the game the players should be prepared to take penal-ties (loss of VP). The last player(s) on each certification track of the department visited by Sandra may lose VP if he/they cannot meet certain conditions (penalties are not committed to players who reached case 5 on the time track). When Sandra comes back on his office players may receive some

OUR REVIEW u KANBAN


VP if they already own some TESTED DE-SIGNS.

Are you still following? Heroes!!! Let’s go on!

Each sold car obliges the safety car to ad-vance one case: if it reaches case 5 or 10 a MEETING in the Administration Office starts. Each player has 4-5 seat tiles here: all start with one AVAILABLE seat (at the be-ginning of the game) and turn up another one for each red seat acquired in the differ-ent departments. Players take the available seats and, in turn order, they place one of them on one of the four available OBJEC-TIVE CARDS displayed in the office. To place a seat you need to cope with the request of the card (examples: for each “green” car in your garage you get “X” VP, for each “mo-tor” cube in your board you get “Y” VP, etc.). Each card offers different amounts of VP (2 to 4) and allows only a limited number of seats (1 to 3) so it is important to look at the items collected by the other players in order to quickly select the cards where competi-tion will surely rise and leave aside for the last minute cards where only you have the necessary assets. Please note that at every meeting the players must also use one of their hand of cards, and this is an advantage as you will surely play a card for which you already collected all the necessary items. All the used cards are then discarded and each player must play another card from

his hand to prepare the Office Objectives for the next meeting. Finally all players take two new cards from the deck to restore the “3 cards” hand.

Two small tracks (one in the TEST area and one in the Administration) will help to take note of the number of meetings attended and the number of times that Sandra came back to her office: when the total reach “5” the game is over (at the end of the current turn). At this time all the TESTED DESIGNS are calculated and the relative VP are as-signed (but I will not bore you with details of this calculations).

A LONG WHISTLE ADVICE THAT THE FACTORY DOORS CLOSE: HOME, SWEET HOME, WE ARRIVE!

This is a very “hard” game for our brains: in-teraction is very high, and you realize this when you have to move your Engineer and you find that the necessary Department is blocked by other players and/or Sandra or when one opponent took the car of the Projects that you wished. It is therefore to maintain a certain flexibility and to always find an alternative solution that will allow you to still advance a little in your strategy.

Projects are very important and you have to concentrate from the beginning on two to three car colors, as it is near impossible to

have TEST DESIGNS of all colors (unless the other players are really “blind”). I suggest to collect 2 projects per color, if possible, and try to use the first to improve your design and the second to purchase a car of the same color, or vice versa. Of course to pur-chase a car of a particular color you need to have one of them available in the oval cir-cuit, and this is possible only if it was pushed outside the production lines, so you have to collect the right cubes ... and so on. Do not be too excited if someone else sort “your” car because he will also surely try to get that car before you.

The best strategy probably should be: take as many projects as possible, then get the corresponding cubes to improve them and to push cars in the production area. Finally try to purchase the cars of those colors. It sounds easy and very clear, but you will soon find out that you will have problems in reaching the right department at the right moment, or you arrive too late to purchase THE car that you wished, or someone has already stolen the design that you needed ...

At the beginning of the game you have to deeply consider the TURN objective cards and the FINAL factory’s objective as they may give you a clever idea for your strat-egy: the VP that each player may get from the MEETINGS are very important but most of the turn objectives may be used only by

WIN The Games Journal now also available as eBook!For all information on that check our website. 15

OUR REVIEWtKANBAN

www.gamesjournal.at 15ISSUE 481 / JULY 2015

two players. The Factory Objective has three cases and each one grant a certain amount of VP to ALL the players that are able to meet the requested conditions (have a cer-tain number of cars, or Certifications, etc.): you have to try to meet at least two of those conditions, and possibly all three, because you may arrive to gain 15 to 20 VP.

(SEE PICTURE 4)

Certifications are also important: they al-low you to eliminate some or all the locks of your board but they also give you some extra bonus each time that you pass on the related department.

Do not forget to take as many “books” and “red seats” as you can: the books will allow you to advance quickly and FREE in the cer-tification tracks and each red seat will free one of your seats in the administration of-fice.

But the real big VP makers are the TESTED DESIGNS: if you performed regularly in all the others sectors but you have 4-5 tested designs (car in garage + improved design on your board) you will normally win the game.

We know that Sandra always moves to the first empty case (from the left of the board) so in the first turns it is important to try to

act before her in the same Department: to do that you need to place your Engineer on the first case of the department, losing one action but ... playing BEFORE Sandra and thus moving your marker on the Cer-tification track in order to leave someone else at the last place ... ready for penalties!!! In the “middle game” usually all the players reached the fatidic “quote 5” and therefore Sandra will not be a problem anymore, but at the beginning of the game is not rare to see players losing 10-15 VP because of San-dra, so take care of her.

Of course this is a game for expert players and absolutely NOT for families or casual gamers: I haven’t purposely touched all the aspects of the game to avoid to bore you ... but be prepared to spend a couple of “test” games before being able to understanding all the subtleties of KANBAN. If you do that I can ... certify that you will be surely reward-ed. þ

Pietro Cremona

NEW: http://www.bigcream.it/

INFORMATIONDesigner: Vital LacerdaArtist: N. Robinson, V. LacerdaPrice: ca. 55 EuroPublisher: Giochix.it 2014www.giochix.it

Worker PlacementUsers: For expertsVersion: itRules: de en itIn-game text: yes

Comments: Set-up is very elaborate * Complex rules * Flexible strategy is a must * Lots of interac-tion * Attractive topic

Compares to:Other complex worker placement games

Other editions:Stronghold Games, Schwerkraft Verlag

EVALUATIONM

y ra

ting

:

PLAYERS:2-4AGE:

14+TIME:

180+

PLAYED FOR YOU uALI BABA / BALA RA


In the bulging earthenware amphorae treasures out of Ali Baba’s cave are hidden, but - as it happens to happen in fairy tales - some of the amphorae are empty and in some of them robbers are hiding. 48 tiles show closed amphorae on the back-side, there are 12 different pat-terns, and one empty amphora, two with treasures and one am-phora with a robber in it. All tiles

are shuffled face-down and laid out in a 4x12 grid.

In clockwise direction each player in turn reveals any tile in a way that all players can see it. If it is an empty amphora, you take it and pass your turn. When an amphora with a hidden robber is revealed, you put the tile back in place and pass your turn. If you find an amphora that holds

a treasure you take it up in your hand and can go on revealing tiles: If you reveal an empty am-phora, you lay down amphora and treasures. If you find an-other treasure amphora you can again go on or stop. But if you reveal an amphora with robber, you put this tile and all treasure amphorae collected in this turn back into the grid into spots of your choice. If you end your turn voluntarily, you keep all trea-sure amphorae that you found. If you collected twelve treasure amphorae, you win instantly. When only twelve tiles remain in the grid, the winner is the player with most treasure amphorae, in case of a tie you win with the fewest empty amphorae. In this new edition Ali Baba is again a very good game for chil-dren with a cute and nice topic and a well-working mixture of memory and stop-or-continue-mechanism, which even pro-vides a little bit of tactic. þ

ALI BABAFAIRY-TALE TREASURES

INFORMATION

Designer: Dominique EhrhardArtist: not namedPrice: ca. 10 EuroPublisher: Piatnik 2015www.piatnik.com

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:5+

TIME:10+

EVALUATIONMemo, collectingUsers: For childrenVersion: multiRules: cz de en fr hu it skIn-game text: no

Comments: New edition of Ali Baba, 1997 * Attractive combina-tion of two standard mechanisms

Compares to:All memo games with a stop-or-continue mechanism


As a jealous god you want to win the adoration of native tribes and be acknowledged as true god of Bala Ra. There are dice, each showing the terrain types of forest, desert, mountains, sea, lowlands and swamp - and three tribe dice for each player that are placed on given positions on the board. You begin with 15/20 terrain dice, roll them and place them - both players at the same

time - on your board to form ter-rain regions for your kingdom. In each round you take the Sword of Destiny - it allows you to change a dice value by 1 once in your turn, calculate your influ-ence points and then you have actions - in any order and num-ber: Place dice for 4 IP, maximum five dice, buy region cards for 4 EP, activate a region card or at-tack, maximum four times. You

always expand/place beginning from your own base line, differ-ent types of terrain can border each other and you can attack opposing regions that border your own regions. You roll a D6 for attack strength, your oppo-nent for defense strength; if you roll higher than your opponent you take over the attacked ter-rain die and turn in to the terrain type from which you attacked. Dice that were separated from their base line by such attacks are also conquered and taken over. Cards are used for terrain advantages or risk minimiza-tion. An opposing tribe die that has more of your dice adjacent that its owner’s dice is deemed to be conquered. If you conquer two tribes, you win.This revised new edition of Bala Ra still offers many tactical and strategic options; the tricks are in the cards which you must ac-quire, use and prepare cleverly and selectively. Some introduc-tory games will be necessary. þ

BALA RAWIN TRIBES TO BE WORSHIPPED

INFORMATION

Designer: J. Hanauer, M. FArtist: not namedPrice: ca. 30 EuroPublisher: Porcupine Press 2014www.porcupinepress.co.uk

PLAYERS:2

AGE:10+

TIME:45+

EVALUATIONTerrain expansionUsers: With friendsVersion: enRules: enIn-game text: yes

Comments: Revised edition of Bala Ra, 2010 * Bag instead of box for package * Only for two players * Many special details from cards

Compares to:Placement games on terrain expan-sion and



PLAYED FOR YOUtC. C. HIGGINS RAIL PASS / CHEF ALFREDO

Crossing America on Rail Tracks – you collect sets of train tickets and travel on railway lines that are historically and geographi-cally correct for North America in the Roaring Twenties of the last century. You start with your engine in Chicago, take the Pay-day Card of corresponding color and place one marker each on the target cities listed on the Payday Card.

The starting player for the first round moves his train one step, all others take one step more than the previous player until all players can do four steps in a turn. There can be several trains in a city. One turn of a player equals one day; at the end of your turn you pay 1$ for each city, 2$ for food, 2$ for sleep-ing quarters and 1$ for tele-grams; you pay even if you did

not move and you have to pay before you receive income. Rail-way tickets can give free travel. After you moved you can ac-quire Railway tickets. If you end your turn on one of your Payday Markers, you receive 50$. Whoever reaches his last tar-get city first, puts an end to the game and Railway Tickets are scored – you receive three points per card if you own the complete set, 2 points if you have the majority of cards of a set and for all other cards you re-ceive one point. A card is scored for sets of Type of Railway, As-signment and Color. You win with the highest score.This is a specialty for fans of railway games – planning is necessary to invest the scarce fi-nances in an optimum way and as efficiently as possible into the collecting of Rail Tickets; expen-sive vouchers for free Sleeping Quarters or Food help you to save money in the long run. Best suited to collectors and special-ist gamers. þ

C. C. HIGGINS RAIL PASSON RAILS ACROSS NORTH AMERICA

INFORMATION

Designer: Patrick StevensArtist: M. Neumann, D. PrietoPrice: ca. 85 EuroPublisher: Numbskull Games 14www.numbskullgames.com

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:8+

TIME:120+

EVALUATIONRailwayUsers: With friendsVersion: enRules: enIn-game text: yes

Comments: Board not very clearly structure * Extremely short, concise rules * Not suited to casual gamers * Short version without money * Long version on the back side of the board

Compares to:Basically move & collect games with payment for movement


Chef Alfredo makes the best soups, but unfortunately he has forgotten which soup is bubbling in which pot on the stove. Four ingredients - car-rots, tomatoes, string beans and garlic - are laid out on the board. Four pots are equipped with one recipe tile each - again car-rots, tomatoes, string beans and garlic - and placed on the stove spots on the board.

Players are active in turn in clockwise direction; at the start of the game all take a look into the pots and check which ingre-dient is in which pot. Then you roll the die: When the die shows Chef Alfredo, you switch two pots on the stove. If you roll an ingredient, you take a tile of this kind, open a pot and put the in-gredient in. Then you check the pot, but do not announce if you

did make a mistake. Then your left neighbor leaves the die un-changed and can either believe you or doubt. If he believes you, you take a cooking tile and pass your turn to your left neighbor who rolls the die for his turn. If your neighbor doubts you, he opens the pot, empties it and compares the recipe tile to your die result: If they correspond, you take a cooking tile. If not, your neighbor gets one. All in-gredients that came out of the pot go into stock. Attention! It does not matter if there are wrong ingredients in the pot - only die result and recipe tile are compared, as you put an ingre-dient into the pot according to the die result. When all cooking tiles have been given out, you win with most of them.Believe or not believe - a famil-iar standard mechanism has been very attractively varied; the control mechanism is an es-pecially nice detail, simple and well-working. All in all a nice game for kids with pretty com-ponents. þ

CHEF ALFREDOONE CHEF AND FOUR POTS OF SOUP

INFORMATION

Designer: Michael SchachtArtist: Oliver SchlemmerPrice: ca. 30 EuroPublisher: Queen Games 2015www.queen-games.de

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:5+

TIME:15+

EVALUATIONMemo, diceUsers: For childrenVersion: multiRules: de en frIn-game text: no

Comments: Series: Queen Kids * Very attractive game compo-nents * Simple and efficient control mechanism

Compares to:All memo games with believe-or-not mechanism


PLAYED FOR YOU uDAS SPIEL DES LEBENS JUNIOR / DER HERR DER RINGE DAS KARTENSPIEL


This junior version of „Das Spiel des Lebens“ offers players a fabulous day at the amusement park. Each player chooses one of the cute cards and puts it at the start. Then you get three guest-of-honor cards - you can visit those attraction to acquire an extra star. In your turn you spin the Wheel of Life and hurl across the board with your car, always in clockwise direction, following

the arrows. When you reach an attraction, you can stop, maybe at the Zoo or the waterpark. You need not move the full number of steps. If necessary you pay the entrance fee to the bank and take a star for your adven-ture card. If you hold a guest-of-honor card for this attraction, you take a second star und turn over the card as being used. You can only visit each attraction

once and only when you have enough money to pay for entry. The “Spaßbahn” takes you to the other side of the board quickly - saves you the long way round - and also gives you a star. When your turn ends on a yellow Ac-tion case, you draw an action card. Those cards challenge you to an action, for instance play-acting, singing or telling a story. Completing those tasks will give you either stars for your adven-ture card or you earn pocket money to pay entrance fees. If you are first to collect ten stars, you win the game.The design of the game board and the Wheel of Life come from the original game Das Spiel des Lebens. Topic and flow of the game are clearly different, but lots of fun and an adult or a fel-low player who can read will surely help with the texts on the action cards, if the symbols on the cards are not sufficient for self-explanation. þ

DAS SPIEL DES LEBENS JUNIORADVENTURE AT THE AMUSEMENT PARK

INFORMATION

Designer: not namedArtist: not namedPrice: ca. 17 EuroPublisher: Hasbro 2015www.hasbro.at

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:5+

TIME:30+

EVALUATIONRoll & moveUsers: For childrenVersion: deRules: de enIn-game text: yes

Comments: Very nice design in analogy to “Das Spiel des Lebens” * Simple roll & move game * Adult assistance or a player who can read is needed for text of action cards

Compares to:Other junior editions of well-known Hasbro Games

Other editions:Hasbro, USA

In the cooperative Living Card Game players, in a fellowship of heroes, master dangerous adventures in Middle Earth. The Core Set features 226 cards in four starter decks, which can be used immediately for an intro-ductory game. This is amended by scenarios and 84 Encounter cards which you can master. The cards used are hero cards, player cards, encounter cards

and adventure cards. If at least one player survives until the last part of the adventure deck has been dealt with, the players win together. Sarumans Verrat/ The Treason of Saruman is a Saga expansion and introduces 165 new cards with new cards for Campaign, Favor and Burden for use in the expansion’s three scenarios, continuing „Die Schwarzen Re-

iter“. Then there is Aragorn, a hero from the Fellow sphere; if you use him no other version of Aragon can be in play as a start-ing hero or in the decks. In the campaign mode you cannot use any card „Frodo Beutlin“ and in the scenarios you cannot use allies or hero cards „Saruman“ or „Grima“. The key word „perma-nent“ appears on some Favor and Burden cards , those are as-signed to one hero, the assign-ment is noted in the log. When such a hero leaves the game, the assigned cards go with him. The three scenarios „Uruk-hai“, „Helms Klamm“ with the new key word Defense and „Der Weg nach Isengart“ with „Zauberei“ a a trigger for timing for Spells and Machines used by Saruman to defend Isengart.This expansion comes with the usual flair and integrates seam-lessly into the story thread, it continues to tell the story and expands the game very felici-tously. þ

DER HERR DER RINGEDAS KARTENSPIEL SARUMANS VERRAT

INFORMATION

Designer: C. Grace, N. FrenchArtist: Mercedes Opheim + TeamPrice: ca. 23 EuroPublisher: Heidelberger 2015www.heidelbaer.de

PLAYERS:1-2

AGE:13+

TIME:90+

EVALUATIONLiving card gameUsers: For expertsVersion: deRules: de en es fr it plIn-game text: yes

Comments: Painstakingly designed reference to book and films * Drawings for illustrations * Special rules in relation to the campaign mode

Compares to:Other saga and deluxe expansions for Der Herr der Ringe

Other editions:Fantasy Flight Games, Edge Entertain-ment, Galakta, Giochi Uniti


PLAYED FOR YOUtDER RÄUBER HOTZENPLOTZ / DER VERDREHTE SPRACH-ZOO

Kasperl, Seppel, Großmutter and Wachtmeister Dimpfel-moser are chasing Räuber Hot-zenplotz. The forest is set up in the game box, fence posts and bushes are placed, and you may look at the back of the bushes and can memorize which bush shows which location. The characters are placed - neutral side to the front - placed be-hind bushes. Then all players

sit down in front of the box, so that they see the forest and fence posts and bushes only from their neutral side. A task card from the face-down stack is revealed and shows one char-acter and one location. You roll a die and move characters ac-cordingly or advance the sun by one step or swap the task card. There can be more than one character on a spot and you can

never look at the back of bushes and characters. If you did move a character, you may take the seer figure and look behind a bush with her crystal ball - when character and bush fit the card, you take the card. When all tasks have been completed or the sun has reached its right-most position, all players in turn may set aside one task card they did win and pull out a fence post to find Räuber Hotzenplotz. If you find him, you win. If nobody finds him, Räuber Hotzenplotz wins the game. The solitaire ver-sion is played the same way; at the start you set two task cards aside. In the cooperative version you can pull out a fence post im-mediately after winning a task card. If you find Räuber Hotzen-plotz, all win together. Once again, a book of Otfried Preußler has provided a base for a lovely game which trans-port flair and feeling lovingly and with nice mechanisms and pretty components. þ

DER RÄUBER HOTZENPLOTZDIE MAGISCHE KRISTALLKUGEL

INFORMATION

Designer: Haferkamp, NikischArtist: Oliver FreudenreichPrice: ca. 25 EuroPublisher: Haba 2015www.haba.de

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:4+

TIME:25+

EVALUATIONSpotting, memoUsers: For childrenVersion: deRules: deIn-game text: no

Comments: Based on the book by Otfried Preußler * Original drawings, touched-up * Includes a solo and coop-erative version * Very nicely designed components

Compares to:Memo and spotting games


At night the little monkey frees the animals from their cages and all the animals enjoy crazy adventures, before all return to their cages and the monkey to its tree. Lustige Zoo-Ge-schichten for children of ages 4+: Eleven green animal chips, the corresponding cards and eleven blue image chips are shuffled face-down. In turn you reveal one green and one blue

chip, tell a story using both im-ages and place the chips into the slots on the board. The next player tells his story and fills the slots. When all slots are filled the image window is covered. Now the top animal card is drawn and the wheel is turned until this animal appears in the win-dow. You must now remember the story for this animal, tell it and check the image window

under the palm leaf. Did you re-member correctly? The monkey advances one step. If it reaches the tree before all cards were drawn, all players win together.Noch mehr erzählen for 2-4 players, ages 5+, is played in analogy to Lustige Zoo-Ge-schichten to fill all slots. In the memory phase of the game, players turn the wheel in turn until the next animal appears; when the story corresponding to this animal is told correctly, you reveal the top card from the stack of image and animal cards, shuffled together, and expand the story using the animal or im-age depicted on the card. If you manage this, the monkey ad-vances one step; if you fail a part of your turn, your turn ends. If the monkey reaches his tree be-fore you need to repeat a story, all players win together.Marvelous training for vocabu-lary, memory, creativity with a free run for imagination, with everybody having fun! þ

DER VERDREHTE SPRACH-ZOONOCTURNAL ADVENTURES AT THE ZOO

INFORMATION

Designer: Klaus KreowskiArtist: Gabriela SilveiraPrice: ca. 14 EuroPublisher: Ravensburger 2015www.ravensburger.de

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:4-7

TIME:30+

EVALUATIONEducational language gameUsers: For childrenVersion: deRules: deIn-game text: no

Comments: Series: Spielend Neues lernen * Marvelous components with challeng-ing mechanisms * Good training for vocabulary and memory

Compares to:Language games using memorizing and telling of stories


PLAYED FOR YOU uDICKE DÄMONEN / DIE GEHEIMNISVOLLE DRACHENHÖHLE


Colors fight for dominance in the field with summoning of white ghosts and colored de-mons. Four rings in yellow, red, green and blue - knotted out of strings = lines - are laid out in a way that each line crosses at least two or three other lines. The crossing points of lines are called corners; lines form cases, bordered by lines in several colors. At the start you draw for

random creatures from the bag and keep them secret. In your turn you either summon a ghost or a demon, that is, you place one creature from your hand into the display. Ghosts are placed into the middle of a case that must be free of other ghost and must be placed into an in-ner case. Demons appear in a corner, one of the lines forming the corner must have the same

color as the demon, the corner must be free and the case must be free of ghosts. A ghost can appear in a case that holds a de-mon. Once in the game you can decide on a color, which is then yours - to do so you put a crea-ture of this color on the table, the color must be one that has not yet been chosen by another player. At the end of your turn you draw a creature from the bag, while still available.When no more creatures can be summoned, White scores for the number of ghosts in the display. Each color scores the number of corners and string knots in cases where this color has a majority. You win if the winning color is yours. In case of a tie all colors involved are winning colors, if you were first to choose one of them you win.An unusual game from any point of view; „corners“ outside of string circles and the scor-ing take some getting used to, but that does not deter from a challenging and sophisticated placement and color-choosing mechanism. þ

DICKE DÄMONENSUMMONING CREATURES IN STRING CIRCLES

INFORMATION

Designer: Heinrich GlumplerArtist: not namedPrice: ca. 15 EuroPublisher: Edition Erlkönig 2014www.erlkoenig.net

PLAYERS:1-4

AGE:10+

TIME:20+

EVALUATIONPlacementUsers: For familiesVersion: deRules: deIn-game text: no

Comments: New edition, first edition 2004 * Unusual placement and scoring rules * Strings are laid out to form the game board

Compares to:Placement games using secret and open color selection


Little Dragon Edward is col-lecting colored gemstones for lucky charms and players help him to find them. There are gemstones in six colors and for each color there are four spots on the board. You choose one of two board sides - easy or a bit harder - and deal two gemstone cards to each player. Edgar is switched on. You roll a die - for a result of 2, 3 or 4 you push Ed-

gar along paths and over spots, in any direction of your choice, but never over the same spot twice, and always for the full number of steps as you are not allowed to forgo any steps. It is very important that you push or slide Edgar along the board, he must remain in contact with the game board. Only if you roll the dragon symbol you are allowed to lift Edgar for flying and put

him down on any spot of your choice. When Edgar breathes fire at the end of his turn he has found a gemstone. If you hold a card for a gemstone of the same color as the spot where Edgar stands, you can put down this card and draw a new one from the stack. If this new card is iden-tical with the one you already hold, you return it to the bottom of the stack and draw a new one. You should strive to remember well where Edgar breathes fire and use this knowledge in your further turns to discard cards. If you are first to discard six differ-ent cards you win the game.This is an enchanting memo game, dragon Edgar is simply cute, the mechanism simple and due to the random align-ment of the two small boards beneath the big board and the two different sides of the big board you have enough vari-ance to avoid memorizing the fiery gemstone spots. þ

DIE GEHEIMNISVOLLE DRACHENHÖHLEEDGAR COLLECTS GEMSTONES

INFORMATION

Designer: Obert, LanzavecchiaArtist: Rolf VogtPrice: ca. 40 EuroPublisher: Drei Magier/Schmidt 15www.schmidtspiele.de

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:5+

TIME:15+

EVALUATIONmove, memoryUsers: For childrenVersion: multiRules: de en fr it nlIn-game text: no

Comments: Enchanting design * Surprising light effects * Simple rules * Variable board

Compares to:Games with electric/elec-tronic gimmicks



PLAYED FOR YOUtDIE LETZTEN TAGE VON ATLANTIS / DIE ZWERGE DAS DUELL

As the leader of a Royal House you will save your compatriots. TO do so you must find favor with members of the senate and use it in voting. Disturbing influ-ences come from early depar-tures of ships from the harbor, destroying of ships by sabotage and from throwing refugees overboard. In four to six rounds you play the phases of Senate, Factions,

Voting and Doom. In the Senate phase you determine the influ-ence of Houses in the senate with bidding of influence mark-ers. In the Factions phase you take a senator tile in order of the number of influence mark-ers and place your personal marker on the senate case. In the Voting phase you lay out five of your seven politics cards face down in a row, reveal them

and then all players in turn bid with influence markers for the right to play the leftmost card in the row. The symbol on the cur-rently valid event cards deter-mines the method of auction. If you win the bid you can imple-ment your card or the card of your left neighbor. In the Doom phase you check majorities of refugees and in the senate for victory points, move ships for victory points when New Land is reached, the event is resolved or a new one is drawn, the board is cleared up and you draw new politics cards. When the third Doom Card is drawn from the event card stack, the game ends and you win with most victory points.Despite some problems with rules and components, which can all be easily overcome, you should take a closer look at this game; it offers some rewarding and challenging mechanisms as well as interesting details and you need to plan the use of your resources well, as they represent refugees as well as influence. þ

DIE LETZTEN TAGE VON ATLANTISSAVE FAMILY MEMBERS WITH POLITICS

INFORMATION

Designer: Marcin WełnickiArtist: Jakub Jablonski und TeamPrice: ca. 40 EuroPublisher: Heidelberger 2014www.heidelbaer.de

PLAYERS:3-5

AGE:10+

TIME:90+

EVALUATIONAuction, placementUsers: With friendsVersion: deRules: de en plIn-game text: yes

Comments: Very nice design * Standard topic * Interesting mecha-nism details * Scarcity of resources for influence/refugees * Somewhat dif-ficult rules

Compares to:Other auction-based placement games

Other editions:Galakta, Poland

Based on the novels by Markus Heitz you are either a Dwarf de-fending „das Geborgene Land“ or an enemy, that is, either a representative of Good or of Evil. Each side has its own deck of 35 cards with allies, victory points, support, event and turn-of-events. You draw four cards from the stack, make dice and joker cards ready and alternate as active player, executing the

phases supply, dice and cards. For the supply phase you draw a minimum of one card, maybe more due to effects of cards in your display. In the dice phase you take three dice - again maybe more due to cards in your display, but never more than six dice - and roll them. The result on the dice you rolled is used in the card phase. To play a card from your hand or use a

card in your display you pay the costs as indicated on the card for number and type of results, and you can only use each dice once. The axe symbol on dice is a joker that can be used for numbers 1 to 5. Card effects are either implemented instantly and you discard the card or you put the card into your display and can from now on use its effect. Those effects can cause damage, either to the draw pile or the display of your opponent. When someone draws the last card from his draw pile, the game ends and you win with most victory points. The box includes an adventure scenario featuring 23 extra cards for the board game, based on the 5th book of the Dwarves series, „Der Triumph der Zwerge“.A very nice mix of dice and card use, rather chance-driven, but with enough tactic to remain a challenge, dice get scarce quick-ly and you need to make clever use of them. þ

DIE ZWERGE DAS DUELLGOOD VERSUS EVIL

INFORMATION

Designer: M. Palm, L. ZachArtist: Jarek NocońPrice: ca. 10 EuroPublisher: Pegasus Spiele 2015www.pegasus.de

PLAYERS:2

AGE:10+

TIME:40+

EVALUATIONcard use based on diceUsers: With friendsVersion: deRules: deIn-game text: yes

Comments: Topic very well implement-ed * Rather chance-driven * Tactic from using dice and damage to opponent’s draw pile

Compares to:Card games using dice to pay for card actions


PLAYED FOR YOU uDREAMING SPIRES / EXTRA! EXTRA!


Oxford, City of Dreaming Spires, thus named for the architecture of its colleges - you lead one of these colleges from the found-ing times of Richard the Lion-heart into modern times. In four eras - Medieval, Enlightenment, Imperial and Modern - you play two rounds each; before the first round the new era is prepared with new Event and Scholar cards as well as new money for

all players.In each of the two rounds of an era the Chancellor reveals an event card for later resolv-ing and then all players, begin-ning with the Chancellor, have four actions in any order, even one action several times: Build, admit a Scholar, use a so far unused Scholar or draw a coin. Then the event previously re-vealed is auctioned according

to the notation on the card - this is meant to represent rivalry among colleges - and resolved by the winner, he is also Chan-cellor for the next round. At the end of the round a scoring evaluates reputation on Sub-jects and in relation to Fellows, Students or Tradition. Buildings - tiles you placed - represent advantages of a college, rep-resented by completed icons; advantages are used to attract famous persons which in turn raise the reputation of the col-lege. Events are historical ones, for instance Building of the Ash-molean Museum.This is a game for enthusiasts or connoisseurs, not as regards to playing the game, but as regards to the topic. If you are interested in Oxford and its history, you will enjoy the game and meet lots of famous persons - who thinks of Oxford when Tolkien is mentioned - he held the Chair of Merton Professor of English Lan-guage and Literature there. þ

DREAMING SPIRESCOLLEGES IN OXFORD

INFORMATION

Designer: Jeremy HoganArtist: J. Price, A. AndersonPrice: ca. 50 EuroPublisher: Secret Games Comp. 14www.secretgamescompany.com

PLAYERS:3-5

AGE:14+

TIME:90+

EVALUATIONTile placement, develop-mentUsers: With friendsVersion: enRules: enIn-game text: yes

Comments: Kickstarter project with game salute * Attractive components * Rare, allur-ing topic * Simple basic rules

Compares to:Tile placement games, first game of its kind with this topic


As editor-in-chief of a news-paper you fight for headlines and stories. On your own board you must assemble title page, back page or middle page of the newspaper, depending on the chosen scenario. To take a story from the Editor’s table you discard News cards show-ing the necessary number of manuscript and photo icons, all cards must have the same topic,

that is, the same color. For the acquisition of those cards you place your meeples as report-ers on the News area on the main board - which represents a newspaper office in San Fran-cisco with areas of Sources, Op-erations and Editor’s desk - in order to collect News cards from six different cities: New York, London, Paris, Rom. Berlin und Tokyo.

You play in rounds that are com-prised of Phases: Refresh News-desk & Morgue - you draw cards depending on the number of players and add them to the cit-ies; Refresh the Newswire - you discard, relocate and add News Cards; Sell New Cards (in the first round only), Collect Income / Pay Salaries - you receive 400 $ and pay 100 $ to each reporter that you employ; if you can-not pay a reporter you put him back into your personal stock and must recruit him again if you want to use him again; Play Stringers - you can discard a re-porter for News; Place Report-ers for lots of action options, Activate Reporters and End of Round. Stories, headlines and advertisements earn you Circu-lation points and you win with most of them.Basically a standard worker placement game with a few in-teresting twists from topic and detail mechanisms, for instant paying to remove a meeple from a position or use stringers to receive news directly from a city. þ

EXTRA! EXTRA!COLLECT NEWS AND COLLATE YOR NEWSPAPER

INFORMATION

Designer: Andrew BondArtist: Mark Zug, Vicki PaullPrice: ca. 85 EuroPublisher: Mayfair Games 2015www.mayfairgames.com

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:14+

TIME:240+

EVALUATIONWorker placementUsers: With friendsVersion: enRules: enIn-game text: yes

Comments: Rare, interesting topic * Lots of option for reporter placement * Many sce-narios to choose from * Rules not optimal

Compares to:Worker placement games, topic very rare



PLAYED FOR YOUtFAMILIE FISCH / FIVE TRIBES

At the start you sort out four Mama Fish from the 36 tiles - recognizable by their red lips - and each player chooses a Mama fish. When there are fewer than four players you take all superfluous Mama fishes to-gether with all other fish of this or these colors out of play.The remaining fish tiles are spread on the table or on the floor and you must now find a

Papa fish and twelve baby fish corresponding to your Mama fish. If you are the active player, you turn over two tiles. When you reveal one or two tiles show-ing fishes of your own color, you can keep those tiles. If you revealed one or two tiles with fishes in other colors, you put them back into the display face-down. When you turned up a

fish tile and a predator fish tile you put the predator fish back into the display, but on another spot than where you took it from. The tile that you revealed together with the predator fish is set aside, open-faced, outside the display. If you turn over two predator fish at the same time, you can - if possible, because there is already one of your fish tiles set aside - take back a fish tile of your own color from aside. If you are first to have col-lected all fish for your family, you win!You can vary the game by agreeing on another number of fish for your fish family, all in all you can have a maximum of 17 fish in your family. For another variant you can take predator fish that you reveal out of play, but only up to a maximum of six because two must remain in play to take fish back from aside.A nice example of a well-varied standard mechanism - memo as usual and yet an individual cute game that even trains first counting efforts. þ

FAMILIE FISCHPAPA, MAMA AND TWELVE FISH BABIES

INFORMATION

Designer: M. & H. RüttingerArtist: M. & H. RüttingerPrice: ca. 7 EuroPublisher: Noris 2015www.noris-spiele.de

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:4+

TIME:10+

EVALUATIONMemo, collectingUsers: For childrenVersion: multiRules: de en fr itIn-game text: no

Comments: Nice version for a standard memo game * Pretty draw-ings * Simple rules

Compares to:All memo games with ad-ditional mechanisms


As a stranger in Naqala you head clans, summon Djinns and win influence in order to be-come the new Sultan. In a round you first pay, in order of bids, for turn order positions. In your turn you first relocate the turn indica-tor to the bidding track, move move meeples and lay claim to tiles by taking back meeples. This is followed by clan actions for meeple colors in hand and

the action of the tile last entered as well as, maybe, commod-ity sales. If someone places his last camel or no meeple can be moved, you score for gold, Vi-ziers, Elders, Victory points from Djinns and tiles with camels, palms and palaces as well as sets of commodities.This expansion introduces Die Kunstschmiede von Naqala / The Artisans of Naqala as a new

tribe. Then there are tents which you can place on a newly ac-quired tile instead of a camel. New tiles give you actions: Werk-statt - 1 Kunstschmied or 2 Fa-kirs for the top item marker from the stack; Specialized Market - 4 gold for any resources card from the open display; Abyss - you cannot enter this tile and there can never be a meeple on it. This is supplemented by Valuable Items and Magical Items with in-dividual abilities when used. Six new Djinns are shuffled into the Djinn cards of the core game.A very beautiful expansion - not only as regards to design - for Five Tribes, the Artisans intro-duce interesting changes, for instance movement restrictions and with them new tactics; there are also the tents for ad-ditional victory points, not to forget the artisans themselves and their marvelous magical items that allow a wide range of actions. þ

FIVE TRIBESDIE KUNSTSCHMIEDE VON NAQALA

INFORMATION

Designer: Bruno CathalaArtist: C. Masson, C. DaujeanPrice: ca. 20 EuroPublisher: Days of Wonder 2015www.daysofwonder.com

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:13+

TIME:80+

EVALUATIONPlacement, collectingUsers: With friendsVersion: deRules: de en frIn-game text: yes

Comments: Needs core game to play * Very well-working addi-tions for the core game * Beautiful design * Simple rules

Compares to:Five Tribes, Mancala for the basic mechanism, otherwise placement and collecting games

Other editions:English and French editions from Days of Wonder

PLAYED FOR YOU uGOLDEN HORN DOMINIO DA MAR / GUARDIANS’ CHRONICLES


As a Venetian trader you sail between Venice and Constan-tinople. In your turn you can rob ships with pirate cards and must then move one of your ships. In the starting harbors you load all commodities of one color; in the other harbor you store your commodities and draw wind cards; en route you can play wind cards for ad-ditional ship movement. At the

end you score commodities and sets of commodities in storage. Dominio da Mar introduces five dominions to the game, which are not part of the trade route, but are laid out separately. Each dominion shows the number of soldiers (out of a total of 20 in the game) necessary to conquer this dominion and the number of victory points earned by this conquest. In the starting har-

bors there are 10 wooden cubes now, new are eight cubes each in black and white. When you make a harbor ready and black and/or white cubes are drawn, they are replaced with soldiers; black cubes are removed from the game, white ones go back into the bag. In a harbor you can now load all soldiers there on your ship instead of goods. A ship carrying soldiers cannot be raided and at the end of the journey you put soldiers into store, too. IF in your turn you have enough soldiers in store to conquer a dominion, you dis-card them and take the domin-ion. If necessary black cubes out of play can replace soldiers as farmers, but you need two such farmers for one soldier.A challenging expansion, due to the high yield of victory points for dominions and points for soldiers and farmers in store conquest might be more inter-esting than transporting com-modities, especially as soldier ships cannot be raided. þ

GOLDEN HORN DOMINIO DA MARCONQUER ZARA OR GALATA

INFORMATION

Designer: Leo ColoviniArtist: Marko FiedlerPrice: ca. 10 EuroPublisher: Piatnik 2015www.piatnik.com

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:8+

TIME:90+

EVALUATIONPlacement, collectingUsers: For familiesVersion: multiRules: cz de en fr hu it nl sk plIn-game text: no

Comments: Needs Golden Horn for playing * Five new realms * Conquest of those realms is possible

Compares to:Golden horn and other games with movement by cards on a board


Episode 1 of Guardians# Chron-icles reports on the conflict be-tween evil Doktor Skarov and the members of the famous team of heroes, the Liberty Pa-trol All players decide on a sce-nario and get their first surprise with the extremely scarce and concise information in Comic Book style. The rules are don in the same way, this needs same immersion for comprehension.

Each scenario has the goal to achieve a good newspaper re-port for one’s own faction. One player embodies Skarov and his minions, the other players choose one hero each with his own abilities and weaknesses, heroes develop in the course of the game. A round in the game comprises Strategy, Activation and End of Round; characters fight, move, use an ability, etc.,

confrontations are dealt with us-ing standard mechanisms with value comparisons. A hero has three actions, villains a number of actions according to their ID card, modified by event cards.When heroes make short shrift of a plan of Skarov, they will end up on the title page of the Guardians‘ Chronicles, but Dok-tor Skarov is mentioned, too, when he gets a goal through, or defeats a hero, of course always according to scenario goals as a basis for a positive mention-ing. At the end of the game the composition of the title page determines who has been given more room and therefore wins.If you are used to the standard adventure games with minia-tures you will face some radi-cal diversions, but will find that they are fun and the creation of the title page to your own advantage is a completely new aspect. Definitely worth playing and one can look forward to fur-ther editions. þ

GUARDIANS’ CHRONICLESEPISODE 1

INFORMATION

Designer: Frédérick CondetteArtist: F. Condette, I. PolouchinePrice: ca. 65 EuroPublisher: iello 2014www.iellogames.com

PLAYERS:2-5

AGE:14+

TIME:120+

EVALUATIONFantasy, adventureUsers: With friendsVersion: enRules: enIn-game text: yes

Comments: Coproduction with The Red Joker * Extremely unusual aim of the game * Layout of scenario-information and rules needs getting used to

Compares to:All adventure games with a fantasy topic

Other editions:French edition, iello


PLAYED FOR YOUtHARRY HOPPER / HEXX & HOPP

Vroom - the blade of grass has fallen - two teams of grass hoppers are harvesting grass blades, which are placed ac-cording to the chosen variant. Players form two teams, which need not be of the same size. One team plays with the dark blades and the dark grass hop-per, represented by wooden ob-longs, the other team uses the light green blades and the light

green grass hopper. In the vari-ant Abgegrast the red blade is set up in the middle of the table or on the floor, whatever you prefer, and then you form two circles around this blade, with a mixture of dark and light blades as stated in the rules. You posi-tion your grass hopper and let it jump by pressing down and then releasing its wings. If you overthrow your own or oppos-

ing blades they are taken out of play. Should you topple the red blade while some of the teams own blades are still standing, you set it up again. Whoever topples the red blade after own blades have fallen, wins. For the variant Grashüpfer-Parcours you create your own course, the blades must fall in sequence. When your own blades or both kinds topple, you take your own blade(s) and set up opposing ones again. Then you have an-other try, and so on. When only the opposing blade topples, you set it up again, If nothing topples, nothing happens. You may never reposition a grass hopper for a new jump, but you may turn it on the spot. The win-ner is the team that topples the red blade first.An attractive version of Kubb, the surprisingly true-to-life grass hoppers are elegant, work well and you can do very well-aimed and controlled jumps with them after a few training jumps. þ

HARRY HOPPERHÜPF! PLATSCH! RUMS!

INFORMATION

Designer: Florian NadlerArtist: Stefan Lohr, Mirko SuzukiPrice: ca. 20 EuroPublisher: Kosmos 2015www.kosmos.de

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:6+

TIME:20+

EVALUATIONDexterityUsers: For familiesVersion: deRules: deIn-game text: no

Comments: Nice topic * Fantastic play-ing pieces * Simple rules

Compares to:Kubb and other dexterity games with hitting a target


72 hexagonal tiles are divided into six triangles; those triangles can have one of four colors - Red, Yellow, Blue or White - and one color can appear on a tile up to three times, which means that a color can be absent from a tile. The tiles are shuffled face-down and then seven tiles are taken to form a starting display as stated in the rules. Then each player is dealt 13 or 15 tiles and takes

them up in hand as a face-down stack. All play simultaneously and on a signal, begin to turn over the top card of their stack and try to add it to the display. Addition to the display is pos-sible when the new tile corre-sponds to at least to tiles already in place with color-concurrent edges. Currently unsuitable tiles are set aside face-down. You can reveal and add them to the dis-

play at any time. When a tile is suitable and can be added, you say “Two” and turn over the next tile in your stack. If you manage to add a tile that contacts three other tiles in the display, you say “Three” and can hand two tiles from your hand, one by one, to any players of your choice and reveal your next tile. Should you manage a placement with four contacts, you can give four tiles to other players, and for five contacts you can hand on six tiles. If you manage to fill a gap with six contacts, you win the round instantly. Otherwise the round is won by whoever is out of tiles first. All others score one point for each remaining tile. After ten rounds you win the game with the lowest score.A very nice family game, cute and fast, with quite some de-mands on reaction and obser-vation to be able to get rid of additional tiles. þ

HEXX & HOPPFOUR CONTACTS LET FOUR TILES DISAPPEAR

INFORMATION

Designer: René BronsArtist: Johann RüttingerPrice: ca. 13 EuroPublisher: Drei Hasen i. d. A. 15www.hasehasehase.de

PLAYERS:2-5

AGE:9+

TIME:30+

EVALUATIONTile PlacementUsers: For familiesVersion: multiRules: de en fr it nlIn-game text: no

Comments: Simple rules * Quick reactions and observation is necessary * Attractive Design * Handy packaging, good to carry along

Compares to:All tile placement games with de-mand for corresponding edges


PLAYED FOR YOU u JOHN DEERE / KING‘S GOLD


Farmers harvest their fields with Johnny the Tractor. If you are most skilled in steering Johnny, you will be successful and win. The field for harvesting is set up, harvest order and thunder-storm cards are shuffled and stacked face down for a draw pile. Three cards from this stack are laid out openly; when a thunderstorm card happens to be among those cards, it is put

back beneath the stack and re-placed with a new card, until three harvest order cards are on display. The active player takes Johnny, lifts the ramp and lets Johnny start at a position of his choice anywhere on the ramp- Johnny rolls down the ramp and stops somewhere. Now you may harvest as many vegetable chips from general stock as are depicted on the case beneath

Johnny’s access steps. If you can meet a harvest order card with vegetable chips you already collected, you discard the chips back into stock and take the cor-responding harvest order card. The gap in the display is filled with a card from the stack. If at that point a thunderstorm card is revealed, all players must give back the kind of vegetable chips depicted on the thunderstorm card. Then the thunderstorm card is taken out of play and a new card is drawn from the stack. Already collected harvest order cards in front of players are safe from thunderstorm cards. Whoever is first to collect four or five harvest order cards, depending on the number of players, wins.The main attraction of this game is, of course, the tractor, it is sim-ply fun to try and position it as exactly as possible - all in all a fantastic training for hand-eye-coordination and correlation distance and impetus. þ

JOHN DEEREFUNNY FARMER

INFORMATION

Designer: Carlo A. RossiArtist: Leon SchifferPrice: ca. 20 EuroPublisher: Schmidt Spiele 2015www.schmidtspiele.de

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:5+

TIME:20+

EVALUATIONDexterity, collectingUsers: For childrenVersion: multiRules: de en es fr it nlIn-game text: no

Comments: Includes original SIKU model tractor * Simple mechanism * Good training for hand-eye-coordination

Compares to:Dexterity games with thrust or momentum control


As a pirate you loot ships and rob other pirates, but the kings wants his share. It is your deci-sion how far you will go to rob the king of his share and to be-come rich yourself. You roll five dice, can set aside dice and re-roll dice up to two times, that is, three rolls all in all, but you can only re-roll dice that do not show a red Crossbones symbol. Dice showing those are set aside

for good in your turn. When you are don with your three rolls, there are the following possi-bilities: Coin symbol + Cannon - you take the number of coins indicated by the coin symbol from the treasure chest and then the same number again and place it in the King’s pile next to the chest. Coin symbol + Skull - you take the indicated number of coins from another

player; only Coin symbols - you steal all Gold in the King’s pile next to the chest; only Skulls - you steal all coins from a player of your choice; only Cannons - you steal all coins that are left in the treasure chest, you need not share with the King. If you did not manage to achieve any of those combinations or if you rolled three or more Cross-bones symbols, you must place three coins onto the pile of the King. If you achieve the same combination - Coin+Skull or Coin+Cannon - twice or both of them in your turn, you resolve the results accordingly. When the treasure chest is empty, you win with most coins.Definitely nothing new, but a nice idea for a standard dice game, noticeably especially for its very pretty tin and for the big, classy coins that come with it. If you like pirates’ games and dice games for combinations and re-wards, you will like King’s Gold. þ

KING‘S GOLDPIRATES DICE FOR BOOTY

INFORMATION

Designer: Stéphane MaurelArtist: PierôPrice: ca. 15 EuroPublisher: Blue Orange Europe 14www.blueorangegames.eu

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:8+

TIME:15+

EVALUATIONDice rollingUsers: For familiesVersion: multiRules: de en es fr it nl ptIn-game text: no

Comments: Beautiful tin for packing * Standard mechanisms * Nice details * Simple rules

Compares to:All dice games on combina-tions



PLAYED FOR YOUtKNÄTSEL / KOLEJKA

Knätsel are puzzles made from dough. Each player has marker, guessing disc, two clue discs and dough of one color. With this dough you form two Knät-sel - representations of items or creatures - and place them with a clue disc on a Knätsel spot on the board. Then you write down the solution and put the sheet underneath the board, numbers 1-5 are visible. The active player

chooses a Knätsel and moves its clue chip by one position. On a white clue spot you may ask two questions, valid answers are Yes, No, Maybe and Not Unequivo-cal. On a grey spot you can de-mand one of the first five letters of the term, the letter is noted in the position on the sheet. If you want to guess, you put your guessing disc into the funnel. If your guess was correct you ad-

vance your marker by the num-ber of green arrows at your po-sition; if it was wrong you move backwards for the number of red arrows at your position. The solution must correspond abso-lutely to the word written on the sheet, no synonyms possible. If several players simultaneously use their guessing disc, the or-der in which they come out of the funnel decides the order of guesses given. The Knätsel creator moves forward in case of a correct guess. After seven clues, unsolved Knätsel go off the board. If you are first at the finish or in first position when all Knätsel are solved, you win. A team version is included.Under the name of Barbarossa this game was 1988 paving the way for the genre of creative communication games and is today still as fresh and interest-ing as it was then; the heart of the game is the forming of items - easy enough to be guessed but no too easy for a good score. þ

KNÄTSELFORM, ASK, GUESS!

INFORMATION

Designer: Klaus TeuberArtist: Fiore GmbHPrice: ca. 33 EuroPublisher: Kosmos 2015www.kosmos.de

PLAYERS:3-6

AGE:10+

TIME:45+

EVALUATIONCreative, communication, form, guessUsers: For familiesVersion: deRules: deIn-game text: yes

Comments: Revised edition of Bar-barossa * Different design * Suggestions for terms and questions on both sides of the individual player boards

Compares to:All editions of Barbarossa, other games with playdough representa-tion of items


One of the games of most inter-est historically and thematically, now in a German edition, there-fore presented again:In the 1980ties in Poland play-ers try to shop for goods on their shopping list and join the queues at the shops. One day = one round comprises the phases of Queuing up, Merchandise de-livery, Queue jumping, Opening of the stores, Exchanging mer-

chandise at the outdoor market and PCT = Administration.For Queuing up you place one of your markers in turn at the end of the queue at the shops or the market, until all available mark-ers are placed. For Merchandise delivery three cards from the Deliveries deck are displayed and goods from the delivery trucks are placed into the shops. The phase of Queue jumping

comprises three round in which you play one card each from your hand to manipulate the queues or you pass and put the remaining cards in hand on your draw pile. When shops open you take one good from the shop for each marker in the queue, in the order they are lined up and while goods are available. Then you can swap goods with goods from the market if you have a marker there or you can pass and leave the marker at the mar-ket. In the administration phase you draw cards and take back markers, the board is prepared for the next round. After five rounds you play “Saturday” with special actions. If you are first to collect all goods named on your list, you win!Kolejka is a fantastic game, albeit played in an oppressively realis-tic setting, using worker place-ment and lots of interaction, with certain humorous aspects; you need clever card manage-ment, which card to play or when to pass is a deciding factor in the game! þ

KOLEJKAQUEUEING FOR SHOPPING

INFORMATION

Designer: Karol MadajArtist: N. Baranowska + TeamPrice: ca. 33 EuroPublisher: HUCH! & friends 2015www.hutter-trade.com

PLAYERS:2-5

AGE:12+

TIME:60+

EVALUATIONContemporary historic simulationUsers: With friendsVersion: deRules: de en fr jp pl ruIn-game text: yes

Comments: Revised edition in coopera-tion with the DDR Museum * Contemporary historical background including a report on actual events * Mechanisms mirror the topic perfectly

Compares to:Worker Placement for mechanism, unique topic

Other editions:Multilingual edition at Instytut Pamięci Narodowej

PLAYED FOR YOU u LUNTE / NORD


The fuse has been lit! You add fuse cards to the starting card with a burning match igniting the fuse and you can trigger the explosion with a bomb card and collect all fuse cards in the row or defuse the whole row by playing a defusing card.You begin the game with sev-en cards and two bomb cards openly displayed on the table; you usually add a fuse card to

the row, fuse end next to fuse end, and then draw a card - until someone places a bomb card or a defusing card. A defusing card cuts off the fuse - all fuse cards are removed and taken out of play for the round; the starting card remains in place and the defusing card is placed next to the starting card, it can have a value of 4 to 6. If you use one of your bomb

card, you place it on top of the last fuse card and then take all fuse cards in the row and also all defusing cards that are sitting next to the starting card, the starting card remains in place.The game ends, when all bomb cards have been played or when the time bomb card is drawn. You add the values of all the fuse cards and defusing card that you added and deduct all fuse cards in your hand, but not any defusing cards in hand! If you hold less than seven cards when the game ends you must refill your hand to seven cards before scoring. You win with most points.Nothing breathtakingly new, but cute and fast and a nice game for holidays or a filler; it comes with two special cards that add a bit of kick; and a little bit of tactic from the dilemma of hoarding high cards and risking penalties or placing them - may-be for the benefit of others who are quick to ignite a bomb. þ

LUNTEIGNITE OR DEFUSE?

INFORMATION

Designer: Bruce WhitehillArtist: RautiePrice: ca. 12 EuroPublisher: Mücke Spiele 2014www.muecke-spiele.de

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:8+

TIME:12+

EVALUATIONPlace card, collect rowsUsers: For familiesVersion: multiRules: de enIn-game text: no

Comments: Nice topic * A bit of tactic is possible * Good family game

Compares to:Card placement games with collecting rows


In the land of the Northmen we lead a tribe and begin with a Jarl and a warrior in a settle-ment. At the heart of the game are the interactions between the components: Settlements have gates which connect them - Jarls are chiefs in settlements, Men are workers in stock, Work-ers are men on land or sea tiles, Warriors are men in settlements. Connections between work-

ers and settlements allow to introduce new workers and de-liveries of resources and food; connections result in conflicts and alliances - Workers connect to adjacent workers and gates; Warriors and Jarls never connect and are never connected. A gate of a settlement and a worker are an alliance, thus a settlement can be part of several alliances.The active player decides on

placement of new workers or on defeating an opposing Jarl. When you decide on placing new workers, you pay for it with a treasure tiles which triggers one of three actions, and then the placement might result in attack of a settlement or uniting alliances and, finally, a scoring. If you want to or need to defeat a Jarl, there are conditions that must be met by positions for an opposing Jarls, your own war-riors and a Dragon Boat. When both alternatives for a move are not feasible, a scoring is trig-gered: In Scoring #1and #3 you score deliveries of resources; in Scoring #2 and #4 you score well-supplied Warriors and then, in a final scoring after Scoring #4 you score treasures.This game offers a very unusual and intriguing mechanism for worker placement; the resulting connections and alliances need some getting used to, but result in an interesting and challeng-ing game. þ

NORDDAS SPIEL DER JARLE

INFORMATION

Designer: J. and R. GoslarArtist: Christoph TischPrice: ca. 40 EuroPublisher: Kronberger 2015www.kronberger-spiele.de

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:14+

TIME:45+

EVALUATIONWorker PlacementUsers: For expertsVersion: multiRules: de enIn-game text: yes

Comments: Challenging rules * A very tactical game * Very little luck * Prior familiarization with rules and mechanisms is necessary

Compares to:First game in this way, basically worker placement games



PLAYED FOR YOUtONE WORLD ANIMAL TRIP / PUTZ DIE WUTZ

In this game in the series of One World, Mai-Linn, Finn, Leila and Jamal travel with animal babies to the most beautiful spots on our planet. The board shows eight regions with images of parent animals, typical plants and tourist attractions. Each re-gion is marked with a colored dot, and the same eight colors are also on the compass spin-ner. You draw animal tiles in re-

lation to the number of players and then in turn spin the arrow on the compass. You go to the indicated region and place an animal tile, if you have a corre-sponding one. In case of a rain-cloud you pass your turn. You can only place one animal tile per turn in a region. If you are first to deposit all your animal tiles, you win.In the cooperative version for

players of ages 4+, a symbol dice and the rain card come into play, the compass is not used. You draw an animal tile from the bag and must take this baby animal home. When you already are in the corresponding region, you place the baby next to its parent. If you are not in the cor-responding region, you roll the die - for one place you can fly to an adjacent region, for two plane symbols you can move to two regions and for three planes you can move to three regions. When you roll the cloud, you cannot fly, the baby animal is placed on the rain card. When the active player could not take the baby animal home, the next player continues with this baby animal. When the active player succeeded, the next player draws another baby from the bag.Two versions for a simple, beau-tiful assignment and dice game for very young players, with at-tractive components and lots of fun with simple mechanisms. þ

ONE WORLD ANIMAL TRIPBRINGING ANIMAL BABIES HOME

INFORMATION

Designer: Frédéric MoyersoenArtist: Katrin KerbuschPrice: please inquirePublisher: Beleduc 2015www.beleduc.de

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:3+

TIME:15+

EVALUATIONDiceUsers: For childrenVersion: multiRules: cn de en es fr it nlIn-game text: no

Comments: Series One World * Attrac-tive Design * Very simple rules * Two game variants

Compares to:Simple dice games with movement


Pigs, which in this game are called Wutz(en), have gotten into the jam store and are there-fore dirty with jam spots in four colors and need to be cleaned.Twelve of the Wutzen are laid out from the face-down stack into a square around the jam glass marker. Attention! Each Wutz must - in clock-wise di-rection - look at the next Wutz. Then you face one side of the

square, place a piece of soap in front of it and now have a line of Wutzen to your right look-ing at you. One player rolls the black color die, the pink spot die and a special die, determining spot color, number of spots and modifying the number of spots by +1 or -1. Take care! 1 -1 results in 6 spots and 6+1 in 1 spot to find. Then all play simultaneous-ly: all search for the correct Wutz

- whoever finds it takes - no, not the Wutz, but the piece of soap at which the Wutz is looking. When the correct Wutz is miss-ing, you search for the one with red spots of the same number. If this is missing, too, you grab the jam glass. If you did right, you are Wutzenputzer of the round and get the Wutz, if it looks at you; if not, you rotate it to look at you. If you correctly hold the jam glass, you rotate any Wutz to you. For a mistake you pass your turn next round. When the stack is empty, you win with most Wutzen.Despite jam not sweet, but cute and chaotic, you need to spot, calculate, check direction and grab correctly; the search-a-re-sult mechanism has been nicely varied, and for younger players there are variants without the special die or with a smaller square. A bit of gloating when the Wutz doesn’t look at some-one and lots of laughter are guaranteed. þ

PUTZ DIE WUTZPIGS WITH COLORFUL JAM SPOTS

INFORMATION

Designer: Thierry ChapeauArtist: Gabriela SilveiraPrice: ca. 18 EuroPublisher: Zoch Verlag 2014www.zoch-verlag.com

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:6+

TIME:20+

EVALUATIONReactionUsers: For familiesVersion: multiRules: de en fr it nlIn-game text: no

Comments: Standard mechanisms * Fun is in the details * Lots of chaos due to taking into account four parameters

Compares to:Geistesblitz and all games with react on results by taking something.

Other editions:999 Games, The Netherlands

PLAYED FOR YOU u SANKT PETERSBURG / SCOTLAND YARD JUNIOR


This revised edition of Sankt Petersburg contains the core game, that is, the 1st edition ver-sion, and a rule for „Das neue Sankt Petersburg Der Markt“ as well as some expansion mod-ules. In the basic game you want to mirror the development of St. Petersburg and acquire crafts-men, buildings and noblemen. Those earn money, points or both during the game, noble-

men also score points at the end. Turns of the game com-prise one round each for crafts-men, buildings and noblemen as well as for exchange cards. A round comprises actions ö buying, taking up in hand or displaying as well as scoring and supplying new cards. You win if you score most points.When you play including the new market phase you can in-

tegrate a fifth player into the game. The market phase intro-duces a new mechanism for additional victory points and rubles: In the market phase ten market cards are displayed and each player in turn has one ac-tion: Buy a card, take a card up in hand, display a card from hand or pass. Then market cards and market place are scored. When someone buys cards with mar-ket symbols and displays them, this is indicated on the market place for this player and earns him victory points when the market place is scored.Furthermore, this new edition comes with six modules which can be incorporated individu-ally or in any combination into the core game: Das Bankett, In bester Gesellschaft, Die Helfer, Die Ereignisse, Die Aufträge und Die Hürden.With this game the nearly im-possible was done: To improve an already excellent game with-out changing a hair’s width in the basic mechanisms, in the flair and the fun in playing the game! What a feat! þ

SANKT PETERSBURGTHE SECOND EDITION

INFORMATION

Designer: Brunnhofer, SchmielArtist: Anne Pätzke, Irene BresselPrice: ca. 40 EuroPublisher: Hans im Glück 2014www.schmidtspiele.de

PLAYERS:2-5

AGE:10+

TIME:60+

EVALUATIONSet collectionUsers: For expertsVersion: deRules: de en frIn-game text: no

Comments: 2nd, revised and extended edition * Can be played as the first edition or using the additional Market rule * Fantastic new design

Compares to:Sankt Petersburg, 1st Edition

Other editions:Z-Man Games, Filosofia Edition, Arclight (announced)

Young detectives chase after Mister X - if they play a game for two or three players, Mister X is represented by one player, the other or other two represent the detectives.At the start Mister X receives a set of tickets for Subway, bus, taxi and boat, a board a visor. The opposing party commands two detective figurines and begins the game with a set of

tickets and a board. The start-ing position for all characters is marked on the board, thus de-tectives and Mister X know the opposing starting positions. In each round Mister X flees and then detective chase him: Mis-ter X secretly chooses a ticket for one means of transport; if he has decided and put his fist on the table, detectives can confer if they want to advance

one station or remain in place. When they move, they discard a ticket for one means of trans-port and move one detective. Then Mister Y shows his chosen ticket and moves accordingly. When he then stands in a sta-tion together with detectives, the detectives can put a success chip to their board. If Mister X is alone in a station, he can put down a success chip. A new round begins. Whichever party is first to fill its board, wins. In a game of four players Mister X is given an accomplice called Mis-ter X junior. Each of them has a set of tickets, the board is shared by them and both decide at the start of the round where they want to go. Depending on loca-tions after movement there is again only one chip for the suc-cessful party.A perfect junior edition of a clas-sic game - flair and challenge remain, the mechanisms have been successfully simplified and means of transports are avail-able at any time. þ

SCOTLAND YARD JUNIORWE CHASE MISTER X AND HIS ACCOMPLICE

INFORMATION

Designer: Michael SchachtArtist: Menzel, Haubold, BolzePrice: ca. 20 EuroPublisher: Ravensburger 2015www.ravensburger.de

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:6+

TIME:20+

EVALUATIONDeduction, detectionUsers: For childrenVersion: multiRules: de en es fr it nlIn-game text: no

Comments: Felicitous junior edition * Simplified rules * Attractive components * Special rules for four players

Compares to:Other editions of Scotland Yard



PLAYED FOR YOUtSOLOMINO / STRATEGO DICE GAME

Mau Mau is good, Domino is good, how good Mau Mau as Domino must be!?! The design-ers answered this question with a new card game. You shed a card, as is familiar from games of Mau Mau, but you place them in the arrangement of a Domino row.The game features 120 cards, each half of a card shows a num-ber on a colored background

or an action symbol. You have eight cards in hand, the top card of the draw-pile begins the display. In your turn you place a suitable card from your hand at one end of the display - color on identical color or number on identical number, or an ac-tion symbol. The correspond-ing halves of the two cards are placed on top of each other. As usual, you draw a card from the

pile if you cannot place a card or do not want to place one. When an action symbol appears, the next player passes his turn or draws a card or swaps his hand with another player or all play-ers hand on their cards to their neighbor. In case of a question mark the game is interrupted: You take a card from the draw pile and place it face-up in front of your neighbor He must pit down a card on it with a half that is identical with one half of this card. If he can do this, he passes both cards to the next player, who must now match one half of the top card, and so on. Who-ever cannot match the top card must take the stack that was passed to him. If you have only one card in hand, you announce “Solomino”. If you discard your last card, you win.Mau Mau is good, Domino is good, and Mau Mau as Domino is better; old and old yielded something new and very nice! A witty idea that playes surpris-ingly well and is enjoyable. þ

SOLOMINOMAU MAU AS DOMINO!?!

INFORMATION

Designer: Lepuschitz, SteinwenderArtist: Markus WagnerPrice: ca. 8 EuroPublisher: Amigo Spiele 2015www.amigo-spiele.de

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:6+

TIME:20+

EVALUATIONCard sheddingUsers: For familiesVersion: deRules: deIn-game text: no

Comments: Very nice combination of two standard mechanisms * Surprising fun to play * Very few additional rules

Compares to:Mau Mau, Domino


Stratego - not on a board but played with a total of 12 dice. Each player holds five dice of a color, blue or red. Those dice are named after the rank sym-bol that they carry three times. Ranks in the game are Marshal, General, Miner, Scout, Spy, Bomb and Flag. The Marshal dice shows the Marshal (10) three times, twice the Scout (2) and the flag. General Die: Three

times the General (9), twice the Scout (2) and the flag. Miner Die: Three times the Miner (3), twice the Scout (2) and the Flag once. Spy Die: Three times the Spy (1), twice the Scout (2) and the flag once. Bomb Die: Each player also has one scoring die, show-ing values 0 to 5. Those scoring dice are set out at the start of the game showing value 0. You and your opponent both secretly

choose one of your dice and roll it - then the roll is scored: Marshal defeats General de-feats Miner defeats Spy defeats the Marshal. A bomb defeats everything but the Miner, the Miner defeats the bomb. If you roll a Scout, you may choose another die and both players roll again. If you roll a flag, you lose the battle. If both players roll the same symbol, the battle ends in a draw. After each battle both dice involved are set aside, even when the battle ended in a draw, and both players choose a die for the next confrontation. For each battle you win you turn up your scoring dice by one. If you win five battles, you win the game.Stratego light, quick and simple - a very felicitous implementa-tion of the classic game using dice, nice for on the road or in-between games, playable where and when you like, fea-turing simple rules and an at-tractive design. þ

STRATEGO DICE GAMEBATTLES OF DICE VERSUS DICE

INFORMATION

Designer: not namedArtist: not namedPrice: ca. 10 EuroPublisher: JumboDiset 2015www.jumbo.eu

PLAYERS:2

AGE:8+

TIME:15+

EVALUATIONDice comparisonUsers: With friendsVersion: multiRules: de en fr nlIn-game text: no

Comments: Attractive packaging * Easy to carry along * Can be played anywhere * Fast, easy version of Stratego

Compares to:Stratego for topic, dice games comparing dice 1:1


PLAYED FOR YOU u SUSHI DICE / TAITUU


The Guild of Sushi Cooks ac-cepts only the very fastest and most precise cooks. There are 19 plates of Sushi, each depicted on a card, and three such cards are on display. As the first active player you choose an opponent - both of you have six dice and roll then as fast as you can, set dice aside and re-roll any num-ber of dice. A star as a result is a joker and replaces all other sym-

bols for Sushi plates. If you have achieved all symbols on a plate, you quickly hit the bell and take the card. Both duelists hand on their dice to their left neighbor; a new plate card is revealed and a new duel can begin. But - it is of course not that easy - the glitch is a symbol called Yuck on the dice - as soon as you spot such a Yuck symbol on your op-ponent’s dice you shout “Yuck”

and thus force your opponent to re-roll all six of his dice, even those that he had set aside at that moment. The non-dueling players are involved, too - they check for simultaneous visibility of a Yuck symbol with both duel-ists - if they spot this they shout “Zack” - the duel ends instantly. Whoever shouted “Zack” takes one set of dice; his opponent will be the player who has col-lected the fewest Sushi plates so far. When someone has col-lected the necessary number of 4 6o 6 plates - in relation to the number of players - this player wins instantly.A nice dice game for a filler or for taking along, the fun is in trying to keep an eye on the opponent’s dice while rolling one’s own as quickly as possible - some of the symbols are aggra-vatingly similar, you can mix up Yuck and the octopus when in a hurry. þ

SUSHI DICESERVE SUSHI WITHOUT YUCK AND CHOP

INFORMATION

Designer: Henri KermerracArtist: AouladPrice: ca. 20 EuroPublisher: Sit Down! 2014www.sitdown-games.com

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:6+

TIME:15+

EVALUATIONDice, reactionUsers: For familiesVersion: multiRules: de en es fr it nl plIn-game text: no

Comments: Basically standard mecha-nisms * Nice variations in details * Pretty compo-nents * Simple rules

Compares to:All dice games for dice combinations


Logic and power of deduction are on demand for this solitaire game. At the start you are con-fronted with an empty board made up from 19 hexagon cases in a hexagon arrange-ment. Number tiles are laid out ready - number face up - there are four times the numbers 1 to 4 and once number 5 in black and white. A deck of task cards provides 24 tasks for which you

use those number tiles. The task card shows the necessary num-ber tiles in each color and also an arrangement of black and white tiles without numbers, for which you use the number tiles face-down. First, you select the necessary number tiles from the stock of all tiles and then use the remaining tiles to cover the given hexagons on the card with black and white pieces

without numbers. The task is always the same: To arrange the given number tiles of a task on the hexagons so that a number tile has always a number of ad-jacent pieces of the opposite color, equal to the value of the piece. Tiles without numbers count for adjacent pieces, ad-jacent pieces of the same color are not important. So, for in-stance, a white piece of value 1 has exactly one adjacent black piece for a correct solution, re-gardless of the number of white adjacent pieces.The back side of each task cards shows the solution, the board is always completely filled. Pure logic and fun in thinking, the game is not only an intellec-tual pleasure, but also a tactile and visual one - board and num-ber pieces are made from classy wood - which presents much more of a challenge than you would suspect at first glance on the simple rules. A challenge in black and white for your grey brain cells! þ

TAITUUTILE VALUE DETERMINES NUMBER OF NEIGHBORS

INFORMATION

Designer: Oliver SchaudtArtist: not namedPrice: ca. 29 EuroPublisher: Gerhards S. u. D. 2014www.spiel-und-design.eu

PLAYERS:1

AGE:8+

TIME:10+

EVALUATIONLogic, placementUsers: For familiesVersion: multiRules: de enIn-game text: no

Comments: Elegant components * Simple rules * Challenging puzzle fun

Compares to:All solitaire logic placement puzzles



PLAYED FOR YOUtTHE EDICT OF KING BUDEAUNIA / TOWN CENTER

A king in his sleep dreams of a hot spring and when he wakes up he sends people out to search for it and pledges his throne! You place your work-ers to dig. Six digging lots are prepared by placing stacks of deep, medium and shallow dig-ging tiles. Treasure cards and specialist cards are prepared. One turn comprises hiring a guard for a digging bonus,

Digging with investigating us-ing 1 worker, Digging using 1 worker, detonating loam using 2 workers, fight a monster with 1 worker and hire a specialist for one worker. When you have used your two workers, you take them back unless they are in the left-hand hospital. If you want to take them from there you must pay for them or relocate them to the right-hand hospital. Further-

more, you can hire a worker and, finally, you give back guards and specialists and turn a specialist over.When both hot springs have been found or five digging sites are empty, the game ends. IF you found both hot springs, you win instantly. Otherwise you win with the highest score from underground river, monsters, treasures, springs and money as soon as five digging sites are depleted. However, should four digging sites be depleted and none of the springs was found, all players have lost the game together.A family game using worker placement, on the edge to a game for experienced players; the timing for using specialists is essential in this game, because you do not want to give too much information to other play-ers via the investigation action. If you do not want the Japanese editions out of a collector’s in-terest, you should get the Ferti Edition in German, English and French. þ

THE EDICT OF KING BUDEAUNIAA KINGDOM FOR A HOT SPRING

INFORMATION

Designer: T. Amioka, SayakaArtist: Mushi, Suo, Iori WatanabePrice: ca. 28 EuroPublisher: KogeKogeDo 2014www.japonbrand.com

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:8+

TIME:40+

EVALUATIONWorker placementUsers: For familiesVersion: jpRules: de en fr jpIn-game text: yes

Comments: Not a pure family game, some playing experience is of advantage * Clever use of specialists is necessary * Mix of planning and risk is necessary

Compares to:Simple worker placement games, excavation games like “Das Geheim-nis der Pyramide” for topic and card layers

Other editions:Multilingual Japanese Edition, multi-lingual edition named “Takara Island” with Ferti

As Lord Mayor you must devel-op the town center and provide housing, for victory points at the end of the game. The higher and bigger you build, the more points you will score at the end of the game; but you must take care to supply the buildings with enough energy sources. You start with your own board, one purple Town Hall block and two grey pieces to mark the

money on the track; the bag with building blocks and a reserve are prepared. Ten rounds of the game are played in phases: In the Investment phase building blocks are drawn from the bag and combined into stacks by the starting player; then in turn you take the top block from any of those stacks and then in a second round a second block. In The Construction phase you

place those blocks into your town, according to placement rules, you cannot keep a build-ing for later use. In the Develop-ment phase the green residen-tial and blue commercial units develop, simultaneously for all players, again following exact rules. In the Income phase com-mercial units generate income, when connected to Utility units, and Parking lots create income for blocks adjacent to them. In the phase Public Works you can choose to invest cash in devel-oping infrastructure by provid-ing more Utilities or Elevator cubes. When the bag is empty there is a final scoring and you lose points for each block in the suburb regions of your town.In this 4th edition of the game the small inconsistencies and deficiencies of the first three small, albeit sold-out, editions have been corrected; the game now provides a fantastic urban development puzzles with lots of opportunities for planning and pondering. þ

TOWN CENTERCITY DEVELOPMENT AND ENERGY PROVISION

INFORMATION

Designer: Alban ViardArtist: Sikiö, Sanders, MutwilPrice: ca. 40 EuroPublisher: LudiCreations 2014www.ludicreations.com

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:12+

TIME:60+

EVALUATIONUrban developmentUsers: With friendsVersion: multiRules: de en frIn-game text: no

Comments: 4th revised edition * At-tractive components with wooden building cubes * Good, easy to understand rules with examples

Compares to:Other urban development games


PLAYED FOR YOU u TRIASSIC TERROR / VAMPIRE RADER


A herd of dinosaurs in a swamp is what you start with. In the course of the game players must increase their herds and start new ones. Herds wander across four types of terrain and fight for the best habitats. You must also protect your herds from T-Rex, flying Pterodactyls and marauding Velociraptors and lead them safely away from erupting volcanoes.

Depending on the number of players you prepare the respec-tive side of the board with the starting set-up. Three geochro-nological periods are processed in rounds. In round one of each era you take a terrain card and an ac-tion tile, in round 2 and 3 only an action tile. The sequence of dinosaurs determines when you can use those tiles and cards.

Options for actions are: New Environment with placing of Dinos; Herd Growth with add-ing of dinosaurs to herds; Herd Migration for two of your herds, separately; Hatch - new Dinos for a herd, then movement of Pterodactyl and removing Di-nos in the target area; T-Rex with his movement and eating of dinosaurs; Raptors with their movement and eating or scat-tering other dinosaurs. Only one herd per habitat is allowed, and only one herd of each player is possible in a territory. After each era you score herds in habitats as well as presence in all terrain types and majorities in terrain types. At the end of three periods majorities of Dinos in all four types of terrain are scored.Triassic Terror is a strategically interesting game that offers lots of options with simple rules; the components are excellent and catch the atmosphere very nice-ly. The riling element of being eaten is the icing on the cake. þ

TRIASSIC TERRORDINOSAURS SEARCHING FOR HABITATS

INFORMATION

Designer: Peter HawesArtist: Kurt Miller, Allen SmitheePrice: ca. 50 EuroPublisher: HUCH! & friends 2014www.hutter-trade.com

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:14+

TIME:120+

EVALUATIONPlacement, developmentUsers: For expertsVersion: multiRules: de en frIn-game text: no

Comments: Very good components including dinosaur minia-tures * Rather destructive interaction * Simple rules with lots of strategic pos-sibilities

Compares to:Evolution, Bios Megafauna

Other editions:Kayal Games 2013

One player represents the invis-ible vampire, the other players guide between eight and nine humans on a 6x6 board and use the limited resources - radar and guns. The board is set up from tiles, adhering to some rules, e.g. not two radar or two bat tiles next to each other, no corner separated from the rest of the board by walls. Bullet markers are placed on marked tiles and

humans place their markers into the corners of the board, in rela-tion to the number of players. Then additional bullet markers are distributed among humans and the Vampire receives bat markers for hit points.The Vampire has a sheet and pencil and secretly notes one of four central tiles on the board for his starting locations. Hu-mans have 2 action points in a

turn and a human can enter an adjacent tile or shoot. If you en-ter tiles with bullet tokens, you take them. If you enter a radar tile, the Vampire must give in-formation on his distance to this radar tile. Based on those clues you can then shoot. The Vam-pire can move, attack or heal himself with a bat token picked up from a tile; for attack or heal-ing he gets bonus actions, chain actions are possible.Humans win, when the Vampire has lost all his hit points, inde-pendent from the individual hu-mans who did the actual elimi-nation action. The Vampire wins when he has either eliminated all humans or when all bullets have been used and humans could not identify the Vampire’s location.The topic is familiar, the mecha-nism in its basic function, too - you deduce not identity, but location and the hunted one makes notes on his locations - if you love this mechanism you will also love Vampire Rader. þ

VAMPIRE RADERHUMANS VERSUS AN INVISIBLE VAMPIRE

INFORMATION

Designer: Yuji KanekoArtist: Yuji KanekoPrice: ca. 18 EuroPublisher: Kaboheru/Japon Brand 15www.kaboheru.com

PLAYERS:2-4

AGE:10+

TIME:60+

EVALUATIONdeduction, cooperationUsers: For familiesVersion: jpRules: de en fr jpIn-game text: no

Comments: Minimalistic components * Standard mechanisms for deduction of hidden locations * Good sample of Japanese games

Compares to:Scotland Yard and other deduction games featuring hidden locations

Other editions:Edition with title variant Vampire Radar, multilingual edition in English, German, French and Japanese


PLAYED FOR YOUtYAK / ZEITALTER DES KRIEGES

Yaks, ibexes, vultures, ground-hogs and yetis of values 1 to 3, jokers, special cards and stop cards make up the deck we play with, they are shuffled and stacked face-down for a draw-pile. All players are dealt five cards from the draw-pile. The active player plays a card face-down, makes an announce-ment and draws a card or he doubts the announcement of

the previous player und checks this announcement; in this case no card is drawn.If you start a discard pile you must announce 1, all others then announce XC beings of a kind in the stack, true or untrue. You have two options - to an-nounce a higher number than the previous player and any kind of being or to announce the same number and a big-

ger being. You can doubt if you believe that there are fewer be-ings in the stack than were an-nounced. You check the discard pile and do not count the cards for the being, but add values on cards of that being. Special cards “!” change each being in the stack into the one that was previously announced, retain-ing the card value. Special cards “1” give each card in the pile the value 1. An uneven number of Stop cards in the pile render “1” and “!” invalid. Whoever is in the wrong when someone doubts, takes the discard pile. When the draw pile is empty and some-one doubts, you win afterwards with fewest cards taken.Standard mechanisms and well-known - and yet a cute fast game, living beings instead of colors change the flair of the game immensely and it is fun to keep track of them and to risk a doubt, as accepting announce-ment is dangerous, too in case one is doubted, therefore: “There are no eight yaks”! þ

YAKGROUNDHOG IS BIGGER THAN A YETI

INFORMATION

Designer: Bono LightArtist: Gabriela SilveiraPrice: ca. 11 EuroPublisher: Zoch Verlag 2015www.zoch-verlag.com

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:8+

TIME:20+

EVALUATIONCards, believe announce-ment yes/noUsers: For familiesVersion: multiRules: de en fr itIn-game text: no

Comments: Cute drawings * Standard basic mechanism * Very nice family game

Compares to:All card shedding games featuring believing announcement or not


As a Daimyo in Japan’s Feudal Era you try to conquer castles and clans. A castle card shows icons for Daimyo, Warrior, Swords and Archery and a value for the indi-vidual card. The backside shows clan color, clan symbol, the value for the complete clan and the number of cards in the clan. All dice show one Daimyo icon, one Warrior icon, one Archery icon and three icons for swords

with one, two and three swords. All castle cards are laid out. You roll all seven dice and place suit-able dice on a castle - you need not name the card before rolling and you must, when placing dice, always fill a complete com-bat row with the correct num-ber of dice; you can overpay - 2x 3 swords are possible when five are demanded. If you cannot place dice, you set aside one

die and roll the remaining ones again. When you fill all combat rows correctly within your turn, you conquer the card. When you have conquered all cards of a clan you turn them over, they cannot be conquered by other players. Single cards in front of players can be conquered by other players when all symbols are placed correctly and - ad-ditionally - also one die for the Daimyo symbol in the top left-hand corner. When all cards have been conquered you win with most points from castle cards and clans - a clan always is worth more points than the sum of its castle cards - for instance, the four cards that comprise the Oda Clan have values of 3-2-1-1, and the complete clan has a value of 10 points.Zeitalter des Krieges / Age of War is a very attractive revised edition of Risiko Express in a his-torical setting, fun and tempo of the original are still there! þ

ZEITALTER DES KRIEGESDICING DAIMYOS

INFORMATION

Designer: Reiner KniziaArtist: Brian Schomburg + TeamPrice: ca. 12 EuroPublisher: Heidelberger 2014www.heidelbaer.de

PLAYERS:2-6

AGE:14+

TIME:30+

EVALUATIONDice, dice assignmentUsers: With friendsVersion: deRules: de en fr it jpIn-game text: no

Comments: Revised new edition of Risiko Express * Very attrac-tive design * Conquest in ahistorical setting

Compares to:Risiko Express and other dice games on combinations

Other editions:Arclight, Edge Entertainment, Fantasy Flight Games, Giochi Uniti

NEW ARRIVALS u A QUICK GLIMPSE ON NEWCOMERS

46Color codes for target groups (Headline Color)

For children + learnFor families

With friendsFor experts

Color codes for features (Bar in Evalution box)ChanceTactic

StrategyCreativity

KnowledgeMemory

CommunicationInteraction

DexterityAction

Extension for Catan for 5-6 players, ages 10+

The 19 land hexes on the island of Catan must be settled. Resources, landscapes, settlements and roads need to be constructed, developed and kept up. Resources are wool, bricks, wood, ore and grain. They can be traded and used for construction. To win you need to collect 10 victory points from settlements, cities, development cards or Longest Road and Largest Army. The modern classic game appears in this edition with changed title and new graphic design including wooden components. This expansion provides components for a 5th and 6th player.Version: en * Rules: de en es fr it jp and others * In-game text: yes

CATAN 5-6 PLAYER

Designer: Klaus TeuberPublisher: Mayfair Games

Spotting game for 2-6 players, ages 6+

The game comprises 25 double-sided, easy cards featuring Cirus/Castle and 25 difficult ones featuring Lake/Dragon. You choose an image, place one of the face-down cards on the table and deal the rest evenly to all players. All play simultaneously: You turn over your top card and try to spot the two differences between your card and the reference card on the table. If you spot them, you say “Difference” and point them out. If you are correct, your card becomes the new reference card. Each card has one difference in common with the previously placed card. Whoever is out of cards first, wins. New edition of What’s miss-ing? Version: multi * Rules: 18 languages * In-game text: no

DIFFERENCE

Designer: Christophe BoelingerPublisher: Gigamic

Sorting game for 1 player, ages 3+

A game that is intended to teach a first knowledge of shapes, colors and spatial impressions. Three basic contours - circle, triangle and square - are presented in two-dimensional pictures and need to be filled with the three-dimensional shapes of cyl-inder, prism and oblong. All those shapes are available in three colors. One of six double-sided cards is placed into the wooden frame and shows between two and four slots showing colored edges. Those slots need to be filled with the corresponding blocks in the color of the edge.Version: multi * Rules: cn de en es fr it nl * In-game text: no

GEOSORTERPublisher: Beleduc

Collecting game with dice for 3-5 players, ages 5+

You collect families of cats and roll a die: Cat - you draw a card and display it. A cat moves according to the rules. A Cat Police is picked up and you either hand back the police piece or take it. Dog - it chases off a parent cat or two cat babies or both togeth-er to the next blayer; Mouse - attracts cats in the same way from another player. Whistle - you take or hand in the police piece. If you own the police piece, your cats are not influenced by cat or mouse. If you own a complete family, you set it aside face-down and win at the end with most cats.Version: multi * Rules: de en es fr it nl * In-game text: no

KATZENPOLIZEI

Designer: Stefanie SchützPublisher: Haba

Monopoly variant for 2-4 players, ages 5+

You collect My little Ponies and set up rainbows for them. As in each variant of Monopoly you roll a die and move accordingly. If you reach a My little Pony lot without a rainbow, you buy the lot; on My little Pony lots with a rainbow you pay hearts. On the Beauty Spot Club lot you draw the top card, read it and imple-ment it. If you must pay Hearts you place them into the Book Box. If you end on a Book Box lot, you may open the Book Box and take all the heart money in it. You win, if you have most Hearts and My little Pony lots when the first player does not have enough Hearts to pay. Includes a variant for experienced players. Version: de * Rules: de * In-game text: yes

MONOPOLY JUNIOR MY LITTLE PONY

Publisher: Winning Moves

Card game for 2 or more players, ages 6+

With 32 cards each for cards and motorbikes you can either ply a standard Happy Family version - cards are marked in the top left-hand corner with letters and numbers accordingly - or you play a trump game in analogy to Top Trumps, comparing number values. If you have the highest value in the currently named category on your card you get all cards of this round. At Happy Families you win with most quartets, in the trump game you either win with most cards when one player is out of cards or one player has to win all cards. App is available. Edition Technik.Version: de * Rules: de * In-game text: yes

SHUFFLE TRUMPF TECHNIK

Publisher: Spielkartenfabrik Altenburg

Spotting game for 2-6 players, ages 6+

Double-sided cards are split into halves on one side; the green half shows the smileys that must be depicted on the target card, the red one shows Smileys that must not be on the target card. The other side of each card shows 10 different Smileys. All cards are spread out Smiley side up, on card is turned over to the red/green side to be the current search card. All are now looking simultaneously for a card with smileys fitting the search card. If you find it, you take the search card and the card you found is turned over for a new search card. When no correct card can be found anymore, you win with most cards.Version: multi * Rules: de fr it * In-game text: no

SMILEY ACTION GAMEPublisher: Game Factory

Dice game for 2-4 players, ages 7+

A dice game with very simple rules, for the basic version one sentence is sufficient: Each player has 10 dice of a color; all roll simultaneously, set dice aside and reroll and you win , if you are first to have the same result on all ten dice. For this mechanism there are eight variants altogether - you determine before you roll what you want to collect or steal dice from other players when their dice show your number. You can also try to achieve two different numbers on five dice each or have the same result on 20 dice in a game of teams with 2 partners, and so on. Each package comes with 40 dice in four colors.Version: de * Rules: de en * In-game text: no

TENZI

Designers: Steve Mark, Kevin CarrollPublisher: Carma Games / HCM Kinzel

Placement game for 2 players, ages 8+

Members of different tribes meet in order to carve new totems. Those totems represent the values of the families and of the village as well as courage and culture. The value of a totem depends on its features and location. Six villages are on display, three of them are available at the start. In your turn you draw one totem piece und then either a) start a totem on an avail-able village or enlarge a totem or b) complete a totem. When all totems are complete you score for characteristics in totem in relation to the villages.Version: multi * Rules: de en es fr it nl pt * In-game text: no

WAKANDA

Designer: Charles ChevallierPublisher: HUCH! & friends

OUR PICTUREStPICTURES / LEGAL DISCLOSURE

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IMPRESSUMOffenlegung nach dem Mediengesetz: Medieninhaber, Eigentümer, Verleger und Hersteller: Verein „Österreichisches Spiele Museum“, vertreten durch Obfrau Dipl. Ing. Dagmar de Cassan, Raasdorferstrasse 28, 2285 Leopoldsdorf im Marchfelde, Österreich, Telefon 02216-7000, mail-to: [email protected], Internet: www.spielejournal.at - www.gamesjournal.at - Chefredakteur: Dipl.Ing. Dagmar de CassanBlattlinie: Die Blattlinie ist die Meinung aller Redakteure, freien Mitarbeitern und Gastautoren. Die Spiele zur Erstellung der Rezensionen stellt das Österr. Spiele Museum für die Dauer der Arbeit kostenlos zur Verfügung. Niemand erhält Sach-,Service-, Geldleistungen von den Verlagen.(Alle nicht namentlich gekennzeichneten Rezensionen zu den Spielen sind von Dagmar de Cassan) English Edition Version 1.0Copyright (c) 2015 by Spielen in Österreich - Die Spiele Collection, Spiele Kreis Wien, Österreichisches Spielefest, Spielefest, Wiener Spiele Akademie, Spiel der Spiele und zwei Spiele-Symbole sind eingetragene Warenzeichen.Ihre Email-Adresse: Wir versenden oft an unsere Mitglieder, Abonnenten und Interessenten eine Erinnerung für Termine und sonstige Infos. Wenn Sie noch nie eine Email von uns erhalten haben, fehlt uns Ihre Email!

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Solo Play Two Players Large Groups Recommended Minimum Age

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