w

w
w
.
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
-
m
a
g
a
z
i
n
.
d
e

Free Navegador
expansion included!
B 12247
7,00 (Europe)
8,50 (Overseas)
All about
Games in a Box
Issue #1 2012
founded 1981
00_U1 titel121_schmonzes_en_js 21.11.12 13:49 Seite 1
Watch trailer on www.schmidtspiele.de
00_U2_az_Schmidt121_en_js 21.11.12 13:50 Seite U2
EDITORIAL
T
he oldest known dice (actually, one
die only) come down to us from the
Sumerians, who were apparently
very keen indeed on their dice games,
according to the art historian and poly-
math Erhard Gorys (in Das Buch der
Spiele). Even before then, mankind asked
the gods questions using spillikins, bones
or stones. In ancient Rome, the practice of
helping the divine answer along had
become so widespread that various doo-
dads were invented to make fudging the
rolls a little bit harder such as the dice
cup and the dice tower. In the Middle Ages,
Chaucer and Shakespeare spoke of the
dangers of dicing, and many writers called
dice the work of the devil, so its fitting that
even today opinion is sharply divided on
the dear old random number generator
(mostly d6). The average board game
buyer clearly has no issue with them, since
otherwise wed hardly see Monopoly, Ludo,
Risk or Yahtzee among the all-time best-
sellers. Likewise, the German Spiel des
Jahres jury has never been averse to dice,
even back when the award began. In half
of the first seventeen prize-winning games,
up to and including The Settlers of Catan,
there were dice in the box.
Youll also find two dice when you lift
the box lid on Feudality (page 34), which
would hardly be worth mentioning if the
game werent published by Lookout, who
until now had been a dice-free zone.
Hanno Girke, the publisher, even saw fit to
put a hazard warning inside the logo on
the box design, which is a good indication
of how sensitive hard-core gamers can be
to such irritants. Intensive gamers mostly
like optimization tasks with a random fac-
tor as low as possible, and the most popu-
lar mechanic at the moment, worker place-
ment, is superbly suited for variations on
this theme. Though optimizer players do
like some dice games as well, such as Titan
or Liars Dice, these really are outlier cases.
If things look different these days, and
the Nuremberg games fair is positively
packed with dice games (see page 16) and
with dice variants of well-known titles
(page 15), then its only natural to ask why.
This question really has two answers, since
there are two trends which have little to do
with one another but which combine to
give the impression that there is some kind
of general return to the old established ran-
domizer. Dice versions of successful titles
are nothing new. As far back as spielbox
3/2007, our colleague Edwin Ruschitzka
wrote an article asking whether dice games
were the new card games. At the time we
saw dice games of Risk, Settlers and
Alhambra, though it would be three years
before there was a real Carcassonne dice
game to match the faked-up picture that
accompanied the article. One reason why
all the big games publishers are jumping
on the bandwagon is the new trend for sim-
plicity of play at least, thats how they
read the omens now that Qwirkle has won
the Spiel des Jahres red pawn. The other
trend has to do with games houses being
(ho-ho!) risk-averse, especially when times
are hard, as they are in the games market
right now even more than usual. Risk can
be minimized by publishing dice games,
which are usually a smaller and less costly
breed. Thanks to Chinas factories, dice
right now are hugely cheaper than they
were twenty years ago. If your new dice
game can also surf the wave of a successful
title, so much the better, even if that success
wave is beginning to break. Thus, this trend
will hardly lead to great innovations.
Feudality, too, is sadly not packed with
the innovations necessary to make hobby-
ist gamers think again about dice. Luckily
there are such innovative games think of
Kingsburg or Roll Through the Ages,
which is temptingly close to Yahtzee and
may be the ideal gateway game to make a
real hobbyist out of a casual gamer. A lot
of games houses are hoping that dice
games can make their number come up,
and they really should embrace the oppor-
tunity. Dice are the common denominator
for simple and more demanding games.
Its true enough that the big houses arent
making big bucks with the complex games
right now, but theres a broad range
between these two extremes where a
game can make its home especially
when a gifted designer can help a game
along. Just dont try to help the dice along.
As the German games writers Helmut
Steuer and Claus Voigt wrote (in rororo-
Spielebuch), the really interesting thing
about a die is that you never know what
number is going to come up next.
Matthias Hardel/sw
The common denominator
01_editorial121a_en_js 21.11.12 13:57 Seite 1
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
1I 2012
I CURRENT
06 I Small is Beautiful
International Toyfair,
Nrnberg 2012
I INTERVIEW
12 I Now with the Blue Triangle
Uwe Rosenberg
14 I Ystari Threefold
Cyril Demaegd
I SPIELBOX EDITION
30 I Pirates & Diplomats
New Options for
Navegador
I A LOOK BACK
31 I Slow and Steady
The Success of David Parlett
I REVIEW
04 I Pearls on Tracks
Indigo
20 I Unashamedly a
Gamers' Game
Ora et Labora
22 I A Full Evenings Game
Die Siedler von Catan
Aufbruch der Hndler
24 I Race for Six Feet Under
Village
26 I One More Amusement Park
Coney Island
28 I No Good Without Wood
Rapa Nui
34 I In a Dice Frenzy
Feudality
36 I The World is Key to Victory
Arcanum
38 I Basically, Its a
Dice Building Game
Quarriors
42 I Stalemate? Never mind!
1812 The Invasion of Canada
44 I Dealing With a Red Herring?
Upon a Salty Ocean
I PORTRAIT
40 I The Art of Infotainment
spieltrieb!
I FOR KIDS
47 I Super Rhino!
47 I Die Schatzkammer von El Mirador
48 I Groer Optikbaukasten
48 I Twiga Trick
49 I Mirakel
I AT A GLANCE
50 I Tuareg
51 I Kalimambo
52 I Jagdfieber
53 I Siebenpunkt
I STANDARDS
53 I Contact
54 I Short notes
56 I Tweaks and Variations
06
14
53
36
31
42
MENUE
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
2
02_inhalt121_en_js 21.11.12 13:59 Seite 2
03_az_hig121_en_js 21.11.12 14:00 Seite 3
no real railroader would design rail con-
nections in such a peculiar, winding way.
I Alone or in cooperation
Each player has three sides of the
board to use as a portal, removing gem-
stones from the board and collecting
them. As the number of players increase
around the hexagonal board, the number
of shared portals increases. With two
players, each gets one portal. With three,
you will need to share one of the exits
with another player. Finally, with four,
you will not have any portals solely for
yourself. Sharing a portal impacts the
strategy used to play the game. In the
two-player game, each fights to achieve
the best result, and with three or four
players, you negotiate with allies. In
other words, the gemstones do not
belong to the person that maneuvers
them off the board, but to the player(s)
owning the portal they leave. To keep
track of two players gaining a gemstone
from a shared portal, the publishers
treated us to a second set of stones, at the
A
t the outset, the quilt is stitched
with gems in different colors
with varying values. The six valu-
able ones are placed in the center and
the other six cheap ones are distributed
to the gaming areas corners. Our main
aim is to collect these gemstones by mov-
ing them along paths to the very edges of
the board. There, we find imaginary por-
tals, each three hexes wide. All players
either have their own or share it with
another player.
The paths are found on hexagonal tiles,
which show three separate sections of a
pathway straight, gently turning, or
sharply bending that leads from one tile
corner to the other. Each tile fits to any
other one, no matter how you turn them.
They form a network of paths, which in
the course of its formation, takes a more
or less winding shape.
The rules are extremely simple: Each
player picks up a face-down path tile and
places it on an empty space. There is no
need to connect to anything (even
though in practice, this is what most peo-
ple do). If the tile borders a gemstone, it
is moved right to the end of the recently
built path. Done.
All players aim to direct the stones
towards their own portals, which the
other players will try to prevent by divert-
ing the stones. The outcome depends on
the path tiles you have currently at your
disposal. At the games end, which comes
about as soon as all gemstones have been
cleared away, players count up the their
gemstones total value. The winner is the
one with the highest sum. For a game by
Reiner Knizia, this is a surprisingly simple
tally. As far as the games theme, Indigo
could have easily been a railroad game;
the gemstones move along the game
area as if they were on tracks. However,
this would have been implausible since
We have a gaudy blanket in front of us, of Indian origin, embellished with trims,
little gemstones, and ornaments. The lavish border frames a game area quilted
with hexagonal spaces. Our hands touch the shiny satin and ... hang on, this is
not a blanket at all, but cardboard. However, it is quite striking how it was pos-
sible to design such a gorgeous abstract game board from hexes. And why is the
game set in India? Because indigo, the deep-blue colorant for which this game
is named, is sourced from indigofera plants, native to the Indian subcontinent.
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
4
ready by
the side of the
board. One
player takes the
gemstone from the
board, and the other
gets a corresponding one
from the supply.
All gemstones are collected behind
individual player screens to disguise who
is currently in the lead. After all, I help
another player gain points by moving a
stone through our common portal, and
that player should not be the one in the
lead. Meanwhile, it is possible to hinder
other players with whom you do not share
a portal. If a gemstone threatens to fall
into the hands of the other players, then
place a tile that makes two stones collide.
Both stones are taken off the board and
no one collects them.
Luck is involved in the game whenever
a random tile is drawn and placed. If you
like a more tactical approach, you may
use the variant offered by the rule book:
Indigo
*** Children as co-op players: absolutely essential!
So, what is Indigo? A distinctly easy adult game (indicated by the suggested age
range 8 and up) or a demanding kids game (which would normally be marked as
6 and up)? My impression is that Ravensburger aims too high for its age range. At
first glance, there are several indicators for a grown-up game: the abstract design,
the four large-scale rule pages, and a crib sheet for each player. In practice, it proves
to be childs play. In this game, it is almost impossible to make mistakes: The task is
easy and the tactical possibilities are limited. You have only one tile (or two with the
variant) to choose from, place it on the board, and the stones zoom along the new
path. Additionally, ganging up on the lead player is minimized by the screen hiding
the exact gemstone count for the players. Some adults lack the spatial skill for the
best path, whereas kids sometimes show an astonishing comprehension. Indigo is an
abstract game, but children have enough imagination to fill it with life. Particularly
attractive is the element of team playing, when two players share a portal. Most
adults will use logic and protect their own interests. However, children negotiate
their next move, enter alliances, and leave them again if forced by necessity. Playing
Indigo in a child-like style is so gripping that adults would want to join in. Without
this type of play, it is a somewhat banal experience.
Pearls on Tracks
REVIEW
04-05_indigo_en_js 21.11.12 14:03 Seite 4
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
5
Reviewer Playing appeal
KMW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Udo Bartsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
L. U. Dikus*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Matthias Hardel** . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Harald Schrapers*** . . . . . . . . . . 6
* After all, it should also be a feast for
the eye, but should always be played
with choosing one of two path tiles for
placing.
** Even if it were just basic training for
18xx.
*** see box.
Indigo
Ravensburger
Reiner Knizia
E. Freytag, W. Pepperle
24
about 8 and up
about 2030 minutes
about 25
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
Players have two tiles at their disposal at
all times, and choose which one to place.
I Anything but trivial
Tile placement games that build a net-
work of paths or tracks from square or
hexagonal tiles are not a new invention,
and are found one way or another in
the publishers product lines. There are
even games that employ the exact same
pattern of pathways as Indigo. The earli-
est was Psyche Path (Funtastic, 1968)
that concededly used several colors.
Another, Tantrix from the year 1988, had
an entirely different objective and was
designed more like a brain teaser.
With Indigo, Reiner Knizia created a
remarkably entertaining family game
that you can explain in a few seconds and
will be easily understood by others. It is
magnificently simple, but not trivial.
Indigo scales well and is equally fun with
two, three, or four players. It shows the
first-class workmanship of the publishers
and the editors. The games rulebook,
design, and presentation are perfect.
Well, is there anything wrong with it? No!
KMW/cs
04-05_indigo_en_js 21.11.12 14:03 Seite 5
Dont take any risks that could be this years motto of the Nuremberg Toy Fair, at least
with regard to the big new titles. Wherever possible, companies worked on a small scale,
and continued tried and tested product lines. New interpretations using dice are particularly
in colleagues from the daily press would call it a trend. The offerings in box format are, on
average, a size smaller and lighter, mainly due to Qwirkle, the current Spiel des Jahres, that set new
measures in this respect. Our overview of the new releases begins with adult games, in alphabetical order by company.
After those, remakes, spin-offs (game families and expansions), dice games and abstract games follow.
ing the start and destination of a race. If
a player travels the fastest from Dakar to
Walvis Bay, for example, he receives two
coins and three points. All players stop-
ping in Dakar place one of their markers
on the expedition card, and obtain a little
encouraging reward: the first of them to
reach Walvis Bay pockets a bonus. Since
this is a game by Michael Schacht, the
individual turns are carried out quickly.
And since its illustrated by Vohwinkel,
Africana looks awesome. -ub
eggertspiele
They say that behind every strong man,
there is a strong woman. And behind
every juggler, is a patron. If you suppose
this might be an allusion to the German
ex-president and his fiscal friends, then
you are totally wrong, of course. This is
about Spectaculum, and thus about trav-
eling people, not to be confused with
spongers and supplicants. These traveling
people cheerfully roam about the country,
while the string-pullers in the background
cash in. The string-pullers? Thats us: We
buy and sell artist cards of the four jug-
gler troupes as profitably as possible. The
price per card fluctuates; it depends on
what locations the jugglers visit. This is
something that, literally, lies in the play-
ers own hands. Each player has three col-
ored pieces, randomly drawn and kept
secret, for the upcoming round. He places
them on the gameboard, expanding the
distribution area of the jugglers of that
color. If he puts chips on particular places,
then the price of the respective color
increases or decreases, or an immediate
dividend is declared, or a penalty is due.
In the end, the richest player wins, and
the charlatans are left to their fate. As
important as they consider themselves,
they are nothing but our marionettes. If
the trend turns around and a playing
color becomes overused or unpopular,
then we drop it and turn to another party.
Ah, it used to be so narrow and over-
crowded on these awful public rondels,
where everybody was allowed to lap
around the circle as he wished. First and
foremost, such familiar standard rondels
provided, by far, too little room for indi-
viduality. But now, no more of this
enforced conformity! Milestones gives
each player a rondel for his own, individ-
ual arrangement. The bottom half of the
rondel is, and remains, the same for all
players; here you find spaces where you
stop and give up resources in order to
erect various buildings on the game-
board. The bothersome castle is also on
the bottom part of the rondel; the playing
figure stops there on its circular course
and pay exorbitant charges. This provokes
a protest movement from the players, of
course. Emigrating to Monaco is not
within the scope of the rules, but nobody
can keep you from markedly, slowly mov-
ing your figure on its track. The upper half
of the rondel is supposed to show fields
Abacusspiele
It is the late 19th century; the African
continent is, for the large part, unex-
plored. A closed book (that is to say, a
book of seven seals), one might think, if
the gameboard didnt prove otherwise:
two books, zero seals. One of the books
lies north of the equator, the other one
south of it. We know their functionality
from Valdora: The books are stacks of
cards that the players buy from (provided
theyre visible), and they flip over as in a
folio. This is not entirely for free, though,
since there is a flip-over tax in Africa. The
North book contains cards that are to be
changed into points and into cash some-
where in the south; for the South book, its
the other way around. Consequently,
Africana sends our pawns across the
continent, sometimes up, sometimes
down. We move ahead by means of travel
cards, which have to match the color of
the destination. And to assure that each
individual player doesnt just play along
for himself, five expedition cards are
always on display for all players, indicat- s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
6
CURRENT
Small is Beautiful
International Toyfair, Nrnberg 2012
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:10 Seite 6
that give the player resources. However,
you first have to acquire these fields in
the form of cardboard tiles and lay them
into the rondel; otherwise, there is noth-
ing in the upper half. If you comply with
certain specifications, then youll always
make some extra profit. Finally, on the
shared gameboard, players primarily
build roads as well as market places or
houses. Roads need to be there first,
because they open up new building areas.
All players extend the same road. Only
market stalls allow for junctions. None of
the objects scores a fixed point value.
Numbers on the gameboard, which are
covered bit by bit, indicate the amount of
the reward. -ub
Hans im Glck
More than one year ago, an advert in
spielbox promised Land ahoy! But
Santa Cruz (see picture below) had to be
fine-tuned longer than expected, in view
of its scoring system. Now, Marcel-Andr
Casasola Merkles latest work has been
released.
We place several dozen tiles on marked
places on a fictional tropical island.
Whereas the tiles in the interior remain
face down for the moment, the tiles at the
shore are displayed face up from the start.
To begin with, we land at a coastal loca-
tion, place the building required there,
and immediately earn the victory points
shown. All tiles that are adjacent to a
road or river connection are revealed.
Then we play a hand card and carry out
the associated action.
A ship allows us to come ashore again.
We spread out by playing road cards and
river cards. The latter even let us skip over
locations, provided the chosen tile lies at
the same river. If one plays a scoring card,
all players who meet the criterion indi-
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
7
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:10 Seite 7
helpers so that we can collect
combinations of wares and
climb up to the top of the status
indicator, step-by-step. The first
level costs two of the same
wares of any kind, and the sec-
ond, one piece of jewelry and
one fruit. Farther up, the require-
ments become more demand-
ing, with the fifth level being the
goal. On my turn, I play up to
three of my hand cards. If I play
fewer than three, then I get new
cards or gold as compensation.
Cards allow me, for instance, to
buy up an entire boatload of
wares. A portion of the wares are
face down, so we dont always
find what were looking for. But fortu-
nately, there are cards that help us out
for example, by allowing us to trade wares
with the supply or sell wares for gold. The
Shaman does the best tricks; if I play him,
I may as an exception pay with gold to
move up one level, which is especially
favored for bypassing difficult combina-
tions of wares. This pay option is an
uncertainty, though, because some cards
coming up randomly in the stack blow
out the Shamans campfire, and if there is
anything that Shamans dislike, its a
blown-out campfire. Until another card
brings the flames to a blaze again, the
Shaman is not approachable, not even
with loads of gold.
And since everything in Africa seems to
be about only business, business and
business, Targi is set here, too. However,
its farther north, where men wear a kind
of veil and an old acquaintance from
beautiful Catan the robber makes
trouble. Each round, he moves at least
one space along the sidelines created by
16 cards. At regular time intervals, he
takes goods or, as a substitute, victory
points from the players. When he finishes
one lap, the game ends. Besides this, the
robber gets in our way, since we use the
outer spaces to place our three figures,
and occupied spaces are forbidden. Each
sideline space stands for an action that a
player is allowed to carry out later.
Beyond this, the position of his figures on
the sidelines defines two cards in the inte-
rior part of the playing area. These give
him goods or gold, or they are tribal cards
cated on this card get points, e.g., three or
even six points for each settlement along
the river, if they have at least one building
that provides wood.
Since all scoring cards in the players
hands will be played at some point, the
trick is the right timing. Do I first focus on
expanding or do I score early, in order to
make free-riding more difficult? In the
first round, we have to discover the build-
ings and resources on the tiles and the
scoring cards in circulation. In the second
(and final) round, the tiles remain where
they are, face up, and each player gets an
additional scoring card from the stock
and may remove one scoring card from
the game. If I watch carefully who
expands how and where, I may guess
future scorings. -cc
Kosmos
Pick up vocabulary with Kosmos.
Jambo, as we learned in 2004, means
hello. After eight years, this rolls off the
tongue easily; therefore, its time for the
second lesson, this time in Swahili to Eng-
lish, English to Swahili: Waka Waka!,
which means, Do it! In this case, Rdi-
ger Dorn and Michael Menzel are the
ones who did it. And since author Dorn
adopts some elements of play from his
Jambo, it is only fair that graphic designer
Menzel copies some of his beautiful illus-
trations from that game as well. So we
celebrate a reunion with our old friends:
the drummer, the psychic, the tribal elder.
Again, they hire themselves out as our
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
8
Anzeige
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:10 Seite 8
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:10 Seite 9
tion manual is more com-
prehensive than the actual
game rules. In City Alarm,
two parties with different
objectives fight against
each other. The thieves try
to loot ten packs of money
before the police can con-
fine them to prison. On
your turn, you choose a
face-down LEGO brick and
reveal it. If it shows pips,
you move a figure of your
party the corresponding
number of spaces on the
road network; if a train is
depicted, you let one of
your figures jump to the
subway station of your choice. Only when
all bricks showing pips lie face up are they
turned over again and mixed anew, so
that one can better assess the possible
moving range in certain phases of the
game. If a thief stands in front of a build-
ing, the LEGO die determines how valu-
able the loot is, and whether the police
can protect a building from an assault by
using the helicopter. In a variant, the
prison is attached to the playing area,
and a thief can liberate an imprisoned
buddy if he stands right in front. -cc
Lookout Games
Agricola takes off! No worries, the
upcoming offspring is not at all a star-
farer version transporting pigs into space.
Not yet. To begin with, the
attempt at offering a wider
range of the companys hit,
and generating an easier
approach, begins in quite a
conventional manner: a two-
player game named, Die
Bauern und das liebe Vieh.
The title says what the game
is about: the farmers and
their cherished livestock.
And what it is not about.
Food? Eliminated. Off-
spring? Eliminated. Qualifi-
cations? Gone as well. You
focus exclusively on the
sheep, pigs, cows, horses,
the meadows, stables and
the other player. Being a
two-player game, Die
Bauern und das liebe Vieh
provokes more confronta-
tion: In addition to the
known Agricola conflict of wanting to
take everything at once, there is now the
nasty desire of snatching everything at
once away from the opponent.
Both livestock farmers have three work-
ers, whom they place in turn. Twelve
action spaces are available. As usual,
some of them are gradually filled and try
to entice the players with even more
wood or still more sheep if nobody is
interested after a while. As in Ora et Lab-
ora, it is possible to buy landscape strips
in addition to your own area. Since fences
are pretty rare, buildings are also helpful
in partitioning the different pastures;
their outer walls are considered demarca-
tions, too. Feed troughs have the effect
that more animals fit on one farm space,
and that is good because, in the end,
many animals score many points. -ub
Murmel Spielwerkstatt
In Grosse kleine Welt, up to eight play-
ers take over one country each and pro-
duce brand-name T-shirts and roasted
coffee there. As in real life, the starting
conditions are very different. Whereas
Cameroon begins with 30 oro (the play
currency), five cotton fields and no goods,
the U.S. has four times as much capital at
its disposal, plus several units of raw cot-
ton, factory T-shirts and green coffee.
During the production phase, you buy
seeds, if you have enough cash on hand,
and improve your products in factories
and offices. These means of production
that cost goods or gold, but produce vic-
tory points and a bonus. Once cards in the
interior area have been used, they are
cleared away and refilled from the stack;
the sidelines stay put. The finishing trick,
at the latest, proves that Targi is one of
the more demanding games in the Kos-
mos two-player series: The scrupulous
Tuareg doesnt just throw tribal cards he
has acquired into the desert sand, but
puts them down neatly in three rows in
front of him. And only identical or only
different card symbols in completely filled
rows score points in the end.
The steak is the goal is the subtitle of
Grill Party, and even vegetarians will
have to admit that a tofu wurst would
have sounded much worse in this slogan.
However, the steak alone isnt the goal in
this game. Each player gets a set of task
cards, which read, for instance, that there
is to be more fish than anything or
more corn than wurst on the shared
grill. Each player holds four of these cards
in his hand. On his turn, he may exchange
one grill item from the grate for one from
his supply. After that, he plays out all
tasks he has completed and draws other
cards. The first player to have worked
through his pile wins. Two grill spices
refine the game: Nobody is allowed to ful-
fill the same task that another player has
just discarded. And if a player doesnt
want to trade with the grill because its
not convenient at that moment, he can
trade with somebody else which might
not be convenient for that player. -ub
LEGO
The concept build first, then play
remains untouched, so that the construc- s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
10
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:10 Seite 10
First World countries turns out to be only
an artificial one in the game.
In her high-school diploma paper in
2009, the Swiss Martina Hupfer devel-
oped a game adaptation on the subject
of international trade and the World
Trade Organization. While the Swiss
organizations Erklrung von Bern and
Alliance sud acted as publishers, the
Murmel Spielwerkstatt (see publisher
Andreas Rudin in the photo on the left)
took care of the production. Meanwhile,
the author is studying education, and is in
an advanced training course at the
teacher training college in Zrich; she rec-
ommends her game to teachers for use in
schools. -cc
Pegasus
This is just as in Dominion is the new
This is just as in Catan and even gets a
higher hit rate. The genes of Eminent
Domain suggest paternity of the deck-
building game, too. Race for the Galaxy
was obviously involved as well. Each
player starts with the same set of cards,
acquires additional cards, shuffles them
in, draws five cards for his hand on each
turn, and makes the best of it. This time,
however, the cards serve mainly to trigger
and reinforce the roles.
There are five roles in the game. On
your turn, you select a role card from the
bank. This initiates as in Glory to Rome
the corresponding action phase, in
which all players can participate, pro-
vided they play the same kind of cards.
The more cards of the same kind played
at one time, the stronger the action. The
initiator receives a boss bonus, of
course. In addition, he keeps the gift card
from the bank whether he wants it or
not. If you often choose the same role,
then youll swamp your hand with the
same kind of cards. The object is to take
planets in possession, because thats
what counts in the end. The different
roles serve the purpose of exploring the
planets and, in the second step, adding
them to ones sphere of influence either
peacefully (Settling) or in a military
fashion (Conquering). Role #4 regulates
the production on the planets and the
sale of goods for victory points, whereas
the fifth role increases the variety of
cards. If you own planets, then you may
add one of the strongest technology cards
(Researching) to your deck. Each of
these cards provides several symbols at a
are unequally distributed as well. The
poor countries initially have no sales
offices at all, for example. Therefore, they
are compelled to offer their raw materials
on the market in order to get money. All
players simultaneously place their offers
on a clearly designed stock market board
at a freely chosen price. If they find a
buyer, then the goods are sold, and in
some cases, only after the prices have
been improved. As for sales, there is no
stipulated fixed order. After that, each
country provides its own population with
a certain amount of consumer goods if
it doesnt succeed, strikes are imminent,
paralyzing the factories and offices.
At the end of the second and fourth
rounds, a ministers conference dis-
cusses rule changes, without any formal
restrictions. If no consensus can be
reached, the majority principle will apply
next time, and this can become very dan-
gerous for the industrial countries that
are in a minority. In particular, there are
no provisions regarding the granting of
credit and their conditions; a (moderate)
regulation would be of utmost interest to
the poorest countries. After six rounds,
each country compares its cash on hand
and its goods in stock with its initial situ-
ation. Whoever improved by the largest
percentage (!) is declared the winner, so
that the seemingly initial advantage of
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:10 Seite 11
your playing side and build in one or two
mosaic tiles, which give you points imme-
diately. After that, you refill the rondel.
You can vary the placement by using
sundry action markers; after their use,
however, you have to turn them over. To
regain full flexibility, you have to miss one
turn. You earn points for connected areas
of tiles of the same color, and if your own
workers form a contiguous group; this
depends on the orientation of the mosaic
pieces. The acute shortage of manpower
gets even worse since as in Carcas-
sonne workers cant be used elsewhere
until a construction phase has been com-
pleted and scored.
If you try to optimally attune your
actions to the three scoring levels, then
youll realize quickly that the overview
and overall view (understanding) can be
two different things.
Hissing sounds emanating from the
neighboring table indicate that people
are playing the game of Escape, a cooper-
ative real-time adventure by Kristian
Amundsen stby that makes for clammy
hands and hot dice. Two to five adventur-
ers play Indiana Jones, collecting magic
gems in a temple in order to break open
the lock at the exit door before the build-
ing completely collapses. To this end, all
participants act simultaneously, using
their five symbol dice. Even though each
player carries out his own tasks, it may be
necessary to go to another players aid if
that player has been put in an awkward
time to support different roles and some-
times also scores victory points, or it can
be played as an action card with a special
effect. -ub
Queen Games
In Maharani, Wolfgang Panning turns the
two to four players into mosaic tile layers
doing the finishing work on the famous
Taj Mahal. In terms of the concept, he
opted for the idea of providing visual
equity in a tile-laying game by giving
every participant the same view from
above. To this end, the gameboard is struc-
tured in a rotationally symmetric manner
and has a rotatable rondel in the center.
This rondel serves to supply building
materials. On your turn, you orient it to
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
12
spielbox: Your new game, Farmerama,
from Ravensburger, looks like a mixture of
Ora et Labora and Agricola. How did it
come into being?
Uwe Rosenberg: Ravensburger decided
to release a board game based on the
world-famous browser game of that name
and was looking for an expert in agricul-
tural games. So they commissioned me to
have a look at the digital model. After
playing the on-line game several times, I
first developed a board game version, but
the company found it much too complex.
So I dismissed this idea for the moment,
but kept it in mind for future publications.
Instead, I presented four other, quite dif-
ferent concepts to Ravensburger. A mix-
ture of two of them matched the editors
ideas, so I used them to craft a target-ori-
ented fifth draft. Then, in cooperation
with the Ravensburger team, this version
was completely revised and slimmed
down two more times, so that the final
product ended up considerably simpler
and easier to grasp.
sb: The rotating rondel of Farmerama is
very similar to the one in Ora et Labora.
Does it have the same function?
UR: The rondel, per se, is my current pas-
sion. I would like to discover and perme-
ate the microcosm of the rondel in games.
I intend to try it out in every possible vari-
ation. A rondel section that is turned
upside down until you can harvest
something, should be called a Time
Wheel thats what Folker Jung called it
when he used it for the first time in
Circle. Without knowing this, I developed
it as well; I hadnt heard about this before
Ravensburger pointed it out to me. In
addition to the central rondel, each player
has his personal time wheel in Farme -
rama, which triggers stockbreeding and
harvesting. In contrast, the rondel in Ora
et Labora is an accumulation wheel. The
longer the players go without choosing a
specific product, the more that will
become available. At present, Im devel-
oping a new game in which actions,
instead of resources, are accumulated in
this manner. One could categorize it as a
kind of Le Havre for two players. Its not
100-percent certain yet whether it will be
published by Lookout.
sb: Why is that? Isnt that your company?
UR: In the beginning, there were three of
us. I developed the games, Marcel [Casa -
sola Merkle] did the graphic design, and
Hanno [Girke] was in charge of the busi-
ness matters. But now, for a long time, he
has been the sole owner, and Ive been
the house and farm author, so to speak.
sb: And what function does the central
rondel in Farmerama have?
UR: Since Farmerama had to be easy to
grasp, I reduced the rondel there to a
panel that indicates who has what yields.
The wheel shape helps connect the begin-
ning and the end of a common chart, so
that one could call it an infinite table.
sb: How is the balance between tactics
and luck in Farmerama?
UR: Principally, the player who bundles
things up better and more effectively, and
uses an action several times, will win.
There are almost no external random
elements. But since all players play an
action card at the same time, one per-
ceives that the luck factor is stronger due
to the imponderables of the other players
actions. This is indeed important for a
game that claims to work well in families,
because in this case, its always the same
people who play together. If it just came
down to the different abilities of the par-
ticipants, it would always be the same
ones who win or lose.
This spielbox interview was conducted
by Christwart Conrad.
Uwe Rosenberg Now with the Blue Triangle
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:11 Seite 12
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
13
situation from which he can no longer
free himself. Whoever manages to get out
may hand over one die to one of the com-
panions still inside the temple. A CD is
included; it is supposed to work as a timer
and fuels the suspense with a fitting
soundtrack. -lud
Ravensburger
Uwe Rosenberg (see also the interview),
who happily and successfully uses agri-
cultural themes in his creations, trans-
formed the on-line game Farmerama into
a board game. The players have five dif-
ferent possible actions. At the same time,
they select one action card and reveal it.
Following a classic production chain, they
have to seed, harvest and feed animals.
The animals progeny correspond to vic-
tory points. -cc
What are striking about this years games
are revisions of titles that got only mini-
mal distribution before. Only a few copies
of the Japanese Grimoire (One Draw, see
also issue 1/11, p. 36), presented at the
SPIEL 10, were available at the Japon
Brand booth. The enhanced version from
Schmidt, Grimoria, is lavishly equipped
and has an impressive graphic design. It
contains a hardcover spell book for each
of the magicians (now, up to five). By put-
ting a bookmark in their grimoire, all play-
ers mark, simultaneously and secretly,
which spell they have chosen. In addition,
the total number of the spell determines
the order of evalua-
tion; spells chosen
by several players
are principally en -
acted after those
that only one magi-
cian picked. Com-
pared to the original
game, the board has
been optimized and
many features and
details have been
modified. Spells, for
example, are now
irrespective of the
moment they were
played effective
during the whole
round instead of
only from the start
of the evaluation. This entails that the
devaluation of a spell is also effective if
several players have chosen the same
spell. Now the game no longer ends when
a player has acquired a specific number of
cards, but after a specified number of
rounds.
Lakota (Kosmos) was originally pub-
lished six years ago, under the name of
Tasso not in Germany, though, but in
Portugal. Each of the up to six players
tries to get rid of his squared sticks as
quickly as possible. You can either put
one stick on the gameboard, or atop two
other sticks that have been already laid
out and dont yet carry any other stick. In
the latter case, you take another turn. So,
if you want to prevent giving others an
advantage, you place a stick a sufficient
distance from the others. At some point,
this is no longer possible since the playing
area is limited.
In our fair report four years ago, we
described the two-player game Stack
Back. It has considerable similarities with
Tasso, as almost the same rules apply to
these two games. However, the sticks dif-
fer in length and color. Here, sticks of the
same color may not touch and not have
the same stick underneath. The playing
area consists of two square fields that
have a distance of a bit more than one
length of a small squared stick.
Similarly, minor efforts have been done
with the rules of Der grosse Wurf
(Ravensburger). In this game, players roll
Remakes
Anzeige
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 22.11.12 16:03 Seite 13
player loses. Now, the Ravensburger edi-
tors cleverly reversed the object of the
game, thus increasing the arc of sus-
pense. This way, Der grosse Wurf fol-
lows the top game Liars Dice and might
cause quite a stir as its younger brother.
Ystari reached back to two classics from
past decades. Dominique Ehrhard and
Duccio Vitales trading and conquest
game set in the Mediterranean, Serenis-
sima, formerly released by Eurogames,
will be published in a new version (see
also the interview with Cyril Demaegd).
Sherlock Holmes Dtective Conseil, a
reworking of the Spiel des Jahres title
from 1985, has already come out in
France. Logical errors have been cor-
rected, for instance, by modifying the
order of information; plus, one chapter
has been added. In just one month, 5,000
the dice in the box inlay the Dice
Arena and hope for identical numbers,
since they get these dice back. Dice show-
ing a special symbol are removed; all oth-
ers stay put in the arena. A player who
has no dice left is eliminated, and the last
player to survive through all rounds, wins.
At the SPIEL 09, author Dieter Nle pre-
sented his self-published Bleichwiese, but
with one considerable difference: the last
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
14
spielbox: In most Ystari titles, the letters
Y and S appear somewhere. Why?
Cyril Demaegd: This came up acciden-
tally. After the first titles had been
released, a fellow player realized this con-
nection, and I found it so funny that Ive
deliberately kept up this practice since
then. Meanwhile, it becomes difficult,
though, to find fitting titles, and so I
wont stick strictly to this stipulation. Any-
way, this only applies to Ystaris basic
product line.
sb: What other product lines are there,
then?
CD: So far, we have two more. First, there
is Ystari plus. In this series, we mainly
release games by our foreign colleagues,
whose products I distribute in France.
These games are adoptions that I hardly
invest any development work in. Agri-
cola, for example, is a mere translation.
For Magister Navis, I developed a two-
player version, plus a variant for three
players, that increases the tension on the
board that is too large for this number of
players. However, I would have found it
presumptuous to publish the games with
my modifications; therefore, Ive put my
ideas only on my website (www.ystari
.com).
sb: And why is Qubec part of the Ystari
plus series?
CD: This game comes from abroad, too,
released by the French-Canadian com-
pany Le Scorpion Masqu. Considering
that Ystari is not distributed in Germany
directly, but through our partners, it is
actually somewhat unusual that our dis-
tribution line appears in your country.
This exceptional situation is explained by
the French-language origin of the game.
Ystari Vintage is our retro line, in the
scope of which we republish great classics
that I like very much. Currently, Die
Frsten von Florenz and Taj Mahal are
among them.
sb: And what series will Serenissima be
included in?
CD: In this case, its difficult for me to
decide. Since I think very highly of this
game, it would actually be a great classic;
but since we made a lot of changes, it
doesnt quite fit in that line.
sb: Why did you make changes, and what
is different now?
CD: In the 1990s, when Serenissima
came out, it was outstanding. But in the
meantime, a lot happened and games
developed further. The author, Domi -
nique Ehrhard, contributed a few very
interesting ideas to improve the game.
The order of play, for instance, is much
more dynamic now. There are no phases
any more, but an activation rondel, indi-
cating which galley (that now shows a
number) has its turn; its owner then
chooses an action. Special dice are used
to decide the outcome of fights. The
game does not end after a fixed number
of rounds; instead, a progress marker is
advanced on a time scale by means of
cards, so that the exact moment the game
will end can only be estimated. Victory
points have been abolished, and in the
end, its the richest player who wins.
sb: How do you explain the success of
Sherlock Holmes Criminal-Cabinett?
CD: When the game came out more than
30 years ago, the time was not yet ripe for
it. Now, players who dont know anything
about the former edition tell me that they
perceive the game idea as fresh and
novel. The concept is very different from
the usual game. It has strongly coopera-
tive aspects, and has some resemblance
to the fantasy books that continue the
storyline in different directions, depend-
ing on the readers decision just without
the references to page numbers. We call it
an UPO, an Unidentified Playing Object.
sb: A year ago, issue 1 of the Ystari Mag-
azine came out, a free 20-page magazine
with news and information about Ystari.
When will you publish another issue, and
what is the intent behind it?
CD: It was actually a crazy idea. I just felt
like telling something. And of course, I
also want to use it for advertising in an
intelligent fashion. This is something I
want to implement not only on the web,
but also in a permanent medium such as
a magazine, which you can physically
take in your hands and take anywhere
with you in order to read it unhurriedly. I
didnt and still dont want to compete at
all with the established games maga-
zines. Regrettably, I was misunderstood
by the makers of JSP [the French game
magazine that recently ceased publica-
tion]. Im still uncertain as to when the
next issue will come out, because such an
undertaking is very time-consuming, as
you certainly know from your own experi-
ence.
This spielbox interview was conducted
by Christwart Conrad.
Ystari Threefold
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:11 Seite 14
copies have already been sold a big suc-
cess for the small company.
Christwart Conrad
Financially secure, loyal and easy to
seduce: Complete collectors are the com-
panies favorite customers. And favorites
need to be pampered, so that they get a
gleam in their eyes as soon as they learn
that they are allowed to buy not just one
Carcassonne expansion in 2012, but
seven! At the price of only six. Mini Car-
cassonne comes in the same box size as
The Count of Carcassonne and is avail-
able in various flavors such as The Flier,
The Ferries and The Robber. Each edi-
tion holds nine tiles, plus some wooden
components. One each of the tiles
belongs to a seventh set that, conse-
quently, the fan pockets entirely for free if
he buys all the minis An amazing gift
from heaven; thats why the set is fittingly
called Crop Circles.
Meanwhile, the Catan family
announces strange flying objects. In Star
Trek Catan, the hopelessly outdated
materials from the 20th Century on earth
have finally served their time. Nobody in
outer space uses retro substances such as
wood and bricks. Trekkies, modern and
authentic as they are, trade Dilithium
and Tritanium and use these resources
to build spaceships instead of roads. Set-
tlements become space stations; since the
robber has accepted a position with
Targi, in the meantime, the vacant posi-
tion is occupied by a Klingon ship. What
makes the settling in space most different
from the terrestrial one is: Each player
gets a character card, e.g., Sulu or
Spock, that he may use for minor special
privileges once or twice during the game,
after which he trades it for another card
from the stock.
Generally speaking, the motto of the
year 2012 seems to be: Weve played it all
before but not yet with dice! The
attempt at turning Bohnanza into a dice
game seems especially extravagant; after
all, the original wit of the game has a lot
to do with the order of cards in the play-
ers hand and the haggling that result
from this. And what can one say: no cards,
no card order. Nevertheless, Uwe Rosen-
berg manages to keep up the element of
simultaneous acting in Wrfel Bohn -
anza. Using seven dice, which show the s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
15
beans in different arrangements, players
have to roll combinations in order to com-
plete the orders on their harvest card, one
by one. After each roll, at least one die
has to be set aside. Everybody, even if its
not his turn, may use the results of the roll
for himself. The probabilities, stated
everywhere, and the order structure show
that a statistician has run amok here. The
orders have been arranged in such a way
that a player can complete no more than
three combinations per round. Therefore,
it would be stupid to collect beans for a
fourth combination when setting a die
aside, and in this special case, the stupid-
est bean farmer wont reach the top of the
beanstalk.
When it comes to varying ones own
oeuvre, the master of all
transformations and
man of a games thou-
sand faces, the great
Knizia, must be consid-
ered. Keltis Das Wr-
felspiel, in good Irish
tradition, is about chas-
ing cloverleaf-shaped
pieces ahead on five col-
ored tracks. Its not sur-
prising that the five col-
ors can be found on five
sides of the dice as well.
You may roll twice, but
then you advance on
only one of the tracks.
You have to choose one
of the colors rolled. If you land on a space
showing a symbol, then you gain a bonus.
And the sixth side of the dice? It shows
the wishing stones. If you roll two of
these, then you get a wishing stone tile.
And to own as many of these as possible,
is as in Keltis very desirable.
In Einfach genial Das Wrfelspiel,
players check off the six symbols on the
score pad as evenly as possible. You roll
your dice up to three times, but without the
option of setting dice aside. You may make
check marks on your own pad only if you
roll the same symbols that are showing on
the dice in front of the other players; all
players results stay put for one round. And
this little trick suffices to ingeniously carry
over a fundamental element of the tile-lay-
ing game into the dice game: the benefit
gained from other players results.
Die Tore der Welt Das Kartenspiel
follows the board game more closely than
was the case in Die Sulen der Erde Das
Kartenspiel. At the beginning of a round,
players draw an event card, read it out
loud, carry out the respective action, and
then orient the card in such a way that
every player receives income. Or, more
correctly, might receive. Because, again,
we are confronted with microelements of
medieval methods of torture. In the board
game, players discard one card every time
they used an action card. In the card
game, its quite similar. If, for example,
cloth is allocated to you as income, then
you play an action card that defines how
much cloth you get; in this case, the text
on the card would be insignificant. Alter-
natively, you may execute the action indi-
cated on the card, in which case you
remain without cloth. You collect com-
modities in order to exchange them for
other commodities or victory points, or to
pay your duties and avoid penalty points
at the end of the two chapters.
Since dice game distillates should be
quicker than the original, our zoo in
Zooloretto Wrfelspiel has rather a
provincial dimension and fits on a sheet
of a tear-off pad. The crocodile enclosure
provides just enough space for one ani-
mal. The lions can boast about having the
most space available five lions fit in
their royal area. For each animal housed
correctly, you get one point. Being the
first to fill an enclosure gives you bonus
points; overstuffing results in point
deductions, though coins can compen-
sate for minus points. As before, the ani-
mals get to us by truck. On your turn, you
roll two dice and place them on any load-
ing platforms, or you roll your truck into
the zoo and present the animals with
their nice new home.
Spin-offs
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:11 Seite 15
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
16
all in all, two types of
landscapes are still
fewer than three. Con-
sequently, there are
fewer complete areas
to develop than in
Mondo, and so the
scoring emphasizes
other things rather
than the many land-
scape areas. Homo
sapiens, as the engi-
neers of culture, con-
sider roads very impor-
tant, for example.
Especially if they are
long and connect wine
barrels to the tavern.
And mankind finds
mankind important. Especially if men
form majorities and are smart enough to
build the corresponding village, which
qualifies the respective group for scoring
in the first place. And Homo sapiens like
variety; thats why there are now four
instead of two world boards per player in
the game. What mankind doesnt like at
all, though, is thinner cardboard for the
player boards. Because mankind always
wants everything: thick and still more.
Udo Bartsch
Dice are the embodiment of luck-depend-
ent games and send a chill down any
strategists spine. But since alea, Ravens-
burgers prestige subsidiary, deals with
dice in its two new releases, we can actu-
ally consider it an overall dice trend of
this years spring. Saint Malo is reminis-
cent of Roll through the Ages. Instead of
a notepad, however, this game comes
with boards on which we mark the results
using a wipe-off pen. With tactical skills,
we build our town, using the symbols
rolled, but we must be wary of the pirates
who destructively stand in our way. It
helps to protect ourselves with a town
wall.
Even more luck-dependent as its
name suggests is aleas Vegas. Ban-
knotes of astronomical values lie on the
table next to the six game mats. Only dice
showing the same number can be put on
the corresponding mat. The player who
has placed the most wins. On the alea
complexity scale, Vegas just barely
reaches the first of ten levels.
The dice game mania
is ultimately topped by
Mensch rgere Dich
Nicht mal Anders.
Finally, the dice game
on the dice game! The
tiny gameboard looks
as if it had been washed
in excessively hot water;
the shrunken circuit
measures only 24
spaces, and not even
the little starting houses
fit on the cardboard.
Our pawns have to
freeze and wait next to
the gameboard until a
six catapults them
into the merciless
footrace. Normally, a six will be rolled
quickly, since players always roll four dice
and arrange them as in Cant stop
into two sets. One of the two dice pairs is
used to move a pawn; the second may be
forfeited unused.
Das Ligretto Fussballspiel, not
related by blood or marriage to Fussball
Ligretto from 2006, has been published
right on time for the year of the European
Soccer championship, which already
makes a significant difference to its pred-
ecessor released in the year of the world
championship. The second important dif-
ference is: In Fussball Ligretto, the fans
had to be able to read, whereas Das
Ligretto Fussballspiel requires mental
math. Five field cards, showing numbers
up to 25, are laid out between the oppo-
nents. Each player or team works from left
to right. Cards with values from one to ten
have to connect to the field so that their
total exactly equals the current field card
value. The players play their hand cards
as quickly as possible, forming two dis-
card piles. Only the top card of a pile may
be played. A player who manages to drib-
ble all the way to an opponents goal
then has to shoot into it, which is simu-
lated by a little puzzle-style task.
Dixit Jinx is the card game on the card
game. The 71 picture cards, printed on
both sides, show abstract images, e.g.,
yellow spots on a red background. Nine
images at a time are displayed in a 3x3
square. By means of a location card, the
clue-giver is allocated an image and gives
the other players a hint. For instance,
Uhm, yellow spots on a red background.
Each of the other players points a finger
at one of the pictures. As soon as one
player guesses correctly, the round ends.
This guesser gets one point; the clue-giver
scores points for all the incorrect guesses.
In the example mentioned, itll probably
be zero. So, as in Dixit, it is crucial to make
very vague statements. Even astrologers,
investment consultants and doctors can
still learn something from this game.
Donald X. Vaccarino is a man who
churns out expansions faster than butter.
As with Dominion, he seems to have quite
a few things in the mix for Kingdom
Builder. Again like Dominion, the expan-
sion follows a motto. In Kingdom
Builder: Nomads, the new victory point
conditions immediately take effect
instead of the end of the game. The
Ambassador means that a player scores
one point whenever he builds a settlement
adjacent to an opponents settlement.
Four new gameboards provide more loca-
tions and special functions, as can be
expected, but instead of castles there
are nomad spaces with nomad tiles. These
are stronger than the location tiles, but
they may be used in the game once only,
i.e., on your very next turn. Thanks to an
added player color, Kingdom Builder:
Nomads can be played with five people;
and knowing Mr. Vaccarino, that certainly
wont be the last of it.
Mondo Sapiens shows vividly what
happens after humans have subdued the
earth. Clonk! The animal world becomes
stunted, and there are just two, instead of
three, types of landscapes. Contrary to
reality, however, the desert disappears in
Mondo Sapiens, whereas the forest gets a
period of grace for now. That is nice, but
Dice Games
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:11 Seite 16
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
17
Tipover (ThinkFun) is pretty close to the
above-mentioned game in terms of visual
appearance and content, the difference
being that here one player, undisturbed
by others, may try to solve more and more
difficult tasks. His alter ego, in the form of
a plastic figure, uses differently high piles
of crates to proceed; it tips over these
piles in such a way that it can get to the
red target crate without touching the
ground. Originally developed by James W.
Stephens as an on-line game, Tipover is
now available in a new edition with 40
fresh tasks.
Swish, by Gali Shimoni and Zvi Shalem,
comes from the same company. It con-
tains a set of transparent cards showing
one dot and one hoop each in different
colors and different positions. Two to six
participants simultaneously try to spot
combinations of at least two cards on dis-
play that, one laid on top of the other,
show every dot encircled by a hoop of the
same color. To this end, the cards may be
turned according to their specific feature,
as known from On The Dot by Dominique
Bodin (Cocktail Games, 2006); in that
game, however, each player solves a com-
mon task using his own set of cards.
Could it be that the Ravensburger mar-
keting department got inspired by the
success of the Easy play games from
Schmidt Spiele? Be that the case or not,
the renowned company with the blue tri-
angle has now started its own Einfach
SPIELEN series so that every customer
instantly knows what he can expect (even
without English knowledge) and, ideally,
takes this as information and a challenge:
just play, play easy... In addi-
tion to a dice game, two tile-
laying games start off the
series; all of them are edited
by Stefan Brck, who is also
responsible for the ambitious
alea label.
Reiner Knizias Kreuz &
Quer is reminiscent of Take it
Easy. Accordingly, it provides
absolutely equal opportuni-
ties without casting out the
random factor. Any tile
revealed is binding for each
player; he immediately places
it on his own board in such a
way that it precisely extends
already laid-out pipe sec-
tions. Unconnected edge
pieces give you minus points,
Last year, Schmidt released a new series
of dice games equipped with a fancy dice
tower. Now other companies follow.
Amigo forgoes the elaborate tower and
suggests instead that the square box be
used as a dice cup. Piraten Kapern, a
translation of the Israeli Treasures or
Trouble, contains eight symbol dice and
over-exaggerates the distribution of
points. For a three-of-a-kind, you may jot
down 100 points on the score pad; for an
eight-of-a-kind (extremely rare), 4,000
points. One or 40 points would be more
straightforward, but less impressive. Dice
with skulls count zero; they may not be
thrown back into the dice cup. The play-
ing card that is flipped over at the begin-
ning of each turn makes for variety: It
gives you a minimum task, an additional
dice symbol, or the chance to add mon-
keys and parrots you have rolled as an
animal unit.
Wanzen Tanzen (also from Amigo)
seems somewhat more refined. It con-
tains five common dice, five bug cards
with up to five minus points, and task
cards; I need to complete the tasks by
rolling the right dice (combinations), and
if I succeed, I get victory points. If I wish
to re-roll the dice, then I get one baby bug
token; if I give up on a task, I have to take
two. These baby bugs, however, are a
problem only if I collect five of them. In
this case, I get the fully grown bug minus
card, and besides this, the other players
put all the baby bugs they received so far
back into the middle of the table. Rake in
plus points or avoid minus points? Either
one might lead to the win.
Bugs are also represented
among the six animals in
the very simple game Wr-
felwurst (Kosmos). It con-
tains symbol dice as well as
animal dice. Players try to
roll as many animals of one
species as possible, and mul-
tiply these by the lowest
number dice thrown. One
sausage counts 1 except
in the case of four sausages,
where they count 7.
Step by Step (Schmidt)
comes with six ordinary dice,
plus a board, chips and
many pieces. Here, after
rolling the dice, you have to
announce whether you want
to roll higher or lower num-
bers for the rest of your turn. If you suc-
ceed, then you may advance in the cho-
sen column on the gameboard. If you
want, then you may continue until you
possibly founder on the recognizable
Cant stop mechanism and lose every-
thing youve won. Harald Schrapers
In a time when it is considered obligatory
to have a dice version follow almost every
successful board game or card game, it is
downright refreshing to deal with these
platonic polyhedrals free from their func-
tion as random generators. QBQ (Huch!
& friends), which stands for Question
behind Question, provides an opportu-
nity to do so. Developed by a team of four
students at a university in Sweden during
a four-week project under the title
Design is a Game, it is supposed to
demonstrate the problems that usually
come up with the increase of staff in an
expanding enterprise. So much for theory.
During play, the two or four partici-
pants have to move their cubes four, ini-
tially from one edge of the gameboard
to the opposite one. For this, one cube at
a time is relocated in such a way that it
still keeps side-by-side contact to another
member of its group. Since this is not
restricted to just one level, players can
erect towers; such a tower, tipped over,
can strike opposing cubes that are in the
way and split up the group of those
cubes. Before you move, you may place
another cube, but smaller groups make
slow progress until they are connected.
Abstract Games
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:12 Seite 17
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
18
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
18
In Gravitas, both players get their own
set of number tiles with values from 1 to
3, and can shove them, one at a time,
onto the board at any place. In doing so,
they are allowed to change the position
of already placed tiles, but it is forbidden
to push them off the board. At one point,
a player scores for continuous rows of
three or four tiles of his color, and at
another, for all tiles that dont lie on the
edges. In the so-called number game vari-
ant, all groups of two or more tiles with
the same number are scored; in this case,
a group with all four tiles of one number
counts double. A neutral tile with the
value of zero always serves as the focal
point.
Pushing is the essence also of Repello
by Arne Holmstrm (Piatnik); here, how-
ever, the objective is pushing opposing
playing pieces off the board, since this
lets you collect points. Leaving one piece
of your own color behind, you can move
so-called stacks as many spaces as the
number on the first space that the chosen
moving direction indicates; at the edge of
the gameboard, they ricochet along the
angle of incidence. If your turn ends
directly next to another piece or stack,
then you may choose which of them is
repelled one space; this can cause chain
reactions that you try to use cleverly.
Christoph Cantzler, the author of Riff
Raff (Zoch), impressively demonstrated,
at the companys booth, what shaky
ground the participants of this game are
on. Despite the heavy swell, they try hard
to stow away their eight cargo pieces of
different shapes and sizes on the small
wooden boat. Utmost caution is advised
so that no part of the load starts sliding
and falls overboard. If you dont react
quickly enough to catch such items, then
they go into your inventory, to the other
players amusement. The technical requi-
sites of this load of loading fun are a card-
board wave crest with a wooden Cardan
joint on top.
Dexterity is also required in 4 Gewinnt
Tower (Hasbro). Here, the original task of
cleverly arranging four chips of ones own
color into a continuous row is reduced to
being the first to fling this amount of chips,
with the help of a catapult, into a funnel;
from there, they slide into a tower whose
windows indicate the score. L. U. Dikus
All International Toyfair Nrnberg report:
/sbw
as indi-
cated on the tiles. If,
in a moment of distress, you place
tiles upside down (in effect, downside
up), then you get minus points as well.
However, four minus points might rightly
make you feel like a topnotch contact-
maker and let you deride connection-
seekers with eleven or more minus points.
An optimal lay-out is also demanded in
5 vor 12 by Michael Schacht; a game that
is reminiscent of Racko (MB, 1956) and
Finito (Schmidt Spiele, 2008). Players
place randomly drawn tiles with numbers
from 1 to 20 on the 4 x 4 spaces of their
own board in such a way that ascending
number sequences are generated in each
row and column. Relocation is not
allowed; replacement is, but it slows a
player down. Tiles that are useless to a
player can be put face up on the face-
down stock, and in most cases, there will
soon be another player who is interested
in them.
A joint series from Pegasus and Ger-
hards Spiel und Design comes out with
two new games as well. Sia Doble follows
Sia Sola, a compilation of superb logic
solitaire challenges by Oliver Schaudt.
With the help of his co-author Hendrik
Simon, he transferred the movement prin-
ciple to a two-player game. A playing
piece may move to an adjacent unoccu-
pied space only if there is a little piece, a
so-called buoy, on one of the two intersec-
tions at the end of the dividing line. This
buoy floats to the unoccupied intersec-
tion on the line that has just been
crossed, as if it were sucked into the surg-
ing swell. This enables a player to make
new moves, but excludes others at the
same time. The object of the game is to
get two of three playing
pieces to the opponents
base line in this tricky way.
Puzzle of Oz was
invented by David Parlett; it
can be played solitaire or with
two players. Starting with the
four corner spaces of the star-
shaped gameboard, players
place randomly drawn playing
pieces in five colors in such a way
that these pieces dont end up
next to other pieces of the same
color. As soon as this is no longer
possible, the game ends. In the two-
player game, the player who has the
color of the last piece drawn loses, no
matter which of the players drew it. If it
is in the neutral color, then the player
who drew the piece loses.
Dieter Steins Mixtour, another new
game from Gerhards, starts on an empty
board. On your turn, you either place a
piece on an unoccupied space, or move a
piece or a tower of several pieces straight
across unoccupied spaces to another
piece or tower, provided the distance trav-
eled matches the number of pieces on the
target space. You are allowed to divide a
tower and move just its upper section.
Since the movement of pieces is not
restricted to pieces of your own color, ful-
filling the winning condition requires tac-
tical maneuvering; as soon as a tower of
five or more pieces has been built, the
player who owns the topmost piece of this
tower wins.
The two new thinking games by Reiner
Knizia, released by Intellego, are made
from wood, too. The objective of the wild
building activities in Singapur is to get a
view of more houses from your own side
of the gameboard than from the other
side. Both building tycoons avail them-
selves from a joint stock of face-down
blue and red blocks worth from one to
nine, four of which are always at their dis-
posal. If a block of the chosen color with a
lower value has already been laid out,
then the new block has to be put on top
of it. Otherwise, any unoccupied space
can serve as building ground. In terms of
its task setting, the game is reminiscent of
Cityscape by Sjaak Griffioen (Pin Interna-
tional, 2001); in that game, however,
blocks of different sizes can be placed at
the players discretion, and the intended
number of visible houses in each row is
determined freely.
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:12 Seite 18
06-19_nbg12_neu_en_js 21.11.12 14:12 Seite 19
B
eing the guiding principle for the
Benedictine order of monks, Ora
et Labora means Pray and Work.
That tells you what this game is about:
you are running a medieval, monastic
economy. Within the monastery there is a
desire for books, chalices, reliquaries and
the like, but if these wishes are to be met,
the monastery and its surrounding area
need to be producing the necessary mate-
rials, contain the necessary craftsmen
and be generating sufficient wealth. It is
a multi-layered economic system, and
your job is to build and manage it.
Each player begins with a small board
representing their initial holding of
land. It is divided
into ten card-sized
spaces, half of
which begin as for-
est and moorland.
During the course
of the game you will
be looking to clear
these to harvest
their resources and
to create space for
buildings. One of
your main aims in
Ora et Labora is to
acquire a collec-
tion of buildings
that work well
together. Of the
remaining five spaces,
two are vacant and
three already contain
buildings in the form of
a clay mound, a farm
and the cloister office.
These initial holdings give you access to
food, fuel, some building materials and
money, but, as in Agricola and Le Havre,
there is more to gaining any of them than
simply saying, Id like some clay this turn,
please. In those games supplies of each
resource build up in spaces on the board
until someone decides to take them.
When this happens, the supply falls to
zero before being reset to a basic
amount at the start of the next
round. It is essentially the same
idea in Ora et Labora, but instead
of piling up counters in spaces,
you have a dial on which sit
markers representing each
resource. A pointer is then moved
at the start of each round, and this
records both the games progress and the
amount currently available for each
resource. It is less fiddly than the old way
of doing things and also more flexible, as
the addition of a joker marker to the
others on the dial gives the system a neat
way of providing an extra supply of what-
ever is currently the most desirable item.
On each of your turns you take a single
action chosen from a list of three options.
The first is to fell trees or cut peat. This is
simply a matter of removing the relevant
card from its space on your board. It gives
you the current supply of wood or peat
and creates a new empty space on which
you can later build.
The second option is to erect a build-
ing. A number of these are available from
the start of the game, and others are
added as the game proceeds. For each of
them there is a required mix of building
A friend of mine described this new game from Uwe Rosenberg as Agricola
meets Le Havre, and for a short description that cant really be improved, as it
gives you a quick and reliable indicator as to whether or not this is the sort of
game that will interest you. If you liked those two, it is almost certain that you
will like this one as well. It is the same sort of game, and quite a few of the ideas
in it will be familiar to you from those earlier Rosenberg successes. However, you
shouldnt go from there to conclude that derivative implies superfluous. As
the same friend went on to say, there is nothing wrong with a designer reusing
ideas, especially when they are his own, provided the final result feels fresh and
new, and that is the case here. Ora et Labora is clearly its parents child, but the
challenges it presents are both different and interesting.
REVIEW
materials, and you submit them to get the
building. There are four building materi-
als in all -- wood, clay, straw and stone --
and three of them are among the basic
resources you can get from your initial
board. The fourth, stone, is harder to
come by in the early part of the game, but
can still be gained from the Stone Mer-
chant and the Builders Market. Later, as
the monasteries expand their reach, they
will gain access to quarries, and supplies
will become more plentiful. The other key
point about buildings is that, with
very few
exceptions, there is only one of each. You
can use other players buildings but will
have to pay the owner.
I Hiring Brother Cuthbert
The third is to place a clergyman into a
building and thereby activate it. If it is
your building, you use one of your own
monks; if it belongs to another player, you
pay them and use one of theirs. There are
tactical consequences that follow from
the difference between the two situa-
tions, but they are not major ones, and my
guess is that the thinking behind this rule
is that if your monastery wants a new reli-
quary, and if the best craftsman for this
sort of work is Brother Cuthbert from the
neighbouring Cistercian monastery, then
rather than send one of your own people
Ora et Labora
Unashamedly a Gamers Game
20-23_ora_aufbruch_en_js_korr 22.11.12 16:13 Seite 20
21
the game gives you. Another concerns the
monastery itself. Buildings fall into two
types: secular and monastic. The secular
ones, which are mainly to do with every-
day goods, can, subject to a few terrain
restrictions, go anywhere, but the monas-
tic ones have to be part of a single, con-
nected monastery complex. So in addition
to the spatial juggling you have to do
with the settlements, you also need to
ensure that your monastery has room in
which to expand. Neglect that, and you
will miss out on the opportunity to obtain
buildings that not only have high eco-
nomic values, but ones that produce
many of the most valuable artefacts. Uwe
Rosenberg does not like to make life easy
for his players.
Ora et Labora is unashamedly a
gamers game. There is a lot of informa-
tion to take in; the challenges it sets are
difficult; and the playing time at 2-3
hours is, by the standards of German
games, long. If your taste is for light, short
and uncomplicated games, you should
give it a wide berth. You are not part of its
target audience, and I doubt youd enjoy
it. Like Agricola, it does come with a set
of rules for a shorter version of the game
(with a playing time of about an hour),
but where in Agricola the shortened ver-
sion was described as a family game,
here all that is claimed is that it is shorter.
However, for those like me whose prefer-
ence is for heavier fare, Ora et Labora is
not one you should even think about
missing. This is a game with a good mar-
riage of theme and mechanisms, rich lay-
ers of strategy to be explored and, despite
the re-use of ideas from its two predeces-
sors, a wonderful freshness. It is a magnif-
icent achievement and, in my view, the
best new game of 2011.
However, having handed out that acco-
lade, I should
also point
with differing mixtures of forest, moor,
etc. The other two are coast and moun-
tains, both of which open up new possi-
bilities for what you can build -- shipyards
and harbours on the coast; quarries in the
mountains. You can buy an extra land tile
as part of your turn, but the cost goes up
as the supply diminishes and so getting
what you want at a price you can afford is
another of the problems that the game
sets.
I A fleeting chance to settle
All scoring happens at the end of the
game, and there are three parts to it. The
first is for money and high status goods,
and the second is for the economic
value of your buildings. The third is
for your settlements. These are vil-
lages, hamlets and market towns,
and they are what give Ora et Labora
its distinctive flavour. Four times dur-
ing the game, rounds acquire an extra
phase. These are the points when the
next batches of building cards become
available and they are also the points
at which you have an opportunity to
add a settlement to your board. Set-
tlements take the form of a special
set of cards, each of which has a
purchase price in units of food
and fuel. The chance to buy is a
fleeting one, so you need to
have been planning ahead for
several rounds: deciding which one you
can afford to buy and where best to put it.
Settlements are like buildings in having
economic values but unlike them in not
having special powers. These are not
places where you send your monks. How-
ever, they are vital because of that third
component of the scoring. Each building
and each settlement has, in addition to
its economic value, a second settlement
value, and in the final tally, for each of
your settlements, you add to your
score the settlement value both
of the settlement itself and of
each building or settle-
ment that is directly adja-
cent to it.
Planning to get valu-
able settlements into
good locations with
high-scoring buildings
next to them
is one of the
tough chal-
lenges that
along to his workshop, you pay Cuthbert
to make the reliquary for you. Of greater
importance is the fact that the building
must be one that is currently unoccupied.
Each player has three monks, and once a
monk has been placed into a building, he
stays there until all of his colleagues have
also been placed. So once a building is in
use, it is likely to be a few turns before it
is again available. Buildings are only acti-
vated at the point when the clergyman is
placed; you cant use them by merely
leaving someone there.
There is a great variety of buildings, but
the function of most of them is to enable
you to convert one type of item into
another. For example, in the French sce-
nario (there is also an Irish one) there is a
windmill, and sending someone here will
enable you to convert up to 7 units of
grain into flour and straw. On a subse-
quent turn this flour could be sent to the
bakery to be made into bread, which can
then be sold. Clay, which at the start of
the game you will just see as a building
material, can, once the cloister workshop
has been built, also be used to make
ceramics.
Mention of money brings me to the
next main component of the game: land.
Your initial allocation is probably
between a quarter and a fifth of what you
actually require in order to score well,
so you will need to buy more. It
comes in the form of tiles, which
you place next to your initial one.
There are four patterns. Two of
them look rather like
your initial tile, but
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
20-23_ora_aufbruch_en_js_korr 22.11.12 16:14 Seite 21
may be a little surprised to learn that
theres a Kontor not just in Amsterdam,
but also in Lisbon, Dublin and Saint
Petersburg. It takes two to three hours
to meet this victory conditions when
youre playing a full game with ten
tokens worth of wares, so theres also a
shorter beginner variant with only six
tokens, which doesnt use the Western
European part of the board.
This means that the board in front of
us shows the continent of Europe,
covered with the old familiar
hexes, from Lisbon to Bucharest,
from Palermo to Oslo. We start
off by settling somewhere in
Central Europe, where we estab-
lish our first three warehouses,
thereby gaining access to the hexes
that can provide us if the dice are
on our side with the old famil-
iar resources of wood, wool,
grain and ore, but also with salt.
So far, so good, the warehouses
are just like villages. But in addi-
tion to resource production, ware-
houses also control how and where
wares can be housed.
At set-up, we line up at the edge of
the board all the warehouses that will
be built during the course of play, and
then place a resource under each of
these. Only when a warehouse is built
onto the board is the ware beneath it
free for delivery. It still needs to be
transported though, which is why we
build our trade routes.
Trade routes look a lot like streets, but
they are more than just lines linking
one village or town to another
theres actually traffic on these
N
ow we are invited to set out on
the road with them as medieval
merchants and traders the
title Aufbruch der Hndler (AdH)
means something like The Traders Set
Out, though your guess is as good as
mine what any eventual English-lan-
guage edition would be called. Its an
invitation well worth accepting, since
while theres not much in the game
thats entirely new, there are interesting
variations and refinements.
Ill grant you that all the games in
the Catan line have their similarities,
but then, thats exactly what makes
them Catan games. We build over or
march across the hexes, and we roll
dice to obtain resources; we collect
cards accordingly, we swap and trade
them; we spend cards to build
roads, villages and towns. We
expand our territory and earn
those all-important victory
points almost without trying.
Thats enough explanation
though; there cant be a spielbox
reader out there who doesnt know at
least the bare bones of the Catan game
engine.
This new Catan variant AdH is
rather different. This time were
not even trying for victory
points, rather the aim of the
game is to offload our wares.
The first player to place down
all his wares in one
of the Kontors the
warehouses of
medieval Europe
has won the game.
Hardcore gamers
Yes indeed, its back to Catan once more! There must be many a gamer who
groaned loudly when Aufbruch der Hndler appeared. As we all know by
now, the good people of Catan soon found their island realm just a little too
small for them. They took to the sea and conquered other islands. Even this
wasnt enough for their ambitions, so that they headed off for the cities,
such as Nuremberg (in the German-only Die Siedler von Nrnberg) or
ancient Rome. They blasted off into outer space (and again, German gamers
are ahead of the rest with Star Trek Catan); they even settled the Stone Age.
A Full Evenings Game
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
22
out that certain aspects of the production
fall short of Lookouts normal high stan-
dards. The all-important player aid,
which tells you what all the buildings
do, when they become available
and how much they cost, has been
printed on paper rather than on
cardstock. I have read that this was
not the publishers intention, but it
happened and you, as the purchaser,
will have to deal with it, either by getting
them laminated or by buying some A5-
sized plastic sleeves. Those with less than
20/20 vision may also have problems
with the size of the print on parts of the
player aid and will certainly have diffi-
culty reading important information on
the building cards that are in front of
their opponents. As you become more
familiar with the game, your knowledge
of the cards will make this problem go
away, but in the short term you might find
it helpful to prepare a supplementary
player aid. The game does come with a
separate booklet giving detailed informa-
tion on all the buildings for both scenar-
ios, but this is too big to be used as a
quick reference. What beginning players
would find helpful is a short summary
telling them what buildings are available
and what they do. With that they would
be more aware of the range of opportuni-
ties that are available and thus will be
better placed to formulate a good strat-
egy. Stuart W. Dagger
REVIEW
Reviewer Playing appeal
Stuart W. Dagger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Udo Bartsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Christwart Conrad . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Stefan Ducksch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Matthias Hardel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Wieland Herold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Alan How . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Ora et Labora
Lookout Games
Uwe Rosenberg
Klemens Franz
14
about 12 and up
about 120180 minutes
about 43
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
Die Siedler von Catan Aufbruch der Hndler
20-23_ora_aufbruch_en_js_korr 22.11.12 16:14 Seite 22
roads, in the form of the Kaufmannszge,
the caravans. These are fueled by salt,
with one cards worth taking you along
three roads. When a caravan has reached
an empty warehouse belonging to
another player, it can deliver one of its
wares there.
We should now mention the mer-
chants, Hndler, whose job it is to found
the new warehouses. They can leap from
place to place without needing to use the
roads, but they have to spend grain.
Unlike the caravans, merchants vanish off
the board once their job is done and have
to be bought back from your reserve stock
every time.
I Gold standard defaults
Essentially, that describes all the game
innovations of AdH, but theres one more
detail I mustnt forget to mention:
gold. We get gold coins whenever
we found a warehouse in a port
city. Mechanically, this is a
counter-balance for the fact that
waterfront warehouses have
fewer resource-producing hexes
around, so that the builder can expect to
get fewer resources through the game.
Gold is also the default result of the dice
rolls if a roll leaves us without any actual
resource, we receive one gold instead.
Gold is more than just second best, its
worth something in its own right. Two
gold coins buy any one resource you
need. This makes the gold coin that we
get as a prize for linking a new city into
the trade route very welcome indeed.
However, in AdH, just as in any other
Catan game, good things come to those
who wait, meaning that first you must
spend wood and ore to open up new
trade routes, then send new merchants
off on their travels with wood, wool and
grain, or put a new caravan onto the
roads with wood, ore and salt.
Thanks to gold, AdH doesnt depend as
strongly on player-to-player trades and
card swaps as vanilla Settlers. However,
since you need your rivals warehouses if
you are
to get ahead, players
depend on one another
nevertheless. When sev-
eral warehouses are
standing close at hand in
a compact core area, as at
the beginning of the
game, its all about speed.
The real challenge of the
game lies in not ending up
as a permanent runner-up
at this stage. You can always
find an empty spot to build your own ware-
house, but its much harder to find an
empty warehouse belonging to one of your
rivals where you can offload your wares.
Obviously, you should not build your ware-
houses right under your opponents noses.
A merchant who strikes out to the fur-
thest corners of Europe needs to invest a
certain amount of grain. In
return, though, an oppo-
nent who wants to trek
out there to deliver a
ware will need to
spend a salt or two to
do so quite apart from the
fact that hell also need to build the
trade routes or pay the toll (1 gold per
road you travel that is not your own) to
make the delivery. However, there are also
dangers in driving your rivals out to the
edges of the continent. These far-flung
hexes dont have their own pre-printed
yield numbers, but are only assigned
numbers (as cardboard chips) once an
adjacent warehouse is built, and there are
not as many of these chips as there are
free hexes and theyre up for grabs. It
may well happen that you are sitting
pretty on a 5 or a 9 somewhere out on the
edge, then one of your rivals swipes it
from you, with no possibility of redress. A
painful blow to your resource production.
AdH is a refinement on The Settlers of
America (see spielbox 6/2010), which
appeared in the USA from Mayfair and
plays through the great age of railway-
building from the East
Coast to
the West. Does that make this a rail-
way game as well? The designer says
no. Klaus Teuber gives us an appendix to
the rulebook containing various tactical
tips and a detailed account of the histori-
cal roots of Aufbruch der Hndler, which
lie with the great merchant dynasties of
the Fuggers and the Welsers, as well as
with the Hanseatic League and the mer-
chant houses of Italy. Using this
medieval theme has meant a few
compromises with (todays)
geography, but the end result
is a thoroughly successful
game. In my view, Aufbruch
der Hndler is an engaging
evenings play and could well be the
most challenging Catan variant to date.
Edwin Ruschitzka/sw
Reviewer Playing appeal
Edwin Ruschitzka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Christwart Conrad . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
L. U. Dikus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Stefan Ducksch* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Matthias Hardel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Wieland Herold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
KMW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Harald Schrapers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
* Playing appeal rating for the short
game. The full-length version has some
serious down-time.
Die Siedler von Catan
Aufbruch der Hndler
Kosmos
Klaus Teuber
Michael Menzel
34
about 12 and up
about 75150 minutes
about 35
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
20-23_ora_aufbruch_en_js_korr 22.11.12 16:15 Seite 23
and they fall under seven
headings: harvest, family,
crafts, market, travel, council
chamber, and church. At the
beginning of each round,
cubes are drawn from a bag and then a
set number is distributed to each area.
Most of the cubes are influence ones, but
mixed in among them are a few that rep-
resent plague.
I You cant have all of them
On your turn, you choose an area,
take one of the cubes from it, and
perform the action. If the cube is an
influence one, then you store it for
later use; if it is a plague, then you
have to advance your time marker.
The round continues in this way until
all the markers have been taken. This is
a mechanism for choosing actions that
I have not seen before, and it works
very well. A good approach to design-
ing strategy games is to present
players with a range of desirable
choices, while making it clear
that they cant take all of
them. Here you have to bal-
ance the desirability of the
actions themselves, the
availability of cubes of
particular colors if your
future plans are to
work, and the scarcity
of cubes of any sort in
many of the spaces.
As for the actions
themselves, harvest
gives you grain,
which can be sold at
the mill or used
directly as a barter
item in various
The picture on the box shows a medieval village. In the center, a
young couple in their wedding finery gaze lovingly into each others
eyes, while in the foreground, two remarkably clean and tidy young
boys listen with rapt attention to the tales of the old wheelwright,
who is also remarkably clean and tidy. In the background is a
church, a windmill, and a horse-drawn wagon. The only thing miss-
ing from this Disneyesque scene is the Fairy Godmother. Fortu-
nately, when you reverse the box and read what is written under-
neath, you find a story that is less dewy-eyed and saccharine. Vil-
lage is a game about families competing to make a name for
themselves in a medieval and rural setting.
transactions; family is the way to gain
the new family members that you will
need as the old ones die off; and crafts
is a collection of buildings where you can
gain various items such as horses, wagons
and ploughs. Wagons are needed if you
are going to send someone off on their
travels, while horses, oxen and ploughs
boost production from the harvest. With
all these craft items, there
are two methods of acquisi-
tion. Either you
can send
some-
one to
work
Race for Six Feet Under
REVIEW
Village
T
he idea is that families consist of
multiple generations. New people
are born, old ones die, and what
each individual does during their lifetime
has an effect on the well-being and repu-
tation of the family as a whole. You stand
that much taller if your grandfather was
the mayor or your uncle the priest.
Most of the actions in the game are
paid for using a variety of currencies. In
addition to the obvious one of money,
there are four types of influence that
are represented by different colored
cubes, and the interesting
one of time, which each
player tracks on a small per-
sonal board, representing
their farmyard. The track is a
circular one of 10 spaces,
and when you undertake an
activity that requires time as
part of its payment, you advance your
marker. The sting in the tail, and the most
novel of the games ideas, is that when-
ever you complete a lap,
one of the older mem-
bers of your family
dies. The use of time is
thus not just a gim-
mick, it is helping to
drive the narrative,
and forcing players
to plan ahead and
make sure that they
have a new genera-
tion lined up to
take the place of
the old.
The actions
themselves are
tied to various
areas of the
main board,
24-25_village_en_js 21.11.12 14:24 Seite 24
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
25
you ought to be
using it in the way
that you are using
the other curren-
cies, efficiently, and yet to be
competitive in the village
chronicle section, you have to
do the opposite. It is also
completely out of keeping
with the games theme to
have a situation where you
regard visitations of the
plague as being no bad
thing.
Village is a well-pre-
sented game with a
board that makes all the
various costs admirably
clear. It is also 90% of
the way towards being
a very good one.
Unfortunately, that
last 10% is a case of the extra
ingredient that spoils the dish. If they
were going to include the notion of a vil-
lage chronicle, then they needed a good
idea to make it work, and to maintain the
coherence of the story. The idea they
chose was lazy and bad, which is a shame,
as the theme and all the other ideas are
good.
Stuart W. Dagger
track. This final scoring area is
the village chronicle, a good
enough idea in itself, but one
which has been realized in such
a way as to make nonsense of much of
what has gone before. The idea is that the
achievements of its members bring honor
to a family, and to that end, we are given
an area into which are placed the dearly
departed. It is divided into sections,
according to what careers they followed
in their life, and spaces are strictly limited.
In a 4-player game, there are just 15
spaces. You
gain 4 VP if you
get 3 family
members into
the chronicle, 7
VP for 4, and an
impressive 12
VP for 5. Do the
math, and you will see that this is a very
competitive section. And how do you get
people into the chronicle? Simply by hav-
ing them die, so this section of the scoring
is no more than a race to the grave, which
is macabre.
I Taking care of granny
I come from a family whose attitude
towards its relatives stopped well short of
sentimentality, but even we would have
regarded thinking that went along the
lines, The churchyard is getting full and
so we need to get granny underground
before all the places are taken, as being
somewhat bad form. Yet, that is precisely
how you need to think in this game. The
entry criterion of early death, which most
of us would regard as a misfortune rather
than an achievement, also calls into ques-
tion the concept of time as a currency and
of plague cubes as a bad thing. The rule
book describes time in this way, and so
there, in which case
you will be expending
time, or you can buy the
items by using grain in one
case and by certain combina-
tions of influence cubes in the
others.
The other four areas are the
places where you gain victory points
for the market action. At the start of
each round, a number of tiles will have
been placed in the market, and when the
market day is called, players have the
opportunity to take
them. It works
on a barter sys-
tem, with such
offers as 6 VP
for a horse and a
plough and 3
VP for three bags
of grain. There is also a time and cube
cost for each transaction, other than
the first one, by the player who
called the market day by taking
the cube from this space. As else-
where in the game, timing is
important.
The travel section of the
board shows six towns con-
nected by a network of roads.
Each road shows the cost
(wagon, time, cubes) that you
must pay in order to travel along it,
and at the end of the game, you will
gain victory points for the number of
towns that your family members have
visited. The other two areas, the church
and the council chamber, also follow
this pattern of first sending a family
member there, and then having
them progress, though with these two
it is up through a hierarchy rather than
across a map. As with the travel
section, there is a cost to be
paid for each advance, and vic-
tory points to be gained for
your positions at the end of
the game.
So far, so good. Up to this
point, we have a game which
has a good story line and
mechanisms that are in har-
mony both with the story and
with each other. However, we
have not yet finished. There
is a fifth scoring area, and at
this point, as far as I am con-
cerned, the train leaves the
Reviewer Playing appeal
Stuart W. Dagger . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Christwart Conrad . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
L. U. Dikus*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 9
Wieland Herold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
KMW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
Edwin Ruschitzka. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
* Equally courageous and successful
employment of the grim Reaper as a
natural consequence of ageing and
disease.
Village
eggertspiele/Pegasus
Inka und Markus Brand
Dennis Lohausen,
Hans-Georg Schneider
24 (for two )
about 12 and up
about 90120 minutes
about 30
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
24-25_village_en_js 21.11.12 14:24 Seite 25
and quantities of building materials. The
more showmen we convince to set up in
the park, the better our own revenues
become.
As for how the game operates,
everything is well thought out. Every
player has his own board, on which
the three train cars are shown. Each
car has four compartments, but only
three are occupied by performer
tokens. If a showman leaves a car,
vacating the space where the token
was, you can see the type of income
generated from then on. Depending
on the car, this can either be attrac-
tion points you could just as well
call them victory points, since they
decide the outcome of the game
or building materials or money. As
there is always at least one open
compartment in each car, a mini-
mum income is guaranteed.
The train board also displays
which and how many building
materials we need for the con-
struction of our fairground
stalls. The materials are the red and white
cubes that are drawn randomly from the
bag or simply selected.
I Policemen for sale
To build a stall in the amusement park
is one of three major actions that we
can take when it is our turn. A second is
developing new building lots in the park.
This costs money, but also gives us,
depending on the area, some sort of
immediate income. The third possibility is
to build major attractions, the kind that
make an amusement park truly enjoyable:
a roller coaster, bumper cars, a wild water
ride, and the like. Again, for this we need
building materials.
We dont have to pick just one of the
three main actions, we could choose to do
M
ichael Schacht has taken up the
theme of the early days of
Coney Island, if only in name.
His amusement park could really be any-
where. All you need is a gated green lawn
thats divvied up and transferred onto the
game board. Gradually, the parcels are
developed and can then offer up to four
attractions. Well, attraction is used
lightly, because at first there can only be
minor timewasters set up on the site. A
weightlifter flexes his muscles, an ice
cream vendor provides refreshment, and a
fortune teller in her tent promises
glimpses into the future. These characters
are members of showbiz families and are
represented by us, the players.
Each of us has been assigned our own
board, made up of three old-fashioned
train cars. These are home to
nine representatives of
the traveling people
who want to set up
booths in the amuse-
ment park. To con-
struct the booths,
we need differ-
ent types
The peninsula at Brooklyns southern end looks back on an eventful history. In
the 19th Century when Coney Island was still an island the masses discov-
ered it as a beach resort. To provide diversions, race courses, carousels, and roller
coasters were built. Establishments of various kinds provided more amusement.
Until the Second World War, the area was considered the largest amusement
park in the world. Then the glory faded.
REVIEW
them all and in any order; in principle, we
can only choose each option once a turn,
but in certain conditions, we can carry
them out multiple times. Theres more: in
the park, there are individuals who offer
up their services for us to use as sec-
ondary actions, mostly ways to barter.
For example, we can buy a policeman and
with his help trade an attraction point for
a building material at any time, as long
as the officer is with us. Unfortunately, he
can be bought away from us by other
players. But buy is the wrong word here,
since the money spent doesnt go into our
pockets, but to the bank.
We have to say a few words about the
great attractions. They can only be built
where there are already fairground stalls.
That is, the big rides displace the small
stalls. The small ones are dismantled, and
the performers return to their homes
with the unpleasant consequence that
they then reduce our recurring income.
Still, dismantling them gets attention,
and thus our points multiply. And the per-
formers can also be returned to the park
to start fresh somewhere else. Even other
One More Amusement Park
Coney Island
26-27_ConeIsland_en_js 21.11.12 14:27 Seite 26
The journalist is also
desired. With his help we
can buy a newspaper
(which, amazingly, does
not cost money, but a
building material).
Newspapers can either
get us victory points at
the end of the game, or we
use them during play to repeat
actions, a possibility that one
learns to appreciate.
There are many opportunities
to earn points, and it pays to fol-
low the actions of other players.
After all, we are building the
amusement park together. To
try out all the different strate-
gies will take several games.
However, each game takes a
while, too. The box promises a
playing time of 30 to 60 minutes. Were
not the fastest thinkers, but also not
brooders. In nine four-player games, we
never succeeded to play in under 80 min-
utes, which is a bit too long for what is
being offered here. Thus, our enthusiasm,
unfortunately, remained restrained.
KMW/sb
Following Zooloretto and Aquaretto,
Michael Schacht has once again turned a
free time excursion into a game with
Coney Island. Aside from the theme,
though, the new game has nothing in
common with its predecessors. In fact, it
was not originally intended to be about a
theme park at all, as Schacht revealed in
an interview. Instead, he wanted to
rebuild Rome after a fire. But Rome is
already the subject of several games on
the market, and the publisher was looking
for a theme that would appeal to
families.
The thematic makeover succeeded,
and the game components have the
high quality we by now expect from
Argentum. As we build up our
theme park, there are many loving
details to discover as long as you
have good eyesight or a magnify-
ing glass. And the author has bal-
anced the numerous play details
with each other. The more expen-
sive it is to bring a showman into
play, the more useful the income
they will generate. The sooner a
major attraction is built, the
more attraction points it pulls in.
Still, the life of the traveling
people in an amusement park is
defined by hardship, with a lack
of a little bit of this and a lot of
that. Revenues are scarce the
author has seen to it that you
can only put a little money
aside for a rainy day. And luck
can play nasty pranks. Namely, in the
income phase, the building material
cubes are drawn blindly from the bag. If it
is the wrong color, the performers must
remain in their trailers. Its a real hassle
when this happens a number of rounds in
a row. The fortune teller and two of her
colleagues allow a player to choose build-
ing materials but only after they have
opened their businesses. And for that, of
course, you need the right building mate-
rials. The only way out is to invest money
in the patron, for with his help you can
swap building materials. Accordingly, he
is highly sought after. And if two players
constantly draw the wrong color from the
bag, it becomes a scramble for the patron
and money.
players
booths can
be built over they
must be, sometimes, since the big attrac-
tions indicate if the dismantled stalls
have to belong to one or more players.
Another problem: A roller coaster, for
example, extends over four building
spaces, and can only be built once four
performers have set up shop side by side.
These four also have to belong to at least
two different families. But when it is
finally finished, the coaster brings its
builder at least half a dozen attraction
points.
I No glory for Rome
Fine, I get it: The big attractions drive
my little people out of the park and ruin
my regular income. Well, then Ill just
send them to the remote corners and
leave them there to set up their stalls,
where they will not as quickly or maybe
not at all be built over. Nice idea, but
the author of the game punishes players
with this idea by subtracting points for
each booth left in the park at the end of
the game. To end the game, there are sev-
eral potential conditions, only one of
which is sufficient to finish things off.
Reviewer Playing appeal
KMW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Nicola Balkenhol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Udo Bartsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
L. U. Dikus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Stefan Ducksch* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Wieland Herold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
* Smooth and round. So much so that
the game doesnt spark.
Coney Island
Argentum
Michael Schacht
Dennis Lohausen
24 (for two: )
about ca. 10 and up
about 3060 minutes
about 30
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
27
26-27_ConeIsland_en_js 21.11.12 14:27 Seite 27
In the game, however, there are still
plenty of resources available. Hunters
and gatherers procure food from land and
sea at any time, so they can make offer-
ings when erecting a statue. There is
enough wood to cut for the transport of
these Moai, though sometimes with diffi-
culty. On the other hand, the number of
priests, who provide only glory, increases
never-endingly. But the end is near, and
often brings a rude awakening.
I Completion by Depletion
All this is realized in an invigoratingly
innovative fashion through an easily com-
prehensible card game. For example,
when you expand your personal card dis-
play, you increase your influence over the
various inhabitants, and activate them
during the same turn. After you replenish
your card hand at the end of your turn, a
scoring round begins based upon the
most recently uncovered card of the gen-
eral display stack from which you drew.
The other players may also
score if they have
the same card
type in their
personal dis-
play. Whereas
hunters and
gatherers pro-
vide only one of
their specific
kind of food,
lumberjacks,
priests and Moai
benefits increase
for each addi-
tional one a
player possesses. In
addition, a player gets a
bonus if he has at least two repre-
sentatives and the sole majority of
the scored type.
W
hereas the choice of the title
might be unfortunate, the
themes implementation fits
and is felicitous in terms of play. Rapa Nui
(better known as Easter Island) is the
desert island in the nearly infinite watery
wasteland of the Pacific. Its inhabitants
reduced the tree population to such a
degree for moving the monumental stone
statues that it resulted in soil erosion that
destroyed their cul-
tures agricul-
tural founda-
tion.
At first, Reinhold Wittig was understandably indignant finding a game called
Rapa Nui among last falls new releases from the Kosmos company. The reason:
He created his game with the same title in his Edition Perlhuhn product line in
2005; it is a dice-placement game that he developed with Ingo Althfer. One
year later, the Giseh company released a version for an extended number of play-
ers. The Kosmos editors could have easily looked on-line at Luding or
BoardGameGeek to check if this title had been used before and if so, find out
whether it was still subject to work title protection. Considering their long-term
good relationship, however, the matter could be resolved with a formal apology.
REVIEW
A dilemma can develop because
by determining the type of card to
be scored, you give the next player
access to this card which may ben-
efit them. This cannot be entirely pre-
vented since players can replenish up
to three cards in their hand (they are
allowed to lay out more than one card
of the same type). Even the surcharge
of one wood for each additional card
seems acceptable.
By taking more cards, you accelerate
the expansion of your own display, receive
more choices for the upcoming scoring,
and prevent the scoring of the first card
(and maybe the second card) picked up.
In the two-player game, in most cases, it
makes sense to spoil such possibilities for
the opponent and content yourself with a
less useful card. In a game with more
players, this strategy results in unneces-
sarily impairing your strength in relation
to the others.
In addition to glory points for Moai and
priests during the interim scorings, each
Moai gives you another four points at the
end of the game. The game ends when a
completely depleted column of the gen-
eral display has to be replenished, and
the draw pile is used up in doing so
(which can be an intentional tactic). The
types and amount of stored food are also
important for the final scoring. Since a
card types value is determined by
the number of them lying on the
Stone of Sacrifice, players are in a
permanent dilemma: The higher
No Good Without Wood
Rapa Nui
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
28
28-29_rapanui_en_js 21.11.12 14:34 Seite 28
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
29
course of the
game. Keeping count will not be to any-
bodys liking anyway, and the face down
sacrifice cards increase the uncertainty.
So, sacrificing a type of card that may be
represented less frequently increases this
types value for the final scoring, or you
can waste valuable cards to improve your
own position, which can lead to com-
pletely different results in the final scor-
ing.
Even though this might be considered
a bit unsatisfying and give rise to going
one better, it is amazingly enough
nothing that could vitally impair the play-
ing fun you had before. L. U. Dikus/sbw
and you have not
invested in just a
single type that turns
out to be worthless
because it was the low-
est amount sacrificed.
The Rapa Nui rules are
easy to comprehend, even
though the connections
do not completely become
apparent in the first game.
It plays briskly and has lit-
tle down time,. as all play-
ers are involved in all the
scorings and have to keep
track of the development of everyones
display. Since the general display and the
order of cards are different in every game,
flexibility and tactical skills are in
demand. The game remains suspenseful
until the end, no matter how many play-
ers participate.
The technique of determining the scor-
ing by the card(s) picked is a real novelty.
In contrast, the principle of deliberately
taking the first and sometimes also a sec-
ond card from different columns and
immediately placing them in ones per-
sonal display previously came up in Das
Super-Blatt by Sid Sackson (F. X. Schmid,
1992).
The dilemma with the evaluation for
the final scoring is already known from
other games. For instance, in Peer
Sylvesters King of Siam (Histogame,
2007), a player can increase a factions
influence by sending for one of its follow-
ers from an embattled province, weaken-
ing this faction there. And if a player in
Kings Breakfast by Alan R. Moon and
Aaron Weissblum (Abacusspiele, Rio
Grande Games, 2003) wants to
score, he collects as many cards as
possible of the high-quality
dishes, but not more than the
king.
In contrast to
these two refer-
enced games
with their com-
plete informa-
tion of the rele-
vant limit values, in
this game it is hardly
possible to assess cor-
rectly how many dif-
ferent types were
offered in sacrifices during the
the number of
them on the Stone of Sacrifice, the less
available to collect for scoring in your
card display.
I Covert Sacrifice
Zealously erecting Moai, which triggers
a round of sacrifices, gives you an advan-
tage. Aside from placing your personal
sacrifice card face down (other players
play them face up), you may add one
more card of your choice from the general
supply. A certain balance can be reached
only by buying additional sacrifice cards;
their initial high price in wood decreases
with each of your own hunters and gath-
erers card of the respective type. Since
five wood in the final scoring gives you
only one glory point, but cards of the
most valuable kind are worth three points
each, almost every purchase pays off.
That is, provided you have enough wood
left no major investment is
coming up,
Reviewer Playing appeal
L. U. Dikus . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Nicola Balkenhol*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Udo Bartsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Christwart Conrad . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Matthias Hardel** . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
KMW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Harald Schrapers . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
* Even with two players, there is a lot of
luck involved; with four players, however,
I feel I have been played.
** Appealing to play, even though the
outcome depends on chance to a great
extent. Interestingly enough, tactical
objectives (majorities in fruit produc-
tion) and strategic objectives (high
values of the fruits stored) differ
diametrically. If you strive for a majority
of fruits in order to optimally profit from
the distributions, youll have a lack of
allies: The respective fruit will not be or
hardly be sacrificed by the other players
and therefore be worth little or nothing
in the end of the game.
Rapa Nui
Kosmos
Klaus-Jrgen Wrede
Martin Hoffmann
24 (for two: )
about 10 and up
about 35 minutes
about 15
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
28-29_rapanui_en_js 21.11.12 14:34 Seite 29
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
30
SPIELBOX EDITION
Navegador: Pirates & Diplomats
This expansion adds two strategic ele-
ments to NAVEGADOR. The pirate can use
ships to plunder colonies on the board
by selling goods from these colonies at
the market. The diplomat, thanks to his
negotiating skills, is able to use another
players colonies and factories instead of
his own at the market. The pirate pro-
vides an additional source of income,
especially to players with many ships
but only a few colonies or factories. In
contrast, if another player has an excep-
tionally big market potential, the diplo-
mat becomes of particular interest
because he can use this potential for
himself.
Rule changes
In the beginning, the six playing cards (3
pirates and 3 diplomats) are put next to
the gameboard (at the privilege gallery)
ready for use; this is called the Display.
Changes of the game rules apply to three
actions:
Privilege
If you are on the Privilege space, you
may instead of taking a privilege per-
form one of the three following actions:
take a pirate from the display and put
him next to your own players sheet,
with the active side face up. Cost: Take
1 of your own ships off the board and
put it into your supply;
take a diplomat from the display and
put him next to your own players
sheet, with the active side face up.
Cost: Reduce the number of workers as
marked on the board by 1;
turn one of your own pirates or diplo-
mats from the inactive to the active
side.
Market
If you have an active pirate or diplomat,
you may in addition to your action use
one of these cards on the Market field
(and turn it onto its inactive side). This
allows you to do the following:
Pirate: In addition to your factories and
colonies, you may sell one resource each
from any un-owned colonies on the
board. The precondition, however, is that
you have a ship in the corresponding sea
region for each colony you use.
Diplomat: Instead of your own
colonies and factories, you
use those of another
player. That means you use
this players colonies for sell-
ing goods, and his factories
for processing goods.
Sailing / Navegador card
When exploring a sea region
marked with the token for a
double loss of ships, you take
this token into your supply.
Victory points
In the final scoring, the cards count as fol-
lows:
each pirate: 1 victory point for each of
your own ships on the gameboard
and 2 victory points for each double loss
of ships token for that you collected
each diplomat: 1 victory point for each
of your own workers
Variant
To get used to the expansion or simply as
a general variant, the number of pirates
or diplomats a player may own can be
limited to one each.
PD-Verlag and spielbox wish you a lot of
fun with this expansion, which is based on
an idea by Lars Brgging.
Example of how to use a pirate with the Market action
Red owns the colonies and factories as shown below. If Red uses
the pirate for the Market action, he can additionally sell 1 sugar
from Bahia (there is only one colony) and 1 gold from Guin
(here, he has only one ship). So, all together he can sell 2 sugar for
50 Cruzados each plus 3 gold for 40 Cruzados each. In addition,
he can use the orange-colored factory to process spices; in this
case, he gets another 30 Cruzados. This amounts to a total of
250. If the player had 2 ships in Guin, he would have been able
to sell 2 additional gold, i.e., 5 overall.
30_Navegador_Piraten_en_js 21.11.12 14:36 Seite 30
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
31
The Success of David Parlett
author of 21 books, among them the Pen-
guin Encyclopedia of Card Games (1979);
Family Card Games (1984, written by Par-
lett under the pseudonym P. R. Jackson);
the Oxford History of Board Games
(1999); the Oxford A-Z of Card Games
(2004); plus revised and repackaged edi-
tions and foreign editions in Spanish,
Hungarian and Japanese (as well as a
German translation of two games on his
website, published by Bambus Verlag in
2008). He authored a series of Teach
Yourself books for
card games, and has
written what some
consider the most
comprehensive book
of solitaire (patience) games ever pub-
lished (The Penguin Book of Patience,
1979). As a film enthusiast, he takes
great pride in staging card games for
period dramas in film and television; he
taught various actors Whist, Pope Joan
and Bezique for their performances in
BBC-TV productions and stage plays. This
consummate, mild-mannered British
game researcher even looks and sounds a
little like Michael Caine, his favorite
screen actor (both are from South Lon-
don). Yet David Parlett is known the world
over primarily for a singular achievement:
Hare and Tortoise. But more on that
later.
David Parlett is an inexhaustible writer,
having penned many articles in addition
to his books. He began writing in 1972
for Games and Puzzles magazine, shortly
after it premiered. By then, he had
already designed what he calls his most
successful card game, Ninety-Nine, which
was produced in 1968, and is now in the
public domain (which is often the case
with games using generic cards). He has
invented dozens of card games since. He
cites Bugami as probably the best of his
other games. Another recent favorite is
Parity, which, like many of his games, is
on his website, but has never been in
B
ut its more than just his love of
games and his inventiveness that
make David Parlett a most fasci-
nating person. His interests and talents
cover such individual things as the
music of composer Sir Arnold Bax
(18831953); the poems that made up
Carl Orffs choral work Carmina Burana,
which he translated into, as he put it,
singable English verse; and the novels
of Jane Austen, which he reread, noting
down all the mentions of card games.
According to Parlett,
her novels are rich in
references to card
games and she evi-
dently knew what she
was talking about. He also enjoys pho-
tography which he called a quicker,
less messy substitute for the painting he
still dabbles in. He continues to do pen-
and-ink landscape sketches.
However, his Renaissance nature aside,
David Parlett is most recognized for his
ambitious work in games. He is the
Whatever you say when you talk with David Parlett, dont mention rabbits and
turtles! If you do, youre sure to get a terse lecture on how a rabbit is consider-
ably different from a hare, and a turtle is a far cry from a tortoise. And hes a
man who should know: His 1973 Hare & Tortoise game has been on the market
nearly 40 years.
Slow and Steady
I wish I had
discovered GO
at a younger age.
Here to be seen in print for the first time:
The Hare & Tortoise prototype
A LOOK BACK
31-33_sammler121_en_js 21.11.12 14:38 Seite 31
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
32
about May 74. He invented it in Octo-
ber and finalized it in November! The
BoardGameGeek website calls Hare and
Tortoise a cunningly designed race to
the finish. Its a very clever exercise in
arithmetic which David Parlett has fash-
ioned into an entertaining and unique
perennial favorite. More than two million
copies have been sold in at least 10 lan-
guages and various editions, including
slight rules variations with each new
release. Parlett says that in terms of
appearance, the 1978 Ravensburger
game, Hase und Igel, which became the
first Spiel des Jahres (Game of the Year)
winner in 1979, was his favorite. The
Waddingtons one was not a good design,
and the early Gibsons was a pale imita-
tion of the original design. However, the
arrangement of the racetrack in the 1987
Gibsons game (repeated by ABACUS in
2000) is one Parlett considers far better
than the original track layout of 1974 and
1979.
The idea of Hare and Tortoise is based
on the Aesop fable in which the tranquil
tortoise wins
because the rapid
rabbit I mean, hur-
rying hare takes a
nap, the moral
being: slow and
steady wins the
race. In Germany,
the Aesop story is not as well-known as
the Brothers Grimm fairy tale about the
hare (Hase) and the hedgehog (Igel),
in which the hedgehog beats the hare.
Whats interesting is that in the Grimm
tale, the hedgehog succeeds by
scheming (his wife impersonates
him and periodically enters the
race ahead of the hare).
The design of the playing
pieces was to allow the
figure of the tortoise to
be used also as the
hedgehog, since this
was the preferred
form in some
European coun-
tries. The fact
that Americans
called the charac-
ters a turtle and a rabbit
always annoyed Parlett. (Maybe
print. You cant publish card games with-
out theming them. I like abstract
games very simple rules but you cant
market these; all
you can do is show
them on your web-
site and let people
make their own.
He prefers card
games that can be
played with ordi-
nary playing cards classics like Crib-
bage, Sixty-Six, Piquet, Spades and Skat.
He plays bridge, but thinks its vastly
overrated and played by some of the
most irritating people in the world. He
is president of the British Skat Asso-
ciation, and has been playing this
three-player German national
card game for 50 years; his
first games book was
Teach yourself Card
Games for Three.
Parlett prefers card
games to board
games, abstract
games to themed
ones, and depth
over complexity.
I dont like com-
plicated games, he
remarked. I want to be able
to read the rules before play-
ing the game, not while playing it. And
as a historian, hes not particularly inter-
ested in modern games except abstract
ones, because theyre timeless, he adds.
His favorite abstract game is Pentomi-
noes, by Solomon Golomb (mathemati-
cian inventor of polyominoes, the inspira-
tion for the computer game Tetris).
All this interest in games began, David
Parlett conjectures, when, at about age
seven, he saw a set of Dominoes with col-
ored pips in his cousins compendium of
games. By the end of 1973, at the age of
34, he was negotiating with companies
for the sale of Hare and Tortoise. The
decade of the 1970s was the golden era
of games in the U.K., but then it faded.
Britain (now) gets swamped with U.S.
imports, and the small, backstreet English
companies are here today and gone
tomorrow. For my money, the best games
are the ones published in Germany.
Hare and Tortoise was initially pub-
lished by Intellect Games, a British com-
pany that didnt survive very long. The
game is dated 1973, but it was only a
few days before Christmas that they
accepted the game, and we signed a con-
tract. It wasnt actually published till
I think DRAUGHTS or CHECKERS is one of the most
underestimated games in the world. Continental
DRAUGHTS on a 10 x 10 board makes use of a
long king that moves like a bishop in CHESS; the
move makes for a better game.
A lot of ideas up his sleave:
Parlett at Game Authors Meeting, Gttingen, 2010
31-33_sammler121_en_js 21.11.12 14:38 Seite 32
The Ravensburger edition of Hase und
Igel that came out in 2008 reintroduced
the layout that first appeared in 1987,
and changed the rules for what occurs
when landing on hare squares, the one
element in the game open to chance
(jugging the hare). Parlett reacted to
various players comments, especially to
suggestions made by Hare and Tortoise
this article will finally correct that!) Rab-
bits are nauseatingly cute, cuddly and
gregarious Parlett points out, whereas
hares are eccentric, individual
and tend to be loners. Im more
of a hare than a bunny myself.
Hare and Tortoise uses a
clever device to govern move-
ment: with carrots as the energy
force, the more spaces you want
to go, the proportionally more carrots you
have to spend; e.g., it costs 1 carrot to
move 1 space but 10 carrots to move 4
spaces. Your position in the race deter-
mines how many carrots you can earn.
But you cant finish if you have too many
carrots left. And then there are the lettuce
cards.
The mechanism for the game was
derived from an earlier
unpublished prototype,
Space Race, which was
created around the time of
the first moon landing, but
was deemed too compli-
cated at the time. As he was
playtesting the mechanism,
the slow-but-steady idea
and hare and tortoise theme
came into mind. Trouble is, it
looks like a childrens game,
but it isnt, Parlett com-
mented. This has been a con-
stant criticism [of the game]
for all the years of its exis-
tence.
Hit the market in 1974:
The first edition made by Intellect
33
aficionados in an on-line Google news-
group. According to Parlett, these mod-
ifications make it, as far as Im con-
cerned, the definitive edition. A
redesigned English-language edi-
tion by Gibsons Games was
released in the U.K. in 2010. This
latest version, in keeping with the
games abstract principles, has
been graphically redesigned
and, around the racetrack,
uses sketches that depict
famous English landmarks,
including St Pauls Cathe-
dral and Blackpool Tower.
Though Hare and Tor-
toise premiered four
decades ago, Parlett hasnt given up on
the idea of inventing another hit. I have
got at least half a dozen games waiting
for the right publisher to come
along, he reports. He still
playtests his games with Bar-
bara, his spouse of 45 years,
whom he calls, a very percep-
tive and valuable games tester-
cum-guinea pig.
I asked David Parlett whether he
thought the slow and steady sale of his
game over decades was an analogy of the
story of the hare and tortoise itself. His
reply: Well, now that you mention it.
Bruce Whitehill
Of games I didnt invent, I think
CARCASSONNE is my favorite modern
one. I would have made it illegal to
build tiles around an empty area.
31-33_sammler121_en_js 21.11.12 14:39 Seite 33
is just like Settlers! , then shame
on you. This is how my fellow
gamers constantly bug
me, too. It is simply
not true. [Editors
note: Besides, it would
be more appropriate to
shout: This is just like Crude /
Mcmulti!] With Feudality, we
get resources or victory points
from the selected tile on our personal
Fiefdom Management Card instead of a
general game board. The buildings have
no victory point value, instead they gain
you something when they are one of the
selected point of action spaces. What
also count are sundry buildings, char-
acter tiles, and our fortification
that when developed from a fee-
ble tower to a castle, results in
four victory points as a point of
action selection. Since 12 to 14
A
s Barons, we extend our fiefdom,
each on an individual game
board comprising eight by eight
spaces (however, we build on only seven
times seven spaces). Here we place our
keep (four spaces), with its buildings and
troops serving as our defense. Addi-
tional tiles with forests, farmers, or
iron ore mines are placed onto our
meadows, hills, and the river, if
possible, in a way for them to pro-
vide us with resources. At the
beginning of his turn, the active
player rolls two eight-sided dice,
and at the coordinate intersec-
tion space of the resulting numbers
(called a point of action), and the
eight spaces adjacent to it, all play-
ers with buildings there will
have exactly one harvest.
Should you now be
inclined to exclaim: But this
It seems that Lookout Games has trendsetting qualities: Half a year before the
Nuremberg Toy Fair brought on a veritable dice game flood, this publishing
house presented a dice-based development game called Feudality. Lookout, of
all publishers, where until now they avoided dice like the plague! Here, Ameri-
can author Tom Wham puts forward a kind of ultralight Kings & Things that
includes some chaos qualified to split up game groups forever.
REVIEW
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
34
points (depending on the number
of players) are required to win,
the game could draw quickly to
an end. In practice, though, this
does not happen.
Feudality is slow. It says, 60 to
90 minutes on the box, and this is
absolutely correct, but it could be less.
The reason is that in Settlers of Catan,
buildings may last for all eternity, but
their feudal half-life can be quite
limited. There are these incredibly
brutal event cards that signal
clearly that we are not taking part
in a planning and development
game, but in a chaotic dice frenzy
and clubbing match. Hordes of
bandits raze our fortifications,
dragons are a welcome means to
destroy a neighbors tiles, and the
king is a pernicious nag, whose mood
swings may cost us a few resources (if we
are lucky, but usually more). There is little
to nothing we can do to defend ourselves
from such evils.
I Divine bombardment
Should our barony survive Fortunas
bombardment, each player can reinforce
it by paying resources during the pur-
chase phase to obtain a couple of tiles.
Another option during this phase is to for-
In a Dice Frenzy
Feudalherren / Feudality
34-35_fedalherren_en_js 21.11.12 14:41 Seite 34
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
35
conditions, all players lose up to three
victory points by an event card,
and the end pushes further
forward into a dim
distance: This sig-
nals a clear alarm.
Planning and
development game fans
simply cannot take it when
attacks on a player lead-
ing by a wide margin have no hope
of success. They ascribe it to game
design and not to their own, earlier
commissions or omissions. The dice
serve as an excuse at all times.
Bottom line: It is questionable if
the people at Lookout Games did
themselves a favor by giving up the no
dice please policy for Feudality.
Stefan Ducksch/cs
when the result is an odd number. We
may heal or cast a spell to save them,
which means repeating our survival
throw.
Unfortunately, the German rule book is
not watertight. Is it possible to own sev-
eral granaries in order to save rations?
Does the stonemason need a quarry
nearby? Do we need to do sur-
vival rolls for our units after
tournaments? How does a
war work after a futile
attempt on Fiumaccio? To
exhaustively clarify all
these matters you need to
refer to the BGG forums or
such.
It would have been better to have a
comprehensive rulebook that covered all
situations. Feudality fans will think differ-
ently. They will use common sense to
overcome ambiguities because
they are focused on having fun.
Then the game plays fluidly
and quickly, the playing
time remains within the
limit, a re-match is possible,
and even games with five or
six players lift the spirits. In
this case, Feudality proves just
right for the reasons that it is blatantly
unfair, abrasive, and quite chaotic. My
colleague Michael Knopf wrote in
another review a long time ago: You
need to like it, and then you will like it.
This putative platitude is also a direct hit
when it comes to Feudality, as the game
will divide opinions.
I Are the dice at fault?
The great majority of my fellow players
would describe themselves as belonging
to the Lookout target group. And
when exactly do these players
discuss an early termination in
almost half of the games? Not
until the very latest, when
just before reaching victory
tify our keep and particularly important
increase the numbers of our troops by
men at arms (strength 1), archers (2) or
knights (3). Next, the active player picks
two Baronial Actions. Two of the actions
gain victory points by starting a hanky-
panky with the queen or sabotaging a
neighbors building. Another one allows
you attack another player. As with almost
every action in this game, dice are rolled,
and a victory point quickly changes hands
from the loser to the winner. Finally, you
may thrash one of the fictitious, neutral
states of either Santa Paravia (14 defense
points) or Fiumaccio (19). The latter gains
you two victory points, a move that will
usually be tried in the last push towards
winning the game.
I Right in the beak!
The active player ends his turn by sup-
plying his units with rations,
and then the next player
takes a turn. This way, the
power balance shifts
to and fro. The victory
pawns creep along the
victory point track, united
as one, until one lucky fellow
is favored by the dice,
enabling him or her to lurch
ahead. However, during
less peaceful rounds,
that leading player
will regularly get a
punch on the
nose! In the
meantime, there is
tile resource pro-
duction, place-
ment optimization,
and lots of dice
rolling: for the bandits, giants, dragons,
rations, and random acts of sabotage.
Even more dice rolling occur during and
after attacks! After an attack, roll
dice to make a survival throw for
each of our units, who are discarded
Reviewer Playing appeal
Stefan Ducksch . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Udo Bartsch. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
L. U. Dikus*. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Matthias Hardel** . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Wieland Herold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
KMW . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Edwin Ruschitzka*** . . . . . . . . . . 7
* Heavy lightweight.
** Old-fashioned, but entertaining and
a welcome break from all the too serious
optimization games.
*** Nice and I seriously mean it!
Feudalherren
Lookout Games
Tom Wham
Klemens Franz, Tom Wham
26
about 10 and up
about 6090 minutes
about 35
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
34-35_fedalherren_en_js 21.11.12 14:41 Seite 35
acter cards, called the Major
Arcana, and 56 Minor Arcana in
four suits pentacles, chalices,
swords and wands with values
from 1 to 10 and the four court
cards of Jack, Knight, Queen and
King. The mystery that has long
shrouded these cards helped in
creating the names, for in Latin
"arcanus" means something like
hidden or secret. Accordingly, the
authors have named their new
game Arcanum.
The minor arcana cards give the
game its basic structure. The four
symbols and colors stand for the
four noble families who want to
control the fate of a medieval
city. The players (three to five)
use the Tarot deck to influence
the future of the noble houses,
who are competing three times
in a prestigious race.
In the noble metrop-
olis, there are ten loca-
tions in which the chess
pieces can be moved. In
addition to King and
Queen, there are the
knave (pawn) and the
horse (knight). If a corre-
sponding court card is
played, the corresponding
figure may be placed in
any location. If a number
card is played, a court fig-
ure of the corresponding
color must be relocated to
a location with the same
number. In each case,
the color card deter-
mines which noble
house marches forward
on the prestige race
course.
T
he Tarot game has its origins in the
homeland of the authors. Since the
18th Century, the 78 cards have
helped people find their personal
path in life. The basic
structure of a tarot
deck is always the
same: there
are 22 char-
With a deck of rummy cards, the armies of Frederick the Great fight
battles (Friedrich, Histogame), and the African bean game Mancala
is well suited for Roman civic matters (Trajan, Ammonit). Wherever
one looks, classics are at work. The Italian game designer Andrea
Chiarvesio, who is responsible for, among other things, Kingsburg,
and his co-author Pierluca Zizzi, have used a complete deck of Tarot
cards and several chess pieces to create an entirely new game. Do not
worry, it doesnt get too esoteric but if you want, you can use the card
deck for divination.
REVIEW
At the same
time, wise use of
the individual
locations brings
additional points
on the prestige
point path. To the
left of the city location number
there are symbols that refer to the color of
the noble or the type of figure. A particu-
larly lucrative space is location 10: if
someone places a blue horse there, his
knights and their swords move forward
four spaces.
I Betting for the pay-off
While controlling the race through the
minor arcana represents one key element
of the game, the big reward beckons in
the form of victory points. In order to get
these to flow freely, we get to the other
key element: to play minor arcana cards
as hidden influence cards. Each turn,
players hide at least one color card, which
acts as their bet on the outcome of the
prestige race.
The betting action is supplemented by
the city spaces. To the right of the city
number are listed the impacts on cards in
hand, possible bets and points. Interest is
therefore high in securing additional
chances to hide cards. This is only possi-
ble in locations 7, 8 and 9, so they are in
special demand. Because the first scoring
happens after just three rounds, it makes
quite a difference if someone can place
three or six betting cards.
This initial description shows that a
players fate is largely determined by the
cards in hand. Everyone starts with four
minor and one major arcana card. One
card has to be placed for the initial bet;
another will be played for the control of a
court figure. So, whoever doesnt have a 7,
8, and 9 in hand and is also lacking a
Arcanum
The World is Key to Victory
36-37_arcanum_en_js 21.11.12 14:50 Seite 36
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
37
cial Tarot cards for
Arcanum. I hope
he was not respon-
sible for the
Roman numerals,
which were printed
partly upside down.
The game plan is
atmospherically
dense, combining the
various effects of play and scor-
ing together skillfully, even if
views of the city locations offer
some confusing symbols. This
causes great difficulty for many
groups playing the game for the
first time. It is thus recommended
to start with a shortened game of six
rounds to get a feel for the city spaces
and card effects. I dont recommend
playing with the full complement of five
players, as Arcanum plays better with
three or four and they also rarely exceed
the estimated play time of 90 minutes. If
I had to pull out of the major arcana deck
a fate card for this game, then, it
would be number 16, the Tower,
which stands for unexpected
events and for disorderly condi-
tions that lead to sudden changes
that will occur in the foreseeable
future. This way, I can still hope a
significant revision and streamlining
of the whole is on the way.
Wieland Herold/sw
horse
race or stock market
game. What makes Arcanum take
some getting used to and that some-
times leads to significant dismay is, ulti-
mately, the diversity and randomness of
the control offered by the different cards
and game spaces. It can take awhile for a
player to complete his turn. The cards in
hand have to be assessed, first in terms of
the city spaces one would like to play in,
then in view of the final score and place-
ment on the race course. Everyone always
forgets the exact effects of the major
arcana cards, so the rules need to be
brought out again and again.
I Playing solitaire
on the side
To understand all of the games ramifi-
cations takes time. Its important not to
forget that playing a card brings forward
a noble house and also the effect of the
respective city space. With five players,
the start player who, after the first
round, needs to pass along the start
player token will not get a turn until
after eight of his opponents moves.
That's enough time to play a game of soli-
taire on the side. To be fair, there are
some locations that have an impact on
everyone, and maybe someone wants to
remember, too, who sponsored a particu-
lar noble house. Nevertheless, the Tarot-
theme leads to some unnecessary bloat-
ing. The game is therefore somewhat
complicated, even though in its basic
structure it is simple, catchy and very
impressive.
It is important to praise graphic artist
Patrizio Evangilisti, who designed the spe-
court fig-
ure that can be
placed in any location has to
hope for the best from the draw deck and
hope that he has placed a bet on the right
horse.
One last hope may lie with the major
arcana card a player may play on his turn.
The 22 cards all offer special advantages,
things like immediate victory points or
new cards to influence the nobles race,
the ability to block certain locations or to
secretly place minor arcana cards. Partic-
ularly strong is card #21, The World.
Played early, it can gain a player 14 vic-
tory points, which would be tough to
overcomethrough intermediate scoring
rounds.
At the beginning of every turn, a player
gets a normal card draw, which can be
either three minor arcana or one major
arcana. A large part of this choice comes
down not only to control of the court fig-
ures but also to betting interests, since
influence on the running track is second-
ary, and it is more important to have
majority interest in the houses leading
the race.
After the third, sixth and ninth rounds,
scores are calculated. Whoever has the
most interest in the victorious noble fam-
ily gets 16 victory points (for the losing
house, there are just 8 points). Sharehold-
ers in the second and third place houses
will also be rewarded. At the end of the
ninth round, whoever stands furthest
along the city wall victory point track
must have had card #10 (the Wheel) or
#19 (the Sun), cards that, next to #21,
foretell special happiness and success in
the Tarot deck.
The ideas that have the two Italian
authors have put into the game are, in
fact, quite logical. They led to a concept
that could have been brought to life as a
Reviewer Playing appeal
Wieland Herold . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 5
Christwart Conrad*. . . . . . . . . . . . 5
* Inappropriately large format. Appeal-
ing concept, but not fully developed.
Effects of the major arcana too arbitrary.
Playing a third round after the first two
brought no progression, it felt almost
like having started all over again.
Arcanum
Lo Scarabeo
A. Chiarvesio, P. Zizzi
Patrizio Evangilisti
35
about 12 and up
about 90 minutes
about 30
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
36-37_arcanum_en_js 21.11.12 14:50 Seite 37
rolled to represent creatures. Players acti-
vate the creatures by paying the associ-
ated price with points (called Quiddity,
which were also rolled). Moreover, the
Quiddity currency can be used to buy new
dice from the supply in the middle of the
table.
I Reasonably faithful
transfer of principles
At the end of a turn, used dice and
remaining dice in the active pool are
moved to the used pile, and activated
creatures and spells remain in the ready
area in front of their owners (spells enter
Success is attractive: Dominion is a great success and therefore attractive to
many game designers. But what exactly is that certain something so many peo-
ple seem to enjoy? Part of the appeal is certainly the opportunity to build a new
deck of cards and test it against competitors. There is also the thrill of finding
the right point in time for a sudden change from deck building to collecting vic-
tory points. However, the thing that Dominion seems to lack in the eyes of some
gamers is some lightness, as luck does not play a large role in the game. Well,
and interaction is practically non-existent. And then there is the constant shuf-
fling of cards ...
REVIEW
38
the game from there at a later time). It is
essential not to confuse these areas,
which is the same as the discard and
action cards played area in Dominion.
The used and newly bought dice remain
in the used pile until the bag does not
yield a full set of six dice for the next turn.
Then, the dice remaining in the bag are
taken out first, the used pile ones are
put inside, the bag is shaken, and the
active pool is replenished to six. In this
way, the Dominion principle of card deck-
building is faithfully transferred to dice.
Quarriors has a new, interactive ele-
ment. The activated creature dice will
attack, in turn order and in succession, all
active creatures of the opponents. In your
turn, you total the attack points shown on
your creature dice. The defending player
counters with his creatures, one after the
other. Each creature has its own defense
value, and when the opponent comes up
with an equal or a higher number of
attack points, the beaten creature goes
into the owners used pile. However, the
Quarriors
Basically, Its a
Dice Building Game
TM
(Quote from the Box)
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
L
ightness, fighting, only a few cards
(which do not need to be shuffled by
the way), and a touch of that Domin-
ion feeling: Quarriors offers all of these.
Special dice (130 in all) take over the role
of cards, and only a selection is used in
each game, which seems familiar enough.
Our group of gamers is carried off into a
fantasy world instead of the Middle Ages,
and equipped with a cloth bag and a set
of dice instead of cards. In the center of
the table, there are basic resource cards
and matching dice, spells with their dice,
and randomly-selected creature cards,
with their associated dice. A cardboard
panel tracks the victory
points.
What happens next is
easy to understand for
those who played
Dominion. In a turn, six
dice are drawn from the
individual bag and
38-39_quarriors_en_js 21.11.12 14:55 Seite 38
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
39
However, all will be
equally amazed by the
game components: so many
different dice in such a small
metal box, and creature and
spell cards drawn with a love
for detail. Okay, not all the
signs on the dice are
easy to decipher, as they
are quite tiny. And if you
are not familiar with the
creature cards, you will have
to pick them up repeatedly
to study the details (an
overview of the crea-
tures and spells would
help, but is not pro-
vided). Finally, a real
shortcoming is that the
rulebook does not give up
on the idea of introducing
its own language, which takes
getting used to at first. However, once
this hurdle is cleared, all questions can be
clarified, at least with some goodwill in
interpretation. All in all, Quarriors is the
original adaptation of an original gaming
principle, and if you accept that luck in a
dice roll may sometimes be against you,
you cannot go wrong in buying a copy.
Nicola Balkenhol/cs
The greatest
difference bet -
ween the games
lies in the luck
that dice
bring in Quarriors.
Too few Quiddity are
useless, as are too many,
and too few creatures inhibit
progress, while too many have the
same effect. When you keep rolling low
numbers of Quiddity, you will not be able
to upgrade your resource pool with valu-
able, but expensive, super-creatures from
the wilds area. Then, your weak crea-
tures will be constantly wiped out by the
strong ones of your opponent, and a
game may end very fast with a huge dif-
ference in victory points. Frustrating! The
minor adjustment mechanisms offered by
Quarriors are no real help here. When-
ever you score a creature, you may discard
one die from your used pile. It is obvious
that one of the less potent dice will bite
the dust: one with a small average num-
ber of Quiddity. With this method, you
optimize your dice pool. Some dice offer
the chance for a re-roll, while others allow
retrieval or re-rolling of a die from your
used pile. While all this helps to limit the
impact of luck, it is frequently not
enough.
I Disappointed with unlucky
die rolls
Now who might enjoy Quarriors?
Gamblers like the speed of the game, the
pressure to make decisions in the face of
the current (sometimes meager) rolls, and
the challenge to make the best of it. They
are annoyed by the fact that the crea-
tures abilities are hard to memorize, as
they are so confusingly phrased. This
leads to frequent debates about the inter-
pretation of some abilities when crea-
tures engage in battle. Dominion fans
have an advantage in the aspect of Quar-
riors that allows them to build a powerful
deck, but become disappointed with
unlucky die rolls that prevent them from
achieving optimal outcomes.
defense
value of the dead
creature will be deducted
from the original attack value for when
the next players creature gets attacked.
This increases the chance of survival for
any subsequently attacked creature. For
example: attack 5; defense with the first
die 2; defending creature dies. Second
attack 5 minus 2, thus 3; defense 4;
attack repelled. The procedure is repeated
with all players that have active creatures
in their display. A creature die that sur-
vives the round will generate victory
points for its owner. A player that first
reaches a certain victory point threshold,
depending on number of players, wins the
game.
Drawing, performing actions, improv-
ing your resource pool with new acquisi-
tions, then discarding: This is the Quar-
riors gaming rhythm. But while in Domin-
ion, players play more or less for
themselves (and are only watched by
their opponents), Quarriors has a built-in
interaction element: attacking!.
Reviewer Playing appeal
Nicola Balkenhol . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Udo Bartsch* . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 4
L. U. Dikus** . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Matthias Hardel*** . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Alan How . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Roman Pelek****. . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
* Half-baked.
** DRAGON DICE hits DOMINION right
between the eyes!
*** Nice, but sadly, frequently over
before it properly starts.
**** Appealing idea, but at the end of
the day, far too dependent on luck.
Quarriors
WizKids
Mike Elliott, Eric Lang
J. Lonnee, Chris Raimo
24 (for two: ?)
about 12 and up
about 30 minutes
about 40
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
38-39_quarriors_en_js 21.11.12 14:55 Seite 39
and discover time and time again in their
projects.
At the same time, in 1995, the now 42-
year old Nicole Stiehl did some practical
training with a protestant city youth rec-
tory of Wiesbaden. The vicar there needed
a planning game themed on local politics,
and the young trainee was expected to
design it. After all, she did have her train-
ing in games pedagogy. However, Nicole
felt overwhelmed and looked for help
from her lecturer Meyer. The team Meyer
& Stiehl was founded, and developed its
first joint project called 2005 An den
Schalthebeln der Macht (The Machinery
of Power), played by more than 350
youths over three months across the
entire country. The aim was to encourage
young people to exchange views and
reflect about their ideas of an ideal home-
land. In the game, they played the roles of
local politicians, and took on this work
from their perspective in an innovative
and creative way. Since 1995, the authors
constantly developed their creation.
Nowadays, it can be run computer-
assisted, but what
remains cru-
cial is the
direct exchange
between the
young players,
who try out An
den Schalthebeln
der Macht with
the background of
their local district. In Dietzen-
bach, the game is played for at
least six weeks each year. At the
end of that period, the partici-
pants meet up with their local
politicians to present their results,
which are then tested for suitability by
politics (www2.dietzenbach.de/JUZ
/Schalt hebel). This is probably the most
effective way for a game to engage in the
real world with the aim of improving it.
The design of development games for
educational work is going to be a main-
stay for Meyer and Stiehl, who founded
their own publishing company, spieltrieb,
three years later with this aim in mind. For
Till Meyer, there is no better medium than
the game, as it enables, trial actions
close to reality free from the fear of seri-
ous consequences The game uses a free
zone where entirely new rules can be
applied, new roles taken on and new
behaviors tried out. Moreover,
compared to other educational
methods a game is process-ori-
ented rather than result-ori-
ented. Of course everyone is
also happy to win a (pedagogical) game,
but the learning happens during the
process leading to this result, not through
the result as such. With this in mind, the
two invent a series of experimental
games: Hinter dem Horizont (1997,
Beyond the Horizon), a discussion game
about politics and forms of government,
commissioned by the German institution
Bundeszentrale fr Politische Bildung
(Federal Agency for Civic Education);
Kinderechte (1999, The Rights of Chil-
dren), an action game for kindergarten
kids; and
PORTRAIT
spieltrieb
T
he 53 year-old graphic designer
Till Meyer felt committed to this
objective, even before launching
his own publishing house. The emphasis
on play, however, did not come about
automatically. My abilities are quite
diversified, he claims, I make music,
write stories, I painted, and then decided
to study graphics. During my studies I
also imported Italian motorcycles.
Rather coincidentally, via a lec-
turer organizing a seminar
about games design, he met
games publisher Franz Scholles,
for whom he made a number of
games. Among them was also the Eine-
Welt-Spiel, which Meyer designed and
employed in intercultural educa-
tional work in the Jugendbil-
dungssttte (Youth Training Cen-
ter), Dietzenbach. Meyer was so
impressed by the games effect on
youth groups that in 1985, he
determined, This is it, thats what I
would like to do in the future!
Since this time, Meyer worked as a
speaker for games pedagogy and a semi-
nar leader in the German federal state of
Hesse. At the same time, he continued his
graphics studies, which he successfully
completed in 1991. It was in his role as a
games pedagogue that he first met
Nicole Stiehl, who within the framework
of her studies of social pedagogy, wanted
to broaden her horizon with games peda-
gogy. She then designed Colony as a final
project during her further studies with Till
Meyer. Nicole was enthusiastic about the
possibilities that playful approaches
offered to pedagogical work. For her, it is
fascinating that people learn and develop
with little effort during gaming, that the
game offers them an opportunity to gain
valuable experience, which is not neces-
sarily provided by real life, whereas its
impacts are quite noticeable in the real
world. This is what they both hope for,
Till Meyer and Nicole Stiehl have followed their play instinct for 16 years. They
are, however, no addicts, and gambling for big money is not their aim. Rather,
these two count on the play instinct of others, and use it as a driving force for
their sophisticated publications that are meant to create learning effects. Their
publishing house considers its products as media of intercultural learning.
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
40
valuable experience, which is
not necessarily provided by real life
The Art of Infotainment
40-41_spieltrieb_en_js 21.11.12 15:02 Seite 40
which she created with funding by the
European Union. The complex educa-
tional game allows a thorough and pro-
ductive discussion of colonialism. What
Colony is to Nicole Stiehl, the puzzle
game Eynsteyn (1997) is to Till Meyer.
We can now barely remember most of
the many self-made variants. Once we
made a felted game board, then one from
simple cardboard in a triangular box. Myr-
iads of game pieces were covered in spray
glue before we had to cut them out
neatly. A couple of years ago they even
manufactured six games from real stone,
with solid sandstone or granite game
boards. Since 2010, this long-selling
game is available in a professionally man-
ufactured version.
Eynsteyn is a tactical tile placement
game for two players. Classically, just like
in Twixt, the borders of the game board
need to be connected by uninterrupted
lines. The charm here is the dual use of
the resulting connections.
Within the setting of Connec-
tion Games, Meyers idea is
a veritable pearl. Last year
with Jets, he realized a
long-cherished project around a futur-
istic car race with photovoltaic ves-
sels. Important for both authors was
their creation Wolfsspuren (2003,
Wolves Tracks), which was initially
commissioned by the outdoor
company Jack Wolfskin. This
game provides an insight into the
complex social structures of a pack of
wolves. Wolfsspuren was nominated for
the Deutscher Lernspielpreis (German
Educational Games Award) in 2004.
Overall, Meyer & Stiehl can look back
on a production of more than 50 produc-
tions.
Their view is to look ahead optimisti-
cally, and they have at least eight new
projects lined up for 2012. They continue
with the objective to inform in an enter-
taining way, as it is formulated by Nicole
Stiehl. We will continue to present
sound, serious work, mostly with a con-
nection to reality and with this task we
will carry on successfully, adds Meyer.
They are committed to following their
play instinct with a high aspiration, which
makes no big money, but connects play-
ing and learning in a meaningful way.
Wieland Herold/cs
ply printing a special logo onto a card-
board box does not create a good game,
is Meyers opinion. His aspiration, even
with these promotional games, is for
them to continually require new reflec-
tions and tacticsThe suspense has to be
kept up. A game that has nothing new to
offer after you have played it once will of
course soon be put aside.
At least of equal importance nowadays
is the commissioned work of board and
card games for various institutions. Spiel-
trieb undertakes the overall production of
game ideas by other designers. Among
those are editions like Das Buch & Das
Leben (2003), a communicative card
game for the Lutheran church congrega-
tion in Wiesbaden, or Waimiri, which was
nominated for the Deutscher Lernspiel-
preis (German Educational Games
Award) in 2006: a communication game
about the effects of bauxite mining in
Brazil. So far, the most successful has
been Keep Cool (2004), a board game
about climate change, created in close
cooperation with the Potsdam Institute
for Climate Change. Its fourth print run
will be published soon. On behalf of
Schulen ans Netz e.V. (Schools On-line),
there has also been an equally popular
on-line version of Keep Cool, available
since 2008.
Even museums are among their cus-
tomers: The Rietberg Museum in Zurich is
dedicated to the art and cultural history
of Asia, Africa, America and Oceania.
Patolli is the first game published by the
museum, on the occasion of a Mexico
exhibition in 2010.
The fourth pillar
of spieltrieb is their
own creations. Both
owners are enthusi-
astic gamers and
game designers,
who occasionally
use their own pub-
lishing house to
offer their ideas to
the market without any outside influ-
ences. This particularly applies to
Nicole Stiehl and her firstling Colony,
Bananen-Rallye (2001) about the subject
of fair trade for the Sozialamt (Social Wel-
fare Office) in Wiesbaden.
They also designed Plato (2002), a
game of history investigation, for the
Jugendbildungswerk (Youth Education
Center) of the Offenbach district, and
Integrate (2007), an experimental game
about the integration of young people in
Europe, for the Jugendbildungssttte
(Youth Education Site) in Unterfranken
(Lower Franconia). They also use their
experience with planning games for in-
house training in subjects such as market-
ing and corporate communication.
Here especially, the balancing act of
the team becomes obvious, where the
progressive political approach goes along
with earning a living, and therefore pro-
motional games form another means of
support for spieltrieb. As early as 1996,
they created A-Klasse (A-Class) for the
presentation of the new A-class Mercedes
Benz. 2003 brought about the
board game Global Player for
the in-house training of the
Schott Glass company in
Mainz, and Windschatten, a
cycle race for Gerolsteiner, with the card
game for the drinks company being pro-
duced in a print run of 160,000 copies.
Since 2007, Navigon, dealing with nav-
igation systems, is in use as an in-house
tool for the company NAVIGON. For the
team, it is important to offer new gaming
concepts, even in this area. There are
heaps of games that just follow well-
known concepts, but why should a cus-
tomer obtain the 50th copy of Monopoly,
the 200th version of a mem-
ory game or
the 1000th
adaptation of
Ludo. Sim-
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
41
trial actions close to reality free from
the fear of serious consequences
40-41_spieltrieb_en_js 21.11.12 15:02 Seite 41
gets to draw cards once
and once only. However,
that doesnt mean that
you will sit there for a
full four-hour game and
only make eight moves,
as we shall see.
Blue always begins,
since the US Army was
the aggressor after all.
Then you grab from
the linen baggie to
determine player order
after that. As soon as all five forces have
been drawn and have moved, the grab
bag is filled back up, and the next round
begins. This unpredictable order of play
gives the game a high replay value, espe-
cially in two-player games.
I Theaters of war
The force which is in play must play a
movement card, and may then use both
of its remaining cards in hand as actions
or events to help decide an outcome, as
long as these cards are indeed action
cards. Movement cards determine both
how many armies can be moved, and how
far. This is where the alliances are notice-
ably imbalanced. Adding the Americans'
number of armies to their movement allo-
wance usually yields a five, while the
Canadians, Brits and Indians are
somewhat less mobile. This is a deliberate
mechanism to counterbalance the geo-
graphical facts and the unequal size of
the alliances, and it works beautifully. All
five decks also contain a couple of special
cards such as Ambush, Force March, etc.,
and some movement cards that let forces
cross water; the lakes and rivers divide up
the board into three more or less distinct
theaters of war.
T
he game itself could almost be cal-
led unnecessary in fact, I didnt
even want to buy it. The historical
background didnt hold much appeal for
me, nor did I even like the look of the
game. The gameboard comes in an odd
choice of colors, showing huge great terri-
tories chopped up with irregularly-shaped
borders, the bruise-blue stretches below
being American while the pale pink bits
above are British. Then in between come
Lake Erie, Lake Ontario and the Saint Law-
rence River. The forces massing at the bor-
ders are not the usual cardboard chips or
stand-ups that you see in typical consim
games, but simple wooden cubes in five
colors. Whats more, you only get twelve
cards per player, which seemed to me far
too few for an interesting card-driven con-
sim. So, a simple straightforward
game? Not in the least!
Knowing what to leave out is
often an art in itself, and its an art
this games designers have tho-
roughly mastered. Theres less self-
restraint on show in the player
numbers. The game takes a maxi-
mum of five players, with one
each controlling the British (red),
the Canadian militia (yellow),
the Indian tribes (green), the US
Army (blue) and the US militia
(white). The first three forces
fight against the last two, but
although all partners in an alli-
ance win or lose together, this is by no
means a two-player game in disguise.
A full game of 1812 The Invasion of
Canada lasts from three to eight rounds,
which can be two to four hours. There are
also two short scenarios included, alt-
hough since I havent played them I shall
not comment. In each round, every player
The United States have grown considerably since their foundation, and not just
because of manifest destiny and the opening of the West. The Louisiana Pur-
chase added the lions share of what are thirteen different states today, Alaska
was bought from Russia. Texas was annexed once it broke free from Mexico,
while Spain had to surrender Florida, and when the USA invaded Canada in
1812 it must have seemed that American rule over the whole of the North Ame-
rican continent was assured. It was a good moment to take a bit of land from the
Brits, since they had their hands full with a war against Napoleon though this
was only one reason for what has often been called an unnecessary war. The his-
torical summary of events appended to the rules of 1812 The Inva-
sion of Canada is well worth reading.
REVIEW
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
42
The decisive twist
that makes 1812 The Invasion of
Canada a true multi-player game,
and what makes it a great game all
round, is the fact that an army consists
of all the cubes that are on a particular
space. This means that Blue can bring
along as many White cubes from A to B as
he chooses, and then later in the round
White can also move the blue/white
army onward from B to C. Then, when
battle is joined as it frequently is every
players rolls dice for their own forces, no
matter whose turn it is in the
round. This means that
everyone at the table is
nearly always caught up in
the action.
Every force has its own
stock of battle dice, which
are all differently colored,
and also all have different
distributions for the three
custom symbols Hit, Flee
and Command Decision
(which is actually a blank).
The British army will never
break and flee, and they hit an
impressive 50% of the time.
The US Army are just as fine shots as the
lobsterbacks, but they also have one Flee
symbol on each and every die when Flee
comes up on ones die, one own unit has
to leave the battlefield, but comes back
next round as reinforcements. Canadian
and American militia are functionally
identical, and they hit or flee one-third of
the time, while the Green (Indian) dice
only have one Flee per die, but like the
Brits, three blank Command Decisions.
Roll a blank and you can choose whether
to move your unit (matching color only,
remember) to a neighboring space or
leave it where it is. This gives you the abi-
lity to save units that are fighting a losing
battle, to regroup, or even to move them
over to another battle entirely if its
being fought next door. Its astonishing
what meaty tactical decisions this simple
rule opens up in practice.
On the other hand, theres no sense tal-
king of tactics if the dice wont let you.
Ive never played a
game yet where at
least one seemingly
certain victory vanis-
hed in the gunsmoke
because the troops
were fleeing the
1812 The Invasion of Canada
Stalemate? Never mind!
42-43_1812-In!asionOfCanada_en_js 21.11.12 15:04 Seie 42
ance is well ahead. Of course, you
dont always have one of these in
hand at the time. On the other hand,
since Truce counts as a movement
card, sometimes you have to play it
down even if you dont want to, if
you dont have any other movement
card in your hand which, remem-
ber, is only three cards.
Few cards in hand, dice, random
player order. Nobody could claim that
1812 The Invasion of Canada is short on
the unpredictable. In my experience, the
really interesting and engaging problems
come precisely from the mixture Ive des-
cribed here, from grasping the constraints
and using them to your own advantage.
Though I would never have expected it
from this game, I felt thoroughly drawn in
to all six of the games I have played so far,
even if the tides of war swept us hither
and yon for four hours and then at the
end it was a stalemate anyway. After all,
the historical events also ended in a sort
of stalemate U.S. rule somehow never
did extend right across all of North Ame-
rica. Matthias Hardel/sw
the red dice that there are.
If on the other hand the
army were made up of
three Yellow, three Green
and two Red cubes, then
all eight dice that the allies possess
could all be used in that engagement.
White and Blue reinforcements come
into play way off down to the South, but
happily from one space in the East and
one in the West, and each of these spaces
can provide troops of either color. Yes, you
then have to march your cubes all the way
up North, but since the colors mix toget-
her almost automatically, that means
that both allies can cooperate to get the
units moving. The size of the blue territory
only really becomes a problem if the
enemy has penetrated and managed to
spread out far and wide but the Indian
player is pretty much guaranteed to be
able to do this, thanks to special cards.
This means that the USA must prevent a
Canadian breakthrough at all costs, espe-
cially on the isthmus between Lake Erie
and Lake Ontario. Also, its not a good
idea to leave cities on the lakeshore wit-
hout a garrison, even if you desperately
need the cubes elsewhere.
I Take towns to win
Although the game is only in its third
round on the picture below, you can see
the U.S. headed for defeat. This is
because while the British are weak, they
have taken six towns in enemy territory,
which is what counts at the end of the
game, which occurs when one alliance
has played out all of its Truce cards. Each
deck of cards contains one of these, and
you are well advised to play them down
when your own alli-
battlefield in droves. If
the enemy forces also
happen to be scoring hit
after hit, even battle-har-
dened soldiers can be
crestfallen. But thats
exactly what gives this game its fine fla-
vor, especially with more players, when
you have to put up with your allies grum-
bles as well as your enemys mocking
remarks.
The uncertainty over how battles will
turn out is not just about fun however.
Since nobody knows how many units are
really needed to be sure of winning an
engagement, this means that there are
hard decisions to be made, making up
much of the tactical appeal of 1812 The
Invasion of Canada. How many cubes to
move and where to move them ought to
be a straightforward problem, but here it
can reveal unexpected depths of play.
Especially since Canadian and American
forces will give different answers.
The Canadians have the simpler job, by
the nature of things. Their red home
region is shallow and thin, meaning that
they dont need to march long distances
to defend it, and reinforcements arrive
rather quickly, but beware! Its irksome
that fresh British troops always land way
over to the East in Montreal, while new
Indians arrive in the middle of the board.
As attrition takes its toll, this means that
troop colors can become fatally separated
out if you dont take active steps to keep
them mixed remember that mixed
armies have much greater mobility, and
not just that. For instance, if eight Red
cubes are on their own in a battle, then
they can certainly hit more reliably that
their Yellow and Green allies, but a one-
color army like this will only have two dice
to roll because thats
all
Reviewer Playing appeal
Matthias Hardel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 8
1812
The Invasion of Canada
Academy Games
Beau Beckett, Jeph Stahl
Jerek Nocon
25 (for two: )
about 12 and up
about 120240 minutes
about $59
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
42-43_1812-In!asionOfCanada_en_js 21.11.12 15:04 Seie 43
landlubbers could decide to go short on
salt and leave the whole seafaring for
what it is!
Players fish for cod and herring; when a
boat goes to sea, the salt immediately is
converted into one of the two kinds, at
the choice of the player, who undoubtedly
keeps an eye on the prices at the market
for this or the next round. Apart from the
fluctuations on the market, each round
tile shows the weather at sea, and if
players can expect pirates or a
bad catch. These are mostly
minor discomforts, but a
player doesnt want to
run into them too often;
each time a ship is caught
at sea during a storm, it perma-
nently loses cargo capacity, and
probably salt that could have been
converted into fish.
I Fishermans friends
In the city, various buildings make the
fishermans life lighter; at the end of a
round, a player who has taken influence
at the Light Tower may remove all dam-
ages on any one ship inflicted by storm or
pirates; at the Warehouse, the storage
capacity gradually can be enlarged, from
6 to 15 to 30 goods, that can hold a mix
of salt and fish. The Chapel of Saint
T
he game board shows the estuary
of the Seine at which Rouen, the
most important French port of
transit for the distantly situated Paris dur-
ing the early 16th century, is conveniently
set for game purposes at the Strait of
Calais/English Channel, with a small
inset to depict the Atlantic Ocean. Several
important buildings of the town stand
out enlarged, and have larger or smaller
spaces next to them, where players can
take influence during the game. The
presence at these buildings either
gives players benefits during
the five-round game, or it
scores at the end of the game; it
darned looks like Puerto Rico
being explained here!
Each player has his own small board on
which he keeps track of the stock in his
warehouse and the cargo of his ships;
players already own a first ship that is
loaded with three salt from their salt
mine. Salt is necessary to pickle the
caught fish in order to offer it in preserved
state on the market; prices change
every round, but players
have an insight what the
changes will be for the next
round. If a good price can
be made for salt, then this
item too can be sold;
Romain offers protection against a
bad catch, and the Church of
Saint Maclou protects the skip-
pers against pirates, but only
for those who have gone to
church there! All this
storm and pirate stuff
may sound like an
old Parker Brothers
game, but consider
it preliminary
shelling as the game is
explained in more depth now!
A table lists the possible actions: sail-
ing, city, port, or market. These actions
cost from 0 to 10 money, and since the
richest player wins at game end, it con-
stantly is a consideration for each player
whether an action still is
worthwhile for him. Each
player starts the game
with a minimum of 10
money on the score track.
From this track, he pays for
all actions in a round --
until he has passed. When
all players have passed, a round is
over. At the start of a round, each kind of
action costs 0 money; the first player per-
forms the action, and advances the
marker to the right. This action will cost
the next player who chooses it 1 money,
thereafter 2, and so on. When the marker
is at 10, the action will continue to cost
10 money.
Now for the deliberations: Shall I go
sailing against high costs, or will I wait
until the following round, when it is
cheaper to sail again? But when I wait,
another player might arrive sooner than
Its not a cheerful atmosphere that is shining upon us from the box of Upon a
Salty Ocean; illustrator Lamberto Azzariti set the sinister scene of Death in
Venice rather than that of a hard-working, busy fleet earning its income from
fishing on the Atlantic Ocean, and turning it into money at the port of Rouen. In
contrast, the atmosphere on the playing board is a lot friendlier; the sketchy
buildings of the town give the game a fun and friendly character. So what will it
be: a difficult process filled with obstacles or an uncomplicated pleasure ride?
REVIEW
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
44
Dealing with a red herring?
Upon a Salty Ocean
44-46_saltyOcean_en_js 21.11.12 15:06 Seite 44
Such con-
siderations put a certain
strain on the game: Players will try to cal-
culate their entire sequence of actions;
most of the times this is possible and this
can slow down the game considerably,
but when reasoning is combined with
going with your gut instinct attitude, all
remains under control.
Additional ships can be built when any
player has taken influence both at the
shipyard and the Naval Academy; this
does not need to be the same player, and
a player even does not have a presence
there. He simply pays the costs, 6 money
for a caravel and 8 for a carrack, and
divides it between the players that have a
presence there. However, a player gets
these ships for free if he has a presence in
both buildings.
There are buildings that are nice to
have influence in at an early stage of the
game. At the end of each round, a player
who is at the Inn receives 2 money, plus 1
money for each player that is not in the
Inn. Investing in the first round for such a
building, when the costs are low,
is a prerequisite for such a
building to be profitable, oth-
erwise the player is better
advised to invest elsewhere.
This could be the Great Clock,
which allows two consecutive
actions, though they have to
be different. This enables a
player to enter the harbor and
go to the market in one turn
me,
and I will be too
late to sell my fish, and will get a
lower price for it. Oh wait, he has cod, I
can go fish herring then, and it has the
same price next round so I have a free
hand to make an action in the city; shall I
take influence at the bank then?
I Wallet endangered
Players who act expeditiously and have
a comfortably filled wallet through their
fishing and trading have to be careful. At
the end of a round, all money above 40 is
skimmed and reduced to 40 if a player
has no presence in the Bank; the same
goes for all money above 80, for which a
players presence in the Vault is necessary
to prevent this confinement.
At the end of each round, players
receive salt from their salt mines; they
start with a production of 3, but by taking
separate city actions, the production can
be increased to 12, and is stored in the
warehouse that simultaneously will have
to be extended.
Buying salt at the market is a viable
option only when the price has dropped
to 1 money; the effort to sail back and
forth against rising costs, and having to
take another market action to sell the
salt, usually does not
weigh against such an
investment at higher
salt prices. But produc-
ing and buying salt and
consequently selling it
at the market, staying
ashore, and going
on aspree is pos-
sible as well.
44-46_saltyOcean_en_js 21.11.12 15:06 Seite 45
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
46
just before another player, because the
price for a good when selling at the mar-
ket always decreases by 1 per 8 goods
sold or part of it. Apart from this, the costs
for the second action still have to be paid,
with a surcharge of 3 money for the first
player that entered the Great Clock, and 5
for the second.
Because there is only room for so many
players, the choice of what building to
take a presence in becomes even more
delicate, and its these
kinds of considerations
that give the game its
excitement. Each player
wants to build on the
Notre Dame of
Rouen, but
when the action
costs are higher
than the rev-
enues at the end
of the game, the
appeal to build here
soon shrinks. Usually there
is a rally between two players for the last,
highest and only position scoring 70
money at game end. Paying 10 money
and receiving 15 is a quickly-made calcu-
lation then.
The starting player for a new round is
the one with the least amount of money,
with other players taking
their turn in increasing
wealth. Because the market
usually provides good rev-
enues for the first player to
trade here, incidentally,
towards the end of a round,
a reverse race arises when
players try to be the least
wealthy person in order to
start the next round. Ending
with a negative score is not
impossible; as soon as a player enters this
deficit zone, he must pay additional
money and consequently takes more
debt. At the end of a round, if a player is
still in debt (i.e. has a negative score),
then he must pay 1 more money. The
score track extends to an arbitrary 22
money.
It is here that the game runs against its
limits; there is no reckoning for players
who keep investing and dont realize their
investments in time. It could occur that a
player is out of the game for one or two
rounds because of too many rash actions
in an earlier stage. This results in a severe
ipate in the whole lock, stock, and barrel
with which he might have gained greater
profits.
The numerical additions at the build-
ings, like the sparingly used symbols, are
somewhat confusing at first, but are very
clear once you know what they mean;
there are no problems understand-
ing them, a flaw of almost every
symbol used elsewhere. By
adjusting the available spaces
at the buildings, the game has
the same feel when playing
with two players, albeit that
there still is some more room
for maneuver; the games opti-
mum still is with four players.
It doesnt take long to play five rounds,
and players must optimize quickly; this is
a lesson easily learned from Upon a Salty
Ocean. Which buildings to occupy, how
often to sail, with how many ships, what
fish to catch and when to sell, each time
remains the question as each game devel-
ops differently so there is no fixed strat-
egy, which makes for a varied game. But,
after the first impression that this is a bril-
liant game, gradually the disappointment
surfaced because the game has too many
loose ends that quickly reduces the initial
attraction. This experience ranks the
game in the gray sea of mediocrity, and
with the tsunami of games each year that
are poured over us, Upon a Salty Ocean
simply has not enough power to stay
afloat. Upon a Salty Ocean has some nice,
albeit known, elements that are blended
together in a new mix, but these are not
up to its promise, ultimately giving the
game its label missed opportunity.
Richard van Vugt
limit of his possibilities, as all actions
above a cost of 0 would drive him
through the 22 mark. The supply of
credit should have been settled in
another, more conventional way. As it is, a
FAQ on the internet has to settle this
issue, but it gives an unsatisfying feeling
when a game hits the table and does not
feel playtested to the
fullest extent possible.
And there is another
issue: During the last
round, players can cal-
culate more precisely
how much each action
costs, and what its rev-
enue will be; often there is
only one other player to consider, and
with this parameter in mind, a long
period of reflection is taken: How many
actions can I do and how much money do
I need to invest to still go forward in
income? is pretty much the, uh, point
then.
I Unbalanced return
on investment?
The feeling could arise that the earn-
ings from the buildings are not balanced.
When, for instance, any player in the
Notre Dame is the first to reach the 18-
money mark, the Stained Glass Workshop
becomes available, and
the first player who takes
influence here earns a
comfortable 10 money
at game end. That first
player, almost without
exception, is the next
player in turn order,
unless this player has to
first deal with competi-
tion, at the market for
instance. But on average,
a player has spent 5 money to perform
the Stained Glass Workshop action, gain-
ing a profit of only 5 money, which sud-
denly is not that much anymore, espe-
cially since these buildings earn their
bonus only at the end of the game, and,
as said, perhaps more urgent matters
have to be dealt with first. A player has to
take 8 actions to earn the maximum
bonus of 70 money at the Notre Dame, at
an average total cost of between 40 and
50 money. A revenue of 20 to 30 still is
worth the effort and by no means to be
sneezed at, but this is a passive invest-
ment, and a player did not actively partic-
Reviewer Playing appeal
Richard van Vugt . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 6
Christwart Conrad . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Matthias Hardel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 7
Upon a Salty Ocean
giochix.it
Marco Pranzo
Lambertzo Azzariti
24
about 13 and up
about 90120 minutes
about 39
Title:
Publisher:
Designer:
Artist:
Players:
Age:
Duration:
Price:
44-46_saltyOcean_en_js 21.11.12 15:07 Seite 46
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
47
W
hat possibilities does one have
to reduce a card game to its
basics? For
one thing, you can use
the cards to build a
house! This idea
maybe as old as classic
trick-taking rules is
taken up by the inspira-
tional Super Rhino. To
withstand the unavoid-
able bending, the cards
have a fold in the middle.
To begin with, players
put down one card as a
foundation. One child
bends two wall cards in
such a way that they
form a right angle, and
sets this up. After that,
the child plays one of his
roof cards, adding it on
top as a ceiling. The roof cards have
marks that indicate how the next player
has to position the
walls of the next floor.
The children handle
this with a lot of
patience some of
them even relish that
the lovingly illustrated
furniture stands
neatly.
One is surprised just
how high such a tower
can grow; therefore,
its best to start con-
structing from the
playing room floor. On
the table, it can easily
become too unsteady
not least of all when
the first child has to
climb on a chair.
Some of the cards have a special func-
tion for instance, requiring that the next
player takes an additional roof card from
the stack. Especially tricky are the roofs
showing a rhino mark; then the player has
to place the title-giving wooden rhino fig-
ure there. Gradually, Super Rhino gets
higher and higher, which can jeopardize
the structural stability of the building
considerably.
If somebody causes the tower to topple
over, he loses. The child that has the
fewest roofs in his hand is the winner of
this dexterity game that is actually some-
times amazing. Harald Schrapers/sbw
Super Rhino! (HABA) by Steven
Strumpf and Scott Frisco; for 25
children, 5+ years; playing time:
about 515 minutes; price: about 7
.
Super Rhino!
managed all my rolled steps without
incident may I actually move my adven-
turer figure along the same route.
For children, its not easy to keep track
without moving a figure. It works, how-
ever, if they use the movement chips to
mark the route. The object is to collect
the treasure tiles spread out on the
board. Small tiles and an arrow marker
indicate what kind of treasure is currently
in demand. Timing is essential. If my
opponent is also near the desired kind,
Id better aim at the treasure after the
next one. And I should keep the position
of the traps in mind; they dont change
each space is firmly linked to an audio
file.
It is striking how awkward the design of
Die Schatzkammer is. The discrepancy
between modern electronics on the one
hand and, on the other hand, figures that
fall apart and the markers and nine sec-
tions of the variable gameboard that con-
stantly slip out of place, is tremendous.
In fact, Die Schatzkammer starts out as
a very exciting childrens game, even
though its elegance and its substance in
terms of play are not particularly terrific.
But six-year olds, especially, quickly reach
their limit, since the game instructions are
quite overloaded. There are six different
equipment tiles at the same time, which,
when used cleverly, make the treasure-
seeking considerably easier. But you have
to check the instructions to see for
example how the rope works in order to
avoid a trap. If you touch something with
the toystick, it regrettably plays just a jin-
gle and, in spite of its occasional talka-
tiveness, is not at all helpful in explaining
the rules. Harald Schrapers/sbw
Die Schatzkammer Von El Mira -
dor (Noris) by Christian Fiore and
Knut Happel; for 24 children, 6+
years; playing time: about 30 min-
utes; price: about 20 (toystick:
about 40).
Die Schatzkammer von El Mirador
T
he toystick is an electronic device
with an optical sensor, microphone
and loudspeaker. It resembles the
so-called tiptoi from Ravensburger, but
has a built-in battery and a stronger
voice. Now, for the first time, Noris has
released a toystick game.
Die Schatzkammer von El Mirador is
reminiscent of Minesweeper. But in this
case, we are not threatened by exploding
mines but by pitfalls and guillotines. The
toystick rolls the dice for me, and I run
the corresponding number of steps
through the chessboard-like treasure
chamber. I scan every space on my route
with the toystick, which tells me whether
there is a trap or not. Only after having
FOR KIDS
47_kinder121a_en_js 21.11.12 15:08 Seite 47
T
he playful element is a bit lacking
in the optics kit from HABA, and
the use of colors is rather marginal
as well. In this respect, Twiga Trick by
Anja Wrede and Claudia Hartmann suits
us just fine; it is an observation and mem-
ory and touch game that gets its appeal
from the magic effect of two color foils.
Normally, such foils serve to make hidden
solutions visible; the two authors, how-
ever, use the foils to make blue and red
geometric patterns on a giraffes body
invisible. Each child has giraffe cards
lying in front of him cards showing the
animals head, neck, belly and legs. Twiga
Twiga Trick
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
48
I
n September 2011, at the award pres-
entation during the Kind + Jugend
trade fair in Cologne, the HABA com-
pany got the Innovation Award (which
has been awarded since 2005) for a prod-
uct that is rather atypical for their line.
The winning game was a big optics work-
shop kit for children from three
to eight years old. Games with
optical effects have a special
appeal by putting our percep-
tion to the test. They can turn
the world upside down, dupli-
cate or distort it; and phenom-
ena that can cause astonish-
ment, open mouths and
amazed head-shaking at first,
lead to new insights and per-
spectives again and again.
All this applies to Grosser
Optikbaukasten. It contains ten
items from various disciplines,
all of which make the world
appear different. There is a Mir-
ror Block, with which the chil-
dren see themselves and their
surroundings upside down. The Faceted
Block enlarges and multiplies everything
it is directed to; the Jiggling Block dupli-
cates an enclosed pink marble and turns
the entire glass trough into princess light.
A Kaleidoscope is also included, of
course. In typical HABA fashion, its not a
cardboard tube but a solid wooden cylin-
der. You can see truly beautiful shapes
through this tube; its as if a complete
movie is playing as you turn the cylinder.
This classic, already known to the ancient
Greeks, hasnt lost any of its appeal even
in the 21st century.
The moir effect, with most different
patterns, results from the overlay of fine
grids. Using the Moir Block, children can
reproduce this effect from an overlaid dot
pattern. Turning the disk in the wooden
block becomes a game of patience when
you try to align all the dots. Playing with
the Prism is appealing, too; it comes with
images on cardboard. Suddenly, shrunken
heads come into being; faces turn into
Easter eggs; and heads seem to float in
the room three-dimensionally.
The Cinema Block is also well-received.
When the little ones slowly shove a cater-
pillar through its grid, it really seems to
move, just like a bird that begins to flutter
and chatter. As the children shove, the
blue grid covers partial images so that
animated picture sequences emerge.
It is doubtful whether the big kit is
actually also good for three-year olds; but
from pre-school age on, children show a
more apparent fascination for the materi-
als and experiments. Educational and
parental guidance is desirable in dealing
with the equipment, which, by the way, is
really solid. Nevertheless, children miss
such simple things as a magnifier in the
overall kit. Magnification
effects do occur, for example,
through the Faceted Block,
but only distorted and
refracted. The accompanying
booklet is very short. This
squanders a good opportunity
to describe various supple-
mental activities, such as
building a kaleidoscope on
your own, using mirror foil and
transparent paper, or building
a periscope. These are things
that children of elementary
school age are able to con-
struct. The excellent materials
have been justifiably acknowl-
edged; but as for the acces-
sories, however, its lacking the
variety that could lead to real insights
and perspectives.
Getting Things Into Perspective
MINT skills capacity in the fields of mathematics, information science and the
natural sciences are currently highly regarded in educational and social circles.
When schools and kindergartens start MINT projects, sponsoring is often
needed, and the industry needs to invest in the future, since this future seems
grim with respect to new blood in math and science. After Kosmos did this, more
and more companies have since addressed the physical and chemical sciences
and, quite in passing, game authors have experimented with physical effects in
quite normal childrens games. Typical examples of this are the numerous mag-
net games, but also games such as Burg der 1000 Spiegel, which uses optical
elements. Optics and colors are also essential in the games shown below.
Groer Optikbaukasten
Grosser Optikbaukasten (HABA)
for 14 children, 3+ years (better:
5+ years); price: about 39 .
48-49_kinder121b_en_js 21.11.12 15:10 Seite 48
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
49
and her friends look quite colorful: Up to
the red cheek in the head section, each of
them is spotted with three red and blue
triangles, circles, squares and stars. Twiga
would actually like to be an ordinary
brownish-colored giraffe again, and to
this end, two to four spot-removers are
allowed to help her.
On your turn, you take a color
foil, put it, for instance, on the
giraffes neck and take notice of
the three shapes that disappear.
Now you have to feel for these
very shapes in a bag, take out
the corresponding wooden
pieces and, after taking the foil
away, check whether these exact
shapes are visible again. If you
have remembered well and have
been able to select the correct
pieces, you may turn the respec-
tive card over to Twigas brown
side until Twiga has finally
overcome the spotteritis and
returns to her old grandeur.
The game proceeds in a more demand-
ing and more frantic manner if all players
simultaneously have to check whether
three wooden shapes, randomly drawn in
the beginning, appear in one color on
their giraffe cards. In this case, the check-
ing of the foil just serves to make the laid-
out shapes visible. Here also, the object is
to change Twiga back, with the exchange
of the wooden pieces afterwards being an
important governing element. If you want
it more challenging, you may elongate
the giraffes neck.
When you use the foil, the aha! effect
is produced when the blue squares and
triangles suddenly disappear after apply-
ing the blue foil but everything else is still
visible. The two authors, in an experi-
enced and skillful manner, implemented
this innovative basic idea in several
games with increasing difficulty. In Twiga
Trick, transparency doesnt lead to more
insight, but accomplishes the opposite.
The insight occurs on a higher level.
I
n the geometry game Mirakel, you
can look behind a mirror using the
wondrous reflector like in Alice
Through the Looking Glass. This reflector
is half-transparent, so that composite
images can be formed by using cards in
front and behind the mirror. This great
idea comes from an author whose last
name, Spiegel, is fateful (Spiegel means
mirror).
In Mirakel, players compare cut edges
and mentally mirror and rotate shapes. If
the shapes are simple, even pre-school
children can manage. More demanding
figures, though, are a challenge even for
adults. The pairs of cards that the authors
have come up with begin with simple
numerical sequences; they continue with
simple geometric shapes, sometimes with,
sometimes without the outlines of the
wanted overall shape. For example, the
shapes of the 7th set of cards are com-
plex, based on the breaking-up of a
square into 32 small triangles. To put the
correct parts
together in such a
case is something
only for older chil-
dren and adults.
Mirakel fosters
the ability to imag-
ine the results of
mirroring. If chil-
dren want to put
two cards together,
they have to be
able to imagine
partial shapes in
mirrored positions.
At least in the
beginning, check-
ing with the trans-
parent mirror is an important and neces-
sary control. This is pretty easy with the
numbers, but then very quickly becomes
more difficult. The easiest way is to prac-
tice Mirakel as a memory variant. Here, all
the cards of one card set lie on the table,
sorted by their backs into two stacks. On
your turn, you pick two corresponding
cards from the two stacks and check the
results in the mirror. Children look closely,
and so the game can be used very well
with elementary school children, at least
for up to half of the card sets. You can rec-
ognize this easily by the differing gaps in
the shape, players state for the first sets of
cards. When the gaps increase, the outlines
are missing and one detail is no longer
enough for identification. If then, in addi-
tion, up and down can no longer be differ-
entiated, it becomes really difficult, even
for adults. This can even be used as train-
ing for an aptitude test.
Wieland Herold/sbw
Mirakel
Mirakel (Kallmeyer) by Hartmut
Spiegel and Daniela Gtze; for 14
children, 5+ years; playing time:
about 10 minutes and more; price:
about 15 .
Twiga Trick (Edition Siebenschlfer)
by Anja Wrede and Claudia Hart -
mann; for 24 children, 5+ years;
playing time: about 1015 minutes;
price: about 15 .
48-49_kinder121b_en_js 21.11.12 15:10 Seite 49
Tuareg
arrangement of the loads cant be modi-
fied afterwards.
The Tuareg players (up to five) start
empty-handed and with a small market of
face-up goods; and they have camels
lying in front of them. On your turn, you
can draw cards from the face-down deck,
then select one of them and place it face
up on the market. Or you load a camel
with up to four goods from your hand or
from the market. Stowing
goods on a camel is tricky:
The up to four goods of, at
most, two kinds have to be
lined up properly (only one
change of goods is allowed),
water may only be used if it is
the only commodity, and no
animal may carry more than
two gold.
Besides drawing new cards
or loading, the third possible
action is to purchase one of
four different special cards. In
the cave, you can hide goods
from your hand or from your
own display. This is useful to
fend off the thief; with the thiefs
help, his owner is allowed to steal
a card from an opponents display
or hand once. The donkey, like the camels,
can carry four goods but the goods on its
back may be varied. Finally, the map is
worth two victory points at the end of a
stage. Each of the special cards cost three
dinars. You may pay with cards from your
hand or from your own display. Goods are
worth one to three dinars, depending on
how many of a kind there are.
When the goods pile has been
depleted, the first stage ends. Now, each
player who has a majority of a type of
goods gets three to six victory points,
T
he nomads of Northwest Africa are
called Tuareg (an individual of this
ethnic group, by the way, is a Targi
or Targui). They live on caravan trade,
among other things: They use camels to
transport salt to oasis markets, and sell it
there in order to buy other commodities.
In the card game of that title from
Adlung, you load millet, gold, salt and
water from the
market (the display), or from the stock
(the card hand) onto camels and donkeys.
At the end of each of the two stages,
when the pile of goods cards has been
depleted, players compare the goods that
each Targi has transported; whoever has
the majority of cards of a kind gets victory
points.
Like Bohnanza, the goods cards have a
double function: They are merchandise
and cash at the same time. Another thing
both games have in common is the fixed
order of cards: In Tuareg, camels or don-
keys may only be loaded evenly, and the
T
he popularity of Chicken Cha Cha
Cha, the publication of which
(courageous at that time) turned
out to be amazingly successful, has given
the company a strong position in the
humorous-fresh segment, which it serves
continually. This time, players line up their
figures in a row between two neutral ones
on a circuit of African ambiance. Mambo
the rhino is pushing from the back, while
Kali, a cross-breed of mole and penguin,
leads the group up front. Each player
chooses one of his hand cards, whose val-
ues range from 0 to 11, and lays it face
down. All players flip over their selected
card simultaneously; Kalis number is
determined by chance. The player who has
played the highest card is the first to move
his figure; the others follow, according to
the descending number value. Irrespective
of the number value played, you always
advance to the front of the group except
for whomever plays zero, their figure stays
put on its current space.
depending on how many of that kind
there are overall. A second stage, played
with the same rules, follows; then the
game ends.
With each card, Tuareg forces you to
make decisions: Do I place it as a com-
modity or use it as cash? What goods do I
load on which animal, and in what order?
Is the topmost laid-out merchandise par-
ticularly valuable and therefore possibly
prone to theft? So, should I wait before
laying out cards? In abstract terms, the
game is about card management and
having an eye for majorities. Each player
should keep in mind who is collecting
what cards and how many cards of a spe-
cific kind have already been taken. All in
all, these are quite interesting constraints,
but nothing new. And, due to the restric-
tion of the number of cards, as Adlung
games are known for, the two stages are
over so quickly (especially in the five-
player game) that players can hardly
build up a good display. So the outcome
of the game is accordingly dependent on
the luck of the cards.
In terms of its graphic design, Tuareg is
well done. The instructions, however, have
a few shortcomings. For instance, the
terms turn, round and stage should
be distinguished more clearly, and the
descriptions of the functions of the spe-
cial cards could be more precise. In short:
nice theme, reasonably adapted but
Bohnanza is more fun.
Nicola Balkenhol/sbw
Tuareg (Adlung-Spiele) by
Francesco Berardi; for 25
players, 10 years and up;
duration: about 45 minutes; price:
about 7 .
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
50
Kalimambo
TOP GOOD FAIR POOR
AT A GLANCE
50-53_spielwiese121_en_js 21.11.12 15:12 Seite 50
You wont find a start or finish line;
in this race game, the journey is its own
reward. Speed doesnt matter; what mat-
ters is avoiding minus points. If you step
into one of the six (wooden) dung heaps
heaps not attributable to small animals
such as ducks or hedgehogs but to ele-
phants you get three minus points. (In
any case, the heaps have turned out small
and cute.)
The rhino is able to dish it out, too. As
soon as the space right in front of it has
become vacant, he bolts forward and
gives the last one in line a boot that
results in as many minus points as the
number of spaces the rhino has moved. If
the mole wallows in the elephant dung or
is pushed from behind, it passes the
minus points to the player who has
played the lowest card.
When all 12 cards have been played,
the player with the fewest minus points
wins.
Kalimambo is easy to explain, but it is
not for everyone not right away, and in
some cases not at all. How can I avoid a
misstep? If a dung heap is lying just in
front of the leader of the group, it seems
superficially advisable to play a pretty low
card. But even that can still be too high.
Or that card is the lowest in the current
round and results in penalty points since
the mutant penguin steps into the dung.
The rhino can also get you easier than
youd think. It seemed a clever idea of one
player in our game group, who was in last
position, to first hold his ground by play-
ing a zero and then, in the next round,
trigger a proper kick. But then all the oth-
ers played a pretty high card since they
wanted to take refuge
from the raging beast;
since Kali accidentally
fell by the wayside and
was therefore rammed
by the rhino, our smarty-
pants shot himself in
the foot by playing a
medium-high card.
That triggered great
malicious joy for the
others.
When it comes right
down to it, the card
constellation is hardly
predictable. This is
like rolling dice for
the highest number,
one of the players
groaned; however, he performed
below average when he deliberately
played his cards completely arbitrarily in
a game.
Opinions differ on Kalimambo. You can
bet that nobody would want to recom-
mend the game to tacticians who have
certain ambitions with regard to winning.
If a player has the intent of figuring out
the optimal move in order to overcome
the imponderables, he will fail to the
other players pleasure. And in many a
game, Kalimambo turned out to be a total
flop. Nevertheless, in my opinion, the
amusing games tipped the scales in favor
(even though I admit that it was a thin
majority). The more players that partici-
pate, the more frequently minus points
are awarded, and the more there is to
laugh about. Kalimambo is especially
entertaining with a greater number of
players.
The atmospheric graphic design makes
it easier for children to approach the
game; thus Kalimambo also proves itself a
family game in the best sense. But it can
well serve as a welcome casual closer
after having played a brain-buster for sev-
eral hours. Admittedly, it satisfies primi-
tive instincts to laugh at the expense of a
player who has had bad luck, and to
delight in emerging unscathed. But
things like this are allowed while gaming.
Christwart Conrad/sbw
Kalimambo (Zoch-Verlag)
by Antonio Scrittore; for
37 players, about 8 years
and up; duration: about 2030 min-
utes; price: about 20 .
50-53_spielwiese121_en_js 21.11.12 15:12 Seite 51
Jagdfieber
all the way we want. Each player is armed
with a set of cards: one hunter, two
wolves, three hares, three carrots and one
special card. All players choose a card and
play it face down.
After that, players reveal their card and
score, according to the motto, What is
the most dangerous animal in the forest?
A hunter shoots a wolf dead, and the cap-
tured card is put to the left on the face-
down point pile next to the players
lodge. If several players
have played an equally
strong card, the cards
are activated, in clock-
wise order, beginning
with the starting player.
In case there are still
wolves alive after the
hunt, each of them
devours one hare played,
and the surviving hares eat
the carrots. Everything that
has not been eaten goes to
the right, face up, next to
ones own lodge. If our ani-
mals or carrots survive the
next round unscathed, they
go to the left on our face-down point pile.
Before then, however, they make formida-
ble targets for the next round of play.
The animal to be eaten is always the
next one in clockwise order; surviving ani-
mals are eaten before newly played-out
ones. This results in some well-known
She thinks that I am thinking combi-
nations, with interesting and thematic
twists. With a Closed Season card, played-
out hunters can be convicted of poaching;
I
f you answer the question, What is
the most dangerous animal in the for-
est? with, The carrot! you wont
land in one of the top spots on the PISA
test (Program for International Student
Assessment). That is, would not have
landed until recently, because that
answer might now be correct but only in
Jagdfieber, and only rarely. Normally, first
the hunters shoot the
wolves, then the
surviving wolves chow down the hares
running around, and finally, the remain-
ing hares dig their teeth into the defense-
less carrots.
Of course, victory points matter in this
lively little card game, presented in a
500-copy print run at the SPIEL 10 by
Smiling Monster Games, a small German
company from Aachen. It is easy to
explain, and players understand it quickly
in most cases after playing the first
game, which usually doesnt proceed at
in this case, they land on our pile as
minus points. The successful wolf lover
gets a bonus for this. And if the competi-
tors are just shooting willy-nilly and wolf-
ing hares down, even our carrots may help
us take a trick.
The end of the game is also tricky in
Jagdfieber. Successful hunters always go
back into our hand, which winds up with
players having different numbers of
cards. When one player plays his last card,
the current round ends. Hand cards then
count as minus points. So, at some point,
our hunter had better just come across a
few harmless carrots and go home to our
hunters lodge without having achieved
anything so we can get rid of him.
Jagdfieber uses tried game mecha-
nisms and combines them in a nice new
way. It gets better with each participant
numbering more than the minimum. With
three players, there is only moderate
action at the table; five players are the
optimal number, making for lots of activ-
ity. One game takes less than ten minutes;
because of this, the instructions suggest
playing four rounds (four days of hunt-
ing) and noting down the scores. In most
cases, this is a bit much. One or two
rounds keep up the suspense just long
enough and are perfect as an evening
ender. Stefan Ducksch/sbw
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
52
Jagdfieber (Smiling
Monster Games) by Stefan
Zlatintsis; for 35 players,
about 8 years and up; duration:
about 30 minutes; price: about 13 .
Siebenpunkt
TOP GOOD FAIR POOR
T
he Swiss have a strong affinity for
their native flora and fauna. Some
years ago, in Haselwurz und
Brenklau (Verlag Murmel in cooperation
with the ETH Zrich), players had to con-
sider the living conditions of the field
cricket and the water-crowfoot, which
thrive only in certain regions. Sieben-
punkt, whose publication was initiated by
the Swiss farmers association IP-Suisse,
tries to encourage us to observe animals,
using quite a different approach in terms
of its game mechanism. The 61 cards use
professional photos, some of them
impressive close-ups. Without a doubt,
the game proves educational, quite in
passing. In this game, the animals can
only be found in their well-defined habi-
tats. The wolf spider requires at least
three adjacent marguerite meadows plus
one insect as food for its well-being.
Establishing this animal is rewarded with
three victory points. The seven-spotted
ladybug, generating the titular seven
points, demands considerably more: one
bellflower meadow bordered by two
poppy meadows, two marguerite mead-
ows and two meadows of any kind, plus
two insects as its basic food resource.
The animals demands are put into play
by means of 120 Domino-like landscape
tiles that each player arranges on his field
area into a more or less homogenous
landscape. Using a drafting procedure, all
players draw three tiles at the same time,
choose one and hand the rest to their
neighbor. After the tiles have been allo-
cated this way, players place them on
their own field board, trying to fulfill one
50-53_spielwiese121_en_js 21.11.12 15:12 Seite 52
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
53
animal, you should keep an eye on
other players plans so that it wont
be snatched out from under you. Oth-
erwise, players play along pretty
calmly, independent of other players
actions.
In the beginning, the considerations
are quite manageable. If you plant the
cherry tree here and bushes next to it,
you can attract the lesser horseshoe
bat but wont please the barn owl that
insists on meadows adjacent to the
cherry tree. Or you heap up stones next
to an apple tree for the Aciculida land
snail; you hope for a water area, which
you dont get hold of, though, and there-
fore change your plan in favor of the least
weasel. As more animals become indige-
nous, the requirements increase quickly;
with the suggested variants, however,
players can choose their preferred level of
difficulty precisely.
Many a player sees these logical-geo-
metrical optimizations as work rather than
play. Unsuitable for frantic or impatient
people, quick-starters, negotiators or per-
formers, Siebenpunkt serves a very distinct
target group: the tinkerers. Unfortunately,
the graphic design mars the playing fun
for these people. The conditions men-
tioned on the cards dont always match
the landscape tiles in visual terms; they
can easily be mistaken and in some are so
grainy that they can produce a headache
as if you had a 3D stereogram in front of
you. Clearer images would be the first
avenue for improvement; alternatively a
stylized fruit or flower would
have served the purpose much better. The
cards on display should also be recogniza-
ble at a distance. If the publisher didnt
want to forgo the excellent animal photos,
larger cards would have been necessary.
Another problem is that the final check of
whether each player still safely harbors all
his animals is a pretty cumbersome proce-
dure. Most of my co-players refused and
wanted to let it go. This is a pity, since, this
way, the hard-earned, well-deserved win
goes underappreciated.
Christwart Conrad/sbw
Siebenpunkt (Fata Mor -
gana) by Cyril Bucher; for
25 players, about 9 and
up; duration: about 4080 minutes;
price: about 40 .
or more wishes of the animals laid out in
the center of the table. If a player is the
only one to succeed with an animal, he
gets the corresponding card and puts it
down in front of him, face up. If more
than one succeeds, the players involved
move the card aside and put one of their
color chips on top, indicating that the ani-
mal can be seen in their area. In the next
round, the display is replenished to eight
cards, and the simultaneous selection
process of three landscape dominoes
starts anew.
Whoever has gained the most points in
the end wins, as one would expect but
only if the habitat still supports the ani-
mals. Since a player may place Domino
tiles partly atop one another, he may, in
doing so, destroy the landscape required
for an animal he has already acquired; if
he doesnt provide it with an alternative
by the end, he loses double the associ-
ated victory points.
In a variant for advanced players, the
landscape builders start with several
secret task cards. If somebody generates
an ecological compensation area, such as
a standard orchard, a pond or a dry wall,
he can look forward to a high reward of
six to 15 points.
Siebenpunkt demands the utmost
attention. You have to carefully balance
the different habitat conditions and
decide in favor of one and against the
other. In most cases, you can satisfy
demanding requirements only over sev-
eral rounds. If you strive for a valuable
Im pres sum spiel box
Founded: 1981.
Published by: w. nost heide ver lag gmbh, Bahn -
hof strae 22, 96117 Mem mels dorf, Germany.
Tel. +49-951-40666 -0, Fax +49-951-40666 -49.
Publisher: Dipl. -Kfm. Jens Nost heide.
Editor: Mat thias Har del.
Assistent Editors: Christwart Conrad (cc),
Jochen Corts (lud), Thorsten Heinermann (th).
Signed acticles express the opinion of their
respective authors.
Translation: Sybille and Bruce Whitehill (sbw),
Corinna Spellerberg (cs), Samuel Willcox (sw),
Sebastian Blanco (sb).
Publication dates: 7 times per year.
Postal address: w. nost heide ver lag gmbh, Bahn -
hof strae 22, 96117 Mem mels dorf, Germany.
eMail add ress: re dak tion@spiel box. de.
Web: www.spiel box-ma ga zin. de.
Sales: Jasmin Pfister (vertrieb@nost heide. de).
Ad manager: Bar bara Nost heide (barbara
@nostheide.de).
Typesetting and Layout: Mat thias Har del,
Christof Tisch.
Printers: creo Druck & Me di en ser vice GmbH,
Bam berg, Germany.
Yearly subscription rates including postage:
45,50 (Europe), 56,00 (Overseas).
Cover price: Individual selling prices in foreign
currencies are country-specific.
Change of address: The publisher is not respon-
sible for issue not received due to a change of
address. Please contact vertrieb@nost heide. de
to report change of address.
Ma nu script submissions: The publisher
resumes no responsibility for loss or damage for
material which has been sent without prior writ-
ten consent.
Registerge richt Bamberg HRB 746
ISSN 07216777 Ust. -IdNr.: DE 132 271 195
Ge richts stand: Bam berg
Copyright: Entire content is 2011 by w. nost -
heide verlag gmbh. All rights reseved.
The Publisher assumes no responsibility for
claims made in advertisements. The information
presented in spielbox is from many sources for
which there can be no warranty of responsibility
as to accuracy, originality or completeness. The
magazine is sold with the understanding that
the publisher is not engaged in rendering pro -
duct endorsements or providing instructions as
a substitute for appropriate training by qualified
sources. Therefore spielbox cannot and will not
assume responsibility for any actions arising
from any information published in spielbox.
The use of any trademarks is not meant to be
construed as a challenge to the trademark hol -
ders.
spielbox is a Registered Trademark of
w. nostheide verlag gmbh, Reg. No. 3,870,584.
spiel box playing appeal ratings
The ratings rage from 1 to 10, whereas 1 is the
worst and 10 the best rating. Ratings of 1, 2, 3
are grades of poor games, ratings of 4, 5, 6 stand
The average rating of the reviewed games in
spielbox is well above the to be expected value of
5.5 since we focus on recommending games and
disregard really poor ones for review purposes.
for mediocre games, and games with ratings of
7, 8, 9 can be regarded as good. The rating of 10
is reserved to exceptionally good games, and is
to be seen rarely.
50-53_spielwiese121_en_js 21.11.12 15:12 Seite 53
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
54
As dOr in Cannes Awarded
O
n the eve of the Games Festival
in Cannes, the As dOr, the
French version of Spiel des
Jahres (Game of the Year) was awarded.
The main prize this year goes to Takenoko
by Antoine Bauza, published by Bombyx
(formerly Hazgaard) and Matagot.
The Grand Prix, corresponding to the
German Kennerspiel des Jahres (a special
prize for more complex games), was
awarded to Olympos (Philippe Keyaerts;
Ystari). Additionally, the Childrens Game
Zwerg Riese (Marco Teubner; HABA) took
a prize, and the Special Prize went to the
Ystari edition of Sherlock Holmes Crimi-
nal-Cabinet (by Raymond Edwards,
Suzanne Goldberg and Gary Grady).
Also nominated:
Cubulus (Sylvain Mnager; Gigamic)
Fame us (Christophe Hermier; Moonster
Games)
King of Tokyo (Richard Garfield; Iello)
The Castles of Burgundy (Stefan Feld;
alea)
Mansions of Madness (Corey Konieczka;
Fantasy Flight Games)
Pirates ! (Alain Rivollet; Djeco)
Tier auf Tier: Das groe Abenteuer
(Klaus Miltenberger; HABA)
Sandwich (Christophe Raimbault; Le
Joueur)
Tournay (Xavier Georges, Sbastien
Dujardin, Alain Orban; Pearl Games)
Of course, the rule that surprise creates
an interest also applies in France. The
Special Prize laureate was not even previ-
ously mentioned on the list of nominees!
That seems somehow familiar. The Ger-
man penchant, however, is getting this
awardback in the fast lane once more.
Feedback on Feedback
After the last Game of the Year titles had
reaped their reward abroad long before
they were accredited in Germany
(Qwirkle was available in the USA for six
years, 7 Wonders was awarded in France
way ahead of Germany, Dixit had been a
laureate there for an even longer time),
the current head
start of 27 years
(Sherlock Holmes
Criminal-Cabi net
was Game of the
Year in 1985) can
hardly be topped.
However, this con-
cept is entirely
irrelevant in terms
of commercial
success, as in this
respect the Ger-
man jury prize is
still the undis-
puted leader.
Until now, the As dOr Jeu de lanne
Prix du Jury (Special Prize) was generally
intended for a gamers game, as was the
case most recently with 7 Wonders. By
renaming it Grand Prix, it was linguisti-
cally upgraded in a considerable way, and
could one day outshine the main prize.
The nominated titles cover all the perti-
nent slots, which differ slightly from the
German ones, for cultural reasons. This
way, Mansions of Madness appeals to the
martial faction, whereas the foolish Sand-
wich lives by its frivolous approach.
Pirates!, completely unknown in these
parts, is somewhat caught between two
stools. As the French list of nominees does
not differentiate between children and
adult titles, this game, recommended for
players from seven years upwards, can
easily find its place at As dOr. In Pirates!,
the pirate players take turns placing cer-
tain objects on the board, with the target
of getting three in line, and then discard-
ing the respective mission card.
Fame us represents the communicative
games category. It modifies the principle
known from Such a Thing (Valley Games,
2007) by narrowing down the theme to
celebrities. A vote decides if discarded
traits relate to a star, and an initial, secret
allocation of players to a certain team
ought to ensure honest answers.
Christwart Conrad/cs
TAKENOKO publisher Hicham Ayoub Bedran (Matagot), Erwan
Hascot (Bombyx) and Autor Antoine Bauza (from left)
T
his spielbox contains six cards for
the game Navegador (PD-Verlag).
If this additional material was
missing from your copy, please contact
vertrieb@nostheide.de for a replace-
ment.
The supplement for the coming edition,
however, will be very difficult to lose
indeed, as it is a large punch board of
new components for Hawaii, a game that
went down well with all of our critics (see
review sb 7/11). The image below shows
the level of development at the beginning
of February.
O
ur search for proofreading volun-
teers was met with an over-
whelming response. We had of
course heard that the volunteer culture is
quite pronounced in the Anglo-Saxon
world. However, nobody had reckoned
with almost 50 interested parties getting
in touch. At this point, a huge thank you
to all volunteers also to those whose
help we are in the end not going to enlist.
Our experiment to publish two reviews
about the same game was met with far
less enthusiasm. Most people expressed a
concern that they had us much rather use
the space for two games than for depict-
ing one game from two perspectives.
Some readers showed a strong preference
for a definite pro and contra vote, but in
this case, the opinion of Stuart Dagger
and Stefan Ducksch did not diverge quite
so much anyway. No clear and pro-
nounced vote for either the English or the
German style was discernable from the
feedback we received, but the answers
reflected a preference to maintain the
blend of translated texts and contribu-
tions in the original language. We happily
comply with this wish.
Matthias Hardel/cs
Outlook and Note on
the Supplement
P
h
o
t
o
:

G
u
i
d
o

H
e
i
n
e
c
k
e

SHORT NOTES
54-55_inkuerze121_en_js 21.11.12 15:16 Seite 54
French Games Magazine Discontinued
In a multi-page editorial in the last edi-
tion, Arneodo set out several reasons why
JSP could not continue. For one, the con-
stant delays in the magazines produc-
tion, over time, bordered on the ridicu-
lous. Whereas the authors faithfully met
their deadlines, the disrespect that the
magazine fermented in its own publish-
ing house became intolerable. Sadly, lack-
ing financial means, a prioritized commis-
sioning of in-house employees could not
be guaranteed. As a further internal rea-
son for the shutdown, he added that the
editor-in-chief, Rozoy, had left to take up
another professional occupation.
Apart from some explicitly named pub-
lishers, the cooperation with games man-
ufacturers left a lot to be desired, as they
complained about negative ratings and
consequently failed to donate evaluation
copies. Furthermore, the pricing policy of
the on-line games shop did not meet with
everyones approval. In addition, Arneodo
considers a missing games press culture
an intrinsic French shortcoming. He
laments the difficult circumstances for
the press in general, and specifically for
small-scale publications hardly able to
survive within the product range of the
wholesalers. He claims that the advertise-
ment business, which has been meager
anyhow, has now entirely ground to a
halt; companies prefer to advertise
their products elsewhere. And finally,
the personal load for him became too
heavy to bear, as he was no longer
willing to permanently put in
unpaid work during weekends and
in his holidays. Even though he
sustains the internet presence, its
future is entirely unresolved.
JSP is not the first games pub-
lication that laid down its arms
for more or less similar rea-
sons. The older people among
us will remember the leg-
endary magazine Jeux &
Stratgie. It is quite sad that
JSP has gone down, particu-
larly for the mainly francophone clientele,
and for those of us familiar with the
French language, who will now no longer
be able to appreciate the sometimes
unusual views of our neighbors.
Christwart Conrad/cs
I
n December 2003, the French game
magazine Jeux sur un plateau (games
on a board) first saw the light of day.
After eight years and 77 issues, it was dis-
continued in January 2012. The appear-
ance of each individual copy, which could
contain up to 100 pages, had changed
repeatedly over time. Apart from reviews,
reports and supplements (as they are also
frequently available in the spielbox), at
least six pages was paid to a specific
game, its development, and other back-
ground information, under the headline
Zoom. Quite often, the magazine con-
tained contests, sometimes a quiz or a
task for classical games, like chess, or for
modern games. Beyond its name, the
magazine covered video games,
recently including games played
on the iPad and other tablet PCs.
All of this was interspersed with
cartoons. In parallel, a website
had been created, which offered
on-line gaming and an on-line
shop that sold the latest games.
From the beginning, the pub-
lisher, Olivier Arneodo, did not
have great financial expecta-
tions, but out of a sense of
pleasure and idealism,
engaged in this adventure of a
game magazine that rapidly grew in
importance. At its peak, they ran 12,000
copies and sold JSP at kiosks. In the end,
5,000 copies were still printed, of which
the considerable amount of 4,000 still
found a buyer.
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
55
54-55_inkuerze121_en_js 21.11.12 15:16 Seite 55
turn until the end of the game so he has
no chance of winning any more.
This dilemma of either having to
choose unfavorable resources or running
the risk of having fewer action disks at
ones disposal can be avoided by not
dealing out any dowry to the players. In
this case, all Helvetians start with six
actions, and this enhances the last
players scope of action in the first round,
compared to the starting player.
Nicola Balkenhol/sbw
B
asically, Helvetia is about building
production chains. The better they
work, the more points they gener-
ate. All players principally start off in the
same situation. Who begins, however, can
have far-reaching consequences. In the
early stage of the game, experienced Hel-
vetians will do their utmost to collect their
two dowry disks (i.e., coins), because they
will have two more actions available to
them from the next turn on. In the four-
player game, it might happen that the last
player in the first action round faces the
dilemma of being forced to marry into a
village containing resources he doesnt
actually want. If he now forgoes the two
wedding actions, his opponents can play
off it: In the worst case, his two dowry
coins stay with a player who has acquired
them by marrying into a village and then
just blocks them by not erecting any pro-
duction buildings, thus making further
marriages impossible. Consequently, the
doomed player has two fewer actions per
Helvetia: Doing without dowries
the two-player game). He
arranges them in as many piles
as there are players. The last
player in the normal order of
play is the first to select a group
of cubes, then his right neighbor,
and so on, until the starting player takes
the remaining resources. After that, the
black bag is emptied, of course.
Christwart Conrad/sbw
I
f all participants know what matters,
then the player who begins has a clear
advantage, and the existence of a
marker that you need to acquire in order
to become the new starting player is an
obvious sign of this. In most cases, the
last player in the first round gets one
fewer resource than the first player, pro-
vided the black cubes are not distributed
equally. The following idea for compensa-
tion also enables a slightly faster
approach for all players, plus more
options right from the start:
After players have distributed the
resources on the spaces on the board as
specified in the instructions, all available
cubes are put into the black bag with the
church representatives. The starting
player draws two cubes more than the
number of participants (or one cube in
Village: Compensation for the starting player advantage
sarily lose salt if you leave the damaged
cargo space empty prior to departure.
Pirates attack the first unprotected ship. If
all cargo areas are damaged, the ship will
sink; however, it can be bought later
again. You can sell even if the price for
salt is at zero, e.g., by using the function
of the treasury office.
The face-down event tiles are not shuf-
fled, not even after players have looked at
them secretly, so the first player who has
invested there may put the looked-at tile
aside, and can take it later or forever
leave it.
Even a player who has not built on
Notre Dame at all
may build a church
window. The town
hall rewards the
possession of (up to
13) buildings (or,
better, action
spaces), among
them: bank, vault,
Notre Dame, the church window
space and the town hall itself.
Christwart Conrad/sbw
A
fter having walked right into the
credit trap once, players can
probably handle the tough credit
limit in the next games. The initial capital
compensation for
those who go last in
the order of play, how-
ever, is meager, con-
sidering the inhibition
threshold is rather low
and wont prevent
them from entering
the minus range in the
first round. An
increase to (at least)
three instead of two units of
money in balance to the player
who has his turn sooner is justified.
The instructions leave many questions
unanswered. For the German translation,
the Heidelberger Spieleverlag expended a
lot of effort and even redesigned some of
the layout. Its annoying that the images
accompanying the description of the
event tiles have been shifted too far to
the top. But it is even more annoying that
the original Italian company repeatedly
Upon a Salty Ocean: Rule clarifications and starting player advantage
s
p
i
e
l
b
o
x
56
made last-minute changes that could no
longer be included in the rules.
Some ambiguities can be resolved as
follows (which partly contradicts the
printed rules but in most cases isnt
covered):
When the inn and bank pay
out money, the previous order of
play is maintained in the
case of a tie.
You may build a car-
rack even before you
have launched the sec-
ond caravel. The other
players revenues from
the academy or shipyard
are lost if the ship
builder has the same
building. He pays his costs
to the bank; the other
players might get less back
from the kitty in case the
amount is rounded down. A
ship repair is also possible on the
high seas, even if the damages have
been incurred before you acquire the
lighthouse. In a storm, you wont neces-
TWEAKS AND VARIATIONS
56_besser_sp121_en_js 21.11.12 15:18 Seite 56
00_U3_a_riogrande121b_en_js 21.11.12 13:52 Seite U3
00_U4_az_zoch121_en_js 21.11.12 13:53 Seite U4