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construction engineer. On your turn, you can choose to take new platforms, new contracts, or suitable building materials (which exist in three types). The fact that you work on your own projects during the other players’ turns is supposed to keep the downtime short. First, the con- structions on the platforms, representing public or private, industrial or commercial buildings, need to be connected to the power supply and the water supply as well as to the local waste disposal system.
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turn, you need to come up with a word that is supposed to fit well with two of your hand cards. You write this word into each notebook except one, and hand out one notebook to each player. Nobody – not even the active player himself – knows who gets the empty notebook (i.e., who is the “Conspirator”). Then you lay out one of your cards that fit the word in question, and the others, in turn, follow with a card from their own hand. After this procedure has been repeated with a second card,
of rally. The race is conducted on a trea
sure map, i.e., the brightly colored game e
board with 19 plots of land, including mines and a ranch. Each round, one plot of land is auctioned off and the amount is equitably distributed among the other heirs. Money leftover is put in the saloon; therefore, it is worthwhile to swing by there in good time. In this game, you often move money back and forth, always with regard to your two secret objectives and the five shared objectives on display that give you additional income if you are the first player to fulfill them.
In order to do so, you need to fulfill topographical requirements. Neighboring plots, plots along the train tracks (where, as a nice gimmick, a put-together steam locomotive is moving) or near the river (used by a paddle wheeler). This is not only an eye-catcher but also generates more cash, provided that the steamer or the locomotive are adjacent to the plot of land that is currently auctioned off. And of course, you can move the vehi- cles by means of action tiles, or you can challenge another player to a duel. Who says that the matter of inheritance, of all things, would be fair in the Wild West? The old Mr. Winchester would certainly have enjoyed the bargaining and gam- bling. -sd/sbw
Huch (Cosmodrome, 2017)
A black box showing a mask: Is that Bat- man? No, but Catham City is set in a city inhabited by cats. The objective is to become the new mayor. In order to reach this goal, you shouldn’t be too soft on the other candidates. For one game, players choose five of the eight factions, all of which consist of 15 identical cards per color. Depending on the faction, you need a different number of one kind in order to trigger an effect. If you don’t want to play a card, you draw instead, taking as many cards as you like of one faction from the seven cards on display. The factions have such nice names as “Hackers,” “Mafia,” “Officials” or “Special Unit of Robocats”; this should make it obvious that only very few characters require nothing but playing a few cards and earning victory points in return. Some factions allow their opponents to get points as well, but many others pick cards from another player’s hand, swap them or even force somebody to discard cards with nothing in return. The first player to accumulate a sufficient
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Second, the contracts show exact archi- tectural drawings of the constructions. And finally, the structures need to survive the transfer to the MegaCity in the middle of the table without collapsing – which is not easy if, for instance, you have to move a multi-story building to the central park area of the city. For this, you score victory points in the end, as you do for the tall- est building in the city or for using only a single building material for construction. If a structure collapses while it is being moved, you have to rebuild it on your next turn.
And what happens if a new building is connected to the city and causes an already-completed one there to collapse? No problem, according to the instruc- tions: Everything that tumbles onto the table simply falls into the sea and can be recycled. -sd/sbw
Huch (I Games, 2018)
If you apply the Agent Undercover prin- ciple to Dixit-style cards, it’s not far to Detective Club. But this game doesn’t provide given locations. Instead, on your
the active player discloses his idea and explains the choice of his cards. In clock- wise order, the other players do the same. Based on the reasons given, everybody now takes a guess as to who might be the Conspirator.
Here also, the communicative aspect is the strong point of this concept. Those who present unsuitable cards cut a pretty poor figure, whereas creative players come up trumps and invigorate the game by interpreting the card content at great length, using it in a figurative sense or somehow putting their cards into an orig- inal context. The entertainment value stands and falls with the players’ narra- tive skills. Players who also like Dixit defi- nitely can’t go wrong with buying Detec- tive Club; in any case, they’ll gain two more card decks that can also be used for Dixit. -cc/sbw
Huch (Blue Orange, 2019)
The title-giving character doesn’t even witness the beginning of the game: Daddy Winchester has passed away, and getting the inheritance is linked to a kind
MEGACITY OCEANIA: Manual dexterity in demand as well
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