Page 42 - spielbox 03/21 - English

RKerivtiekw. M/TeweepaleksLanddVariations/Analysis. Meeple Land
Hullabaloo By GERALD RÜSCHER
and populate it with visitors in four colors. The goal is to put different attractions in your park and accom- modate as many customers as possible. Mechanically, it‘s very simple: we buy tiles that show Ferris wheels or bumper cars and place them in our own tableau
until we run out of money.
At the end of the round, we pick a bus
card and receive a handful of meeples, which we immediately place in our park:
C
erything is better for them today. Instead of working the fields, they can go to the fair. They can eat a fat burger, hop on the
Tweaks and Variations
By CHRISTWART CONRAD
The random distribution of tiles doesn‘t do justice to the special weight that scoring gives to collections of different attractions. If you‘re down on your luck and can‘t acquire certain tiles because they just don‘t show up, you‘re doomed to lose. It‘s simply an- noying when everyone is waiting for the toilet or the ghost train and then, when that tile is finally revealed, one lucky person instantly benefits.
Here‘s one possible remedy: Each player gets an additional $2 per turn. If you are dissatisfied with the display, you may spend $1 before your turn to place up to five tiles of your choice under their respective stacks. You may choose from any of the three sizes. After that, you replace the display from the respective
piles. If you are still not satisfied, you can repeat this action once by paying $2.
***
The busloads of meeples might also
be a problem. In principle, you should remove spurned bus cards from subse- quent rounds and put them back in the box, while the used ones are collected in a discard pile. Especially with four players, you‘ll need to shuffle this pile as soon as no more cards are available. In- dependently of this, a player may draw two bus cards from the pile by paying $2. Either you use one of them and pass or you put it on the discard pile like the other card. You may also repeat this ac- tion once, provided you pay another $3.
***
As an alternative to the meeple dis-
play, you can purchase exactly two mee-
ples of your choice at a fixed price:
2 of any color except pink: $3 1 pink and 1 other color: $4 2 pink: $5
***
The price for the Plot Extension, which
according to the rules costs $6 (and not $9, as printed), is reduced to $4. Also, the other last-ditch action, buying a sec- ond entrance, should be reduced to $2.
***
Player order should be set according to
the assets at the beginning of the round. In this case, the rules about the ties re- main the same. Any additional entranc- es only have to be locked into position when you start a path there.
With all these changes you gain, along with a slightly longer game, more con- trol over the events. (sb)
40 spielbox
enturies ago, meeples lived diffi- cult lives. They had to work hard as
chain carousel with a full belly, then go for a quick visit to the porta potties. Oh, how nice.
Meeple Land is a tile-matching game in which we build an amusement park
knights, monks or highwaymen. Ev-
Photos: Becker, Rüscher / Illustrations: Blue Orange