Page 56 - spielbox 03/21 - English

At a Glance. Spukstaben
Cheese Rescue
Letter Ghosts
By WIELAND HEROLD
Spukstaben: A good friend of ours owns a print shop. This office still contains an old Roman letter case
with movable type; compared to the mod- ern printing machines, it is more a deco- ration. It is understandable that the un- used letters are getting bored. Therefore, in Moritz Dressler‘s imagination, they want to escape to freedom. The only way to prevent this is to use the letters; so, the creative coining of words is in demand.
The letters appear in the typesetting room, at the printing press, and in the office. From there, it‘s not far to the exit door. Before they can escape, the rescue team is supposed to capture them by means of words, simultaneously and se- cretly generated over the course of ten rounds.
In the first round, there are six Letter Ghost (“Spukstabe“) cards on display; in the next rounds, additional ghosts will be haunting around. The more common ones have a higher ghost power. Consequently, they should come up more often in the word creations, since each appropriate letter there reduces the ghost power. Once this power is exhausted, the Letter Ghost vanishes. Otherwise, it continues its way through the print shop – until it manages to escape.
In the final round, a jointly determined Power word indicates how many ghosts can still be prevented from escaping. This word is so strong that the letters‘ ghost power no longer plays a role. The only
important thing is that it contains many of the letters on display. In the end, de- pending on the number of escapees, the achievement of the team is rated from “word-wasting“ to “word
magic.“
Children are particularly fascinated
by the incorporation of ghosts, and they get involved in the letter-rescue with great zeal. Word-formation rules and the idea of a team, however, shouldn‘t be regulated too strictly. Even author Moritz Dressler himself explicitly recommends using house rules. In this case, the gen- erating of words can become a creative
adventure.
(sbw)
Title: Designer: Illustration: Publisher: Players: Age: Duration: Price:
Spukstaben Moritz Dressler Christian Opperer NSV
1 – 4
about 10+ years about 20 minutes about 15 Euros
Reviewer
Wieland Herold
Udo Bartsch
Too many rules required.
Christwart Conrad
Playing appeal
7
5 6
A pleasant cooperative word-crea- tion task, typically with limitation problems as to which words and clues can be considered legitimate. I don‘t mind an odd theme – but who scares whom in this game? This is rather detrimental to getting familiar with this (basically simple) little game.
L.U. Dikus 7
Coming up with well-coordinated and witty words in order to jointly put a stop to the activity of letter ghosts is a task of considerable appeal. Only the large number of conditions to be met tempers the enthusiasm a bit.
Stefan Ducksch 6
A nice task, but with an old-fashio- ned theme and many detailed rules. The special rule for the final round is superfluous.
Marie Poenisch 7
Harald Schrapers 6
An interesting word game that bene- fits even those players who are not so creative. Downside: the hard-to-un- derstand instructions.
54 spielbox
Cat and Cheese
By HARALD SCHRAPERS
Cheese Rescue: Dogs chase cats, cats eat mice, and the favorite food of mice is cheese. Some of
this might be just a stereotype, but it fits perfectly with this card game and its ret- ro-style illustrations.
Initially, each player gets a set of six pieces of her or his personal type of cheese. Bit by bit, you have to put your cards on the table, trying to avoid that a mouse will eat your cheese.
If a mouse card is lying next to a cheese card, the cheese will be captured. This makes Cheese Rescue remotely sim- ilar to Chess, also in terms of the square playing area, which is built up during the game. Its size depends on the number of players, and the exact distribution of the cards forming the playing area is deter- mined only over time. A significant dif- ference to Chess is that the entire playing area in Cheese Rescue is first completely filled with the game pieces (here, cards) and some of the cards are (re)moved only then. This makes for a suspenseful and sometimes even surprising finale, al- though one could actually pre-calculate the removal of cards.
During the game, you have not only cheese cards in your hand but also animal cards; so you can use these to attack, so to speak, an opponent‘s cheese. Or you use a cat to attack a mouse that threat- ens your own cheese card.
In terms of tactics, this is demanding: When should you put your cheese on the table: earlier
Photos: Becker, Heidelbär Games, Herold, Schrapers