Page 12 - Spielbox_Special_2021_gesamt_EN

Current. Fall Preview 2021
onto an island or to your dining room. Whoever has the majority in a color there also gets the corresponding professor and in turn controls this color on the islands, as well.
In this way, it is determined who is in charge of the island, where Mother Na- ture stands. That player gets to place a tower there, which earns an influence point. If neighbouring islands are con- trolled by the same player, they merge into one large island — just like magic. In other words, it will now be much harder for the opponent to take this island back.
The first player to build all their towers is the winner. Alternatively, the game is played to see who has the most influence when only three island groups remain, when all students are in play, or when all players have used up their ten hand cards. For Eriantys, experts there are also cards with special abilities in the box. (ab/dm)
Deep Print Games
Peter Eggert was downright ecstatic. At the Pegasus press day in early summer, Eggert, one of the six brains behind Deep Print, just couldn’t stop raving about the new tile-laying game by old hands Michael Kiesling and Wolfgang Kramer. The game is called Savannah Park and aimed at one to four players aged eight and older.
Particularly the setup is special here. Each player‘s savannah is not gradually filling up with tiles showing varying num- bers of elephants, giraffes, antelopes and
such, but it is full right from the start – with a few exceptions. The active player names a tile, something like „An ostrich at a watering hole,“ and each player picks up this tile and places it on another emp- ty space, while flipping it over to the side with their color. From then on, it is locked in place. This continues until all 33 tiles have been newly positioned.
What follows is the final scoring, before which specific tiles around the three bush fires are removed. Uncovered trees and grasses score a few points, large herds of the same animals win big time. But only if they have access to at least one water- ing hole that serves as a multiplier. So, if ten rhinos are adjacent and there are three watering holes on their tiles, this herd is worth thirty points. Super simple rules paired with a tricky task. And the game also comes with a few variants, for example a solo mode. (ab/cs)
Delicious Games
The disease killed many people, mostly in the densely populated cities. The only thing that helped was to get them away from the infection zone and out into the countryside, with sick people needing to be quarantined. It sounds as if Raúl Fernández Aparicio and Vladimír Suchý have designed a game for our times. However, this is not about Corona, but the Black Death, the plague, with an outbreak in Sicily in the middle of the 14th century. Flea-infested rats arrived by ship from the Crimea. And it was actu-
spread the disease. This is where the story of Messina 1347 starts
off.
As players we own an estate outside
the city limits. We want to save the pop- ulation and fight the plague. And in a mechanism well-known from Suchý (and apparently also a favorite of Aparicio’s), the goal is to use a single action to trig- ger several others and win the biggest pile of victory points.
It’s exciting how much advance praise Messina 1347 has already received. The prototype came out right at the top in five competitions. The most important one was first prize in Málaga 2019, for Suchý himself sat on the jury there. He approached Aparicio – and from then on, the two continued to develop the game together.
At the core, the game is actually quite simple. We place one of our lieutenants in one of Messina‘s districts. A citizen can be rescued from there and henceforth works on our own estate. If the plague already broke out in that district, the res- cued person spends two turns in quaran- tine – where they can still be productive. In addition, the plague is fought with fire, which increases our reputation in the city, and that in turn earns us instant bonuses and scores points at the end. The same applies to reputation in the city‘s magis- trate and in the church.
Last but not least, each location tile offers income or an action, e.g. build- ing a workshop. Or one of the overseers moves forward on the estate. And that‘s the really thrilling mechanism: That over- seer marches past specific sectors hous- ing rescued citizens. They can then be activated by the overseer, but we have to decide which path he takes, so ev- erything has to be cleverly planned out. Additionally, the rescued people toil in workshops, but they can also be taken back to Messina.
ally the little insects that carried and
Savannah Park.
10 spielbox special
Potos: Deep Print Games, Delicious Games, eggertspiele