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Schichtwechsel. Spielworxx
It‘s another one of those stories that designers and game editors dig up and make us enjoy reliving through a game — a story you might otherwise never have learned about: Squaring Circleville, by Matt Wolfe, tells the story of Circleville, a town in Ohio that was built in 1810 on the remains of a historic rampart and had a circular structure and a central plaza. This went well for only a few decades. Soon, the citizens started complaining about the layouts of the lots and missing points of orientation. Consequently, the area was redeveloped and changed into square blocks.
Players now re-enact this unusual sce- nario. You are an urban planner help- ing with the redesign. Step by step, you place elements of the square structure on the circular city map and mark them, of course, so that your contribution to the remodeling will be rewarded with points
at the end of the game. The game is driv- en by an action rondel that shows four colors. In addition, there are stacks of ac- tion disks in the four colors next to each rondel space. Wherever you move your figure, you have actions available in one or maybe two different colors, which can become stronger over the course of the game. For instance, you can build roads or demolish buildings and erect new ones. The game takes a good two hours. As a solo player, there are four different characters available you can compete against. (sd/sbw)
Steffen-Spiele
Despite Abalone, Akiba, and other games where players move marbles across a board, the idea doesn‘t seem to be exhausted yet. In Mabula, by Néstor Romeral Andrés, the two players randomly place their glass marbles on the starting spaces along the edges of
the six by six grid that has been shaped into a solid wooden board. Players alternate turns. On your turn, you shove one of your own mar- bles any number of spaces; in doing so, you move other marbles fur- ther along, but without pushing them out of the playing area. After exactly 12 moves for each player, the game ends. You score either for the largest connect- ed group of your own marbles or – somewhat more complicated – for
the size multiplied by the number of your own groups. The elegance of this compact set of rules is impressive; and the consequences are fascinating. The basic objective is to consider the moving range and the order in which you send out your marbles. Depending on the con- stellation, you can blow up a formation of your opponent until the very end, who may anticipate this danger and secure the position with blockades. But then the potential of a much larger group might develop elsewhere ... It is amazing how differently a game (which usually takes only 15 minutes) can proceed. The replay appeal is enormous. Mabula has what it takes to become a classic among ab- stract two-player games. (cc/sbw)
Strohmann Games
Since their game Fantasy Realms was no- minated for the Kennerspiel des Jahres, the young Strohmann-Verlag had a fan-
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