Page 34 - Spielbox Special 2023 – EN

Spiel mit uns! Teste unsere Neuheiten auf der SPIEL Essen
Halle 2, Stand 2E156
Current. Fall Preview 2023
into a smooth-running large-scale brew- ery business. While it takes a long time at the beginning until a brew is finally ready, the process soon speeds up. This includes training your workers so that they can soon act more efficiently. You should expand your cellar, get money for delivering beer, and play multifunctional cards for development progress and vic- tory points. Once a player reaches 20 of these, the current round will still be com- pleted before the game ends.
By the way, if you’ve always wanted to know more about brewing and the brewery founders, you’ll find a wealth of reading material in the well-prepared almanac. Bier Pioniere is scheduled for release in October. (sd/cs)
ITrefl (5H102)
t has happened from time to time that people (even game publishers) were un- able to tell the difference between llamas and alpacas. In the family
game Llamas & Al-
pacas, Rita Modl
now gives partici-
pants aged six and
up a visual demon-
stration lesson in
how to recognize
the different New
World camels. Not
only do we learn
that alpacas are
smaller and live in
herds, while the
solitary llamas are
occasionally used to guard them. In ad- dition, all the llamas here wear a stylish hat, while the alpacas are adorned with a neckerchief.
Of course, these distinctive fashion fea- tures primarily serve the goal of placing identical animals on your own three by three game board. Players take turns to choose a favorite from the six animals on the board. Any skipped colleagues get pissed off and can only be prevent- ed from spitting by feeding them. Llamas want carrots, alpacas prefer clover.
Supply is replenished when you take an animal that comes with the corre- sponding tokens. You place it in your own display. Once a row or column has been completed, which can also be achieved by moving an animal, two points are awarded for each identical characteristic:
identical animals, clothing color or iden- tical or ascending numbers on the tiles. The scored animals are placed on the dis- card pile and the pasture is cleared for new point suppliers.
Llamas & Alpacas is played until one player reaches 18 points, which takes the two to four players around 20 minutes. It should already be possible to try out the game at the SPIEL. (sd/cs)
ZAoch-Verlag (6 F102)
fter several years with rather light fare, Zoch surprises us this time once more with a connoisseur-level game, be- cause Pim Thunborg’s Die Patin (The Godmother) is decidedly confrontational. In this area-control game, all participants are directly pitted against each other. Each player at the table is a female mafia boss who wants to expand their influence in the city within five rounds. At the end of each round, only one objective can be fulfilled
at a time: you either exercise control over the largest territory, or you have placed the most henchmen (called “rats)” at an intersection between two territories, or you currently own the most loot mark- ers. In the end game, acquired enterprises also count, especial- ly if they are of the
same type.
Before each of the four turns of a
round, all godmothers use a face-down intrigue card to determine what they want to do—consolidate their own territo- ry or expand it via two different options. After that, the boss herself or at least her henchman comes on the scene. Now, territory borders are merrily shifted, op- posing “rats” removed, loot grabbed, and enterprises taken over. It’s lucrative to set up your own back rooms in controlled ar- eas. But it is equally valuable to claim the back rooms of others for the final scoring. Thus, control of the board and objectives for each round surge back and forth. Es- pecially in light of the playing time of half an hour for each of the two to five players (12+), it’s clear that there’s a lot going on here. Die Patin is expected to be available at Essen. (sd/cs)
Photo: Zoch-Verlag
www.moses-verlag.de