German Gaming News April 29, 2006

by Moritz Eggert

Transcript of our podcast from 29 Apr 2006

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Beergarden time has begun in Munich and I'm sure you envy me that I write this in front of a huge Mass of beer, which was served by a Bavarian maid with a Dirndl, but there you go, because I'm kidding ;-).

"Antike", the popular board game by Eggert-Spiele (Peter Eggert not in any way related to me) has sold out - again and in it's second edition! Apparently the fact that the starting player ALWAYS wins in this game this hasn't prevented hundreds of players buying this game. Reinforcements have arrived in the form of a new card game to be published by Eggert, called "John Silver", with a definite pirate theme. Don't you think that Pirate Games are the new Egyptian-themed games?

The English translation of this game has apparently been done with babelfish, the automated internet translation device, so I don't to want to keep this wonderful English description of the game from you, taken from the Eggert-Spiele website:

"Each apple and each coin bring pluses to you, Cards with the black mark against it points of minus. Deceitful is however the apple: This is passed on to the left neighbour and brings there the points.

John Silver is a tactical game, with which you around the corner think must. 2-4 players must lay their cards out carefully considered. And if it go wrong: At one duration of 30 minutes you make it better with next time."

Something for Settlers fans: With typical German thoroughness Sybille Aminzadah has done a huge survey asking American and German players about their experiences with this game, why they like it, how often they play it, and if they have ever thought about getting a life. The results can be downloaded (and it's a huge file) at the German settlers website www.siedeln.de (which also has lots of content in English).

Finally there is a new variant for "China", the game by Michael Schacht (I think I have not pronounced his name yet here). This variant consists of a simple set of rules and a downloadable variant map, which you can find under www.spiele-aus-timbuktu.de. The variant is called "Grenzstreitigkeiten", which translates to "border disputes".

As the variant rules are very simple and short I have simply translated them for you here:

There are 6 border cities, which are marked with a circle on the new map. If you build a house there it counts for BOTH adjacent provinces. To build a house on a border space you have to either

One can buy a border house and a normal house in the same move, as long as you follow the usual rule that if you build first in a province you can only build ONE house.

There are also 7 spaces with an anchor symbol - these are ports and count as a subprovince that is only calculated for VP's at the END of the game. The "ports" province is treated like a normal province, so for example player A who has the majority of ports, let's say 4 houses, gets 7 VP's, player B with the second most ports gets a number of VP's equal to the houses of player A, just like calculating a province.

That's it for today my friends, may your Lederhosen never wear off, and may your Kimchi always taste like good ol' Sauerkraut,

Auf Wiedersehen!

Moritz Eggert


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