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Something for everyone: board games »Fort«, »Zwergar«, »Destinies«, »Ecosystem« and »Canvas«
Photo: Maren Hoffmann / DER SPIEGEL
For rule haters: "Ecosystem" with bees, flowers and bears
The salmon want to go into the river, the bear for the honey and the wolves prefer to be in a pack.
An ecosystem must be well balanced and as diverse as possible for flora and fauna to thrive.
If you like to play with nice cards, don't like reading rules, but still like to think tactically, you should take a look at Matt Simpson's pretty card game.
You can start right away, literally: Everyone receives ten cards showing animals and landscapes, keeps one and passes the rest on until all cards are gone. You put the ones you keep in front of you and try to lay them out as cleverly as possible in a grid of four rows and five columns - everyone has a small notice board that tells you how you can score with each of the eleven different cards. Then do the same thing again in an anti-clockwise direction, and your own ecosystem is ready.
It's quick and fun, also because the cards are designed so puristically - no numbers, no symbols, just an eagle or a pair of hares (the former is very happy to be in the neighborhood with the latter).
There is also a relaxed element of happiness because you are never sure what will happen to you.
For two to six people aged ten and over, playing time from a quarter to a half hour
Hand on it:
animal lovers, mixed rounds of frequent and infrequent players, short players
Hands off:
people who like to have a lot of interaction while playing
For aesthetes: »Canvas« can do something
That no one had thought of this before: The box of Jeffrey Chins and Andrew Nerger's »Canvas« (Illustrations: Luan Huynh) - when freed from the plastic cover and thus the lettering - becomes an image that you can hang on with an integrated hanger can attach to the wall. That also leads straight to the topic, because we should create works of art with which we can win awards. To do this, we collect transparent cards with pretty motifs, which we slide into a transparent cover together with an atmospheric background card in order to get the best picture.
Delicate and poetic imagery emerges from three cards plus a background, here a ship sailing into the unknown, figures, trees, enchanted scenes - and random titles.
Something like "The Walking of Truth" or "The Shameless of Adventure".
In essence, however, all of this is only an accessory, because points are scored with what can be seen below on the cards - symbols that you have to cleverly combine in order to get as many awards as possible.
The same game idea could have been implemented with completely different topics: arming armies, building machines or breeding animals, for example.
But the unusual setting creates a very special atmosphere.
At some point some people put the rules aside and play freestyle just for the fun of it.
For one to five people aged ten and over, playing time half an hour
Hand on it:
colorful creatives, romantics, decoration lovers
Hands
off:
Action lovers, Bauhaus aesthetes
For the playful: »Fort« - building a tree house with pizza and stuff
The cool ones were of course in the tree house club, of course.
And because it's never too late for a happy childhood, you can now catch up on what you might have missed in elementary school at the gaming table: building the coolest of all fortresses with the coolest of friends.
Grant Rodiek and Nick Brachmann did not make it easy for themselves with the target group of the game: It's a game about children's stuff, but it's not a children's game, as you can see in the quite adult-looking illustrations (Kyle Ferrin). Everyone gets a tableau on which you can collect pizza and toys as currency, and a handful of friends ("kid's cards") who help with the expansion, but apart from the two best buddies also like to switch sides.
Some things are a little bit cramped towards supposed children's worlds, but the design is great - and above all, the rules are written so clearly and with such good overviews of symbols that there is hardly any ambiguity.
It's really fun.
One detail, however, urgently needs to be changed in the next edition: The small wooden pizzas are hexagonal!
Who would come up with something like that?
They have to be round.
For two to four people aged ten and over, playing time around 20 to 40 minutes
Hand on it:
people with the life motto »Don't grow up!
It is a trap!"
Hands off:
adults who always like to grow up
For opulence lovers: dig deep in »Zwergar«
Digging, hoarding, collecting. Iron, stone, gold, jewels. The dwarf heart really opens! And isn't there a dwarf in each and every one of us? Admittedly: the name is a bit ashamed of others. "Dwarf", seriously? But well, you can overlook that. Jan Madejski's game has solid mechanics and what board game nerds call a fine table presence: Lots of stuff that you can do lots with. And you have to, because you can only win if you complete many of the good project cards from the chief engineer.
We see a large-scale mine with an engineering office, forge, smelter, alchemist's laboratory, steam boiler, elevator and - at the heart of it all - a mine with lorries, which hopefully can be lifted to the surface as small tableaus, hopefully filled with rich yield. We, the dwarves, are extremely hungry for energy and need many small ovens in order to be able to afford all the actions - if we use our specialists, there is still a bit more income, but like everywhere else in the underground kingdom of dwarfs there is a shortage of skilled workers.
You have to go into the regular reading a bit, but you shouldn't be put off by the fact that there are 20 pages.
Most of them are illustrations, technically irrelevant background texts from the dwarf kingdom, with names that can be forgotten again immediately.
And a praiseworthy detailed map overview.
The five project card sets can be combined again and again and each set different tactical and strategic incentives for the current game.
For two to four people from the age of twelve, playing time of just under an hour (or more)
Hand on it:
Frequent gamers and everyone who - heyho - is happy and happy
Hands
off:
planning paralytics, gut gamblers and rule haters
For endurance players: Fulfill your own destiny with »Destinies«
Some people don't just want to play a board game. You want to live in it. Role play systems can do something like that, there are whole analogue parallel worlds. If you want a lower threshold, but still want to guide a character through a game world, develop it and experience a lot of adventure, then »Destinies« by Michał Gołębiowski and Filip Miłuński (published in German on the game offensive). The set of rules is quite simple, so that you can easily try out whether the game principle suits you.
Up to three players compete against each other in order to fulfill their own secret fate (this is written on a small map) in front of the others. There are at least two ways to do this, and you have to keep making decisions that change the further course of the branching story. On the way you find objects, explore the terrain and have to pass tests. To do this, you roll dice, the success of which depends on the development of your own character. In the course of the game you can increase your intelligence, skill and strength. However, this development does not just happen linearly, but follows a sophisticated, innovative mechanism.
The central component of the game is the free app, which shows which parts of the plan, enemies and other characters come into play and what happens next.
In classic role-playing games, this has to be done by a game master, you don't need one here.
There are already two expansions: "Sea of Sand" brings new scenarios, with "Fate Sisters" you can play with four instead of only three and compete against each other in two teams.
One to three people aged 14 and over, playing time per game two to three hours
Hand on it:
roleplay beginners, adventurous people, fantasy friends, miniature painters
Hands off:
cooperative players, app haters, people with small tables, advanced role-players
