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International Toy Fair Nuremberg 2014
Internationale Spielwarenmesse Nürnberg 2014
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Kosmos
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It is good to see Teuber has developed a game that isn’t the Umpteenth Version of Catan, although elements of previous games like Entdecker and Sternenfahrer/Starfarers lie just around the corner.
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Players will have to fulfill a certain amount of assignments, eight in a four player game, ten in a two or three player game. Each player has a ‘real’ ship, with spaces for a jail, the cabin and the crow’s nest. Players start with one cannon on their ship and a sail capacity of ‘4’. In a turn, the player chooses one of the three displayed tile stacks and turns so many tiles face up as his sailing capacity. Each event must be executed first, before the next tile is drawn; when the tile has an ‘A’ on it, the player must decide whether he wants to perform the action or not.
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A player may take up to two actions. After that he may take a trade letter, provided he only took no or just one action. With the sea tiles, players can take actions such as buying or selling goods, upgrade a player’s ship with additional sails or cannons, etc. The fog tile could have a treasure, or a pirate, which is resolved by a die.
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There are three harbours the goods may be brought to, and when delivering, players start at the bottom of the list, moving their way up by making additional deliveries of the right combination of goods and/or gold. Each delivery is marked by a cube; the player who has placed all his cubes is declared winner.
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Norderwind, Klaus Teuber, Kosmos - 2 to 4 players, 10 years and up, 45 minutes
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The expansion includes four new heroes for Legends of Andor, and these heroes can be used either with the base game or with the Der Sternenschild expansion. With the new rules in this expansion the game now can be played with up to six players. Also included is the socalled brother shield. The carrier can lend his strength to one of the other heroes on the board, twice. From the next module, ‘Die Reise in den Norden’, comes no information yet other than that it’s the second part of what has to become a trilogy.
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Die Legenden von Andor: Neue Helden, Michael Menzel, Kosmos - 2 to 6 players, 10 years and up, 75 minutes
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Each player tries to place his balls in the right dimension. Each round six task cards are laid out. These state which balls may not be on top of others or which may not touch. During the time of an hour glass players try to  place their balls according to as many of the task cards. After that, all players score one point for each of their placed balls, but score two minus points for each task card that is not fulfilled.
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They score one point if they have used all five colours, and receive one bonus chit when they placed less balls than the player that placed the most. After six rounds the game ends. Bonus chits score -minus- points at game end; having only one penalizes a player with minus ten points, having twelve scores a whopping plus 36 points.
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Dimension, Lauge Luchau, Kosmos - 1 to 4 players, 8 years and up, 30 minutes
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How difficult do you want to make a game? Players work together, tile by tile, to plant, reshape and grow a garden, trying to get the most flower beds of their colour in the garden.

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In a turn a player takes one tile, places it, moves his pawn and scores the flower beds. If there is a majority in a specific colour, the owning player places a flower bed chit in his colour over the bed. The game ends when a player has placed his eigth flower bed, or there are only four garden tiles in the draw pile. Whoever is most adept at placing his favorite plants in the garden with the help of two gardener figures and creating a majority of flowers in the most beds wins. A not too complicated yet challenging family game.
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Gardens, Perepau Llistosella, Kosmos - 1 to 4 players, 8 years and up, 30 minutes
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Players collect animal tiles and make sets of the same kind. In a turn, a player plays one card from his hand of three, taking the animal that is depicted on the card.

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Only tiles that have at least one free edge can be taken. After this, the player must take a second tile, without having to play a card, one that is orthogonally adjacent to the first taken tile.
An animal set is complete, when the total of animal symbols on the tiles equals or exceeds the required number on the tile. There are socalled silly birds such as pelicans, cockatoos and tucans that act as jokers.
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Concluding his turn, a player refills his hand to three cards. The game ends when the draw pile has been played a second time. Players score the number of points equal to the number on each complete set, no matter how large the set is, the number is only scored once. The player with the highest score wins.
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Faulpelz, Rüdiger Dorn, Kosmos - 2 to 4 players, 8 years and up, 30 minutes
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Die Drei ??? Kids began as a children's book series of the Kosmos Verlag. After the great success with this youth book series Die Drei ??? Kosmos decided in 1999 to publish an offshoot of the series, targeted to a much younger audience, 6-10 years appeal.

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In this new episode the three children are young investigators, and in this deducting game try to solve varying kinds of settings concerning a mysterious dragon.
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Die Drei ??? Kids: Spur der Drachen, Kosmos - 1 to 4 players, 7 years and up, 30 minutes
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Publishing boardgames isn’t the only thing Kosmos is doing as already mentioned above. They publish a large range of books on cooking, nature and garden etc., and have a large collection of children’s books. But if I was a child again, I would ask each single Christmas and every birthday an ‘Experimentierkasten’, an Experimental Case, from Kosmos. It’s just terrific: stimulating, exploring, and learning in an exciting way, and Kosmos has these experimental cases for all ranges of youngsters. So I just throw in these few examples of ‘Kästchen’ for ages 5, 8, 10 and 14:

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