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International Toy Fair Nuremberg 2007
Internationale Spielwarenmesse Nürnberg 2007
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Pegasus Spiele

In ‘Heartland’ players are placing farms and workers and try to get as much money for their crop. Revenues are dependent on simple market economics: if there is less of a crop available, the price for it on the market increases. Eacht turn a new domino-shape tile is placed that features two different types of crop; convenient to you or blocking growth for you opponent. Each turn players decide wether they score the accumulated crop or continue to enlarge their farm as this will bring more points. September.

Heartland, prototype, Jeffrey D. Allers, 2-5 players, 10 years and up, 60 minutes
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‘Robotics’ uses familiar game mechanics, a familiar topic, as well as the usual freaky graphics that go with the genre. Players build a three part robot, and buy the different elements from the market for a market price that drops by one after each turn, get them (but blind and thus likely a not usable part) from the scrap or buy them cheap on the black market. Getting caught with such a part if there is an inspection makes you lose all those parts from the robots, leaving them unfunctional. Players have a depot where they can store up to six parts, the first three for free. The game will be illustrated by Michael Menzel which surely will be a garantee for an appealing look. This game is due for October.

Robotics, prototype, Mario Coopmann, 3-4 players, 10 years and up
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Phalanx Games
Discovering new land can be done very comfortable from your dinner table in ‘Zeitalter der Entdeckungen’. Twelve discovery cards are laid out. These have a number that is the maximum ship volume that can participate in the journey. Assignment cards can be bought for 1 gold and earn a player money. The longer he waits, the more money he earns. With the collected money a player can buy ships to participate in a journey; the participating ships in a journey must be of the same colour. The first ship in a discovery determines the colour for the rest of the ships (of the same or other players) in the journey.
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There are two scoring rounds in the game, triggered by cards in the ship card stack. If the ships in a discovery and the discovery card have the same value, it earns a player more points. At the start of the game players also get some action cards to be used during the game, such as getting money one turn earlier, or the colour of ships on a discovery may be different from the other ships. There are also special assignment cards that are dealt at the beginning of the game and that players have to fulfill in order to earn more points.

Zeitalter der Entdeckungen (Dutch title will be ‘In de naam van de Koning’), prototype, Alfred-Viktor Schulte, 2-4 players, 10 years and up, 45 minutes
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Piatnik

Not much is known of this title. The prototype has a very 80’s look, plays on a world map, and has to do with trying to obtain monopolies and earning illegal money. This is Nürnberg 2007, right?

Der Boss, prototype, Pascal Bernard, 2-5 players, 12 years and up, 60 minutes
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Pro Ludo
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The box of ‘Der Markt von Alturien’ has a very fragile look, with the feel of a fairy tale, which at least is something different from the accepted usual. In this game, players act as merchants, trying to get rich by founding four trade houses. With the income of these, new businesses are made, and with the aide of ships, also foreign business can be started.
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Obtaining status and trying to get to the higher social class of the nobility is the goal. The illustrations on the cards are also very well done, especially the position of the dedicated worker (and the way his shirt hangs over his trousers) on the ‘Investition’ and the two women on the ‘Marktführerschaft’ cards. This may be called more than just a nice job by Eckhardt Freytag. The game is the first in a series, a flyer on the stand already showed some additional graphics for the sequel ‘Die Hauptstadt von Alturien’, but the series is announced to contain four games to encompasss the whole saga.

Der Markt von Alturien, prototype, Wolfgang Kramer, 2-6 players, 10 years and up, 60 minutes
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As the press contacts at the stands had so many meetings and it was impossible to get them all neatly scheduled for a meeting, there was not always some other person available to give info on a game. So, here are the pictures from ‘Legenden von Camelot’, a card game in which each player will have to try to get influence in each of the four or five areas.

Legenden von Camelot, Andrew Parks, 2-4 players, 10 years and up, 60-90 minutes

 
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The second ‘Wikinger’ title shows colourful miniatures with a large board. Pro Ludo describes this as ‘something like Serenissima’: trading and attacking.

Wikinger, Ragnar Brothers, 3-5 players, 12 years and up, 90 minutes

 
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A French title from last year, a small German production this year, because for obvious reasons the topic in Germany is not very popular or at least regarded as not political correct. September.

Tannhäuser, William Grosselin & Didier Poli, 2-10 players, 60 minutes
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Hot news from Pro Ludo, as they obtained the rights for ‘Merchants & Marauders’ from Bloodline Games. They will coproduce the game, rework the graphics (the illustrations for the board will be done in oil instead of a computer generated map), and rename the game into ‘Pirates’. Probably some additional redactional fine tuning will be done, apart from the translation on the cards. This game now is anounced for September.

Pirates, Christian Marcussen & Kasper Aagaard, 2-4 players, 180 minutes
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