Animals

Everybunny knows that rabbits love the countryside — and carrots, of course! The best carrots of all grow between the train tracks, but you have to keep an eye out for trains! Roll the dice and hop your rabbit to the best carrot patch; as long as you don't need to flee out of the path of the train, you can happily nibble away. Chomp, chomp, chomp...

In Karnickel, each player places his rabbit on the circular train track made of eight interchangeable tiles, sets the train engine on its start space, then takes turns rolling the custom dice. After you roll, set any die that shows the "train" out of play, then count up how many times each of the player colors appears on the remaining dice; you must move one of the rabbits (yours or another player's) clockwise around the track the full number of spaces. You then pass the rabbit dice to the next player. Players take turns, each time rolling only the dice passed to them and hopping the rabbits from tile to tile, trying to land on the tiles where they will be able to collect the most carrots.

When a player rolls only trains, the rabbit hopping has to stop as the train is ready to move! That player rerolls all seven dice, counts up the number of trains rolled, then moves the train that many spaces around the track. Every rabbit on a tile that the train moves through is scared away by the engine and hops off the track, failing to collect any carrots this time. All rabbits still on the track after the train moves — either because the train didn't reach them or because they were on one of the two tunnel tiles — get to grab 1, 2 or 3 carrots...or maybe lose one — exploding carrots are a risk!

Everyone then hops back onto the track, and the next player rolls all the dice to start a new round of play. Whoever has the most carrots when one player has at least eight carrots wins!

In the crazy cat-collecting game Here, Kitty, Kitty!, your neighborhood has a cat problem. The problem is that the cats don't all belong to YOU! Everyone in the neighborhood wants to claim those adorable kitties for themselves.

Outwit your fellow feline fiends as you lure cats onto your property, move cats into your house, and steal cats from your neighbors. All's fair in love and cat-collecting!

There are no blenders or explosions in this game, but if you use your "Catlike Reflexes" and avoid "Stray Dogs" and "Hairballs", you might just "Land on Your Feet"!

GAME PLAY DESCRIPTION FROM THE DESIGNER:
Your neighborhood has been overrun by a colony of adorable cats! Your objective is to lure as many cats as possible onto your property and into your house.

Each player chooses a Property board, which contains three zones: the Yard, the Porch, and the House. At the end of the game, cats in the House are worth 5 points each, cats on the Porch are worth 3 points each, and cats in your Yard are worth 0 points. However, having cats in your Yard does have advantages for special scoring conditions, such having the most cats of a single color or the most cats overall. All 40 Cat minis are placed in the center of the table, and represent the Neighborhood. Each player is dealt 2 or 3 cards, depending on the number of players in the game.

On each player's turn, he or she performs two Actions: moving a cat, playing a card, or discarding cards. Cats can be moved 1 space for 1 Action, by picking up the cat and putting it in the next zone of the property. For example, a Cat can be moved from the Neighborhood to the Yard for 1 Action, or from the Yard to the Porch or from the Porch to the Yard (and vice versa). Playing cards may allow a player to move multiple cats at once, to move cats multiple spaces, to steal cats from opponents, or to make opponents give up cats. A player may also choose to discard 1, 2, or 3 cards as an Action. Once both Actions have been taken, the player draws back up to a full hand, and play passes to the person to the left. If an Instant card (red border) is drawn, it is played immediately and affects the entire group. The player then draws a replacement card for the Instant card until a full hand is achieved.

The final round is triggered when a player draws the last card from the draw pile. From that point every player, including the player who drew the last card, has one final turn to maximize his/her score. Then, the cats are counted and a winner is lauded for his or her purr-procurement proficiency.

The animals want to show how good they are at making tall pyramids! They must be skillfully careful: Who will position the penguin on top of the crocodile, the sheep on top of the penguin, the serpent on the sheep? The hedgehog wants to stand on top of the pyramid but the height is making him dizzy.

Tier auf Tier (a.k.a. Animal Upon Animal, Pyramide d'animaux, and Dier op dier) is a simple stacking game, listed for ages 4-99, with 29 cute wooden animals.

Each turn a player rolls the die and either places one or two animals on to the stack of animals, passes one of his or her animals to another player for them to place, or places an animal on the table, extending the base for other players to build upon. Of course, if any pieces fall off whilst you are building, you get up to two of them back. The first player to have used all of their animals wins.

This game, intended for children, is equally popular with adults.

Lead the most impressive flock through feeding, nest building, and hatching. Selecting the actions is simple, but when one bird flies, so do all the others! Can you time your actions to take advantage of when the flocks fly?

During the game Flock, players try to expand their flock with the goal of scoring the most victory points after three rounds of play. Victory points are scored by controlling the action cards at the end of each round. Also, be sure to have enough tasty worms to feed your birds at the end of each round, or otherwise they will fly away. Will your flock be on top of the pecking order?

In more detail, players start with three of their eleven birds in front of them. Six nest, egg and worm tokens are placed on the side for each player. On a turn, a player can either place a bird on one of the six action cards or activate an action card on which they have at least one bird. When you activate an action card, you can remove birds from the card — possibly paying worms, nests and eggs as well — to take the action shown, such as removing two birds from "Feeding" to get three worms. Spent birds are returned to your personal pool of resources, while other spent resources are placed on the side. Each player in turn order does the same with this action, then whether they used their birds or not, all birds are removed from this action card, flying away to the players' personal pools.

When the "Dominance" card is activated, the dominant player adjusts their pecking order on the initiative track, then everyone else flies their birds from that card to the other action cards. When "Competition" is activated, which is possible only when enough birds have landed on it, each player spends a nest and worm for each of their birds (removing them if this isn't possible), then flies their birds to other action cards. Players then score points for having the most or secondmost birds on a card and for the birds left in their pool.

After three rounds, the player with the most points wins!

Lots of animals live on the African plains. Elephants, lions, zebras, hippos, giraffes — we aren't sure exactly how they live, so animal researchers are constantly studying them in order to find out more.

In String Safari (a.k.a. String Savanna), the players are zoologists, trying to get as much information as possible about the animals scattered across the savanna to complete research goals. Before you can study the animals, though, you need to have them under control, so you'll need to enclose them in your study range — that is, your string — which earns you a point at the same time. The animals all have different attributes, and the topography also influences your ability to study the animals. In the end, whoever completes the most research on the correct animals wins.

Special rules are included so that even young children can play.