Animals

In Myrmes, originally shown under the name ANTerpryse, players control ant colonies and use their ants to explore the land (leaving pheromones in their wake); harvest "crops" like stone, earth and aphids; fight with other ants; complete requests from the Queen; birth new ants; and otherwise dominate their tiny patch of dirt, all in a quest to score points and prove that they belong at the top of the heap, er, anthill. After three seasons of scrabbling and foraging, each ant colony faces a harsh winter that will test its colonial strength.

In game terms, each player has an individual game board to track what's going on inside his colony – that is, whether the nurses are tending to larvae or doing other things, where the larvae are in their growth process, what resources the colony has, which actions are available to workers when they leave the colony, and so on. The shared game board shows the landscape outside the exit tunnel that all colonies share; after exiting this tunnel, workers ants can move over the terrain to place pheromones (which gives them access to resource cubes), clean up empty pheromones (to make space), hunt prey (by discarding soldiers) or place special tiles (but only if they've developed the ant colony).

The game lasts three years, and at the start of each year three season dice are rolled to determine the event for each season: extra larvae or soldiers, more VPs for actions, and so on. Within each season, players can spend larvae to adjust the event for themselves on their personal player board. (Put the kids to work!) After adjusting the event, player allocate nurses to birth larvae, worker or soldier ants or to use them for other actions. The worker ants then do their thing, working within the colony itself (although only one colony level is open initially) or traveling to the outside world to hunt prey (ladybugs, termites, spiders), lay down pheromones (which later lets them claim resources on these spaces), place special tiles (like an aphid farm or sub-colony), or clear out pheromones left by ants from any colony. After harvesting, nurses who didn't tend to births then take additional actions, such as opening a new tunnel that only your colony can use, clearing a new level within your colony, or meeting one of the six objectives (capture a certain number of prey, build special tiles, and so on) laid out at the start of the game.

After three seasons, players must pay food to get their colony through winter, losing points if they can't. Whoever has the most points after three years wins. All hail our new ant overlords!

A "Hide-and-Seek" game for 2 to 6 players.
One player acts as wolf, and gives the other players 5 seconds time to hide their goat in one of seven furniture pieces. The Wolf then can look at 2 pieces and capture all the goats that are present there. The undiscovered goats get points.

Awards

2009 Golden_Ace, French Childrens' Game of the Year

The crocodiles are loose in the luxurious hotel swimming pool! Just seconds ago, the vacationers were enjoying the cool water of the pool, but what is that? A crocodile has just entered the pool - and now there is one less swimmer! Wow! Theres another croc - and another - and another. As the number of crocs in the water increases, the number of swimmers drops! But, the crocs hunt not only the hapless swimmers, but also other crocodiles. Thus, all in the pool strive to save themselves! The player who brings the most swimmers and crocs to the safety of the end of the pool, will win the game!

For ages 8+.

Crocodile Pool Party is part of the Kosmos two-player series.

Each morning Odin sends the ravens Hugin and Munin to race over the world of Midgard and report back what they have seen. The first to return wins Odin's favor, but any cunning corvid has a few tricks in store and these are the two most brilliant birds in Middle Earth.

Odin's Ravens is a two-player card game in which two ravens race across separate tracks, the tracks being comprised of domino-style landscape cards that feature different types of land. Each player has his own deck of cards, using them to match cards to the land types in front of his raven and advance the raven toward the end of the flight path. Odin Cards allow a player to take special actions, such as rearranging the track of landscape cards or impeding the other player's raven. During play, each player can create an auxiliary stack, playing cards from the hand now to set up plays in the future.

The round ends when a raven reaches the end of the flight path, and that raven's player scores points equal to the distance separating the two ravens. In addition, whoever has played more cards to the "Magic Way" during the round – a separate playing area in which players may play a particular type of card – wins three points. The game lasts multiple rounds until one of the players reaches a total of twelve or more points and wins!

What happens when the hunter becomes the hunted?

In Tally Ho!, one player takes the role of the hunters and the lumberjacks; the other takes the role of the foxes and bears. Both players hunt each other!

At first the forest lies peacefully under the face-down tiles. As the players turn the tiles over and move them on the board, the forest awakens and the hunt destroys the serenity of the forest. The lumberjacks cut swaths through the forest to provide hunting fields for the hunters. The bears then use these same aisles to track the hunters and lumberjacks. And both sides hunt the ducks who are just trying to live in peace!

The two sides are balanced with luck dominating the early game, but skill taking over at the end. Good hunting!

Originally published by Spear Spiele in 1973 as Jag und Schlag, Kosmos republished the game in 2000 as Tally Ho! / Halali! as part of its Kosmos two-player series.