Family Games

Welcome to Savannah Tails (Fragor's Essen 2009 release) the game of fast and furious ostrich racing. Play as either Albrecht, Alexandra, Enzo, Nnelg or Mathilda as you race for glory through the African savannah. However, winning the race is the least of your worries. Cheetahs will try to eat you. Crocodiles will try to eat you. Warthogs will probably try to ignore you. Elephants are just in the way. The less said about porcupines the better.

The game will include 25 track sections allowing players to once again design their own races. Some of these feature “unhelpful” animals. Special tracks involving a rope bridge, quicksand and a sand dune are also included.

A limited edition of 1,000 games will be produced for Essen 2009. The game is fast paced and easy to learn.

In Monkeys on the Moon, players advance monkey civilizations while also freeing monkeys from lunar isolation by launching spaceships. Players must carefully balance which tribes they advance, however, as there are monkey politics at play! Influencing one tribe will likely harm another tribe's opinion of you. The player who launches the most powerful primates home to Earth by game end will claim victory.

Every move that a player makes will impress one the six monkey tribes yet anger another. Knowing when to play favorites, and when to risk incurring the scorn of a tribe, is key to success.

The game's monkey cards also feature six original drawings by cartoonist Scott Starkey.

In Augustus, you vie with your fellow players to complete "objective" cards for special powers and ultimately for victory points. Each card has 2-6 symbols which you must populate with legionnaire meeples in order to complete the card. These symbols are drawn one at a time from a bag, with all players gaining the benefit equally, but interestingly, the bag contains more of some symbols than others.

So the pivotal skill you'll deploy is in making your choice of which three objectives you'll start the game with (you're dealt six) — balancing potential difficulty of completion against value of the reward — and then which of five available objectives you'll add to your plate each time you complete one of your three. The game ends when someone completes seven objectives.

Game description from the publisher:

In Maharani, the players are architects helping the King to complete the Taj Mahal palace by placing beautiful mosaic tiles. These tiles come into play through a rotating rondel, which enables every player to place the tiles in different parts of the palace. Once the mosaic is complete, the best architect wins the game.

Game description from the publisher:

Via Appia, the most famous road of the Roman Empire, is under construction. Be a part of this historic event and finish the road that connects Rome and Brindisi. Prove your intuition in the quarry to get the best stones. Whoever builds the most valuable sections and reaches the different cities early will be victorious and the most famous builder in all of Rome.

Goal of the Game (from the Rules)
Rome needs a connection to Brundisium, and the players have been tasked with building the Via Appia in order to allow for fast travel between the two cities. To create the road, they’ll need to break off stone tiles in the quarry, then travel to Brundisium, laying out the tiles and creating the path that all will follow in the years ahead. This travel costs sesterces, but will bring crucial victory points and glory from Rome in return.