Animals

In 2001, 2F-Spiele published the original Funkenschlag.

In 2011, it is time to look back...a long time back! To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the original Funkenschlag, designer Friedemann Friese will take you back in time and let you relive the early beginnings of mankind. True to the name of the German edition (a literal translation of which is "Flying Sparks"), it is time for Funkenschlag: Die ersten Funken, or "The First Sparks".

The First Sparks transports the Funkenschlag mechanisms into the Stone Age. The order of phases during a game round, the player order, the technology cards: you know all these parts from “Funkenschlag”. But what is new? What is different?

The First Sparks is much faster and far more direct. You are immediately part of the action. Each turn, each decision is important. As a clan leader you decide on the well-being of your clan during the Stone Age. You need to develop new hunting technologies and get new knowledge - to successfully hunt food or to learn to control fire. With the help of these skills, you will harvest enough food to feed your clan and spread it far enough to reach new hunting areas.

In a game of The First Sparks you are always confronted with many decisions: Which technology cards offer you the biggest advantages? When is the right time to spread your clan on the game board? Which hunting areas will grant the most food? Reaching new hunting areas or trying to secure parts of the game board for your own clan are important factors for your strategy. Empty spaces are cheaper for you to settle compared to spaces in which other clans are already settled. If you are the first to increase your clan size to 13 clan members, you win The First Sparks.

A group of competitive monkeys tries to find a leader and arranges a dangerous competition: the one who can pluck out the most whiskers from the faces of sleeping tigers will be their new leader! Not only are all these monkeys agile and cunning, but they also don't hesitate to use all kinds of unscrupulous methods to get closer to the tiger "safely", pushing, wrestling or even throwing stones. However, don't go overboard! If a tiger wakes up and gets angry, it won't be something the monkeys' petty tricks can handle. Will you be able to escape the tiger's jaws to become the brave and clever Monkey King?

The push-your-luck game Cheeky Monkey includes eight sets of animals – three elephants, four seals, and so on up to ten monkeys – with a plastic chip representing each animal. To start the game, you place all the chips in a bag.

On a turn, a player may draw chips until either (1) he chooses to stop or (2) he draws an animal that he has lying in front of him from a previous draw this turn. In this latter case, he returns all chips in front of him from the current turn to the bag, and the next player then takes his turn. In the former case, he stacks the chips in whatever order he wants on top of any chips he's collected in previous turns. (If a player has animals of only a single type, he can tuck them on the bottom of his stack.) Two special rules come into play while the player draws chips:

If a player draws an animal chip that matches the animal on top of an opponent's stack, the player can steal this animal, adding it to the chips currently in front of him. (If he busts for drawing a duplicate animal, this stolen chip is also returned to the bag.)
If a player draws a monkey, he can either keep the monkey (as with any other animal) or he can swap the monkey for the chip on top of an opponent's stack.

When the last chip has been added to a stack, the game ends. Any player who has more chips of an animal type than any other player receives bonus points equal to the total number of that animal in the game. The player with the most points wins.

It's a leap-to-the-finish in this colorful game of fast-moving reptiles. Choose a secret creature card, shake the cup and pour out the picture tiles. Move your lizard forward or backward depending on what the tiles show. But look before you leap or else you could wind up at the back of the line! The first player to jump to the finish is the king of chameleons.

Another day, another mammoth hunt. But the spoils of the hunt remains to be divided, and everyone tries to secure the largest share for themselves in this quick and clever family strategy game. Each round the tiles are shuffled in the bag and dropped onto the table. The face up symbols show the spoils of today's hunt.
The tiles are then divided by a unique mechanic: When it is your turn, you may either A) Take any number of tiles from the pool, or B) Claim that another player has been too greedy, taking all of that player's tiles, but returning at least one tile to the pool (you must of course show yourself to be a little less greedy).

The next player without tiles then follows in turn. This way the size of the pool will gradually increase, and the round is over once the last player without tiles decides to take what's left in the pool. Every player will then have a share of tiles, and a scoring phase follows.

Tactical play will help you get the meat, fur, tusks, animals, and tools you want (each tile has a different way of scoring), but you may also play cards for immediate effects or to secretly influence the scoring.

- Game material is language independent -