Set collection

Cheeky Monkey

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.

Good Help

You have just finished your evil doctorate. Now it's time for you to return to a castle on the outskirts of the town where you grew up, to begin your tyranny in the name of revenge. Every bully that gave you a wedgie in school and every cutie who laughed at your advances will feel the wrath of the monster you are about to create...

Your goal in Good Help is to create the best monster that you can, then unleash it on the public – but don't take too long as the first player to have his monster destroy five buildings in town wins. Alternatively, you can set your monster on those of the other players, and if you have the last monster standing, you win.

To assist you in your goal – and to preserve your reputation in town – you'll hire assistants, then send them out to collect body parts, buy supplies and earn money. Your assistants can confront those of other doctors to try to steal away the gold, supplies or limbs they carry. Each assistant has at least one vice, however, and when moving about town they might be lured away by the prospect of beer, jewelry, dresses or sausage, selling or dropping everything they have to get their fix. Good help is indeed hard to find!

Charon Inc.

In the year 2288, off-world mining is now controlled by a few mega-corporations. It is no longer just people or nations that are subject to exploitation, but entire planets and moons. As the CEO of one of these mega-corporations, in Charon, Inc. you will vie against CEOs of other corporations as you exploit the planet’s resources and colonize Charon, the largest moon of the dwarf planet Pluto.

You will stake claims to the various mining regions of Charon, acquire resources for building facilities, use special actions (fair and unfair) to gain advantages over other CEOs, and build your empire to achieve victory in this fast-paced game of planetary domination!

Mammut

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 -

Unexploded Cow

Europe. Summer 1997. You and your most creative friends have discovered two problems with a common solution: mad cows in England and unexploded bombs in France. You've decided to bring these two powder kegs together just to see what happens – and you wouldn't say "no" to a little money on the side, so round up your herd, march them through France, and set them loose behind the Cordon Rouge. If you're lucky, you'll come home rich before Greenpeace gets hold of you.

Either way, there's something magical about blowing up cows.

Unexploded Cow is a money game in which players are trying to collect enough points to win the pot. On every turn, you will buy cows and pay for special effects by putting money in the pot, then try to discover bombs with your own cows in an effort to take money out of the pot. All along, you will be earning points from the French as you liberate town after town from the terrors of unexploded bombs, and the player who scores the most points gets whatever's left in the pot.

Unexploded Cow is best played as a series of short games, each of which takes about thirty minutes. The game is quite simple and very chaotic: You'll have a blast.