To follow up yesterday’s post, let’s look at a few more titles coming out in early 2023 from German publisher Schmidt Spiele, starting with what is surely the heaviest of the bunch: New Eden, from Benjamin Schwer, who previously designed Hadara and Crown of Emara.
Here’s a summary of this 1-4 player game due out in March 2023:
This current forms a basic supply for the inhabitants (represented in game by coins), and from there, the station is constantly being expanded and enlarged with useful modules from the last mega-factories on the coast of Mount Everest or from the black market in order to receive further resources, points, and lucrative advantages. Many of these well-intentioned actions can damage “New Eden”, however. Will the station withstand this damage, or will it collapse in on itself? Only those who keep an eye on the balance between progress and destruction can collect points in the final scoring. Whoever has built the most points and thus the safest and most livable station wins “New Eden”.
In more detail, New Eden lasts three rounds. Each round, first reveal the module cards and place them in four rows. Players take turns buying a card from the display, using oxygen to take an action with a diver on a module, or passing. When you buy a card, the cost can vary from 10 coins + 3 repaired damage to 1 coin + 1 damage. When a row is empty, all cards drop down one level, making them cheaper, but potentially damaging. Discard all cards on display once everyone has passed.
Once all players have passed, enter the black market phase. Each player takes three cards from the black market deck, with remaining cards placed in rows on the display. Pay for any cards with coins and damage, then place the remaining cards in a row of the display.
Players then bid on a row in the display, with each row having a combination of discard black market cards and empty spaces, which allow you to move a diver and activate a module. Once all four rows have been auctioned, players have a brief scoring and clean-up before the next round.
After three rounds, if your level of damage exceeds the meter on your board, you score no endgame points, keeping only those points scored during play. Whoever has the highest score wins.
• Schwer is also the design of the trick-taking game Chaos in Gotham City, which is for 2-6 players and is due out in March 2023.
As in several other Batman-based games, you take the role of a villain, and you want to steer clear of Batman more than other bad guys:
The first player in a round leads a card, and all players must follow suit, if possible. Whoever played the highest trump wins the trick and collects the location and played cards; if no one played trump, whoever played the highest card in the suit led wins. The winner leads to the next trick.
After all tricks have been played, players sum the Batman points on the cards and locations they collected. Whoever has the most Batman points (or is tied for the most) doesn’t score the chaos points they collected this round. Shuffle all cards to set up for the next round.
Whoever has the most chaos points after 2-6 rounds wins.
• Aside from Noch mal! Deluxe, Schmidt Spiele has another roll-and-mark game due out in March 2023: Bing Boing, a 2-8 player game from Christoph Cantzler and Torsten Marold. The publisher’s description is minimal:
That said, from that description and this cover—
—I think you can make guesses as to how to play, namely when you have all but one space filled in a row or column, you get to “boing” the remaining space, which might possibly let you boing somewhere else. I’m guessing based solely on what’s marked with an X and what with an O.
The box contains two number arrangements, as well as a red die that doesn’t seem to be covered in the description. Anyway, you might already have an idea as to whether such a game might be for you.
• Schmidt Spiele owns the Drei Magier Spiele brand, and as is often the case with this imprint, this new game for children has an elaborate physical presence. Here’s an overview of Irrgarten der Magier (Magician’s Maze), a game for 2-4 players from Wolfgang Dirscherl and Wolfgang A. Lehmann:
The playing area consists of two levels. On the ground level, you have a game board with plastic ridges that create barriers for movement. As you improve at the game, you can add hedges to the game board to create additional barriers. One player will move the young magician Linus across this board.
But Linus must travel with a star overhead so that he can find these objects in the dark. The second level of play is a plastic sheet that forms the sky. Another player will control a “magic button” that magnetically holds the star, which is attached to Linus, in the sky and keeps it from falling.
On a turn, reveal a route card; three spaces have targets on them, and the other three spaces will be filled with revealed target chips. After discussing how they want to move and starting the electronic timer, two players move Linus and the star (via the magic button) to one target after another until either they’ve visited all six targets or time has run out. If the star ever falls due to players moving in different directions, the players must first elevate the star again before moving.
Place each chip you’ve reached in slots in the timer and return unreached target chips face down to the supply. If you claim all thirteen targets by the end of twelve rounds of play, you win!
