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Game Previews from Spielwarenmesse 2016: Bunny Kingdom, Oceanos, Cry Havoc, Dynasties, Cacao: Chocolatl, Costa Rica, Fight for Olympus, and the Future of Mayfair Games

Game Previews from Spielwarenmesse 2016: Bunny Kingdom, Oceanos, Cry Havoc, Dynasties, Cacao: Chocolatl, Costa Rica, Fight for Olympus, and the Future of Mayfair Games
From gallery of Gregaria
• Time for the final round-up of videos from Spielwarenmesse 2016, which means that we have processed and published everything in less than three weeks from when the show ended. Whoa, that's a first. As I've noted in other such round-ups, I'm not posting every video in this section, but each video does appear on its respective game page and all 118(!) of them can be found in a Spielwarenmesse 2016 playlist on YouTube.

First in this round-up is Richard Garfield's Bunny Kingdom from IELLO, which will debut at Spiel 2016. As IELLO's Matthieu Bonin notes, this is a card-drafting game with a difference as players draft locations on the game board in which to place their bunnies, draft city cards to build on the board, draft resources to provide more goods for their bunnies, and draft scoring cards for the end game.

As an aside, I love the way Matthieu pronounces "bunnies". I think I need to make that my ringtone...





Board Game: Oceanos
• IELLO has another drafting game in Antoine Bauza's Oceanos, due out in August 2016. The twist in this game is that the cards you draft over three rounds represent your findings in the ocean at different depths.





Board Game: Cry Havoc
• I've already posted two videos highlighting upcoming titles from Portal Games, and now here's an overview of Cry Havoc from Grant Rodiek, Michał Oracz, and Michał Walczak, which features a simple, yet wildly ingenious battle resolution system, along with (would you expect otherwise?) four unique factions that players can control.





From gallery of Photodump
• Hans im Glück wasn't quite sure whether to talk about Matthias Cramer's Dynasties on camera as the game is still under development, but in the end they decided to go for it, and now you can get a taste for what's coming in this game that has you pairing up in order to (ideally) get the better of your partner down the road.





Board Game: Cacao: Chocolatl
• Phil Walker-Harding's Cacao from ABACUSSPIELE received an overwhelmingly positive response from players, and for 2016 the designer and publisher offer Cacao: Chocolatl, an expansion of four modules that can be added to the game individually or in any combination.





Board Game: Costa Rica
• The non-final cover at right showcases Costa Rica, the title of which is also not final but the design of which is. This Brett Gilbert and Matthew Dunstan design, to be published by Lookout Games in Europe and Mayfair Games in the U.S.,





Board Game: Fight for Olympus
• Matthias Cramer appears a second time on this list with Fight for Olympus, the next title in Lookout Games' two-player line, in which players spend cards to play cards in order to punch damage through to their opponent.





Board Game Publisher: Mayfair Games
• As is the custom for these conventions, the final three videos posted are the first three that we shot. That's a bit of "good news bad news", I suppose, as I am clearly more awake and perky in this interview than I am in clips from day three.

In any case, Alex Yeager from Mayfair Games spent a good chunk of time at Spielwarenmesse 2016 talking with me about the future of Mayfair post-Catan: how the company will function, what you might see in the future, and why the loss of one game line — even one as large as Catan — doesn't signal their end of days.

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