KOSMOS Expands Catan, Encourages Smugglers, Paints Elephants, Punches Buckets, and Builds in Egypt

To bring the best youngsters into the business, the smuggler boss is holding a contest, with the candidates being challenged to move a sack filled with contraband through an opening in the fence.

More specifically, in Schmuggler players form the "sacks" used for smuggling out of modeling clay and hide their contraband within. The sacks are then rolled down a 3D path, with a die roll determining which hole in the fence the player needs to try to squeeze through. The player whose bag fits through the hole and who has the largest sack now checks the smaller bags, possibly taking the contraband hidden within. Who will prove to be the best smuggler?

Welcome to the elephant festival in the Indian province of Kerala! Colorfully decorated elephants roam everywhere, and naturally players want to participate and make the most magnificent fairground with as many elephants as possible.

In Kerala: Der Weg der Elefanten, each player wants to take at least one tile of each color, and all tiles of one color should be joined together, but of course the players are constantly getting in the way of one another and grabbing the tiles that someone else wants.

In Imhotep, the players become builders in Egypt who want to emulate the first and best-known architect there, namely Imhotep.

Over six rounds, they move wooden stones by boat to create five seminal monuments, and on a turn, a player chooses one of four actions: Procure new stones, load stones on a boat, bring a boat to a monument, or play an action card. While this sounds easy, naturally the other players constantly thwart your building plans by carrying out plans of their own. Only those with the best timing — and the stones to back up their plans — will prove to be Egypt's best builder.

In Bucket King 3D, players lay down sets of animal cards to try to knock over every other's pyramids of buckets. Cards in hand can be used to defend your own buckets and attack those of others — and if you knock out a bucket low in someone's pyramid, you might cause a cascade that takes out even more!

Each turn, the active player either plays cards or loses buckets; the game is played in rounds with a new round starting after anyone loses one or more buckets. At the start of each round, the active player chooses 1-3 cards in hand of the same color/animal, lays them face up in front of himself, announces their sum, then draws one card to add to his hand (regardless of how many he played). Each subsequent player must lay down 1-3 cards of the same suit as the initial player with a higher sum than previously announced or else lose a bucket. (If play circles the table to the round's start player, he can add 1-3 new cards to those previously played, then announce the sum of all cards in front of him.)

When a player cannot or chooses not to defend his pyramid by playing cards, he removes one bucket of that card color from his pyramid by pushing, flicking or poking it with only one finger. (If he doesn't have a bucket of the required color, he removes a bucket of his choice.) This player then starts a new round after everyone has cleared their played cards.

In a two- to four-player game, the game ends when a player loses his last bucket; in a five- to six-player game, a player who loses his last bucket is out of the game, and the game ends when only three players have buckets still in play. Whoever has the most buckets remaining in his pyramid wins.