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Spielwarenmesse 2014 — Game Previews IX: Mauerhüpfer, Skull King, Big Deal, Larry, Karten Kniffel, Marvel League, Würfel Bingo & Mensch ärgere Dich nicht: Das Kartenspiel

Spielwarenmesse 2014 — Game Previews IX: Mauerhüpfer, Skull King, Big Deal, Larry, Karten Kniffel, Marvel League, Würfel Bingo & Mensch ärgere Dich nicht: Das Kartenspiel
Board Game: Mensch ärgere Dich nicht: Das Kartenspiel
• Time for another round-up of game preview videos recorded at Spielwarenmesse 2014 — the annual toy and game fair in Nürnberg, Germany — with the spotlight turning on German publisher Schmidt Spiele this time.

Schmidt is celebrating the one hundredth anniversary of Mensch ärgere Dich nicht, a game in the Pachisi family developed by Josef Friedrich Schmidt that first appeared in print in 1914. In addition to releasing special editions of that game, Schmidt has two spin-off titles that feature similar gameplay, one of those being Mensch ärgere Dich nicht: Das Kartenspiel by designers Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling.




Board Game: Mauerhüpfer
• The other title — Mauerhüpfer from Norbert Tauscher — keeps the same "moving along a path, knocking others home" aspect of Mensch ärgere Dich nicht while adding in a new possibility for movement that might possibly encourage you to play positively instead of simply trying to crush the hopes of others.




Board Game: Karten Kniffel
• Following on the heels of the 2013 release Kniffel: Das Kartenspiel comes Karten Kniffel, a card game from Michael Feldkötter that is a more straightforward attempt to recreate the dice game Kniffel in card form.




Board Game: Cover Your Assets
• Schmidt is adding a half-dozen card games to its line-up in early 2014, all of them fitting nicely on a counter display that will present German families with a range of playing options. In addition to the two card games covered above, Schmidt has a version of Naoki Homma's Parade (that features only colors and numbers, alas) as well as German-language versions of two self-published games from designer Brent Beck — and while the title Grandpa Beck's Cover Your A$$ets nicely describes the gameplay of that design, it doesn't translate well for a German market, so now the game bears the title Big Deal.




Board Game: Skull King
Board Game: Skull King
• The other Brent Beck design has been transformed from Grandpa Beck's Scheming and Skulking to Skull King, and while sometimes homegrown designs win out — as with the hokey Cover Your A$$ets name and cover design — sometimes the professional companies do the best job, as is the case with the cover choices seen at right.




Board Game: Larry
• The final title in Schmidt's card game line-up is Larry from Ronald Hofstätter, first released in 2007 as Blöff. Even after a demo, I'm baffled by the choice to name the game Larry, but perhaps too many games already exist with bluffing or some variation thereof in the title — or perhaps "Larry" has some hidden meaning for Germans that's unknown to those outside the country. Hmm...




Board Game: Würfel Bingo
• Würfel Bingo from designer Heinz Wüppen first appeared in print from Ravensburger in the mid-2000s, but now Schmidt has taken on the game, adding a double-sided play card in the process to give players two ways to play.




From gallery of W Eric Martin
• To end, here's a title not fitting quite into either the analog or digital category: Marvel League, which uses the included cards and requires an NFC-enabled handy.

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