The most eye-catching game of the lot is one that will immediately have you thinking of an older Zoch title: the 2002 Spiel des Jahres-winning Villa Paletti from Bill Payne. Unlike that stacking game, however, Menara from Oliver Richtberg is a cooperative game, with a player count of 1-4 and a playing time of 10-60. You're still stacking things, after all, so you can likely crash to failure within minutes! Here's the short description of the game that we have for now:
A steady hand, an alert mind, and mutual assistance can help you successfully complete what seems to top out at dizzy heights...
• Christwart Conrad's card game Rock the Bock had me looking up what "bock" means: "Bock is a strong lager of German origin." Well no wonder I didn't know that; my knowledge of beer rivals my knowledge of wargames. Of course the German word "Bock" also means "buck" in English, and that makes a bit more sense given that players try to get animals into play to score points — but the game is set at a festival where bock would likely be served, so kudos to Zoch for working more word play into another title, a specialty of theirs. As for the game:
In Rock the Bock, the player who gets the most animals from their hand onto the festival grounds wins. Groups with too many animals have to stay out, though. A good connection to the black market and a cleverly used VIP pass can't hurt.
• Saus und Brau's from Thomas Daum and Violetta Leitner follows a couple of other Zoch traditions: rhyming game titles (as with Rock the Bock above) and witches as main characters. A game overview video will probably add a lot of context to this description:
In Saus und Brau's, children (but also adults!) can combine the magic power of their fingertips with the sharpness of an alert mind.
• Other titles coming in early 2018 from Zoch are Jacques Zeimet's Geistesblitz Junior (so that players of all ages can learn how to slam the table in frustration); Michael Kallauch's Flick Fleck, which challenges players ages 4 and up to create nice black-and-white patterns on cows via tile-laying; and Monster Meister from Maja and Amelie Dorn, about which I know nothing.
As is the case with many upcoming games from German publishers, BGG will be at the Spielwarenmesse trade fair in early February 2018 to record overviews for you, our faithful readers. (Undependable readers can also watch these videos, of course. YouTube takes all eyes...)