Collect Chilies for Spicy Sauces, Escape Saboteurs in a Collapsed Mine, and Roll Dice to Grow Beans — Again

Collect Chilies for Spicy Sauces, Escape Saboteurs in a Collapsed Mine, and Roll Dice to Grow Beans — Again
On August 1, 2022, German publisher AMIGO announced its upcoming games for the second half of the year, and in keeping with tradition for the past decade or so, its largest release is still rather small: a deck-building game of sorts by Wolfgang Kramer and Christian Stöhr titled Sauscharf. Here's an overview of this 2-4 player game:
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Can you prepare the hottest collection of chili sauces in Sauscharf?

Board Game: Sauscharf

Mild, hot or super hot? Depending on the selected level of difficulty, players start with 8-10 cards in hand. A card display is filled with the remaining chili pepper cards, with up to three cards of the same value being placed on top of one another.

The game is divided into two phases: In the first phase, players collect chilies, taking cards from the display and placing them on their personal ingredient stack. Whoever plays the highest combination of the same cards is the first to use the display. After all the ingredients have been taken, the card display is refilled and the chili collecting continues. This phase ends when no one has cards in hand.

Board Game: Sauscharf

For the second phase, the previously accumulated chilies are taken into hand. In addition, a new display with sauce tasks that can be fulfilled is made available. Now the players can decide each round whether they want to collect more ingredients or use their chili-card combinations to complete a sauce task to receive chili points. The hotter the sauce, the more points you score. Depending on the number of players, the game ends as soon as someone has prepared 3-6 sauces and has no more chili cards. Whoever collects the most chili points wins.
Board Game: Würfel Bohnanza
• For the tenth anniversary of Würfel Bohnanza, AMIGO and designer Uwe Rosenberg are bringing the game back in a streamlined form — Bohnanza: Das Würfelspiel — that trims one-third of the original game's playing time:
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At the start of the game, each player receives two order cards, each of which shows five orders; the player tries to complete orders on one card while using the other to cover completed orders. The easiest orders to complete — say, three beans in any combination of two types – are at the bottom of the card, and the hardest ones — requiring, say, a three-of-a-kind plus a rare bean – are at the top. Orders must be completed from bottom to top.

Board Game: Bohnanza: Das Würfelspiel

On a turn, the active player starts by rolling the five bean dice, three of which have one combination of beans and two of which have another combination. This player must set aside at least one bean, then they reroll any remaining dice, setting at least one aside, etc. After at most seven rolls, they complete as many orders as they can, reusing the dice as needed to complete orders. Once a player completes three orders, they can "harvest" the card for one coin. Each additional completed order is worth a coin, up to a maximum of three. When a player harvests the order card, they draw a new card and use that to record completed orders (possibly on the same turn) on the order card they already had.

In the Bohnanza card game, players trade cards to improve the standing of both parties involved in the trade. In Würfel Bohnanza, the active player doesn't trade dice, but opponents do get to benefit from that player's rolls. After each roll by the active player, all other players can use the dice just rolled — and not dice already set aside — to complete orders on their own cards. Thus, the active player has some incentive not to dawdle too much as their opponents might benefit from their turn more than they do.

Board Game: Bohnanza: Das Würfelspiel

The game ends as soon as one or more players have collected ten Bohnentalers. The player with the most Bohnentalers wins!

Bohnanza: Das Würfelspiel features the same gameplay as Würfel Bohnanza, but uses fewer dice, has only five orders on a card instead of six, lowers the victory threshold from thirteen to ten, and has a few other changes.
Board Game: Armadillo
• In the category of small-card-and-dice game, AMIGO offers Armadillo from Rudi Biber, with up to six players trying to dump their cards as quickly as possible:
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Each player starts the game with ten cards randomly numbered from 1 to 20, as well as two chips. On a turn, roll whatever combination of the six dice you like, with the two blue dice being numbered 1-3, the two yellow 4-6, and the two red 7-9. If the sum of the rolled dice matches a numbered card you have in hand, discard it! Of course, if someone else has that number, they discard it, too. You can spend chips to raise or lower the rolled number, and if you spend four chips, you can discard any card!

Board Game: Armadillo

Wait, four chips? Yes, any time you don't discard a card on your turn, you gain a chip from the pool. The round ends as soon as someone empties their hand, and everyone else scores 1 point per card still in hand. Whoever has the fewest points after three rounds wins.
Board Game: Saboteur: The Dark Cave
• Designer Fréderic Moyersoen is further expanding on his long-lived game Saboteur with the release of a new, standalone game for 2-8 players. Here's an overview of Saboteur: The Dark Cave:
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After your dwarf clan found gold, you suddenly felt an earthquake and the mine is now collapsing. Time to escape! But the dark cave is full of dangers, such as spider webs, monsters, and of course the saboteurs who make your life miserable. Whose dwarf team can escape the cave with the most gold?

At the start of the game, each player assigned to a clan, although possibly they will be a saboteur for the other clan. Starting from the mine card in the center of play, you take turns laying down tunnel cards to build outward from the mine toward the four corner cards, only one of which is the exit. In addition to building new tunnels, you'll play cards to give yourself equipment, place monsters in front of others, discover who's actually on your clan, and reveal the exit before trudging all the way there.

Board Game: Saboteur: The Dark Cave

As soon as you leave the mine, you reveal your true identity, with any gold you have going toward your clan's total. As soon as all members of a clan have left, the game ends, and whichever clan has the most gold wins.
While this title and all others mentioned so far will be released in Germany on September 1, 2022, the U.S. branch of AMIGO will debut Saboteur: The Dark Cave at Gen Con 2022 ahead of its Sept. 2022 retail release.

• Other titles coming from AMIGO are Unsolved: Der Jagd-Unfall, which might be seen as Fréderic Moyersoen's take on the escape room genre. In the game, players look at picture cards drawn from a deck that includes thirty base cards and six case-specific cards, with the game including three cases. Over the course of the game, you can lay up to twelve images face up, with these images ideally helping you answer what happened in this situation that might be an accident, might be a murder.

Board Game: Unsolved: Der Jagd-Unfall
Board Game: Dice Hunters of Therion
Board Game: Wizard

Richard Garfield's Würfelhelden debuted in June 2022 in Germany and will be released in English as Dice Hunters of Therion in September 2022. Each player is a hero who has their own set of dice with which to capture villains and gain coins. You try to best one another by having more swords in order to capture the current villain on display, or you can settle for a few coins instead of being shown up.

Ken Fisher's Wizard is getting yet another edition: Wizard Deluxe, with Franz Vohwinkel providing new character art and metal coins included so that players can note their bids on the table. More importantly, for the first time that I can recall the German edition will have distinct symbols for wizards and jokers. Hurrah!

From gallery of W Eric Martin

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