Fresh-Looking Hunters and Gatherers For Sale

• In addition to Peter Rustemeyer's Paleo, which I somewhat previewed in February 2020, German publisher Hans im Glück is spiffing up two of its older titles for release in late 2020.

One of those titles is Klaus-Jürgen Wrede's Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers, which debuted in 2002 as the first of many spin-off standalone games following the incredible success of Wrede's Carcassonne in 2000. This new version — which has changed only in cosmetics — will be released in Germany in October 2020, with an English-language version coming from Z-Man Games.

Board Game: Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers

Note that HiG's developer Bernd Brunnhofer is credited on the cover of this game for the first time.

• The other Hans im Glück revamp is Marco Teubner's Carcasonne Junior, né The Kids of Carcassonne, a.k.a. My First Carcassonne.

Curiously enough, the first Portuguese/Spanish version of this game was titled Junior Carcassonne, while the first French version was titled Mon premier Carcassonne, so all of these names have been in the mix from the debut of this tile-laying title for tots in 2009.

Z-Man Games will release this title in English, although the publisher is not certain right now whether the game will hit its production schedule in late 2020 or early 2021.

• Many folks were surprised when German publisher Zoch Verlag announced an expansion for the game Tobago eleven years after the game's debut, but Eagle-Gryphon Games has decided to throw down for the record of "longest time between the release of the base game and expansion" by announcing the 2021 release of For Sale: Advisors, an expansion for Stefan Dorra's For Sale, which debuted in 1997!

To add a caveat to this record, the first editions of For Sale had 3-5 players competing for housing structures numbered 1-20, with those players then selling those locations for checks worth $3-20 million, with a couple of $0 checks thrown in for good measure.

When Uberplay released the game in English in 2005 — which was the first time the game appeared in English — the number of buildings ran from 1 to 30; the checks went from $0-15, with two copies of each (and no $1s); and the player count expanded to 3-6.

The bidding rules also changed, with equal bids no longer being allowed, and with most players taking back half their bids rounded down instead of up. The game was the same, but not the same, akin to an Earth-2 version of For Sale, albeit one more in line with what Dorra originally intended.

In any case, here's what you'll find in For Sale: Advisors: "This expansion adds a third phase to the classic game For Sale, with players starting the game by bidding to hire advisors who will then assist in the second and third phases of the game when players acquire houses, then sell them."

Should you not already have For Sale, in 2021 Eagle-Gryphon Games also plans to release For Sale Autorama, a game by Stefan Dorra in which 3-6 players buy and sell vehicles — cars, motorcycles, RVs, semi-trucks, etc. — over three distinct phases, with players first bidding to hire advisors, after which those advisors then assist them in the other two phases of the game: purchasing vehicles, then selling them.

EGG describes For Sale Autorama as a standalone game that includes the Advisors expansion, so everything comes in one box. What immediately comes to mind — not being familiar with the content of Advisors, mind you — is the idea of combining Autorama with the 30-building version of For Sale. Lay out cards from each game equal to the number of players, pairing a random building with a random vehicle before players start bidding. Do the same with checks.

I don't know whether this would be wildly fun or would flatten out the variability of the offerings (and the payouts) to make everything average. Stuck at home with too many thought experiments these days...