We continue our column about children's toys. In the near future, I will try to describe the minigames I have recently bought (it will take a few weeks to describe all the children's games, let's start with the minigames). I love small games because they don't take a lot of time to play (not always parents have), plus the format is perfect for traveling (lightweight and doesn't take up a lot of space).  Today we will talk about the game Alles Tomate!, a good filler for children with a short session of 15 minutes. HISTORY Grandfather and grandmother need to be helped to deal with the economy on the farm, they are very old and do not have time to remember where and what needs to be taken where. Help them remember where the shovel is kept or where the horse needs to be tied. GAME PROCESS A row of 7 cards is laid out, on which plots of the farm are depicted, each of the cards has its own color (7 colors in total) and finely drawn objects (such objects are present on cards of the same color in the main deck). Opposite each of the seven cards from the deck, one item card from the deck is placed face up. Together, we have two rows one below the other: the upper one is a farm, the lower one is an item from the farm, pulled from the deck. The players look at all this and after that the cards are turned face up. Remember where and what was? Forward! We take the top card from the deck and turn it over. For example, they pulled out a chair drawn on a blue card. Where is our blue farm, and what was under it just now? The first one to shout out the correct answer gets a card from under the farm and takes it for himself. The newly drawn card takes its place. And so in a circle until the deck ends. Whoever collects the most cards wins. CONCLUSIONS The game won a number of awards, such as the Children's Game of the Year and the German Game Prize in the field of education. In Germany, I brought this game to the teachers in my daughter's class..

 Having played many board games, I want to stop at the board game "Finka". First of all, it is the high quality of printing, which definitely distinguishes most games made in Germany. And quite an interesting game mechanism, but more on that below.  This is the fruit logistics of the island of Mallorca. Players have to move their farmers and collect fruits by moving on the wings of the windmill. Fruits - oranges, lemons, grapes, figs, olives, almonds - wooden chips painted in their colors.  And the movement takes place as follows: the player starts walking and makes as many moves as there are farmers standing on his wing at the beginning of the move, and he takes as many fruits as there are farmers (including himself) standing on the wing he stood on at the end of the move. In this way, you can move your farmers and prevent other players from making the moves they want - because you can calculate which fruits the opponents are picking, which tiles are aimed at.  After the player has the amount of fruit he needs, he can start transportation - for this, carts with donkeys are used, which the player takes from the center of the mill, each time crossing the border in the center (a line is drawn on the field). Each visa can carry only 6 fruits. During his turn, the player places the tile with the cart back to the center of the mill, and takes a tile from the playing field with fruits on it.  The player must put as many fruits as are drawn on the tile back into the pot. If the stack of tiles on the field ends, then a finca tile with the image of some fruit is drawn. It is awarded to the player whose collected tiles have the most images of this fruit - this gives an additional 5 points to the final score, and the empty area is placed as a hacienda. The game continues until all the haciendas are displayed. You can also get a bonus tile during the game - the player who first collected tiles with numbers from 1 to 6 gets 7 bonus points. The..

 For me, Dust Tactics is a case where, after opening the box and playing the game, I got what I expected and even more what I was promised. Easy to learn, fast and dynamic game of soldiers. In DT, you can actually start playing about half an hour after opening the game. While one carefully adjusts cannons, machine guns and searchlights to robot walkers, removes soldiers from personal ziplocs and prepares the playing area, the other carefully reads the rules. The rules are explained in five minutes, and thoroughly fixed in the memory during the first game. In order to make the right decisions, it is important to know the characteristics of all the fighters represented on the field and to be aware of their strengths and weaknesses, as well as special tasks, but this can be learned in one or two fights. In terms of dynamics, perception of what is happening and passion, the game resembles hockey, behind which chess is hidden - with positional struggle, forks, sacrifices and exchange of pieces. In the first round, players take turns placing one figure on the field. For the next 2-3 rounds, the positional struggle and the convergence of troops continue - the players try to increase their chances of victory. Then comes the battle itself, in which everything is decided by the die, but based on the chances with which the players approached it, and regrouping if both sides managed to survive it. Since the basic set involves healing the wounded and the arrival of reinforcements, it is usually over in 5-6 rounds. All battles take 10-60 minutes depending on the scenario and the experience of the players. At the same time, the simplicity of the rules does not interfere with the depth of tactical possibilities provided by the variety of specialized combat units. But even though each figure is unique and the armies are asymmetrical, at least the base DT set is balanced. It's funny to realize, but in this game there is a place for dice. You have to throw..

 Battlestar Galactica is a cooperative game that supports from three to six (optionally expandable to seven) players, in which one or two of them, depending on the number of participants, turn out to be "traitors" and play against their comrades. The average playing time is about 2.5-3 hours. I would immediately like to dispel the myth about the need to watch the series before sitting down at the gaming table. This is completely optional, and you won't lose anything fundamental, since the game is completely self-sufficient. PLOT AND MECHANICS  The task of the human players is to lead the fleet, led by the "Galaxy", to a certain distance without losing either the cruiser itself or any of the key resources - Population, Food, Fuel and Morale. The task of "traitor" players is quite the opposite. The plot of the game, without being sly, repeats the television one. Cylon robots, created by man, revolted, destroyed most of the people, forcing those who remained alive to seek salvation by fleeing. The remnants of humanity on their spaceships, united around the last hope - the cruiser "Galaxy", are trying to break away from the pursuit of the Cylon fleet and find a new home with the prosaic name "Earth". The case of rescue is complicated by the fact that the Cylons have managed to create 12 models of humanoid robots and introduced them into the glorious ranks of the human race. And so "who is who" makes up the lion's share of the intrigue of both the series and the game. At the beginning and in the middle of the game, each participant secretly receives a so-called loyalty card from the others, which determines whether your character is a Cylon or a human. The game has a lot of characters, each of which is endowed with its own special skills, as well as unique positive and negative properties. It is not difficult to guess, it may happen that in the first part of the game, not a single cylon will appear on the field, and in the second phase, the..

 Yesterday we tested the game The Golden City, which arrived at the beginning of the week. Since the parcel was from Germany, I have the game in German - Die Goldene Stadt (published by KOSMOS). The field and game components are completely language-independent, incl. to master it, only the rules in Russian or at least in English are necessary. The original rules take up only 4 pages, in the Russian version that I was able to find on the Internet, there are only 2 of them (there are no pictures, and they are not particularly needed - the rules are very simple).  The field is of good quality, moderately bright, wooden houses without chips and well painted, cardboard components from 3 mm cardboard, playing cards are quite dense, but "Business cards" (the equivalent of victory points) in quality as in the Manager (if someone remembers), that is. cheap paper  Inside the box is an organizer with more compartments than components. Why? Not clear. However, there are 4 slots for cards - enough to spare, because of cards in the game is 88, and the depth of one card slot is 70. Protectors are desirable, because after all, cards are not linen. Protectors from Fantasy Flight Games Mini European 1 11/16 x 2 5/8 (44x68 mm) are perfect, although they are sold in 50 pieces, and the package, on average, costs 150 rubles, but they are dense, unlike CardPro, which are sold in pieces of 100 rubles for 100. According to my own feelings, I like the FFG protectors much more - they fit like a glove, cards do not pop out. Two people played, but the game is for 3-4 players, so I had to play for two at once. Preparation for the game takes no more than 5 minutes. When playing with three, each player gets 18 houses and the hand with which to vote, when playing with four - 16 houses. Each player gets three coins twice, one "Coast" type landscape card. The rest of the landscape cards are shuffled and resounded one card at a time. 8 product cards are shuffled and the top 3..

 "Zooloretto" does not let go. Point. I don't stop liking this unimaginative game at all... On the shelf there are untried "Dracula" and "Shadows of Camelot", recently "Warcraft" came with an add-on, and I want to play "Zooloretto". If anyone doesn't know, Zooloretto is a game about a zoo. In it, players act as managers of their own zoo, buy animals, build stalls and new enclosures, in short, do everything to earn victory points. As one of my friends likes to repeat: "Everything is like in life." "Zooloretto" is not really an original game. The author (the well-known Comrade Shakht) reimagined his most successful brainchild - the game "Coloretto" - in a new way: threw the hell out of abstraction, added money to the game, replaced colored cards with tokens with animals, and voila! We had to come up with a new name... Before us is a game that looks great, with simple rules, high dynamism, low competitiveness. In short, a find for the family. "Professional" boardgamers perceived the game as recycled material, saying that "Coloretto" is pure gameplay, leavened on interesting mechanics, and "Zooloretto" is purely a money-making game. But! This game has one great feature - it is not abstract at all. For me personally, this is the main reason why I prefer to collect animals rather than pieces of colored cardboard. Any action in this game is closely related to the setting and is logical. Money brings a very light economic aspect to the game in addition to the tactical one, and add-ons provide a fan. Appendix one: Tokens of Podlanka. Finally you can make abominations! These are nine tokens of problems that play in the zoos of rivals and close places for animals in enclosures, prohibit the construction of stalls and break the roof of the reserve, forcing to spend on major repairs. I like to make abominations! Appendix Two: Mission Maps. Loudly shouted, of course, about the mission. Simply, at the beginning of the game, each player receives a card on..

 Rune Age is distinguished by a high level of interaction between players and aggression (up to the elimination of the player), asymmetric factions and different game scenarios. The scenario shown on The Realms of Terrinoth reduced the game to an "arms race" in which the goal was to accumulate enough power to destroy the main enemy, the dragon lord card that lies in the center of the table from the start and has a power of 18. The west was mentioned and mentioned. a co-op scenario in which "trouble" is thrown into the deck of events, and players must work together to counter that deck. Scenarios also determine the cards available to players; yes, in the scenario played out at the event, there were only 3 different neutral cards available to players. SCHEDULE The basic set of the game features four factions - the same as in Runewars. Each faction has its own unique set of stacks of cards that a player playing as a faction can buy into their deck, and they are unique. Most of the faction's special cards are troops. In addition, each faction is matched with one card representing the kingdom itself, which has 20 stamina. Also, each faction has its own stack of so-called fortresses - they give players points of influence. Common deck cards can be bought by all players. These include gold cards and neutral cards; the second includes various tactics that can affect the player's turn or battle, as well as neutral troops. The city maps represent the various cities of the Terrinoth universe (Vinevale, Frostgate, etc.). Cities have defense levels at their disposal and can be captured by players. Once a city is captured, it is positioned in front of the player who captured it and can rotate 90° (like resources in collectible card games) to grant them influence points to purchase cards. The Event Deck provides unique instant events and enemy cards that come into play and can be attacked by players. Most of the enemy cards when defeated bring artifacts..

 Many draw parallels between "Cuba" and such games as "Puerto Rico" or "Struggle for the Galaxy". Indeed, the driving force of these games is the choice of character cards (roles, phases - the essence does not change from this). Let me remind you that in the basic "Cuba" players have five characters at their disposal: a worker (extraction of resources and products), trade (buying/selling goods), architect (construction of buildings), foreman (activation of buildings) and mayor (export of goods for victory points ). In each round, each player plays four characters from this list, and the remaining character after 4 rounds goes off to engage in politics, buy votes with the player's money and seek leadership in those same votes to be able to dispose of the four bills and decide which laws will be accepted by the government. , And which are rejected.  Addition "El President" adds one round of moves in each round. In addition to 4 of the 5 characters, each player must sooner or later use one of the available Cuban cards, taking it from the field for himself and performing a unique card action. At the beginning of the round, each Cuban is in a separate place on the field. A certain action of the president is tied to each such place. By taking the Cuban's card, the player crosses out one of the president's possible actions from the list in this way. At the end of the character phase, the presidential car drives along the boulevard and stops near the last card of the Cuban (the others have already been sorted by the players). After that, the president's action is performed, related to the place on the field where the card of the remaining unwanted Cuban is located. Cubans: dancer (player becomes the first player in the next round), musician (player receives 2 coins), day laborer (allows to immediately move the player's products from the yard to the warehouse), port master (replaces ships in the port), lawyer (activates one building per coin), revolutionary..