Before going on with Fairy Land preview sopme news from Italian company was not included in my preview part1 or part2
Giochi Uniti
Giochi Uniti is probaly the biggest Italian publishers/disatributor. Under Giochi Uniti name several Italian famous brabd like Stratelibri, Stupor Mundi or Venice Connection. Giochi Uniti is also the Italian distributor and localizator for Fantasy Flight Games and Days of Wonder. In Essen Giochi Uniti will present two games: Bookmaker and
Bookmaker by Giuseppe de Carolis
for 3-9 players. age 12+ playing time 45 minutes
It looks like a simple strategic game about horse racing bidding. The game is played on several race. Before eaceh race players will recive 4 cards and bid on horses. The ration of the horses is decided by the bookmakers according to some info they only have. The race, between 4 horses, is played just turning cards from the race deck that is made by 80 card in the 4 different colours. Of course having several cards of the same color in hand probably will means that you horse will be not in the top,
Jungle Brunch by Lua Borsa e Luca Bellini
for 2-5 players, age 6+, playing time 10-20 minutrs
“Jungle Brunch is the fun and quick card game of hungry animals for the whole family!”
Fairy Land (Lo Scarabeo)
Designer: Luca Iennaco
Publisher: Lo Scarabeo
Players: 2-4
Age: 10+
Playing time: 30-40 minutes
Fairy Land preview by Liga just reading the final rules
I was quite surprised by last year Lo Scarabeo release, Arcanum, both for the quality of the game and for the quality of the materials. Of course Andrea Chiarvesio, from the Kingsburg crew, was in the design team and so I was quite sure of the quality of the final result.
This year Lo Scarabeo strike again with a card game from Luca Iennaco, that worked with Chiarvesio both on Kingsburg and Olympus. Luca is one of the best Italian play-tester so I’m sure Fairy Land will be a well balanced and tested game. I’m also sure about the quality of the cards, since Lo Scarabeo is Italian most famous tarot publishers.
The King of Fairy is coming back from a long travel and all are trying to make their best to welcome him.
Every player start with the same 8 cards: 7 fairies (numbered from 1 to 7) and a special card. There is the queen deck (9 of the 19 queen cards randomly selected), the Druid deck (9 randomly selected wood cards) and the wood deck. Finally three face up cards will be the three different clearing in the wood.
The player will try to best use their fairy cards to get wood cards from the clearing, trying to get the right combinations of animals and flowers. The game is played in turns and during the turn there are three phases: dawn, say and sunset.
In dawn the player add cards to the the clearings and in sunset the clearing with more than 6 cards are emptied. The game is played in the day where is possible to make one of this actions: exploring a clearing, visiting the queen, visiting the druid or use and object.
Visiting the queen and the druid will give to the player a card from a draw in the queen or the druid deck: the muber of cards drawn is equal to the fairies’ value played. Visiting a clearing will rise a one round auction for all the cards in that clearing, with the player playing the turn being the last.
The “coin” used for everything is the value on the fairy cards and since all players start the game with the same deck it looks like it is just a matter of how good you are in managing your resources. In the wood deck there are also fairy card you can add to your hand and orcs and goblins that will offer you some trouble! In the end you will score for being the one with the most animal (there is a score for each animal and there are 7 different species), for copies of the same flower and also for having different type of flowers.
The game looks simple but intriguing: something between a good filler and a light family game. Of course we need to play it to really be sure it is engaging and challenging.
