12.10.14 In this Keyflower expansion, the players are developing their agricultural skills. In addition to the standard Keyflower resources, wheat, sheep, pigs and cows can be produced. The expansion contains the required animeeples, plus season tiles for each season, which mostly have something to do with production or scoring of animals. The animals are placed on a field on the tile that enabled their production. Pay close attention to all the roads, fences, walls, streams and more of the sort to be able to distinguish what parts of a tile do or do not belong to the same field! Every two animals in the same field reproduce at the end of each season, except for the winter. But, at the end of the game, points are scored for each field containing at least one animal, and there are no extra points for any additional animals present! So, toward the end of the game, the animals have to be moved to different fields to be able to yield points. They can be transported using the transportation action that is also used for standard resources. Wheat tokens can be used for additional steps. According to the rules, The Farmers expansion can be either shuffled in with the standard game, or it can be used as a whole and just supplemented with season tiles from the standard game when necessary. Neither option is perfect: when the tiles are shuffled in with the standard game, chances are that for example the tile to score additional bonus points for sheep does enter the game, but no tiles to actually produce sheep are drawn. When The Farmers is used as a whole, and just supplemented with tiles from the standard game, another problem arises: there are hardly any tiles present to produce the standard resources, while these resources are required for certain productions, for bonuses, and for the improvement of many tiles! This is especially a problem with two players, since only two tiles from the standard game are added each season. In both configurations it feels like playing two different games simultaneously. A general complaint with expansions is that they don’t add enough extra’s to the game; in this case the problem is that the expansion is a completely different game! In addition to the incompatibility of the standard game and the expansion, The Farmers has another disadvantage: the drawings on the season tiles were originally only meant as decoration. But now it is suddenly important to be able to distinguish where one field ends and another one begins. The animeeples are so big, and the illustrations so tiny, that two sheep can completely cover one small field plus surrounding roads, making it very hard to see which animals are in the same field. Also, the mere presence of the animals all over the tiles often obscures their function, both for their owner and for other players, who are also allowed to place their workers on those tiles! Altogether The Farmers involves too much hassle on the season tiles, and as a consequence the elegant simplicity of the standard game is severely compromised. Barbara van Vugt
Keyflower - The Farmers, Sebastian Bleasdale & Richard Breese, R&D Games, 2013 - 2 to 6 players, 14 years and up, 90-120 minutesxxtop

15.11.13 During or after ‘Spiel’ in Essen many wonder: what was the trend? In fact this is a silly thought, because there never is a conscious trend; publishers do not en masse prepare for a new season by saying: ‘This autumn everything will be pink’. Besides, they are dependent from the - varied - offerings by authors and only in a single case can minimally adjust a game by changing the theme, for instance. No, at the very most there are a few striking yet accidental similarities. One of it could be that this year quite a few card games have been published that were boxed in an oversized box that normally holds board games, the cards being accompanied with some excuse parts to justify the large box.
In Kashgar the excuse parts are the unduly executed scoring board that holds count of the amount of spices. Leave it out and what remains is a card game. Adlung could have published it...
But we are going to travel, with at least three caravans. At the head of these are patriarchs, and gradually the caravan grows as more people join it. Each person, once in front, has a characteristic that executed, forces that person to join the queue at the rear. (Drawing people isn’t exactly Franz Vohwinkel’s forte; yet in Kashgar he performs better than in his previous work).
In some cases a person can be used only once, after which the journey is continued without him. Goal of the game is to collect sufficient spices, gold and mules to fulfill the various assignments. These score points, and twenty-five of them an almost sure - the round is completed - victory. Is there more? No; this is it. Is it fun? Yes, for a while. Is it difficult? No, it is a rather cosy game and quite - despite the variant - without any conflict. But it goes as with all these kickshaws: at a certain point you‘re in need of some heavier meal.
Kashgar did not have to be more spicy per se, but it could have been more satiated.
Kashgar, Gerhard Hecht, Kosmos, 2013 - 2 to 4 players, 12 years and up, 60 minutesxxtop

22.03.13 On a board depicting the Nile delta two to five players battle for points, eight or ten. These points can be earned by a succesfull attack on another player, controlling temples or upgrade a piramid to level four. In the night phase players receive prayer points, and cards are dealt that can be played during a battle. During the day phase one by one players take an action on their player board; they buy armies, upgrade piramids, move armies, collect prayer points or additional equipment aiding a player in an attack, defence, in movement, or it supplies resources. These extras, tiles, come in strength one to four, and have a relation with the strength of the piramids as a player only may buy tiles in a colour up to the strength of the corresponding piramid. The tiles give a player a modifier on the die in an attack, in defense or it gives additional movement. Then there are the monsters, animals, mythical beings, or whatever they are called. These come with certain tiles and their function is no different than a tile, being a modifier that is, but they look nice on the board and probably that is why they were inserted.
That the pharaos invented teleportation before Scotty used it was not commonly known until yet: a player may transport his troops from a city to any obelisk on the board, paying two prayer points. Don't reach for your prayer books though as it only is made up, so it's not real! The teleport only works one way by the way, so in fact the Egyptian gods had something to improve, but probably lacked the time, some thousand years or so...
But it's all so weird: the game actually is no more than a straight battle game, but completely rigged with miniatures and almost endless modifier tiles that according to the rules should be placed next to the board for better oversight. We did not follow this suggestion; just take a look at this socalled oversight.
Egypt being the theme of this game is quite stretched; the map illustration is straight ugly, the game idea -attack!- dull and rather flat, and despite all bells and whistles one does not more than hope the game is over soon. Special minus points finally go to the unreadable logo. Kemet, it wants to be played on fertile ground but in fact it is an inhabitable planet. Beam us up, Scotty!
Kemet, Guillaume Montiage & Jacques Bariot, Matagot, 2012 - 2 to 5 players, 13 years and up, 60 minutesxxtop

13.01.13 Two to six pirates play three robbery campaigns of three weeks, after which the player with the most points may set course to libertalia, say the Mallorca for retired pirates. Each day the players play a character card from their hand of nine different but for each player initial identical set of cards. The pirate ship is filled with the accumulated treasures the pirates have shopped together, as many as participating players, some of them valuable, others a bit mwah, and one or two  outright to be avoided because it’s a curse. Superstitious people as they are, pirates rather don’t want these curses in their pocket.
After each player has chosen a character, the card is placed onto the deck of the ship, the card with the highest value put at the rightmost position, and so further down. The highest card in rank is the first to choose a treasure, the lowest played card has bad luck and uncomplainingly but with a sigh takes the curse that is left over. But each character has a special feature, and one of it could bet hat it eliminates the highest valued character on deck, or that the player may take an extra treasure; bad luck for the other players after him who go empty-handed. Other effects could bet hat a player loses doubloons, or receives some from an other player.
The played character cards are placed near the players pirates nest and some of them have an effect in the night phase: take a doubloon, or discard a treasure and receive three doubloons, which comes in quite handy when the discarded treasure is a curse.
Because each player starts with an identical set of characters, with some of the characters players are pondering; when play it and he does too, the card ha sno effect. When I don’t do it, only he profits from it. But does he do it, and will he do it now? So, a warning beforehand  for player groups with a player who has potential brain paralysis: this game should be played with a gut feeling. The game length also indicates this: from 40 to 60 minutes, just short enough to stay fun.
At the end of a complete round some of the characters als have an effect: take ten doubloons, take a doubloon for each character in your pirates nest, or lose three doubloons for each curse inpossession.
At the start of the second campaign nine character cards are added to a players hand. Each player still has three characters left from the first round, but these don’t necessarily have to be the same, so each player now has a slightly different set of characters, a difference that even will be greater at the start of the third campaign and through which it becomes harder to guess which character another player can and thus will play.
After each round the treasures are exchanged for points; the accumulated money also scores points. A new round is started with placing new treasures onto the ship, and the adding or reducing each players money to ten doubloons. To cut a long story short: Libertalia is an uncomplicated, playful game with a nice atmosphere and a beautiful execution.
Libertalia, Paolo Mori, Asmodee, 2012 - 2 to 6 players, 14 years and up, 40-60 minutesxxtop

23.01.09 The cover shows a writing youngster; at first glance we think he is wearing a pyama and is making his homework for the other day with the help of some lamplight. But he is not writing at all and we don’t see any homework; he is drawing and the subject is old civilisations and their monuments. The two to four players are going to collect these monuments that come in cards, and similar to the cover illustration they are going to do something with it as well, write a paper about it or something, to bring these monuments under the attention of mankind and in this way increase their regard - but in the game more important to the players: their value.
Each monument is on display on the table and has two sides - the amount of possible builds. Players have a hand of cards which in their turn can be increased from a  deck or window of three open cards as one of four possible actions; they have three actions but may choose a specific action more times in a row.
Building a monument is another action: a player plays a minimum of two cards of a monument and places these in front of him; a third possible action is to add one or more cards to an already built monument. And the fourth action, well, we keep it for ourselves as we don’t have to give all of the show away, do we?
O.K., we have some monuments on the table, so what happens with the points? Well, players get points for them only until the end of the game - when the card deck is depleted. At this point, the scoring board gets important. From this is read how famous all monuments have become and how much has been written about them. Players are awarded points for each of the monuments they have built and because each monument could have been built a second time, these points will have to be divided between the owners with more points for the player who has a larger - more cards - monument, fair is fair.
In able to raise the value of the monuments, another type of turn has to be chosen; so far we only mentioned the socalled monuments turn with all its possible actions but now the writer turn gets its, eh, turn. At the start of the game, each of the players have been dealt a number of writer discs that they can play in such a turn, one at a time. When doing so, one card of all other players monuments is taken if such a monument consists at least of two or more cards; all assembled cards make the corresponding monument shift one column to the right on the abacus, one per card. The writer disc of the player is put on a separate score track, with as many spaces forward as all assembled cards in the writer action. The position of all writers are also worth points at the end of the game, so a player will want to wait with his writer turn until many monuments have two or more cards, but if he waits too long, another player is ahead of him. On top of it, not played writer discs are minus points!
The problem of each player is that he mainly can increase the value of monuments that are not his own; secondly built monuments with other players do not always carry the necessary minimum of two cards, a requirement for increasing the value of a monument. Diverging therefore is important, but also taking care to always try to have two cards in your own monuments stack when another player chooses to take a writer turn. With only nine cards per monument, this restricts the tactical possibilities; besides this the deck of cards is depleted sooner than wished.
At the end of the game an unfair bonus is awarded to already succesfull writers: the writer with his disc in front gets his casual points, and after that bonus points for being first (second, third)! The scoring board is very dull and unattractive; the colours sometimes do not match the card colours and some colours are too close to each other. The printing quality of the board is below standard; it looks like a blurry copy on wood-pulp paper.
'Monuments' can be best narrated as: 'A player does a little this, a player does a little that, and also gets to score somewhat.' - O.K., did I say I could rhyme?
In doing all this, he has had little influence or controlling power, while the atmosphere also wasn't exactly cheerful. Technically 'Monuments’ is sufficient, but it is lacking in the pleasure department.
Monuments, Stefan Risthaus, Abacusspiele / Mayfair Games, 2008 - 2 to 4 players, 10 years and up, 45 to 60 minutesxxtop