Spiele Hit in Austria

Excellent news.

Nicht zu Fassen, alias Cache Moutons, has been rewarded with the Austrian prize for Childern's games.

Tips & Tricks

Suggestion :

As Batt'l Kha'os requires some tactical insight, it can be a little outbalanced between an experienced and novice player. The balance can be readjusted by allowing the experienced player to start with only 3 or 4 power tokens instead of 5.

Tactical advice :

• Once you control the first 2 corners of one tower, you have a great advantage. When your opponent tries to capture the third corner, you can easily take the 4th corner and the majority.


• Thus, when your opponent controls 2 corners of a tower, it is better to give it temporarily up and distract his attention by placing a new tower at another spot of the battlefield.


• Placing new towers is an excellent way to open the game. If you fight tower per tower, the outcome depends much more of the tiles that you keep in your hand. If there are several towers to capture, you force your opponent to make choices as he can not attack on all places at the same time. Thus, if you think having a weak hand of tiles, place a new tower.


• Use your power tokens to take control of towers and not of corners. If you use a power token to get a corner and you do not manage to capture the tower, your power token has been wasted.


• Use your power tokens before the end of the game. Frequently, the game accelerates towards the end, giving you not enough opportunities to use your power tokens in an efficient way.
• Towards the end of the game, you can count how many turns each player needs to win the game. The player who has the advantage at that moment, is very difficult to beat.

Good luck with these few tips.

How to play?

Eric Hanuise has made a nice video to explain the basics of the game Batt'l Kha'os.
You will recognize my son as an orc (the smallest one). Enjoy.



Il a également réalisé une version française.

Batt'l Kha'os release

Z-man Games, an American publisher, has released Batt'l Kha'os, a new game which I've co-developped with Eric Hanuise.

The game is an abstract duel with square tiles containing knights and orcs. The objective is to control towers by gaining the majority of the corners.

Check the website of Z-man Games for the full rules or Boardgame geek for a translation.

Designed as a 2 player game, it is nevertheless quite easy to play it with more players.

Here are the special rules to adapt the game for 4 players :

• The players form 2 teams of 2 players. Each player gets 3 tiles in his hand and 3 power tokens (instead of 5).
• Players alternate turns. First, one orc player plays his turn, then one knight player. After this, the other orc player plays his turn and the other knight player last. Then, a new turn begins, always in the same order. Power tokens can only be used by the controlling player.

With 3 players, the special rules are quite similar.

• Now, there is one team of 2 players and one of one player. The single player gets 6 power tokens instead of 3.
• The single player plays twice per turn while his opponents only once per turn.
  

Pressconference in Berlin

Here a few pictures of the pressconference on July 29th 2009.

The president of the Jury hands over the nomination award to the editor and myself.

All nominated games in a row. As you can see, Nicht zu fassen is standing very close to the winning game (at the right).

The wolf and myself in front of the presentation stand of the game.

"Nicht zu fassen" can still compete for other prices.

Particularly interesting is the Deutscher Spiele Preis, where the public can vote.

So, if you think that "Nicht zu fassen" deserves a price, please participate in the voting.

You must fill in the name of the editor, which is Zoch. Attention, the site is only in German language.

http://www.deutscherspielepreis.de/p040.php4

Nomination for "Kinderspiel des Jahres"

"Nicht zu Fassen" alias "Cache Moutons" for the French, has been nominated for the German Children's Game of the Year. At the end of the month, the final decision of the Jury will be known.

Among all contests, this one is the most prestigious, especially for the "Game of the Year". To give childern's game a chance, the organisators have added a childern's price too, since 2001.

A nomination and even better the first prize is much envied in Germany.

In contrary to contests for game designs where authors are rewarded, this contest is a reward for the game as a final product : not only the concept of the game, but also how the game is realised : the clarity of the rules, the design of the game box and its components.

In this regards, Zoch Spiele, the editor, did an excellent job and I'm very glad about it.

Saboteur in Japanese language

From now on, the game is also available in Japan.