For the first time, Kosmos released this year a new big-game for the Essen games Convention. The title this year is "Sofies Welt", based on the famous book "Sofieīs World" by Jostein Gaarder.

In the game, the player will travel through different epochs in time, so he will visit for example Old Rome, Renaissance and the 19th century. In each epoch, the players will have to answer historical questions concerning this epoch in order to collect Wisdom-Points. Itīs the goal of the players to prove fit for entering Sofieīs World by answering questions in at least 4 epochs. Furthermore, a player may come to special places where he has to answer some philosophical questions.

To travel between the epochs, a player may go through warpholes which are centered on a moving circle in the center of the gameboard. After a player has bested 4 epochs, he will be led to the last test: Now he has to answer questions from the epochs which he still hadnīt visited and in addition one more philosophical question.

The game looks promising and I will do a detailed review after I have played it, but I donīt think that the german set is useable for english-speaking people, since itīs a game with very much text. But I was assured that an english version is published.....

Very interesting are the news from Klaus Teuber and the Settlers-family. At the convention the new Settlers-scenarios "Alexander the Great" and "Cheops" will be available - both sold together in one expansion-set. These scenarios offer new and different settings for the Settlers-game and they will slighly alter the rules. So for example, in "Cheops" the players will have to use their resources to build a Pyramid, whereas in "Alexander" the players will have to build villages at the route of Alexanderīs army, gaining Victory-points for assisting the army.

Unfortunately, the new expansion-sets for the Settlers-Cardgame will NOT be available at Essen. Due to some printing problems at an earlier-stage, the expansions are scheduled to be released in December. In total, 5 expansion-sets will be released:

The old Tournament-set will be diveded into two sets:

• "Ritter & Händler", with the Castle as a central card and introducing one new card, the Peasants-Army.
• "Fortschritt & Wissenschaft", centered around the University plus a new card called "Handelsakademie".

Additionally, the creativity-contest from the old Tournament-edition is finally over and it resulted in three new decks of cards:

• "Handel & Wandel", is mostly concerned with getting a plus if trying to secure the Mill-stone. So you can mobilize Knights by breeding horses for them, build Trading-posts or assist fleets by by building homing-lights. (30 cards)
• "Politik & Intrige" will assist you in getting as much out of a military-conflict as possible. So you can weaken Knights of the opponent by building a whorehouse, strengthen your knightīs faith by building an Orderīs Castle or make the Church pose a threat to the enemy. (30 cards)
• "Drachen & Zauberer" will be the most interesting set of the three, introducing Magical Citadels and sorcerers to the game. The Sorcerers may use their magical abilities to create Dragons which will assist your army, remove event cards from the game or use many other spells to alter the game. (43 cards)

As said above, these sets unfortunately are not availeble at Essen, but I was able to secure a sneak preview at "Politik & Intrige" and at "Drachen & Zauberer" for the visitors of Kulkmannīs G@mebox. Many thanks to Fritz Gruber from Kosmos for lending me the preview-prints of these sets for a day, enabling me to scan some cards....

One other news was to be seen from the Settlers-club. In a very small edition, a 3-dimensional Settlers-set will be available soon. I have asked them for the price of the game, and they said that the unpainted version will cost DM 200,-, whereas the handpainted game will cost DM 1000,-. The game will only be produced if 100 orders will reach Kosmos. If you should be interested, you may ask for the game at "SIEDLER SERVICE, Franckh Kosmos Verlag, Pfitzerstr. 5-7, 70184 Stuttgart, Germany". English letters are welcome, and please tell them that you have read about the game at Kulkmannīs G@mebox !

Another news from Kosmos will be the re-release of the old boardgames-classic "Twixt". To celebrate the 40th birthday of the game, Kosmos has decided together with Alex Randolph to publish the game components once again in form and materials of the original game. In addition, a limited edition will be published, containing a replicate of a notebook which Alex Randolph used while testing the game with his old friend, the german comedian Herbert Feuerstein.

Last news from Kosmos is the release of the game "Kahuna" in their series of interesting two-player-games. The game is perhaps better known as "Arabana Ikibiti" which was published at Essen ī97 in a very small circulation-number. Now Kosmos is proud to present the game in their 2-players-line, with attractive wooden playing pieces and gameboard. In the game, two Kahuna-Priests battle for dominance over a kingdom of small isles, and they do this by clever placement of influence-markers. A very promising-looking game !

Well, that was the Essen ī98 report about the news from Kosmos !

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