Menagerie

Gray and I are working on a custom game, we've titled "Menagerie". A combination of influences inspired the African safari theme. The general mechanic is "explore, expand, trade, collect".

We collected parts for a number of other games that I have spares for: Hansa, China, Mesopotamia, Mare Nostrum, and Struggle of Empires. The board is completely changeable, thanks to the hex-tiles of Mesopotamia. The figures are from some 1/24 scale figures my parents gave the kids and have ancient middle-eastern garb. Tam bought a tube of animal figures from the craft store. There are "goodie-huts" in the form of house-pieces from China.

The game is 4-player, and goes in rounds. Each round lets each player take 3 actions, which include moving, exploring a territory and uncovering it's inhabitants (natives, animals, or treasure), renting a "specialist", or converting native tribes to your side. Players collect commodities collected from friendly native tribes, and trade them with each other at the center of the board (never more than 3 moves or 1 turn away from any player). They can later trade treasures into a museum, or turn animals into a zoo for money or victory points.

We are working on rules for the "specialists", characters that can be added to your team and that have special abilities similar to Agricola. The one pictured here we are calling a "ranger", he adds one victory point for each animal collected, and gives a modifier to the die roll when attempted to "collect" an animal discovered on a new tile.

We hope to use commodities collected each turn from "friendly natives" to trade for large improvements that upgrade a position. Twelve unique commodities would form a set that could be turned in for a museum that would allow players to harvest their treasure, a zoo for keeping animals, a large camel that represents a logistics network allowing for more efficient movement of goods, and a trade tent that facilitates rapid trading between two players anywhere on the board.

There is no combat in the game, but you can do things like steal a treasure space from an unsuspecting player, or convert (bridge) a village over to your side. You can block other players from using the trade tent if you own it, and charge players whatever you like to use your trade network. You receive a profit share when they use your museum or zoo. You can also place draw location tiles in favorable or unfavorable positions near your neighbors, for a price.

It's coming along pretty well - Gray and I have been having a ball building it out. Will keep you posted.

Oh, and we're open to suggestions on a more appropriate name. Click "comments" below to add your suggestion! - - Dave