Vendor: The Dietz Foundation
Type: Board Games
Price: 53.97

Originally released by Fata Morgana in the 1980s, KREMLIN is a European-style boardgame where players compete to control the Communist Party of the Soviet Union.

The Jolly Roger KREMLIN features updated art and better components created in the style of 1930s Soviet poster propaganda. This edition has an error on the board that has the name of the game covering part of the graphics and text on the board.

Kremlin is played for up to ten turns, ending as soon as the Party Chief successfully waves three times at the May Day Parade or when so many politicians are dead or in Siberia that the Party Chief can disband the Politburo and take complete power for himself.

Each turn has phases. The most important of these are the KGB trials (which can send party members to Siberia or the cemetery) and the Defense Ministry's Spy Investigations which can also force politicians on a winter's gulag holiday. With the KGB, the catch is that the higher up the ladder the target, the more difficult to bring down, and Party Chiefs tend to change KGB leaders who take shots at the top... For the Defense Minister, his investigations require a trial to be successful--and a guilty vote, and that isn't always possible in the Central Committee.

The catch? Players allot influence secretly at the start of the game and don't reveal it until it is used, meaning no one knows who controls the KGB or any other ministry, not until Influence is revealed--and even then, who knows who still has undeclared influence on that person? It is possible that players can swap control back and forth over the KGB chief even as he is trying to determine who to assassinate!

Once the carnage is done, players have to survive the ravages of aging--and every time a politician takes action, he ages faster than normal...your 50 yr old star of the party? Well, suddenly he's acting like he's 83, Comrade. Life near the top will do that to you. In the Health phase, politicians may die or grow sick--sick politicians can choose to go to the hospital, but while there, they exert no influence and their responsibilities pass on to other politicians. Sometimes this means your man must make the heroic sacrifice to the Rodina and remain on the job even while at death's door.

Once we know who is still alive, the Party Chief is allowed to move politicians between posts. After all, he's in control of the bureaucracy. He can move people up and down, and when he's done, upper ministers do so as well--but can only affect politicians below them on the food chain. Heck, politicians can even sponsor comrades in exile in Siberia to come back to the People. Of course, each person you bring back ages you five years....want to bring back five? Age 25 years in the blink of an eye, Tovarich.

Intrigue cards allow you to take control of situations or foil other players' schemes. In one of the older versions, you could have things like Chernobyl take place in 1920. That's been corrected--so that while events may be the same, they have now been made era-appropriate.

The turn ends with the May Day Parade. If the party chief is healthy, he can wave throughout the day making people happy--clearly our socialist union is prospering. But if he's sick, sometimes he leaves early and is unable to wave, sending doubts through the ranks. If a faction (player) earns three waves, they win the game.

The Jolly Roger version provides three different KREMLIN games in one box.


The 'original' with fictional politicians, set in a USSR where KGB investigations send those found guilty to Siberia. This version will have victory conditions based on the original Fata Morgana rules.
A version inspired by the Avalon Hill variant titled 'Revolution'. Set in the 1920s, it uses historical politicians as well as fictional politicians. It's a more violent game as those arrested by the KGB are shot and removed from the game.
A new version, set in the modern USSR and Russia, an era of entrenched bureaucracy and alternatives for escaping KGB persecution. This version introduces the concept of "Going into Exile" to avoid Siberia. It also includes modern politicians from the 1960s onwards, whether it is Kosygin or Putin and Gorbachev.

Vendor: TIKI Editions
Type: Board Games
Price: 17.95

Vendor: Fata Morgana Spiele
Type: Board Games
Price: 29.95

Vendor: ABACUSSPIELE
Type: Board Games
Price: 12.95

Vendor: ABACUSSPIELE
Type: Board Games
Price: 12.95

Vendor: ABACUSSPIELE
Type: Board Games
Price: 12.95

Cosmic Eidex is an intriguing little trick-taking game for 3 players. The deck consists of 36 cards, 6 thru Ace, in four suits: Hearts (red), Lizard (green), Raven (black) and Stars (yellow). The Cosmic characters are the heart of the game, providing each player with a special Cosmic power. Each player draws one randomly at game start.

In Cosmic Eidex, the idea is to take either the most points or the least points (designated by the trump and rank of the cards that you take each hand), to earn a victory point. If in a hand, one player exceeds 100 card points, then the other two players get 1 victory point each. If one player takes all of the tricks, she receives 2 victory points. Seven victory points wins the game.

Cosmic Eidex is a mutation of the ages-old Swiss trick-taking card game Jass. Like Skat, the traditional German trick-taking card game, it is a three-player game.

The Cosmic-like powers each player is given are relatively weak. Most allow the player to break one of the rules once per game (before, during or after), some can be used multiple times. You don’t need to know every characters' powers, just the powers of the three characters used in the current game. There are as many character/power possibilities as there are cards, but wise card play usually outweighs their influence.

Vendor: Jolly Roger Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 39.95

A game of political intrigue set in the Soviet Politburo. The game consists of a large number of politician cards, some of which form the first politburo. Politicians have certain stats (preferred offices, for instance) and an age.

At the start of the game, the players secretly note influence on ten politicians, graded from 10 (most) to 1 (least). Gameplay is not clockwise, but happens from top to bottom in the politburo. Whatever action the politician in a certain office can take is done by the player who reveals the greatest influence on the politician in question. Actions include accusing other politicians of espionage (potentially exiling them to Siberia), pardoning them, reshuffling the politburo and others. But each action a politician takes lets him (or in one case, her) age by one or more years. Once a turn each politburo member must face a health roll which can result in sickness marker or even instant death (the older, the most likely). At the end of each turn, the reigning head of state must wave to the crowd at the October parade without collapsing (which gets harder the sicker the politician is). A politician who succeeds in this three times makes the player who controls him/her the winner.

The original Fata Morgana edition included rules requiring the players to hold funeral speeches for deceased party chairmen and drinking vodka with it, for instance. The later Avalon Hill edition scrapped these rules and gave the game a less satirical and more serious tone.

Vendor: ABACUSSPIELE
Type: Board Games
Price: 19.95

Note: This is an import game in German.  English Rules can be found here.

Partnership climbing card game -- object is rid yourself of your hand. The deck is a standard 52-card pack with four special cards added. When it's your turn, you may either beat the current top card combination or pass. If play passes all the way back to the player who laid the top cards, he wins the trick and can lead the next one. The card led determines the only combination of cards to be played on that trick. So if a single card is led, then only single cards are played. If a straight of seven cards is led, then only straights of seven cards, etc. The last player out gives all the cards he won to the player who exited first, and the last player's unplayed cards are handed to the opposite team. Fives, Tens and Kings are worth points, with each hand worth one hundred points (without bonuses). The first team to 1000 points wins.

Vendor: ABACUSSPIELE
Type: Board Games
Price: 18.95

• 56 playing cards,
• 4 playing aids,
• 1 rules

Vendor: Rio Grande Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 14.50

Vendor: Valley Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 14.95

Ein solches Ding is a game where players have to think of a thing that fits a number of given categories.

The game consists of 220 cards featuring clues such as "needs fuel", "swims" or "can be used militarily". Players in turn add cards from their hand one by one, until one player doubts there is a "such a thing" (which is what the game title means in German) that matches all the cards currently played. If the previous player can name a reasonable(!) thing, the doubting player is penalized with 3 extra cards. If there isn't such a thing, the previous player is penalized 3 cards.

The first player without any cards wins.