#79: Mein Lieber Biber

Mein Lieber Biber

• designer: Heinz Meister
• publisher: Goldsieber
• date: 2000
• BoardGameGeek rank/rating: not ranked/5.0
• age: 6+
• # of players: 2-6
• print status: OOP
• cost: EUR 9,95 (Amazon.de, approx. $14.00)

Take a dash of Bambeleo (the tilting board), add some card-based movement of common pieces (in other words, every player can move every piece) and give it a whimsical theme (beavers taking apart a raft in order to build a dam)... and you've got Mein Lieber Biber. (BTW, that literally translates "My Lovely Beaver" - but the idiom is better translated as "My Friendly Beavers".)

On your turn, you play one of your color-coded cards to move one of the beavers along a series of life rings - if you manage to land one on a life ring that matches his color, you get a "log" (brown Settlers road). If, as happens once in a while, you manage to get a beaver off the raft, you get a log as well.

Of course, you don't want to make the raft capsize - if moving the piece you've chosen cause one or more beavers to go sliding off, the round ends & you lose all your logs. (BTW, this is usually how a round ends when playing with kids.) Play three rounds & find out who has the most logs.

The game as published is not quite tippy enough... you have to get the beavers scattered way across the board to see any real tilt. After trying a number of different ways to fix it, I finally discovered a simple & inexpensive way to make the game work like a charm - put a small piece of felt underneath the wooden pivot piece... the added cushion gives it a little more tippiness without making the game too difficult.