Chocolate Market

The idea

Jungle grows on the island and produces cocoa, and on your hexes you build production sites for further ingredients. Once you have the right ingredients together, you make chocolate at the market. But the market moves: whatever is in demand right now pays well, and every bar you make pushes the price of its variety down.

That gives every hex a second meaning. A field produces grain, but with a sugar beet field on it, sugar as well. Good starting spots therefore combine resources for building with ingredients for the market.

New rules

• Jungle: new hexes with their own number. They never produce resources, only cocoa through cocoa plantations.
• Production sites: cost 1 lumber and 1 ore and sit on a hex next to one of your settlements or cities. Cocoa Plantation in the jungle, Sugar Beet Field on fields, Dairy on pasture, Hazelnut Grove in forest, Vineyard on hills. When the number comes up, each site gives 1 ingredient on top of the resource.
• Setup: there is a third round with a third settlement, a road and 2 free production sites.
• Market: five varieties sit on a demand track with eight rows. At the very top a bar earns 2 victory points, below that victory points with a development card or a resource, further down a development card, a road or a resource. In the bottom row a variety is locked.
• Demand: after you make a bar its variety drops one row. Then the demand die raises a variety, and on a 6 you choose which.
• The 7: resources and ingredients are counted separately. Anyone with more than 7 of either discards half of that kind. Whoever robs chooses the resource or the ingredient pile.
• Trading: at the bank you trade 4 matching ingredients for a different one, with a 3:1 harbour 3 for 1.

The five varieties

The 5 boards

• Original Board: the 19 hexes of the classic game plus 5 jungle hexes in rows of 4-5-6-5-4, grows from 5 players, 2 to 8 players.
• Cocoa Bean: a small bean with 3 jungle hexes for quick games, 2 to 3 players.
• Chocolate Bar: five rows of equal length, rectangular like a bar, 2 to 4 players.
• Praline Islands: three islands around a lagoon, connected only through trade, 3 to 4 players.
• Great Plantation: rows of 5-6-7-6-5 with 6 jungle hexes, 3 to 4 players.

Tips

• Cocoa goes into every recipe. A cocoa plantation on a good jungle number is the foundation of any chocolate strategy.
• Grapes are the scarcest ingredient. Fruit & Nut needs all five ingredients, but starts high up the track.
• Make whatever sits at the top right now, and watch which variety the others are heading for. Whoever makes it first gets the bigger reward.
• Resources and ingredients are counted separately on a 7. You can therefore hold more cards than in the classic game without having to discard.
• Don't forget the classic game: settlements and cities still score. A city only doubles resources, each site always delivers 1 ingredient.

Combining

With Ships & Islands roughly every fifth land hex of a scenario becomes jungle, even in the fog. With Knights & Keeps the market hands out progress cards from a deck of your choice instead of development cards. The target is 3 points above that of the other settings.