It’s a circus of Carcassonne expansions with this, the 10th, Under the Big Top, where the focus is on scoring points through interactions with adjacent tiles.

Included in Under the Big Top ($20 retail) are 40 new tiles, animal tokens, ringmaster meeples, and a wood big-top piece. Circus tiles give points both to the meeples on them and to those on adjacent tiles. Acrobat tiles score multiple meeples, with new ones stacked in a pyramid when tiles are placed adjacent. And ringmaster meeples are placed as normal but score bonus points for adjacent circus and acrobat tiles.

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The idiosyncrasies of international toy licensing means that some of the latest Star Wars games are not available (at least not officially) to us here in the North American market. Though new and packaged for The Force Awakens, some of these are also actually based on events and characters of the earlier movies.

Star Wars: The Force Awakens Ubongo is a fast-play puzzle game where the players race to fill in mission cards with a set of polyominoes. There are 50 different mission cards and each turn the players roll a die to determine whether to use First Order or Resistance pieces filling them in.

Star Wars Galaxy Rebellion is a push-your-luck dice game representing a competition between Han, Luke, Leia, and Chewbacca to see who will blow up the Death Star.

In Star Wars Labyrinth the goal is to find the various Star Wars characters at the center of a shifting maze.

A variant of the classic tile-laying game, Star Wars Carcassonne incorporates new rules for taking over other players’ planets and for dice-based combat over other features.

Star Wars: Secret Invasion is a Star Wars-themed version of Love Letter. Exclusive to the Russian market, the game is about rescuing Princess Leia with each round seeing one player closer to success.

Just released by Ravensburger, Star Wars: The Force Awakens Rebel Forces is a Reiner Knizia design that requires “concentration and a quick response”, so fast-play memory?

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BoardGameGeek recently tweeted a picture of a Star Wars themed Carcassonne game. According to the gaming website, licensing for Star Wars has already been approved, but is waiting for approval on the box art, tiles, and game play mechanics.

Additional images of the game started appearing around the Internet about a week ago, during the Nuremburg-based toy fair Spielwarenmesse. ICv2 notes that the game’s original publisher Hans im Gluck Verlag announced that the game would be released in Autumn of 2015. There is no official information regarding whether Z-Man Games will produce the English version but the company’s spokesperson told ICv2 that they are in talks with Hans im Gluck to negotiate the rights of “several games.”

In other Star Wars gaming news, Hasbro just announced a new game based on the action board game Loopin’ Louie. Loopin’ Chewie was unveiled via The Nerdest.

Strangely, the game is for two to three players, which is different from the original, which maxed out at four players.

The iconic Wookie sits in a mini Millennium Falcon and spins around, taking out Stormtroopers.

The game is scheduled to launch this September at most toy and games retailers for $24.99.

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That’s right! Carcassonne for the iPhone and iPad is finally getting expansions that can be bought as in-game downloadable content. The two expansions that have been released are The River and Inns & Cathedrals.

The River adds 12 tiles that are played at the start of the game, creating a river that divides the land. It’s priced at 99 cents.

Inns & Cathedrals adds 18 tiles, some of which have an inn or a cathedral on them. Inns can double the value of completed roads they touch, while cathedrals add an extra point for each tile that makes up a city. It’s priced at $1.99.

In my opinion, both of these expansions are worth the price. If they’d just release Traders & Builders I’d be a happy man.

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