I was wanting to make a larger board for this afternoon's game and realised I had not dug out an old favourite for a while. The 2010 Der Schokoladenmarkt (The Chocolate Market) not only adds hexes, but also five new resources too.
Developed by Klaus Teuber for Ritter Sport, a German chocolate manufacturer, this mini-expansion adds five chocolate related resources, Cacao, Sugar, Hazelnuts, Milk and Grapes.
By using combinations of these five chocolate resources, players can earn bonus cards, roads/ships and/or victory points. One fun aspect of the production is that the rewards vary in value each time a player claims the benefit. After a reward has been claimed that resource marker drops one level. The dice is then rolled and depending on the number one of the rewards increase in value by one level. Rewards vary from a single resource card all the way up to two victory points. However if the production falls to the lowest level then it gives no reward at all!
The five hexes supplied in the set are jungle hexes that earn cocoa resource cards. From the other hexes can earn milk on the pasture/sheep hex, sugar on the fields/wheat hex, hazelnuts on the forest/wood hex and grapes on the hills/brick hex.
Before you can start earning these resources you first need to build a manufacturing facility on the hex. These facilities cost one wood and one ore to build. Once built the player who builds the facility receives one chocolate resource when the number on the hex is thrown. You can trade the chocolate resources with other players or you can trade with the bank using the standard trading rules, including port rules.
When a 7 is thrown, the standard resources and the chocolate resources are counted separately, If either hand is over 7 cards then the normal halving applies to that set of resources. The robber blocks both standard resource and chocolate resource production when placed on a hex.
While this mini-expansion was only released in German, there are no cards to translate and so it works really well in English games too. I have translated the instruction booklet into English for our own games - pdf 2.6mb.
In the picture above as well as my playset box, I have also included in the middle my sealed Klaus Teuber autographed set from my collection. I have another sealed unsigned copy in my display.
