Building Castles in Old Spain. [Okay...not quite]

Moving Vienna Sausages around with Spell Cards. [Okay...still not there]

Nearly Themeless Kramer Wonder, serving as a gateway into the Mask trilogy. [Finally, I think we have a winner.]

We played this recently, and will play it a few more times, using it as a "gateway" of sorts - to teach the concept of AP games to our daughter.

But first some about the game.

It is played in three phases. Each phase will have a certain number of turns (4 in the first, 3 in the second and third phase). During a phase you have 5 action points (AP) to spend. These can be used to:

2AP - Place a new Vienna Sausage (ahem . . . Knight)
1AP - Move a Sausage (Knight) 1 space
1AP - Place a Block (note, cheese issues here)
1AP - Buy a Card (only in the beginner mode, which we play currently)
0AP - Play a Card

The cards are mostly useful. In fact they are all useful, but they are not all useful all the time. Some are situationally priceless, but then the rest of the time they might as well be drink coasters. Others are almost always useful (such as the cards that increase the AP you get during a turn). The cards (as listed above) cost 0AP to play, so the action represented on the card is free. Even if this is a move or placement action, it does mean it is free.

The idea of the game is to, at the end of each phase, accumulate points and to have the winning total at the end. Points are accumulated, mostly, but determining how much castle each of your knights controls (again, beware the cheese).

The scoring formula is quite simple - take the highest level knight you have in a castle (level is based on how many Blocks your Knight is standing on top of), and multiply his level by the number of blocks in the base of the castle (how many squares on the board the collection of adjacent blocks making up the "castle" occupy).

The cheese warning was because it is simple to forget that you only score one time per castle, no matter how many knights you have there.

This continues, with bonus points for the player(s) who get there knights into a castle with the king.

The game is good. Mostly themeless, but a great way to introduce the concept of Action Points (which is our main use for it). Will probably play it a half dozen times over the next week or two, to get the concept down. And so what if we do - it is fun, and any game that is fun that also gives you an excuse to play, is a good thing in my book.

Thanks,
Chuck

ps- thanks for sausage-ology to http://www.boardgamegeek.com/thread/161142