Under the Big Top

Manege Frei, also known as Under the Big Top, is a circus-themed expansion.
It talks of the traveling circus, going from town to town, and bringing acrobats, animals and, of course, a ringmaster with it.

The expansion brought 20 new tiles; 8 of those are acrobat tiles.
These tiles have spaces for meeples to become acrobats, and form a meeple-pyramid! When placing an acrobat tile, or a tile adjacent to one, you may place a meeple on the meeple pyramid. Once it’s completed (3 meeples), it will not be scored immediately. When a player places a tile, instead of placing a meeple, they may decide to score the meeple pyramid. This is a great way to earn points (5 points per meeple), but also a tricky way to try and leave your opponent’s meeple stuck there for as long as possible.

When a circus tile is placed, an animal token is placed face down on it, and then covered by the big top. Once a new circus tile is placed, the big top will move and the token will be revealed. The number on the token will be converted into points for each meeple on the circus tile and its 8 surrounding tiles.

The settler meeples from New World were reused as new meeples, and were added to each player’s set. A ringmaster works like a normal meeples, except it gets an additional 2 points for each circus/acrobat tile in its vicinity when scoring.