Medium-Heavy 11 - Shut Up & Sit Down

New Amsterdam

Nieuw Amsterdam was founded by the Dutch West Indies Company in order to encourage the lucrative beaver pelt trade with the local Native American hunters along the Hudson River. To establish a trading post there, they needed a town and a fort, which was built on the tip of Manhattan Island. To encourage European patrons – that is, settlers of means or noble birth – to populate the colony, they granted them both land and indentured servants. The patrons became the lords of a new feudal system not unlike that seen in Europe.

In Nieuw Amsterdam, players are those patrons, and they bid on action lots in order to build businesses, work land for both food and building materials, compete in elections, ship furs to the Old World, and trade with the Lenape Indians – a process that gets more complicated as players claim more land and push the Lenape camps farther up the Hudson River.

Plan, build, and develop a small town into a major metropolis. Use hex-shaped building tiles to add residential, commercial, civic, and industrial areas, as well as special points of interest that provide benefits and take advantage of the resources of nearby towns. Your goal is to have your borough thrive and end up with a greater population than any of your opponents.

Suburbia is a tile-laying game in which each player tries to build up an economic engine and infrastructure that will be initially self-sufficient, and eventually become both profitable and encourage population growth. As your town grows, you’ll modify both your income and your reputation. As your income increases, you’ll have more cash on hand to purchase better and more valuable buildings, such as an international airport or a high rise office building. As your reputation increases, you’ll gain more and more population (and the winner at the end of the game is the player with the largest population).

During each game, players compete for several unique goals that offer an additional population boost – and the buildings available in each game vary, so you’ll never play the same game twice!

The object of Power Grid is to supply the most cities with power from your ever-improving collection of power plants. As each player buys power plants, new and better plants come onto the market, forcing you to upgrade as you and your opponents try to spread your power networks across more and more of the country.

Power Grid is one part territory control, one part plant expansion and one part economic management, as players compete to buy the raw materials they need to fuel their ever more demanding power plants.

In 1960: The Making of the President, you take on the role of Kennedy or Nixon, protagonists vying for the right to lead their country into the heart of the Cold War. However, it is not just foreign policy that poses a challenge to American leadership; this is also an era of great social turmoil. As the United States continues to build upon the promise of its founding, candidates must contend with the question of civil rights and balance their positions on social justice against the need for valuable Southern electoral votes. Of course, the ever-present issue of the economy also rears its ugly head, and both Nixon and Kennedy will compete to be the candidate with the voters’ pocket books in mind.

Keyflower is a game for two to six players played over four rounds. Each round represents a season: spring, summer, autumn, and finally winter. Each player starts the game with a “home” tile and an initial team of eight workers, each of which is colored red, yellow, or blue. Workers of matching colors are used by the players to bid for tiles to add to their villages. Matching workers may alternatively be used to generate resources, skills and additional workers, not only from the player’s own tiles, but also from the tiles in the other players’ villages and from the new tiles being auctioned.

In spring, summer, and autumn, more workers will arrive on board the Keyflower and her sister boats, with some of these workers possessing skills in the working of the key resources of iron, stone, and wood. In each of these seasons, village tiles are set out at random for auction. In the winter, no new workers arrive, and the players select the village tiles for auction from those they received at the beginning of the game. Each winter village tile offers VPs for certain combinations of resources, skills, and workers. The player whose village and workers generate the most VPs wins the game.

Early in the history of the United States, slavery was an institution that seemed unmovable but with efforts of men and women across the country, it was toppled. In Freedom: The Underground Railroad, players are working to build up the strength of the Abolitionist movement through the use of notable figures and pivotal events. By raising support for the cause and moving slaves to freedom in Canada, the minds of Americans can be changed and the institution of slavery can be brought down.

Freedom is a card-driven, cooperative game for one to four players in which the group is working for the abolitionist movement to help bring an end to slavery in the United States. The players use a combination of cards, which feature figures and events spanning from Early Independence until the Civil War, along with action tokens and the benefits of their role to impact the game.

Players need to strike the right balance between freeing slaves from plantations in the south and raising funds which are desperately needed to allow the group to continue their abolitionist activities as well as strengthen the cause.

The goal is not easy and in addition to people and events that can have a negative impact on the group’s progress, there are also slave catchers roaming the board, reacting to the movements of the slaves on the board and hoping to catch the runaway slaves and send them back to the plantations.

Through careful planning and working together, the group might see an end to slavery in their time.

Assuming the role of one of the greatest sorcerers of the time, you will be participating in the legendary tournament of the 12 Seasons.

Your goal is to raise the most victory points by gathering energy, summoning familiars and magic items. If you amass enough crystals and symbols of prestige, you will become the kingdom’s most illustrious mage. Optimize the cards through skilful combinations, using the seasons wisely to access the energies of crystals and become the the new Archmage of the kingdom of Xidit.

In a first phase, select 9 power cards at the same time as your opponents. Do the right choices, because they will determine the rest of the game. Acclimatize to the season to make the most of the actions proposed by each roll of the dice! Collect energies, invoke magical and familiar objects, and collect enough crystals, symbols of prestige.

DreadBall: The Futuristic Sports Game is the hyper-kinetic sci-fi sports game of unparalleled speed and ferocity – a fast, fun and tactical miniature sports board game written by Jake Thornton and created by Mantic Games.

Two coaches compete for victory with teams of beautiful miniatures on a stunning sci-fi pitch. The game is easy to learn, yet challenging, with carefully orchestrated plays and counter attacks hinging on positioning and the mercy of the dice gods.

Created by the finest sculptors, artists and game designers, DreadBall: The Futuristic Sports Game is the first in a series of visually stunning sci-fi sports games, to be supported with expansions introducing new teams and exciting new game play, building on the already impressive 84-page full-colour A4 rulebook.

Village Inn, the first expansion for the award-winning game Village, adds two new buildings to the village: the brewery and the inn.

The brewery is a new craft building where you can acquire a new good: beer. In the inn you can meet a lot of influential people (in the form of cards), and you can acquire these villager cards by spending beer/coins and time. Each villager card has a unique ability that can be used once per game, giving either points and advantages during the game or additional points at the end of the game for certain achievements.

In addition, Village Inn includes all necessary components for a fifth player.

BioShock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia board game, based on the critically acclaimed BioShock Infinite video game, allows players to explore the world of BioShock Infinite–the atmosphere, the characters, the city of Columbia itself, and even contours of the game’s plot–from a tantalizing new perspective as the leaders of the Founders and Vox Populi factions.

Set during the same series of events as the video game, players take on the role of the Founders and Vox Populi factions, desperately seeking to seize control of Columbia. Gain points from staking your claim to the city’s territories and accomlishing other goals, all the while fighting your opponents and Booker while trying to influence Elizabeth and commanding an army of detailed miniatures as well as the Songbird and Airship!

In BioShock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia, each player uses their unique deck of cards to influence world events, build their army, fight off Booker, zoom around the city on the Sky-Line, and claw their way to ultimate control of Columbia.

Feeds