Medium-Light 14 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Fungi

The woods are old-growth, dappled with sunlight. Delicious mushrooms beckon from every grove and hollow. Morels may be the most sought-after in these woods, but there are many tasty and valuable varieties awaiting the savvy collector. Bring a basket if you think it’s your lucky day. Forage at night and you will be all alone when you stumble upon a bonanza. If you’re hungry, put a pan on the fire and bask in the aroma of chanterelles as you sauté them in butter. Feeling mercantile? Sell porcini to local aficionados for information that will help you find what you seek deep in the forest.

Morels, a strategic card game for two players, uses two decks: a Day Deck (84 cards) that includes ten different types of mushrooms as well as baskets, cider, butter, pans, and moons, and a smaller Night Deck (8 cards) of mushrooms to be foraged by moonlight. Each mushroom card has two values: one for selling and one for cooking. Selling two or more like mushrooms grants foraging sticks that expand your options in the forest (that is, the running tableau of eight face-up cards on the table), enabling offensive or defensive plays that change with every game played. Cooking sets of three or more like mushrooms – sizzling in butter or cider if the set is large enough – earns points toward winning the game. With poisonous mushrooms wielding their wrath and a hand-size limit to manage, card selection is a tricky proposition at every turn.

Following each turn, one card from the forest moves into a decay pile that is available for only a short time. The Day Deck then refills the forest from the back, creating the effect of a walk in the woods in which some strategic morsels are collected, some are passed by, and others lay ahead.

In Mystic Vale, players take on the role of druidic clans who are trying to cleanse a cursed land. Each turn, they play cards into their fields to gain both powerful advancements and useful vale cards. They must use that power wisely, or decay will end their turn prematurely.

Mystic Vale uses a “Card Crafting System”, which lets players not only build a deck, but build the individual cards in that deck, customizing each card’s abilities to exactly the strategy they wish to follow.

In Quadropolis™ you enact the role of the Mayor of a modern city. You will need to define a global strategy to build your city according to your Inhabitants’ needs and outmatch your opponents, sending your Architects to have various buildings erected in your city. Each building allows you to score victory points. There are various types of buildings with different scoring patterns; many of them may be combined for better effect.

Will you be able to meet the challenge and become the most prestigious Mayor in history?

Will you cross the finish line first? Now is your chance to find out! Automobiles is a deck‑building game where the fun is cubed. Instead of cards, you’ll be building your collection with cubes. Your cubes not only allow you to race your car around the track, but they will also allow you to improve your handling, optimize your pit crew, and boost your speed, which are your keys to victory!

The goal of the game is to cross the finish line first! You accomplish this by customizing your race car and surrounding yourself with the best crew. Your race car and crew are represented by a collection of cubes garnered from various options that will be available to you. Starting with the same small set of cubes, each player will build their collection as you play the game. Use these cubes to enhance your performance, train your pit crew, and ensure your race car runs as effectively as possible. Be the first to cross the finish line and watch that checkered flag wave!

Designed by David Short, Automobiles is the exciting new game in AEG’s Destination Fun series! Continue your travels in the acclaimed Trains and Planes boardgames.

In this tile-laying game, 2-5 players are chieftains of famous clans and want to build their kingdoms to score as many points as possible, but in each game only four of the sixteen scoring tiles will be scored.

Each game is different and leads to different tactics and strategies, but having enough money is useful no matter what else is going on. Managing that money can be tricky, though. Each turn, each player places two area tiles in front of them and sets the selling price for the tiles. Setting a high price is great, but only so long as someone actually pays the price because if no one opts to buy, then the seller must buy the tiles at the price they previously requested.

In the end, the player with the best kingdom, not the richest player, becomes the sovereign of the island.

Greedy Greedy Goblins is a simultaneous play, strategic tile placement and bluffing game.

Players lead a clan of goblin miners who want to gather the most valuable collection of gems. Coins are scored for gem tiles on the mines you have claimed, with bonuses for dynamite tiles — but if there is too much dynamite, the mine (and all the riches within) are destroyed!

In more detail, players sit around a circle composed of cave game boards and the guildhall game board, with sixty mining tiles placed face-down within this circle. Each round, while playing at the same time, players use one hand to look at one mining tile at a time, then place it on one of the cave game boards. At any time, a player can claim the guildhall or a cave by placing one of their three goblins on the board, after which no more tiles or goblins may be placed on this board.

Once everyone has placed all of their goblins (or decided not to place them), players resolve the boards. The goblin on the guildhall draws a minion card that provides a special ability, while each goblin in a cave scores coins based on the gems, diamonds, dynamite and monsters found there; these goblins can also take minion cards if minion tiles have been placed in the cave. Dynamite multiplies the value of a cave, but three or more sticks blows the place up, costing you coins.

If someone has one hundred or more coins, the game ends and whoever has the most coins wins; if not, set up another round and go digging again.

“None of the principal states were armed with their own proper forces. Thus the arms of Italy were either in the hands of the lesser princes, or of men who possessed no state; for the minor princes did not adopt the practice of arms from any desire of glory, but for the acquisition of either property or safety. The others (those who possessed no state) being bred to arms from their infancy, were acquainted with no other art, and pursued war for emolument, or to confer honor upon themselves.” –Niccolò Machiavelli, History of Florence Book I, Chapter VII

It is 13th century Italy. Trade flourishes between the city-states and the Levant. Venice, Florence, and Genoa are bursting with wealth. However, each city-state is also plagued with a weak national army, leaving them defenseless against invasion from their envious neighbors. Enter the Condottiere.

Under the trees, life is a breeze. Different colored trees will fill your arboretum and immerse you in a wonderful sense of freedom. Making the most beautiful arboretum is not an easy task and much planning is necessary in order to create wondrous paths.

The co-operative game Thunderbirds, released in 2015 to celebrate the 50th anniversary of the cult hit TV show, features the iconic Thunderbirds machines and a high-octane world full of disasters for players to rescue.

Set in the year 2065, Thunderbirds follows the exploits of International Rescue, a secret organization committed to saving human life, secretly founded and funded by the millionaire Tracy family, with the motto: ‘Never give in, at any cost!’ International Rescue has a host of technologically advanced land-, sea-, air-, and space-rescue vehicles and equipment ready to launch at a moment’s notice.

Racing to the rescue from a secret island base beneath the luxurious home of the Tracy family somewhere in the South Pacific Ocean, International Rescue defies government spies and criminals who want the secrets of their incredible machines for their own. To combat this threat, Lady Penelope, the Thunderbirds’ aristocratic English secret agent, and her chauffeur Parker lead a network of agents to uncover those behind the disasters caused by deliberate sabotage.

A criminal mastermind known as “The Hood”, operating from a temple deep in the Malaysian jungle and in possession of strange powers, often engineers events to allow him to spy on the Thunderbird machines with the goal of selling their secrets to the highest bidder.

The iconic Thunderbirds are designed by the Tracy family’s close friend “Brains” and are assigned to each of the five Tracy brothers: – Thunderbird 1, piloted by Scott Tracy – a hypersonic rocket plane used for fast response and rescue-zone reconnaissance, and as a mobile control base. – Thunderbird 2, piloted by Virgil Tracy – a supersonic VTOL carrier which transports their major rescue equipment in detachable pods. – Thunderbird 3, piloted by Alan Tracy – a single-stage, vertically launched spacecraft – Thunderbird 4, piloted by Gordon Tracy – a utility submersible for underwater rescue, launched from Thunderbird 2 – Thunderbird 5, manned by John Tracy – a space station in geo-stationary orbit that monitors calls for help from across Earth.

Finally, Lady Penelope has the iconic FAB 1, driven by Parker – a pink, amphibious car.

Thunderbirds is a cult 1960s British science-fiction television series, created by Gerry and Sylvia Anderson. It was produced using a combination of marionette puppetry and scale-model special effects, which was dubbed “Supermarionation”. Two series, totaling thirty-two 50-minute episodes, were produced, along with two films using the same techniques.

Players will work together using Thunderbirds characters and vehicles to complete rescue missions and save the day.

In many ways 7 Wonders: Duel resembles its parent game 7 Wonders as over three ages players acquire cards that provide resources or advance their military or scientific development in order to develop a civilization and complete wonders.

What’s different about 7 Wonders: Duel is that, as the title suggests, the game is solely for two players, with the players not drafting card simultaneously from hands of cards, but from a display of face-down and face-up cards arranged at the start of a round. A player can take a card only if it’s not covered by any others, so timing comes into play as well as bonus moves that allow you to take a second card immediately. As in the original game, each card that you acquire can be built, discarded for three coins, or used to construct a wonder.

Each player starts with four wonder cards, and the construction of a wonder provides its owner with a special ability. Only seven wonders can be built, though, so one player will end up short.

Players can purchase resources at any time from the bank, or they can gain cards during the game that provide them with resources for future building; as you acquire resources, the cost for those particular resources increases for your opponent, representing your dominance in this area.

A player can win 7 Wonders: Duel in one of three ways. Each time that you acquire a military card, you advance the military marker toward your opponent’s capital, giving you a bonus at certain positions. If you reach the opponent’s capital, you win the game immediately. Similarly, if you acquire all six different scientific symbols, you achieve scientific dominance and win immediately. If neither of these situations occurs, then the player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Fungi

Mystic Vale

Quadropolis

Automobiles

Isle of Skye

Greedy Greedy Goblins

Condottiere

Arboretum

Thunderbirds

7 Wonders: Duel

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