Card Games 13 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Ethnos

In Ethnos, players call upon the support of giants, merfolk, halfings, minotaurs, and other fantasy tribes to help them gain control of the land. After three ages of play, whoever has collected the most glory wins!

In more detail, the land of Ethnos contains twelve tribes of fantasy creatures, and in each game you choose six of them (five in a 2/3-player game), then create a deck with only the creatures in those tribes. The cards come in six colors, which match the six regions of Ethnos. Place three glory tokens in each region, arranging them from low to high.

Each player starts the game with one card in hand, then 4-12 cards are placed face up on the table. On a turn, a player either recruits an ally or plays a band of allies. In the former case, you take a face-up card (without replacing it from the deck) or the top card of the deck and add it to your hand. In the latter case, you choose a set of cards in your hand that match either in tribe or in color, play them in front of you on the table, then discard all other cards in hand. You then place one or more tokens in the region that matches the color of the top card just played, and you use the power of the tribe member on the top card just played.

At the end of the first age, whoever has the most tokens in a region scores the glory shown on the first token. After the second age, the players with the most and secondmost tokens score glory equal to the values shown on the first and second tokens. Players score again after the third age, then whoever has the most glory wins. (Games with two and three players last only two ages.)

Unlock! is a series of cooperative card-based escape adventures for up to six players. Each Unlock! game consists of sixty cards depicting objects, maps, and puzzles that can be activated, solved, or combined in an effort to access other cards and areas. The free companion app tracks the time allotted to win the game, while also offering hints and unlocking new, and necessary, elements. When the players believe they have figured out the code to escape each adventure, they will input the number into the app and escape the danger, or lose even more time in finding the real sequence.

Everyone meant to use the cabin only as a shelter for the night, but come the morning the door has been secured by a combination lock, with no one knowing the combination of numbers that will let them leave. The windows are barred as well. An enigmatic spinning code dial and a mysterious book is all that you have to go on. Can you escape from this abandoned cottage?

In EXIT: The Game – The Abandoned Cabin, players must use their team spirit, creativity, and powers of deduction to crack codes, solve puzzles, collect objects, and earn their freedom bit by bit.

Honshu is a trick-taking, map building card game set in feudal Japan. Players are lords and ladies of Noble houses seeking new lands and opportunities for fame and fortune.

One game of Honshu lasts 12 rounds, and each round is divided into two phases. First, Map cards are played in a trick and the player who played the highest value card gets to pick first from those played. Then the players use the Map cards picked to expand their personal maps. Each player must expand their personal maps to maximize their scoring possibilities.

Manipulating your position in the player order is crucial for mastering Honshu!

50 black stories, 31 crimes, 49 corpses, 11 murders, 12 suicides and one deadly meal. How could that have happened? Black Stories are fiddly, morbid and mysterious riddles for teenagers and adults. The players try to reconstruct the crime by asking, guessing and fiddling about. A spooky card game just right for any party.

Burgle your way to adventure in Clank!, the new deck-building board game.

Sneak into an angry dragon’s mountain lair to steal precious artifacts. Delve deeper to find more valuable loot. Acquire cards for your deck and watch your thievish abilities grow.

Be quick and be quiet. One false-step and — CLANK! Each careless sound draws the attention of the dragon, and each artifact stolen increases its rage. You can only enjoy your plunder if you make it out of the depths alive!

A social game of deduction and deception. Who among you can see through the lies? Who is capable of getting away with murder?

In Deception: Murder in Hong Kong, players find themselves in a scenario of intrigue and murder, deduction and deception. One player is the Murderer, secretly choosing their weapon and the evidence they leave behind. Another is the Forensic Scientist who holds the key to convicting the criminal but is only able to express their knowledge through analysis of the scene. The rest are investigators, interpreting the clues to solve the crime – and the killer is among them. Investigators must collaborate and use their wits, their hunches, and their keen deductive insight to correctly identify the means of murder and the key evidence to convict the killer. The murderer must mislead and confuse the investigators to save themselves.

Do you have what it takes to see through the lies and catch the criminal in your ranks or will they muddy the waters long enough to get away with murder?

Spyfall is a party game unlike any other, one in which you get to be a spy and try to understand what’s going on around you. It’s really simple!

Spyfall is played over several rounds, and at the start of each round all players receive cards showing the same location — except that one player receives a card that says “Spy” instead of the location. Players then start asking each other questions — “Why are you dressed so strangely?” or “When was the last time we got a payday?” or anything else you can come up with — trying to guess who among them is the spy. The spy doesn’t know where he is, so he has to listen carefully. When it’s his time to answer, he’d better create a good story!

At any time during a round, one player may accuse another of being a spy. If all other players agree with the accusation, the round ends and the accused player has to reveal his identity. If the spy is uncovered, all other players score points. However, the spy can himself end a round by announcing that he understands what the secret location is; if his guess is correct, only the spy scores points.

After a few rounds of guessing, suspicion and bluffing, the game ends and whoever has scored the most points is victorious!

Spyfall 2 features the same gameplay as Spyfall with two important changes: (1) Enough location cards are included that the upper player count is now twelve instead of eight, and (2) two spies can be found at each location, giving all of the non-spy players more of a challenge when it comes to tracking down who doesn’t belong.

Something evil stirs in Arkham, and only you can stop it. Blurring the traditional lines between roleplaying and card game experiences, Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a Living Card Game of Lovecraftian mystery, monsters, and madness!

In the game, you and your friend (or up to three friends with two Core Sets) become characters within the quiet New England town of Arkham. You have your talents, sure, but you also have your flaws. Perhaps you’ve dabbled a little too much in the writings of the Necronomicon, and its words continue to haunt you. Perhaps you feel compelled to cover up any signs of otherworldly evils, hampering your own investigations in order to protect the quiet confidence of the greater population. Perhaps you’ll be scarred by your encounters with a ghoulish cult.

No matter what compels you, no matter what haunts you, you’ll find both your strengths and weaknesses reflected in your custom deck of cards, and these cards will be your resources as you work with your friends to unravel the world’s most terrifying mysteries.

Each of your adventures in Arkham Horror LCG carries you deeper into mystery. You’ll find cultists and foul rituals. You’ll find haunted houses and strange creatures. And you may find signs of the Ancient Ones straining against the barriers to our world…

The basic mode of play in Arkham LCG is not the adventure, but the campaign. You might be scarred by your adventures, your sanity may be strained, and you may alter Arkham’s landscape, burning buildings to the ground. All your choices and actions have consequences that reach far beyond the immediate resolution of the scenario at hand — and your actions may earn you valuable experience with which you can better prepare yourself for the adventures that still lie before you.

Aquarium offers high player interaction as the other players can – and will – use their action cards to alter the available fish that you can buy and the price that you have to pay for them.

Each player starts with a set of nine action cards and $15. The deck is shuffled, then set up with three or four “Feeding time!” cards shuffled into the deck at various points. On a turn, a player first turns up a card from the deck if the market is empty (as it is as the start of the game). Then the player looks at the fish and plant cards in the market and decides whether to pass or try to buy them. If he passes, he takes $2 from the bank and adds the top card to the market; if he wants to buy, all other players get to influence what’s on the market and what the cards cost.

First, each other player chooses one of their five action cards for use in phase 1 of a buy. These cards force the active player to add, remove or swap a card from the market or simply allow the card player to make a fish swap of his own! (Players can also pass, with all action cards but the “pass” being set aside.) Second, each other player chooses one of their five action cards for use in phase 2 of a buy. These cards add or subtract 1 from the cost of the market, or double or halve the cost of the market. In the latter case, the player of the card receives money from the active player instead of those coins going to the bank.

Once the goods and the cost are set, the active player chooses to buy all the fish and plants on offer or none of them. The cost is equal to the sum of the card values, plus or minus any modifications, then doubled or halved as appropriate. All purchased cards go into a player’s personal aquarium. If a player has two identical fish, he can move them to a separate breeding tank where they will earn him 1-3 coins each turn.

Each time a “Feeding time!” card is revealed, players reveal one “food cost” card at random, then pay money equal to that cost times the number of stars on fish and plants in their aquariums. Any fish not fed starve and float away to the big toilet bowl in the sky. Each plant in an aquarium reduces the food cost by one.

After the final “Feeding time!”, players count the stars on their non-breeding fish, then receive bonuses for collecting all colored fish of the same size, all three sizes of fish of the same color and different varieties of plants. The player with the most stars wins.

Here, fishy, fishy, fishy…

Feeds