Too Many Bones comes loaded for bear by breaking into a new genre: the dice-builder RPG. This game takes everything you think you know about dice-rolling and turns it on its head. Dripping with strategy, this fantasy-based RPG puts you in the skin of a new race and takes you on an adventure to the northern territories to root out and defeat growing enemy forces and of course the infamous “baddie” responsible.
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Chronicles of Crime is a cooperative game of crime investigation, mixing an app, a board game and a touch of Virtual Reality.
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In Underwater Cities, which takes about 30-45 minutes per player, players represent the most powerful brains in the world, brains nominated due to the overpopulation of Earth to establish the best and most livable underwater areas possible.
The main principle of the game is card placement. Three colored cards are placed along the edge of the main board into 3 x 5 slots, which are also colored. Ideally players can place cards into slots of the same color. Then they can take both actions and advantages: the action depicted in the slot on the main board and also the advantage of the card. Actions and advantages can allow players to intake raw materials; to build and upgrade city domes, tunnels and production buildings such as farms, desalination devices and laboratories in their personal underwater area; to move their marker on the initiative track (which is important for player order in the next turn); to activate the player’s “A-cards”; and to collect cards, both special ones and basic ones that allow for better decision possibilities during gameplay.
All of the nearly 220 cards — whether special or basic — are divided into four types according to the way and time of use. Underwater areas are planned to be double-sided, giving players many opportunities to achieve VPs and finally win.
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The first large expansion for A Feast for Odin, The Norwegians includes four new islands (Isle of Man, Isle of Skye, Islay, Outer Hebrides) with Irish coastal viking-settlements on the backside (Waterford, Wexford, Cork, Limerick), where people from Norway came to stay through the winter (longphort), to trade at, and to settle nearby. This offers new strategies and new puzzle-tiles like horse (6VP, 2×5 spaces)/pregnant horse/leather(green)/vadmal(blue) and pigs (1 VP, breed every round; 2×3 – 1 = 5 spaces)/herbal (orange)/ antler (green)/tools (blue). The game has a third box for the tiles and offers the four old islands too (renewed little different VPs and new graphic-aspects of mini-expansion islands Lofoten/Orkneys/Tierra del Fuego).
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THE GAMEPLAY
Street Masters is a 1-4 player cooperative miniatures board game inspired by classic fighting video games. Featuring over 65 highly detailed miniatures, unique decks for fighters & enemies, custom dice, and lightning-fast gameplay, Street Masters lets players match up powerful fighters against villainous organizations in a wide array of exciting scenarios. Designed by Adam Sadler and Brady Sadler, the game offers modular and elegant gameplay set in a unique and exciting world of brutal combat.
THE STORY
Warriors from around the world, known for their legendary fighting abilities and skills, receive mysterious invitations to participate in a martial arts tournament. During the tournament, the organization surrounding it reveals their true identity — The Kingdom — and their purpose to recruit fighters to join their militia or enslave those against them. While several of these warriors made it out in time, many were never heard from again.
Five years later, a government project called “Street Masters” initiates in order to counter-act the war against The Kingdom, now having divided and seized control over the world by several of its factions. Those who join the Street Masters project must work together to take down each faction, crippling parts of The Kingdom before they’re able to launch their end game.
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Fallout is a post-nuclear adventure board game for one to four players. Based on the hit video game series by Bethesda Softworks, each Fallout scenario is inspired by a familiar story from the franchise. Survivors begin the game on the edge of an unexplored landscape, uncertain of what awaits them in this unfamiliar world. With just one objective to guide them from the very beginning, each player must explore the hidden map, fight ferocious enemies, and build the skills of their survivor as they attempt to complete challenging quests and balance feuding factions within the game.
As they advance their survivors’ stories, players come across new quests and individual targets, leading them to gain influence. Who comes out ahead depends on how keenly and aggressively each player ventures through the game; however, if a single faction is pushed to power too quickly, the wasteland will be taken for their own, and the survivors conquered along with it.
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Santa Maria is a streamlined, medium complexity Eurogame in which each player establishes and develops a colony. The game features elements of dice drafting and strategic engine building. The game is low on luck and has no direct destructive player conflict; all components are language independent.
In the game, you expand your colony by placing polyominoes with buildings on your colony board. Dice (representing migrant workers) are used to activate buildings; each die activates a complete row or column of buildings in your colony. The buildings are activated in order (left to right / top to bottom), then the die is placed on the last activated building to block this space. It is therefore crucial where you put new buildings in your colony, and in which order you use the dice.
As the game progresses, you produce resources, form shipping routes, send out conquistadors, and improve your religious power to recruit monks. When you recruit a monk, you must decide if it becomes a scholar (providing a permanent special ability), a missionary (for an immediate bonus) or a bishop (for possible end game points). The player who has accumulated the most happiness after three rounds wins. The available specialists, end game bonuses and buildings vary from game to game, which makes for near endless replayability.
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You are a collector of rare and valuable books in a thriving gnomish village. Recently, the Mayor and Village Council have announced an opening for a Grand Librarian: a prestigious (and lucrative) position they intend to award to the most qualified villager.
To outshine your competition, you need to expand your personal library by sending your trusty assistants out into the village to find the most impressive tomes. Sources for the finest books are scarce, so you need to beat your opponents to them when they pop up.
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Gaia Project is a new game in the line of Terra Mystica. As in the original Terra Mystica, fourteen different factions live on seven different kinds of planets, and each faction is bound to their own home planets, so to develop and grow, they must terraform neighboring planets into their home environments in competition with the other groups. In addition, Gaia planets can be used by all factions for colonization, and Transdimensional planets can be changed into Gaia planets.
All factions can improve their skills in six different areas of development — Terraforming, Navigation, Artificial Intelligence, Gaiaforming, Economy, Research — leading to advanced technology and special bonuses. To do all of that, each group has special skills and abilities.
The playing area is made of ten sectors, allowing a variable set-up and thus an even bigger replay value than its predecessor Terra Mystica. A two-player game is hosted on seven sectors.
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Gloomhaven is a game of Euro-inspired tactical combat in a persistent world of shifting motives. Players will take on the role of a wandering adventurer with their own special set of skills and their own reasons for traveling to this dark corner of the world. Players must work together out of necessity to clear out menacing dungeons and forgotten ruins. In the process, they will enhance their abilities with experience and loot, discover new locations to explore and plunder, and expand an ever-branching story fueled by the decisions they make.
This is a game with a persistent and changing world that is ideally played over many game sessions. After a scenario, players will make decisions on what to do, which will determine how the story continues, kind of like a “Choose Your Own Adventure” book. Playing through a scenario is a cooperative affair where players will fight against automated monsters using an innovative card system to determine the order of play and what a player does on their turn.
Each turn, a player chooses two cards to play out of their hand. The number on the top card determines their initiative for the round. Each card also has a top and bottom power, and when it is a player’s turn in the initiative order, they determine whether to use the top power of one card and the bottom power of the other, or vice-versa. Players must be careful, though, because over time they will permanently lose cards from their hands. If they take too long to clear a dungeon, they may end up exhausted and be forced to retreat.
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