It’s your task to create the best bear attraction the world has ever seen, so how are you going to do this? By arranging your bears for maximum points, of course!
Lay out your park, its amenities and, of course, its many bear enclosures. But be careful, everything is a very particular shape and you only have so much room. What’s more, everyone else is competing to seize the same bears first. Can you beat them to it and build the best bear park of them all?
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October 1888: During the construction of the Metropolitan Police headquarters near Whitehall, which would later be known as Scotland Yard, the remains of a body were found. In September, a severed arm had already been discovered in the muddy shore of the River Thames.
There is another murderer roaming the streets of London in Whitehall, amusing himself by spreading the pieces of a poor woman around Whitehall, like some kind of macabre treasure hunt. The identity of this monster and his unfortunate victim are a mystery, the Whitehall Mystery.
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Sagrada is a dice-drafting game where players compete to build beautiful stained glass windows out of different coloured dice. Each die cannot be laid next to another die of the same colour or showing the same value, so as players continue to lie more dice and build up their window, placement becomes harder and harder.
In addition to trying to build their windows, players look to score points according to variable criteria that could include how many different colours they’re using in each column, or the die values they have placed.
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Near and Far is Ryan Laukat’s sequel to his game of wistful adventure, Above and Below, focusing this time on travellers exploring strange and distant lands.
Recruit your party members, set out on perilous quests, discover rare treasures and meet the strangest of characters! Near and Far features a host of worlds to explore and a huge book full of adventures and encounters, just waiting for you to find them.
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In 1942, the Japanese empire exploded across the Pacific, conquering everything before them. The only large land mass still held by the Allies was Australia, which they desperately needed as a staging area for a planned U.S. led counter-attack. The Japanese knew of the importance of Australia, but lacked the resources to conquer it, so they decided on the next best thing: Isolate Australia from the United States by building an airfield on the island of Guadalcanal, from which planes could disrupt the Allied supply lines.
The United States, ill-prepared as it was for any offensive actions, immediately attacked with the 1st Marine Division under the command of Major General Alexander A. Vandegrift, caught the Japanese by surprise and easily took control of the airfield. The Japanese 17th Army, under the command of Lt. Gen. Harukichi Hyakutake, counterattacked with an ever-increasing number of troops. For the next four months a titanic struggle took place in the air, on land and on sea as the isolated Marines and U.S. Army fought for their lives to hold their tiny perimeter around the airfield against the might of the Japanese Empire.
Conflict of Heroes: Guadalcanal – Pacific Ocean 1942 recreates this struggle on your tabletop and includes gorgeous beach and jungles maps of the South Pacific, amphibious landing craft, the USMC, Japanese Banzai Charges, night combat, and much more.
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America in the 19th century: You are a rancher and repeatedly herd your cattle from Texas to Kansas City, where you send them off by train. This earns you money and victory points. Needless to say, each time you arrive in Kansas City, you want to have your most valuable cattle in tow. However, the “Great Western Trail” not only requires that you keep your herd in good shape, but also that you wisely use the various buildings along the trail. Also, it might be a good idea to hire capable staff: cowboys to improve your herd, craftsmen to build your very own buildings, or engineers for the important railroad line.
If you cleverly manage your herd and navigate the opportunities and pitfalls of Great Western Trail, you surely will gain the most victory points and win the game.
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In Fresco, players are master painters working to restore a fresco in a Renaissance church.
Each round begins with players deciding what time they would like to wake up for the day. The earlier you wake up, the earlier you will be in turn order, and the better options you will be guaranteed to have. Wake up early too often, however, and your apprentices will become unhappy and stop working as efficiently. They would much rather sleep in!
Then, players decide their actions for the turn, deploying their apprentice work force to various tasks. You’ll need to buy paint, mix paint, work on painting the fresco, raise money (which you’ll need to buy the aforementioned paint!) by painting portraits, and perhaps even send your apprentices to the opera in order to increase their happiness. Points are scored mostly by painting the fresco, which requires specific combinations of paints, so you’ll need to buy and mix your paints wisely, in addition to beating other players to the paints and fresco segments you would like to paint.
Fresco includes several expansion modules, so you can play without expansions for a lighter family game or add in expansions to vary play and increase the decision-making and difficulty, resulting in a very flexible game with a high replay value.
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In Yamatai, 2-4 players compete to build palaces, torii, and their own buildings in the land of Yamatai. The game includes ten numbered action tiles, each showing one or more colored ships and with most showing a special action. You shuffle these tiles, place them in a row, then reveal one more than the number of players.
On a turn, each player chooses a tile, collects the depicted ships from the reserve, optionally buys or sells one ship, then places the ships on the board. The land has five entryways, and you must start from these points or place adjacent to ships already on the board. You can’t branch the ships being placed, and if you place your first ship adjacent to another, then that first ship must be the same color as the adjacent one; otherwise you can place ships without regard to color.
After placing ships, you can either claim colored resources from land that you’ve touched with new ships this turn or build on one vacant space. To build, the space must have colored ships around it that match the ships depicted on one of the available building tiles. If you build a personal building that’s connected to others you own, you receive money equal to the number of buildings.
You can bank one ship before the end of your turn, then you can use any three resources or a pair of matching resources to purchase a specialist, each of whom has a unique power.
After all players go, you shuffle the action tiles, place them face down in the row, then reveal enough tiles at the front of the line to set up for the next turn, with the turn order being determined by the numbers on the tiles that players chose the previous turn. Once you trigger one of the game-ending conditions — e.g., no ships of one color or no more specialists — you finish the round, then count points for buildings built, specialists hired, and money on hand.
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Cry Havoc is a card-driven, asymmetric, area control war game set in a brutal, science fiction setting. Each player commands one of four unique factions with varying abilities and units. The game includes 54 custom miniatures, a large format board, and over one hundred unique cards, all with stunning new artwork.
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The excitement in the air is electric as the leaders round the last corner and head for the finish line. Each team has used cunning and skill to position their sprinter for this moment, but only one has done enough to pull off the win!
Will your team lead from the front and risk exhaustion? Should you play it safe in the middle of the pack? Could you surprise everyone by striking from the back? Can you time your move perfectly?
Anyone can race, few become champions!
Flamme Rouge is a fast-paced, tactical bicycle racing game where each player controls a team of two riders: a Rouleur and a Sprinteur. The players’ goal is to be the first to cross the finish line with one of their riders. Players move their riders forward by drawing and playing cards from that riders specific deck, depleting it as they go. Use slipstreams to avoid exhaustion and position your team for a well timed sprint for the win.
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