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Burn the Witch

| T3d-1978

Step back into a dark period in our past, when frenzy and paranoia dominated peoples’ perception of ‘the other’, driving communities across Europe to take the most extreme measures against their fellow man… or woman, as history would have it.

Burn the Witch is a game of social deduction where players are divided into two factions (zealots and sympathizers), which are pitted against each other in a bid for survival. Players represent houses, comprised of two to four villagers, one or more of whom may be a witch. The zealots win by uncovering the identity of all witches in play—a discovery made only through fire. The sympathizers win by keeping the witches’ identities hidden. With witches forming a small minority, the sympathizers’ only chance for success depends on their ability to employ cunning and misdirection as they seek to outwit the other players by turning the zealots’ xenophobia and pyromania back onto themselves.

The game typically goes for 45-75 minutes and concludes when either every witch in the village has been uncovered or enough innocents have been wrongly condemned that the witch hunt is called off, and the sympathizers win.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hidden Roles
  • Player Judge
  • Roles with Asymmetric Information
  • Traitor Game
  • Voting

Game Specifications:

  • 5 – 15 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.75

Bios: Genesis

| T3d-1978

In Bios: Genesis, one to four players start as organic compounds shortly after Earth’s formation, represented by up to four Biont tokens. The Amino Acids command Metabolism, the lipids create cells, the pigments control energy absorption and storage, and the nucleic acids control templated replication. Their goal is a double origin of life: first as Autocatalytic Life (a metabolic cycle reproducing, yet not replicating, its own constituents), and the second as Darwinian Life (an Organism using a template to replicate in an RNA world). Players can play cooperative, competitive, or solitaire.

Notes designer Phil Eklund, “This subject is the most difficult and ambitious I have ever attempted, and it has taken many years to get it to work right.” With Bios: Genesis, Bios: Megafauna, and Bios: Origins (Second Edition), Eklund takes players through almost the whole breadth and scope of life on Earth.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Cooperative Game
  • King of the Hill
  • Market
  • Open Drafting
  • Re-rolling and Locking
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.39

Bloomchasers

| T3d-1978

30-min light strategy game for adults – grow your flowers and outwit opponents on a stunning 3D tree, either solo, as a team, or competitively.

Each turn, players — affectionately called “Bloomchasers” — place a new branch onto the tree, along with a “bud” of your color. Your goal is to place your buds in certain shapes so when a Bloom card is drawn, you’re set up to grow flowers (and your opponents aren’t!). Your ability to read and predict the weather will help you bloom faster and make sure you’re growing the most valuable flowers to win.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative Game
  • Pattern Building
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Three Dimensional Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.75

Cascadero

| T3d-1978

The kingdom is shattered, its towns are divided, and its people are distrusting. The newly crowned ruler, El Cascadero, seeks to reunite the land, but he can’t do it alone. Thus, he appoints four ministers to visit the people and restore civil harmony. While the ministers are obligated to bring prosperity to the entire land, each of them also has one dedicated responsibility: Farming, Crafting, Mining, and Markets. El Cascadero also records in his book the successes of his ministers…

Cascadero is the next epic tile placement strategy game from acclaimed designer Reiner Knizia. Ministers visit towns by placing their envoys adjacent to them; but towns are distrusting of single envoys, so newly placed envoys will only trigger town scoring when they are part of an established group or carry an official seal from El Cascadero himself. Towns with Royal Messengers at them or a history of envoy visits are even more valuable, as they willingly collaborate for even greater successes.

Players must decide between two competing strategies: build long chains of their envoys to achieve synergies and objectives, or establish smaller, separate groups of envoys to trigger timely town scoring. Both will award victory points, yet your victory points will mean nothing if you don’t also reach the end of your appointed success column.

By triggering town scoring, you’ll advance along that town’s matching success column, gaining bonuses as you pass over them. Bonuses include earning victory points, advancing further on any success column, claiming an official seal, repositioning an envoy, or even acquiring an additional turn. Through careful timing and clever plans, players can trigger a cascading combo of exciting bonuses that swing momentum in their favor.

Cascadero provides a wealth of replayability through emergent player interaction, variable board and tile setups, and an advanced player mode featuring traveling heralds. Yet the game will always end in one of two ways: when one player reaches fifty victory points or must place a tile but has no tiles left. The players who reached the end of their appointed success column qualify for victory, and whoever among them has the most victory points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Chaining
  • Connections
  • Network and Route Building
  • Tile Placement
  • Track Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.58

Cartographers Heroes

| T3d-1978

The expedition to the Western Lands is the kind of honor that comes once in a lifetime for a royal cartographer. But these are dangerous times. War ravages the land, and you are sure to encounter Dragul forces determined to thwart Queen Gimnax’s plans for western expansion.

Fortunately, brave heroes have risen to the defense of Nalos. Chart their deeds alongside the queen’s edicts and secure your place in history.

Cartographers Heroes is the sequel to the critically acclaimed map-drawing game Cartographers. It includes all-new map sheets, scoring cards, explore cards, and ambush cards with unique abilities.

Cartographers Heroes can be played on its own or mixed with components from the original game for a greater variety of gameplay possibilities.

Game Mechanics:

  • Paper-and-Pencil
  • Pattern Building
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Take That
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 100 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Cartographers

| T3d-1978

Queen Gimnax has ordered the reclamation of the northern lands. As a cartographer in her service, you are sent to map this territory, claiming it for the Kingdom of Nalos. Through official edicts, the queen announces which lands she prizes most, and you will increase your reputation by meeting her demands. But you are not alone in this wilderness. The Dragul contest your claims with their outposts, so you must draw your lines carefully to reduce their influence. Reclaim the greatest share of the queen’s desired lands and you will be declared the greatest cartographer in the kingdom.

In Cartographers: A Roll Player Tale, players compete to earn the most reputation stars by the time four seasons have passed. Each season, players draw on their map sheets and earn reputation by carrying out the queen’s edicts before the season is over. The player with the most reputation stars at the end of winter wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Paper-and-Pencil
  • Pattern Building
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Take That
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 100 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.87

Cartaventura: Lhasa

| T3d-1978

The search for the explorer and spiritualist Alexandra David-Neel will be a long and arduous journey. Travel through Ceylon and India and across the Himalayas to the forbidden city of Lhasa in Tibet. Up to six players can take part in this collaborative adventure game, deciding together how to proceed at every juncture. Card by card, the team learns how the adventure unfolds, exploring locations, and moving toward one of five possible endings of the game. Let’s go on an adventure! Follow a multitude of different paths and explore various far-off lands. Only one path leads you to Alexandra David-Neel!

You play Lhasa by flipping over the story cards, building out the map, and making decisions that will impact the ending you receive! The game is simple to play and will lead you through the game mechanics as you move through the story. The game contains five different endings to explore, depending on your decisions.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative Game
  • Campaign Game
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.11

Carrom

| T3d-1978

Carrom is most easily described as “finger pool”. On a 29″ x 29″ wooden board, players flick a large weighted disc (the striker) at smaller wooden discs (the carrom-men). The goal is to sink your 9 carrom-men (black or white), as well as the red Queen, in the four corner pockets. The first player or team to accomplish this collects points for the round (commonly called a “board”). A standard game of Carrom continues until one player has 25 points or 8 boards have been completed.

Carrom is typically played with powder, and some variations of the game use cues. The most widely played form of ‘proper’ Carrom is supported by a world wide set of rules known as The Laws of Carrom, and are available from the International Carrom Federation.

Carrom bears similarities to Pool and Crokinole, but is a fascinating game in its own right with varied strategies and techniques. No one knows exactly where the game originated. It could have come from Bangladesh, Burma, Egypt, or Ethiopia, but most believe it originated in India.

Game Mechanics:

  •  Dexterity
  • Team-Based Game

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.46

Cargo Noir

| T3d-1978

In Serge Laget’s Cargo Noir – his fourth standalone box game from Days of Wonder – players represent “families” that traffic in smuggled goods in a 1950s noir setting. Each turn, you’ll set sail to various ports where cargo is known to get “lost” for the right price – Hong Kong, Bombay, Rotterdam, New York and more – and you’ll make an offer for the goods on display. If another family then offers more in that port, you’ll need to up your bid or take your money and slink away to look for goods elsewhere. Stand alone in a port, though, and you’ll be able to discretely move the goods from the dock to your personal warehouse. Says Laget in a press release accompanying the game announcement, “Everything in Cargo Noir grew from a core auction mechanism that is simple and trivial to explain – you can only bid up, and the last bidder standing gets the goods.”

Once you collect goods, you can trade them in to add more ships to your fleet – allowing you to scout for wares in more locations – purchase Victory Spoils, or take other actions. The more goods you collect, the more valuable they can be. The player with the most Spoils at game end wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction / Bidding
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2- 5 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.09

Cards Against Humanity

| T3d-1978

A party game for horrible people.

In Cards Against Humanity, play begins with a judge, known as the “Card Czar”, choosing a black question or fill-in-the-blank card from the top of the deck and showing it to all players. Each player holds a hand of ten white answer cards at the beginning of each round, and passes a card (sometimes two) to the Card Czar, face-down, representing their answer to the question on the card. The card czar determines which answer card(s) are funniest in the context of the question or fill-in-the-blank card. The player who submitted the chosen card(s) is given the question card to represent an “Awesome Point”, and then the player to the left of the new Card Czar becomes the new Czar for the next round. Play continues until the players agree to stop, at which point the player with the most Awesome Points is the winner.

This, so far, sounds like the popular and fairly inoffensive Apples to Apples. While the games are similar, the sense of humor required is very different. The game encourages players to poke fun at practically every awkward or taboo subject including race, religion, gender, poverty, torture, alcoholism, drugs, sex (oh yes), abortion, child abuse, celebrities, and those everyday little annoyances like “Expecting a burp and vomiting on the floor”.

In addition, there are a few extra rules. First, some question cards are “Pick 2” or cards, which require each participant to submit two cards in sequence to complete their answer. Second, a gambling component also exists. If a question is played which a player believes they have two possible winning answers for, they may bet an Awesome Point to play a single second answer. If the player who gambled wins, they retain the wagered point, but if they lose, the player who contributed the winning answer takes both points.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Party Game
  • Player Judge

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 30 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.17