Tag: Rondel

A Rondel is a wheel-shaped game mechanic that represents all actions available to players in a game.

West Kingdom Saga: Viscounts of the West Kingdom

| T3d-1978
West Kingdom Saga: Viscounts of the West Kingdom

West Kingdom Saga: Viscounts of the West Kingdom

Viscounts of the West Kingdom is set at a time when the King’s reign began to decline, circa 980 AD. Choosing peace over prosperity, our once strong King began offering our enemies gold and land to lay down their axes. But peace is a tenuous affair. As poverty spread, many people lost faith in his ability to lead and sought independence from the crown. Since finding favour in his courts, our future has also become uncertain. As viscounts, we must be wise and decisive. Loyalty is to be upheld, but gaining favour among the people must be our priority, should there be a sudden shift in power.

The aim of Viscounts of the West Kingdom is to be the player with the most victory points (VP) at game’s end. Points are gained by constructing buildings, writing manuscripts, working in the castle and acquiring deeds for new land. Players begin with a handful of townsfolk but should quickly seek out more suitable talents to advance their endeavors. Each turn they will be travelling around the kingdom, looking to increase their influence among the various areas of society. The game ends once the Kingdom reaches poverty or prosperity – or potentially both!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Rondel
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.45

Virtu

| T3d-1978
Virtu

Virtu

It’s a time of upheaval, when the Middle Ages end and modernity is born. For those in the government, the situation is ripe for action. Your city must maintain its standing, and you, as its prince, must make this happen.

Virtù takes place during the Italian Renaissance, with each player embodying one of the powerful Italian cities of the time and trying to make it more powerful than all others through “virtù”, the ability to accomplish great things through a strong state (according to Machiavelli).

The foundation of the game is “wheelbuilding”, that is, creating a “wheel of actions” on your personal player board, which has a unique arrangement compared to other players and with you having a different set of starting family cards. Depending on how you place the cards, you have multiple options available and a starting strategy, but you can acquire and place new cards to alter your approach over the course of the game. You interact with others indirectly by taking cards they want or racing to goals or directly by sending agents to the palace or their cities as well as by attacking cities. Artists, merchants, and diplomats can also work to increase your prestige.

Virtù includes a two-player mode that is played differently from the game with 3-5 players.

Game Mechanics:

  • Rondel

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.89

Tawantinsuyu

| T3d-1978
Tawantinsuyu

Tawantinsuyu

The great Sapa Inca Pachacuti turned to his offspring and ordered them to worship Inti, the Sun God, and to expand the Inca Empire as far as the llamas roam. With Chinchaysuyu, Antisuyu, Qullasuyu, and Kuntisuyu — the four regions of the new empire — now ripe for conquest, the time has come for Pachacuti’s true successor to arise.

Gather your people from the villages below and use their unique abilities to strategically place them where they can perform the greatest tasks for you. Climb the steps of the Sun Temple, reaping the rewards of your piety. Build structures that both nourish your people and provide you with benefits no other has at their disposal. Muster an army and conquer villages in the four realms of Tawantinsuyu. Prove yourself a worthy successor to Pachacuti and lead the Inca to glory!

During Tawantinsuyu: The Inca Empire, players place workers onto various locations on the game board, performing actions, collecting resources (potatoes, corn, stone, and gold), constructing buildings and stairs, sculpt statues, expanding their military strength, and collecting weavings.

The game board features a hill located within the old Inca capital of Cusco, the sides of which are terraced and divided into five sections. Atop the hill sits the Coricancha, The Golden Temple, the most important temple of the Inca Empire. Within the Coricancha, each player has a High Priest. On the terraced sections below exist a variety of worker placement locations, interconnected by paths and individually marked by symbols. On your turn, you must either place a worker onto a location outside the Coricancha OR choose two of the following:

  • Recruit one worker.
  • Take two god cards.
  • Draw two army cards and keep one of them.
  • Move your High Priest one or two steps clockwise within the Coricancha.

When placing a worker, you must first discard a god card with a matching symbol or pay one gold. Once placed, the worker remains on the game board for the rest of the game! Each worker placement location is connected to exactly three action spaces. You must always perform at least one of these actions. However, for each adjacent worker (i.e., connected to your worker’s location via direct path through one of the action spaces) that matches the type of worker just placed, you receive one additional action!

While some locations will result in you being able to perform multiple actions, other actions and placements may be more desirable, especially since each of the five types of workers has a unique ability:

  • Warrior: Remove one of the adjacent workers, placing it in your player area.
  • Craftsman: Gain +1 action if placed onto a craftsman space.
  • Architect: Gain +1 action if placed onto an architect space.
  • Courier: Decreased placement cost; +1 action if it’s the first worker placed within a given area.
  • Priest: Take one god card; you may pay one potato to gain +1 action.

All god cards feature one of the different symbols found on the worker placement locations. Before placing a worker, you must either discard a god card with a matching symbol or pay valuable gold resources. God cards also depict special abilities that can be activated only if you have previously built a matching statue!

Army cards allow you to send one or more units to conquer villages in nearby regions. You must compete against the other players for control of each region as well as for valuable rewards that can be gained as a result of military conquest.

The position of your High Priest within the Coricancha has a significant impact on your overall strategy, affecting your access to powerful actions and determining any potential resource costs when placing your workers. More specifically, when placing a worker, you must pay additional resources the farther your worker is from your High Priest, from nothing all the way up to eight potatoes or corn!

Additionally, when moving your High Priest, you can activate powerful actions available only within the Coricancha:

  • Produce: Gain all rewards from your production buildings.
  • Worship: Sacrifice previously sculpted statues to gain permanent temple advancements.
  • Offering: Pay resources to gain temple advancements.
  • Conquer: Engage in military conquest of nearby villages.
  • Rejuvenate: Refresh previously activated buildings and military units.

Throughout the game, you score victory points whenever you construct stairs or sculpt statues. Gain bonus victory points whenever another player makes use of the stairs you have constructed. Score victory points from temple advancements and control of the four regions.

The game ends when the worker pool has become exhausted, symbolizing the full incorporation of nearby regions and villages into the newly risen Inca Empire. You then score bonus victory points from reaching the top of the temple, from your woven tapestries, and from various buildings and resources you have accumulated.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Control
  • Civilization
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Rondel
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.07

Sabika

| T3d-1978
Sabika

Sabika

On the hill of Al-Sabika in Granada, the Nasrid dynasty created one of the most impressive constructions in history, the Alhambra.

In Sabika, you play the role of one of the Nasrid nobles who contributed to the construction of the towers, gardens, and palaces of this ancient monument. In addition to this honorable task, you have to establish trade routes through Europe and the Maghreb. These routes will provide you with sufficient income to be able to take on the demanding tribute that has been commanded by the Catholic Monarchs. In exchange for your work, you will receive military protection against the various conflicts of the Taifas Kingdom.

Sabika implements a novel mechanism that integrates three interrelated rondels. Each rondel focuses on a different scenario: the construction of the Alhambra, the carving of poems in its halls, and the export of goods along the trade routes. All of this takes place over five eras (rounds), and at the end of the fifth round, the player who has accumulated the most prestige points takes the victory.

Game Mechanics:

  • Rondel

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.91

Merv

| T3d-1978
Merv

Merv

Merv: The Heart of the Silk Road is a tense economic game charting the rise and fall of the greatest city in the world.

In Merv, players are vying to amass power and wealth in the prosperous heart of the Silk Road. Through careful court intrigue, timely donations to the grand mosque, and favorable trade deals, players attempt to redirect as much of that prosperity as possible into their own pockets.

Meanwhile, beyond the city walls Mongol hordes approach. If you help construct the city walls, you give up on precious opportunities to build up your own stature, but leave it unprotected and you will burn with the city. Every decision is weighty and the consequences of each misstep are dire. Will you rise to prominence or fade into oblivion?

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Economic
  • Rondel
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.47

Three Sisters

| T3d-1978
Three Sisters

Three Sisters

Three Sisters is a strategic roll-and-write game about backyard farming. Three Sisters is named after an indigenous agricultural technique still widely used today in which three different crops — pumpkins, corn, and beans — are planted close together. Corn provides a lattice for beans to climb, the beans bring nitrogen from the air into the soil, and the squash provides a natural mulch ground cover to reduce weeds and keep pests away.

In the game, you have your own player sheet with multiple areas: the garden, which is divided into six numbered zones, each containing the three crop types; the apiary; compost; perennials; goods; fruit; and the shed, which is filled with tools that have special abilities. All the crops, fruits, flowers, and hives are represented by tracks that you will mark off as you acquire these items. Many of the tracks are interconnected with other elements in the game, giving you bonuses along the way. A common feature of these tracks are circles that represent a harvest, which generates goods; get enough goods, and you unlock bonus actions. Advancing on all of these tracks offers various amounts of points, advancements, and bonuses.

The game lasts eight rounds. Each round, roll dice based on the number of players, group them by number, then place them on an action space of the circular action wheel, starting with the current position of the farmer; the farmer moves each round, which means that dice showing 1s, 2s, etc. will end up on different spaces each round. Once the dice have been placed, each player drafts one die and uses it as described below. Once everyone has drafted a die, all players get to use the lowest-valued die remaining on the action wheel. A die lets you do two things, which you can do in either order:

  • Plant or water the numbered zone matching the value of the die.
  • Take the action of the space from which you removed the die.

To plant, you mark the bottom space of two empty crop tracks. (Note that you can’t plant beans until the corn adjacent to the beans is tall enough to support them.) To water, you mark one space in all the crop tracks that already have at least one mark in them. As for the actions on the action wheel, you can:

  • Plant or water again in the same numbered zone.
  • Gain one compost (which lets you adjust die values) and four goods (which will get you bonuses at the farmer’s market).
  • Mark off the hive track, which can bring you points, goods, or bonus actions.
  • Mark one of the four fruit tracks. Each fruit is worth different points and different amounts of goods and has different track lengths and circle positions.
  • Visit the farmer’s market, which gives you points and bonuses based on the number of goods you’ve collected.
  • Mark one of the fifteen tool tracks in your shed. As soon as you complete a track, you gain that power or end-game scoring opportunity.

Perennials don’t have a direct action associated with them and are marked off only through actions in other areas, with the various perennials giving different bonuses as you mark them.

At the end of the round, all players receive a bonus action, either rain that waters all numbered zones in your garden, a trip to the shed, or a visit to the farmer’s market. After eight rounds, you score points for harvested crops, perennials, the apiary, fruit, and some shed items. Whoever has the most points wins.

Three Sisters has a solo mode in which you try to top your own score against an “opponent” that drafts dice and blocks areas of your sheet.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Drafting
  • Dice Rolling
  • Paper and Pencil
  • Rondel

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.62

The Red Cathedral

| T3d-1978
The Red Cathedral

The Red Cathedral

Autumn is not the best time to climb up on a scaffold in Moscow, but it is still far better than doing so in the winter. Tsar Ivan wants to see results and our team will prove to him that we are the best builders in the city. We are sure to finish off those decorative arches with the brightest shining stones and ensure our place on the list of the government’s trusted workers.

Sheila Santos and Israel Cendrero make up the game designing duo known as Llama Dice. To date they have put out various titles with different Spanish publishers (1987 Channel Tunnel, Mondrian, Smoothies), and The Red Cathedral is the first game they have published with Devir. Pedro Soto (Holmes, Sherlock & Mycroft, Papua) and Chema Román (El mundo de Águila Roja) took care of the graphic elements of the game with a grand homage to Ivan Bilibin, an iconic Russian artist from the turn of the twentieth century. Despite being from a far later period, his mark is very recognizable in the game.

The Red Cathedral is a strategic, “Euro” board game in which the players take the roles of construction teams. Their job is to work together to put up St. Basil’s cathedral in Moscow, as ordered by Ivan the Terrible. However, only one of them will be able to gain the favor of the Tsar.

During the game, the players can carry out one of these three actions: assign a section of the cathedral, send resources to that section to build it, or go to the game board to achieve more resources. Each of these actions has its own mechanism and requires that the players pay close attention to what the other players are doing.

When the sections of the cathedral are assigned the players take possession of the spaces in each of the columns that make up their section. The more sections built and the completion of each with its own tower, the more points the player will be given at the end of the game.

The players can send resources to the cathedral sections that they have claimed. When they complete each of those sections they will obtain rewards in money and prestige points. They will also be able to install decorations on the completed sections to achieve even more recognition from the Tsar. This part of the game also works as a clock, since once any player completes the construction of their sixth section it brings about the end of the game.

The game board shows us the iconic rondel of The Red Cathedral. It is where the players obtain all the resource types needed to complete their work on the cathedral, as well as to get favors from the guilds and professionals to make the most of their trip to the market. In the central rondel the players choose the die they wish to use and move forward as many spaces as is shown on the top side of said die, in order to obtain the resources indicated in the space destined by the die.

The Red Cathedral is a very accessible game with regard to its rules because it is very easy to understand the various levels of the game, but it remains very interesting with regard to strategy. It is sure to please those who are more interested in the challenge offered by trying to strategically optimize their position in each game rather than the complexity of the rules.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Rondel
  • Tableau Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.82

Merchants of the Dark Road

| T3d-1978
Merchants of the Dark Road

Merchants of the Dark Road

After half a year of daylight, we must now prepare for the dark season. The roads will be treacherous but they will still need to be braved by a select few in order to keep our cities thriving. In Merchants of the Dark Road, you are one of these brave few merchants that travel the dangerous paths between cities. While the job is perilous, fame and fortune await.

Discover the capital city where most of your actions will take place using a rondel action system. Collect and produce items to add to your caravan, or sell these items to local heroes and hire them to travel with you. Manipulate the market price of items, visit the back alley sellers, or delve a nearby dungeon for magical items to gain the potential for even more coin and notoriety.

Gather lanterns to ease your passage along the dark roads as you guide your caravan to distant villages. Deliver goods and heroes to the best destinations and gain fame for your bravery! Balance the money you earn with the height of your fame because your final score after a number of game rounds will reflect the lowest of these two values.

After all, what good is a purse full of the coin if the people don’t sing songs about you, and what good is a song with an empty mug of ale?

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Rondel
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.12

Iki

| T3d-1978
Iki

Iki

Edo — what we now know today as Tokyo, Japan — was a thriving city with an estimated population of one million, half townspeople and half samurai. With a huge shopping culture, Edo’s main district, Nihonbashi, was lined with shops, selling kimonos, rice, and so much more.

Nihonbashi is the focus of IKI: A Game of EDO Artisans, which brings you on a journey through the famed street of old Tokyo. Hear the voices of Nihonbashi Bridge’s great fish market. Meet the professionals, who carry out 700­-800 different jobs. Enter the interactivity of the shoppers and vendors. Become one with the townspeople.

One of the main professions in the world of Edo is the artisan. Each of the Edo artisans uses their own skill of trade to support the townspeople’s lives. In this game, not only are there artisans, but street vendors, sellers at the shops, and professions unique to this time and age. Meet the puppet masters, putting on a show. Meet the ear cleaners that people would line up for.

The goal of this game is to become the annual Edoite, best personifying what is known as “IKI”, an ancient philosophy believed to be the ideal way of living among people in Edo. Knowing the subtleties of human nature, being refined and attractive — these are all elements of a true IKI master.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Rondel
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.99

Corrosion

| T3d-1978
Corrosion

Corrosion

In Corrosion, each of you manages a factory and deploys engineers to build up diversified scoring and production engines. In the steam-filled air, however, your biggest enemy is time because most machines and gears rust away quickly, so you are well advised to also produce chrome gears and invest in rustproof and powerful chrome machines.

On your turn, you can either play an engineer card or turn the corrosion wheel of your factory:

  • Playing engineers mostly gains you new machines and qualified engineers. Other players can copy your engineer’s action by playing an engineer of the same suit but a higher grade.
  • Turning your corrosion wheel puts your machines to work and returns engineers to your hand, but also causes old gears and machines to rust.

To be successful, you must cleverly co-ordinate your engineers and corrosion wheel and smoothly shift from one efficient engine to the next.

The game end is triggered once the special point supply or the award supply run out. Then, whoever was able to score the most points with their machines and awards wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Rondel

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.21