Tag: Take That

Games with a “Take That” mechanic allows players to take actions that actively hinder an opponent’s progress in-game.

Bearly Working

| T3d-1978
Bearly Working

Bearly Working

Welcome to your City! As the newly elected Mayor it is your duty to attend and bid at a 5-day bear auction in hopes of creating a prosperous society with a diverse workforce. Watch out though because you’ll be facing rival Mayors with the same objective! Bearly Working is an “auction-based card collecting game” where the end goal is to have more points than your opponents while managing your resources wisely. Develop your city by purchasing bears with special skills and hire covert criminals to sabotage your opponents! Whatever your strategy…

Running a city is grizzly business!
—
This is an auction-based game for two to four players and takes around 20 to 30 minutes to play.
The game lasts 5 days and each day is broken into 3 phases.
The first phase is the auction, where you will face off against the other mayors in an open bidding system. One by one, a bear is showcased and then auctioned off. The winning bidder hires the worker into their city. The second phase is payday. There are two types of bears. One provides victory points and the other provides income. Mayors with income bears in their city will collect their total paycheck from the bank. The third phase is the action phase. Mayors will have three opportunities to either collect five coins from the bank or enlist the help of criminals.

These crooks will be essential in sabotaging your competition. They do devious things such as fixing the auction, stealing some money or kidnapping bears. At the end of the third phase, the day is complete, and this cycle is repeated for a total of 5 times. The player with the most victory points at the end of the game, is the winner!

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Set Collection
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 35 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.33

BANG! The Card Game

| T3d-1978
BANG! The Card Game

BANG! The Card Game

“The Outlaws hunt the Sheriff. The Sheriff hunts the Outlaws. The Renegade plots secretly, ready to take one side or the other. Bullets fly. Who among the gunmen is a Deputy, ready to sacrifice himself for the Sheriff? And who is a merciless Outlaw, willing to kill him? If you want to find out, just draw (your cards)!” (From back of box)

The card game BANG! recreates an old-fashioned spaghetti western shoot-out, with each player randomly receiving a Character card to determine special abilities, and a secret Role card to determine their goal.

Four different Roles are available, each with a unique victory condition:

  • Sheriff – Kill all Outlaws and the Renegade
  • Deputy – Protect the Sheriff and kill any Outlaws
  • Outlaw – Kill the Sheriff
  • Renegade – Be the last person standing

A player’s Role is kept secret, except for the Sheriff. Character cards are placed face up on table, and also track strength (hand limit) in addition to special ability.

There are 22 different types of cards in the draw deck. Most common are the BANG! cards, which let you shoot at another player, assuming the target is within “range” of your current gun. The target player can play a “MISSED!” card to dodge the shot. Other cards can provide temporary boosts while in play (for example, different guns to improve your firing range) and special one-time effects to help you or hinder your opponents (such as Beer to restore health, or Barrels to hide behind during a shootout). A horse is useful for keeping your distance from unruly neighbors, while the Winchester can hit a target at range 5. The Gatling is a deadly exception where range doesn’t matter: it can only be used once, but targets all other players at the table!

Information on the cards is displayed using language-independent symbols, and 7 summary/reference cards are included.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Hand Management
  • Hidden Roles
  • Player Elimination
  • Take That
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 7 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.63

Thug Life

| T3d-1978
Thug Life

Thug Life

Thug Life is a miniatures combat board game for 2 to 5 players and takes 40 minutes to play.

Players takes on the role of a Boss controlling a gang of Thugs who commit crimes and fight for control of the Streets. Each turn Bosses must measure the risk/reward of upgrading their gang, committing crimes and fighting with their rivals for money, power and respect. The success or failure of these decisions determine how many points of respect a Boss earns each turn. The first Boss to earn 13 respect wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Dice Rolling
  • Storytelling
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 20 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.67

Star Wars: Rebellion

| T3d-1978
Star Wars: Rebellion

Star Wars: Rebellion

Star Wars: Rebellion is a board game of epic conflict between the Galactic Empire and Rebel Alliance for two to four players.

Experience the Galactic Civil War like never before. In Rebellion, you control the entire Galactic Empire or the fledgling Rebel Alliance. You must command starships, account for troop movements, and rally systems to your cause. Given the differences between the Empire and Rebel Alliance, each side has different win conditions, and you’ll need to adjust your play style depending on who you represent:

  • As the Imperial player, you can command legions of Stormtroopers, swarms of TIEs, Star Destroyers, and even the Death Star. You rule the galaxy by fear, relying on the power of your massive military to enforce your will. To win the game, you need to snuff out the budding Rebel Alliance by finding its base and obliterating it. Along the way, you can subjugate worlds or even destroy them.
  • As the Rebel player, you can command dozens of troopers, T-47 airspeeders, Corellian corvettes, and fighter squadrons. However, these forces are no match for the Imperial military. In terms of raw strength, you’ll find yourself clearly overmatched from the very outset, so you’ll need to rally the planets to join your cause and execute targeted military strikes to sabotage Imperial build yards and steal valuable intelligence. To win the Galactic Civil War, you’ll need to sway the galaxy’s citizens to your cause. If you survive long enough and strengthen your reputation, you inspire the galaxy to a full-scale revolt, and you win.

Featuring more than 150 plastic miniatures and two game boards that account for thirty-two of the Star Wars galaxy’s most notable systems, Rebellion features a scope that is as large and sweeping as any Star Wars game before it.

Yet for all its grandiosity, Rebellion remains intensely personal, cinematic, and heroic. As much as your success depends upon the strength of your starships, vehicles, and troops, it depends upon the individual efforts of such notable characters as Leia Organa, Mon Mothma, Grand Moff Tarkin, and Emperor Palpatine. As civil war spreads throughout the galaxy, these leaders are invaluable to your efforts, and the secret missions they attempt will evoke many of the most inspiring moments from the classic trilogy. You might send Luke Skywalker to receive Jedi training on Dagobah or have Darth Vader spring a trap that freezes Han Solo in carbonite!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Hidden Movement
  • Take That
  • Team Based
  • Wargame
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 180 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.73

Scythe

| T3d-1978
Scythe

Scythe

It is a time of unrest in 1920s Europa. The ashes from the first great war still darken the snow. The capitalistic city-state known simply as “The Factory”, which fueled the war with heavily armored mechs, has closed its doors, drawing the attention of several nearby countries.

Scythe is an engine-building game set in an alternate-history 1920s period. It is a time of farming and war, broken hearts and rusted gears, innovation and valor. In Scythe, each player represents a character from one of five factions of Eastern Europe who are attempting to earn their fortune and claim their faction’s stake in the land around the mysterious Factory. Players conquer territory, enlist new recruits, reap resources, gain villagers, build structures, and activate monstrous mechs.

Each player begins the game with different resources (power, coins, combat acumen, and popularity), a different starting location, and a hidden goal. Starting positions are specially calibrated to contribute to each faction’s uniqueness and the asymmetrical nature of the game (each faction always starts in the same place).

Scythe gives players almost complete control over their fate. Other than each player’s individual hidden objective card, the only elements of luck or variability are “encounter” cards that players will draw as they interact with the citizens of newly explored lands. Each encounter card provides the player with several options, allowing them to mitigate the luck of the draw through their selection. Combat is also driven by choices, not luck or randomness.

Scythe uses a streamlined action-selection mechanism (no rounds or phases) to keep gameplay moving at a brisk pace and reduce downtime between turns. While there is plenty of direct conflict for players who seek it, there is no player elimination.

Every part of Scythe has an aspect of engine-building to it. Players can upgrade actions to become more efficient, build structures that improve their position on the map, enlist new recruits to enhance character abilities, activate mechs to deter opponents from invading, and expand their borders to reap greater types and quantities of resources. These engine-building aspects create a sense of momentum and progress throughout the game. The order in which players improve their engine adds to the unique feel of each game, even when playing one faction multiple times.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Control
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Tableau Building
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 115 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.43

Imperium: Classics

| T3d-1978
Imperium: Classics

Imperium: Classics

Formidable adversaries are arrayed against you. Your people stand ready. History beckons.

In your hands lies the destiny of one of history’s great civilizations. Under constant threat of attack, you must conquer new lands, oversee dramatic scientific and cultural advances, and lead your people into the era of empire. Expand too rapidly, and unrest will bring your civilization to its knees; build up too slowly, however, and you might find yourself a mere footnote of history. As one of eight radically asymmetric civilizations, you will compete to become the most dominant empire the world has ever seen.

Imperium: Classics is a standalone game that contains the Carthaginian, Celt, Greek, Macedonian, Persian, Roman, Scythian, and Viking civilizations and an individual solo opponent behaving as each nation. It is also fully compatible with Imperium: Legends for players wanting to expand their pool of civilizations even further.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Civilization
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Move Through Deck
  • Tableau Building
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.48

Dune

| T3d-1978
Dune

Dune

Imagine you can control the forces of a noble family, guild, or religious order on a barren planet which is the only source for the most valuable substance in the known universe.

Imagine you can rewrite the script for one of the most famous science fiction books of all time. Welcome to the acclaimed 40-year-old board game which allows you to recreate the incredible world of Frank Herbert’s DUNE.

In DUNE you will become the leader of one of six great factions. Each wishes to control the most valuable resource in the universe – melange, the mysterious spice only found at great cost on the planet DUNE. As Duke Leto Atreides says “All fades before melange. A handful of spice will buy a home on Tupile. It cannot be manufactured, it must be mined on Arrakis. It is unique and it has true geriatric properties.” And without melange space travel would be impossible. Only by ingesting the addictive drug can the Guild Steersman continue to experience visions of the future, enabling them to plot a safe path through hyperspace.

Who will control DUNE? Become one of the characters and their forces from the book and . . . You decide!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Bluffing
  • Bribery
  • Negotiation
  • Take That
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.96

Dominant Species

| T3d-1978
Dominant Species

Dominant Species

90,000 B.C. — A great ice age is fast approaching. Another titanic struggle for global supremacy has unwittingly commenced between the varying animal species.
Dominant Species is a game that abstractly recreates a tiny portion of ancient history: the ponderous encroachment of an ice age and what that entails for the living creatures trying to adapt to the slowly-changing earth.
Each player will assume the role of one of six major animal classes—mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid, or insect. Each begins the game more or less in a state of natural balance in relation to one another. But that won’t last: It is indeed “survival of the fittest”.
Through wily action pawn placement, players will strive to become dominant on as many different terrain tiles as possible in order to claim powerful card effects. Players will also want to propagate their individual species in order to earn victory points for their particular animal. Players will be aided in these endeavors via speciation, migration, and adaptation actions, among others.
All of this eventually leads to the end game—the final ascent of the ice age—where the player having accumulated the most victory points will have his animal crowned the Dominant Species.
But somebody better become dominant quickly, because it’s getting mighty cold…

Game Play
The large hexagonal tiles are used throughout the game to create an ever-expanding interpretation of earth as it might have appeared a thousand centuries ago. The smaller tundra tiles will be placed atop the larger tiles—converting them into tundra in the process—as the ice age encroaches.
The cylindrical action pawns (or “AP”s) drive the game. Each AP will allow a player to perform the various actions that can be taken, such as speciation, environmental change, migration, or glaciation. After being placed on the action display during the Planning Phase, an AP will trigger that particular action for the owning player during the Execution Phase.
Generally, players will be trying to enhance their own animal’s survivability while simultaneously trying to hinder that of their opponents’—hopefully collecting valuable victory points (or “VP”s) along the way. The various cards will aid in these efforts, giving players useful one-time abilities or an opportunity for recurring VP gains.
Throughout the game, species cubes will be added to, moved about in, and removed from the tiles in play (the “earth”). Element disks will be added to and removed from both animals and earth.
When the game ends, players will conduct a final scoring of each tile—after which the player controlling the animal with the highest VP total wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Grid Movement
  • Open Drafting
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 120 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.04

The Wolves

| T3d-1978
The Wolves

The Wolves

The Wolves is a pack-building strategy game for 2-5 players. It’s survival of the fittest as you compete to build the largest, most dominant pack by claiming territory, recruiting lone wolves, and hunting prey. But be careful not to expand too recklessly into terrain where your rivals thrive – they may lure members of your pack away.

A clever action-selection mechanism drives your choices. Each action requires you to flip terrain tiles matching the terrain where you wish to take your action. These double-sided tiles mean the actions you take this round will set up which terrain types you can act on in the next round. As you take actions to expand your pack’s control of each region, you also upgrade your pack’s attributes, allowing you to take more aggressive actions as the game goes on.

In three mid-game scoring phases, power is calculated in each region. At the end of the game, players tally points based on VP tokens earned in these scoring phases and the highest VP number revealed in each of the six tracks on your player board. The player with the most VP wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Grid Movement
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.80

Western Legends: Blood Money

| T3d-1978
Western Legends: Blood Money

Western Legends: Blood Money

To become a legend, it takes grit, cunning, and a little luck. Problem is, you ain’t the only one looking to make a reputation for yourself. So you have to be willing to risk it all, every hard-earned dollar, every drop of blood, to write your name across the face of history.

Blood Money is the second large expansion for Western Legends, introducing a number of modules to tailor every game. The risk module uses a die that improves a number of actions… at the risk of injury. The legendary story module incorporates the story track and high-reward adventures for players to pursue. Players may now purchase deeds to locations and legendary items from the traveling trader. And of course, there is a bevy of new characters and items to explore!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Movement
  • Bluffing
  • Hand Management
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00