Author: T3d-1978

Camel Up

| T3d-1978

In Camel Up, up to eight players bet on five racing camels, trying to suss out which will place first and second in a quick race around a pyramid. The earlier you place your bet, the more you can win — should you guess correctly, of course. Camels don’t run neatly, however, sometimes landing on top of another one and being carried toward the finish line. Who’s going to run when? That all depends on how the dice come out of the pyramid dice shaker, which releases one die at a time when players pause from their bets long enough to see who’s actually moving!

Game Mechanics:

  • Betting
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 8 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.50

Caesar’s Empire

| T3d-1978

In Caesar’s Empire, you will be building Roads to connect Rome to new Cities across the board. Each time you build a Road, you score points. Every new City you reach will provide City and Treasure tokens that will be worth points at the end of the game. The game ends when Rome is connected to every City on the board. After adding the value of City and Treasure tokens to the points scored during the game, the player with the most points wins!

Caesar’s Empire uses a simple network-building mechanic. Each time you build a Road, you must connect Rome to a new City by placing one or more of your Road pieces onto the game board. You may build your Road anywhere you like on the board, as long as you start from either Rome, or a City whose token has already been taken. This means you may be continuing a Road started by another player! When you reach a City, you get to take its token, which can be worth points at the end of the game. Each City also provides a Treasure token. Treasures you find are added to your player board and will score you points at the end of the game, especially if you manage to make collections!

Once you’ve taken your City token and your Treasure, you score your route back to Rome. Each section of Road included in your route will score 1 point for the player it belongs to. As your route can include sections of Road placed by other players, you can end up giving points to your opponents!The game continues until all of the Cities on the board have been taken. Once the final City has been taken, players move on to final scoring.

At the end of the game, you’ll score points based on your City tokens. Each City has a value, which is the number on the back. This is the number of points you’ll score for that City. However, if you have more than one City token of the same colour, you will only score points for the one of the highest value. You then score the value of the different collections of Treasure on your player board. Collections can be of the same Treasure or different Treasures, and Gold is scored separately. The player with the most points returns to Rome to be showered with fortune and glory by Caesar himself!

Game Mechanics:

  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.51

Caesar!: Seize Rome in 20 Minutes!

| T3d-1978

The Roman Republic is coming to an end, but not before a power struggle between Caesar and Pompey. Players will command their legions, strategically deploying them to key battlegrounds to try and seize control of the provinces and become ruler of the republic.

Players draw tokens from a bag to determine their starting forces and to replenish their losses. Players allocate their resources to each province, gaining tactical advantages and vying for control of the republic.

Three modules to expand the game are included: poison your opponent, deploy powerful Centurions and use underhanded tactics to gain advantages in the Expansions of Rome.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Chit-Pull System
  • Simulation
  • Solo / Solitaire Game

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 2 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.93

Brandon the Brave

| T3d-1978

Want to be as strong, brave and glorious as the knight Brandon the Brave? To become a knight, all knaves first have to master regal tasks and prove that they have good intuition. Your task is to seek out giants, dragons, witches, and other dangers!

In Brandon the Brave, the player who can skillfully place the field tiles next to one another, thus mastering the tasks, will be the lustrous champion at the end of the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~10 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.06

boop.

| T3d-1978

A deceptively cute, deceivingly challenging abstract strategy game for two players.

Every time you place a kitten on the bed, it goes “boop.” Which is to say that it pushes every other kitten on the board one space away. Line up three kittens in a row to graduate them into cats… and then, get three cats in a row to win.

But that isn’t easy with both you AND your opponent constantly “booping” kittens around. It’s like… herding cats!
Can you “boop” your cats into position to win?
Or will you just get “booped” right off the bed?

  • Approachable but challenging abstract game. Plays in 20 to 30 minutes.
  • Features a quilted, fabric board that lays over the back of the box, completing the miniature bed playing surface. 8 wood kittens and cats per player – 32 adorable cat pieces in all!

Game Mechanics:

  • Grid Movement
  • Pattern Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.39

Blokus

| T3d-1978

Blokus (officially pronounced “Block us”) is an abstract strategy game with transparent, Tetris-shaped, colored pieces that players are trying to play onto the board. The only caveat to placing a piece is that it may not lie adjacent to your other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one corner of your pieces already on the board.

There is a solitaire variation where one player tries to get rid of all the pieces in a single sitting.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.74

Key to the Kingdom

| T3d-1978
Key to the Kingdom

Key to the Kingdom

Key to the Kingdom is a restoration of the 1990 classic game. The new version features the classic hole-in-the-board mechanism to hop through portals and explore the Demon King’s domain.

As the kingdom’s not-so-mightiest heroes — Pitiless Pixie, Knovice Knight, Unique Unicorn, Merciless Mercenary, and Gnarled Gnome — you’ll go on adventures to gather the three pieces of the magic key, then hop through a portal to defeat the Demon King once and for all.

This new version gives players greater control over the whims of the dice. You’ll use your collection of items to tweak your rolls. But make sure you have the right item ready when you go on an adventure to give you an easier path through. You’ll get magic items and companions along the way as well. It also adds a new endgame in which you need to face a series of mini-challenges to win the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Push Your Luck
  • Racing
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 20 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.20

Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun

| T3d-1978

It’s time to build another treehouse!

In the new stand alone sequel to the Golden Geek Nominated Best Treehouse Ever (Best Card Game, Best Family Game, 2015), Best Treehouse Ever: Forest of Fun, players compete to build their best treehouse, outfitting their treehouse with cool rooms, and creating fun habitats for their favorite furry and feathered friends, while also making sure that their tree doesn’t tip over and that their rooms are more impressive than all of their friends’ rooms at the end of the game.

In addition, our treehouse builders have leveled up their experience by visiting new locations in the forest that provide special abilities to help them in their new build.

Building takes place over three weeks/rounds, and in each round, players use card drafting and spatial reasoning to add five new rooms to their treehouse. Players must pay attention to the other treehouses being built since they take turns determining which types of rooms score for everyone at the end of each round.

At the end of the third week, the winner is the player with the best treehouse ever!

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.50

Beasts of Balance

| T3d-1978

Beasts of Balance is a game of strategy and balance in which you build a tower of animals on your tabletop, then help them evolve in a connected digital world.

A cooperative game for one to five players, the aim is to make the most fabulous world you can by strategically nurturing and evolving your creatures and casting skill-based miracles – before your tower collapses.

Players take turns to stack a set of beautifully made artifacts into a tower. As they’re placed they pop onto the connected device’s screen, where they’ll be seen to evolve and grow as players continue to make tactical choices over how they build.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dexterity
  • Digital

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.14

Battleship

| T3d-1978

Battleship was originally a pencil-and-paper public domain game known by different names, but Milton Bradley made it into the well known board game in 1967. The pencil and paper grids were changed to plastic grids with holes that could hold plastic pegs used to record the guesses.

Each player deploys his ships (of lengths varying from 2 to 5 squares) secretly on a square grid. Then each player shoots at the other’s grid by calling a location. The defender responds by “Hit!” or “Miss!”. You try to deduce where the enemy ships are and sink them. First to do so wins.

The Salvo variant listed in the rules allows each player to call out from 1 to 5 shots at a time depending on the amount of ships the player has left (IE: players each start off with 5 ships, so they start off with 5 shots. As ships are sunk, the players get fewer shots). This version of the game is closer to the original pencil-and-paper public domain game. Many versions of the pencil-and-paper game have different amounts of shots based on the ship (IE: Battleship: 5 shots. Destroyer: 3 Shots, Etc.).

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Paper and Pencil
  • Secret Unit Deployment

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.20