Author: T3d-1978

Cindr

Date Dragons, Without Getting Burned!

Are you a dragon looking for companionship?
Or just the adventurous type, looking to join the exciting dragon dating scene? Cindr is a ‘push your luck’ dice and card game that allows players to set up a dating profile and then thumb through potential matches, seeing if a given dragon sounds compatible.

If so, Meet Up and say hello – and if that goes well, push your luck, and take the Next Step. You never know, before the date is over you may just take things to the Next Level! The better the dates go, the more Love points you earn – but watch out, just 3 Flames will leave you burned, scoreless and searching for love all over again. Will you be the first of your friends to find love and fulfillment?

  • A 30-minute, push your luck dice game for 1-5 players, where the more compatible you are, the better the odds get of not getting burned.
  • A fun, light-hearted send-up of dating apps like Tinder, with tarot-sized cards as the app deck and date locations with special bonuses provided by the “Whelp” app deck.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Push Your Luck
  • Re-rolling and Locking

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.33

Century: Golem Edition

Century: Golem Edition is a re-themed version of Century: Spice Road set in the world of Caravania. In Century: Golem Edition, players are caravan leaders who travel the famed golem road to deliver crystals to the far reaches of the world.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Deck, Bag, and Pool Building
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.71

Catapult Feud

Build your castles, set up your troops, load your catapults and use your cunning tactics to win the day! The War for the Floor has begun once more!

Catapult Feud (original series was named, ‘Catapult Kingdoms’), is a game of last person standing. Your objective is to knock down all your opponent’s troops!

Starting with the youngest player, choose your family: Chaufort or Cunningfields. Then, use your bricks to build a castle to fortify your troops. Using your catapult, launch boulders in an attempt to destroy your opponent’s castle and knock over their troops. When all troops of one family are knocked over, the battle is over. The winning family must have at least one troop standing upright.

The game is played in a series of rounds. During a round, starting with the youngest player, everyone takes a turn. Each player’s turn is divided into four phases: Tactics, Aim, Fire and Cleanup. Perform these phases in order, finishing each one before moving to the next. When all players have had their turn, the round finishes. You keep on playing round after round until there is only one player with troops on the table.

Warning! This is a game of construction/destruction of plastic bricks and figures… NOT your opponent, pets, or people who may foolishly pass through the field of battle! Please play fair and be careful not to hurt each other or damage anything… other than your opponent’s attempt at a impenetrable fortress!

In Mar 2022 – a special Ukrainian fundraising edition was added to several crowdfunding forums.

Game Mechanics:

  • Events
  • Movement Template

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.07

Ca$h ‘n Guns

In an abandoned warehouse a gangster band is splitting its loot, but they can’t agree on the split! It’s time to let the guns talk and soon everyone is aiming at everyone. The richest surviving gangster wins the game!

Ca$h ‘n Guns helps you relive the best scenes of your favorite gangster movies. The goal is to have more money than anyone else after eight rounds while still being alive.

Each round, one player is the Boss, and he controls the pace of play. First, loot cards are revealed on the table to show what’s up for grabs. Next, players load their guns by secretly selecting either a “Bang!” or a “Click! Click!” card from their hand. The Boss counts to three, and on “Three” each player points his foam gun at someone else; due to his status, the Boss can tell one player who’s pointing a gun at him that he needs to point it in another direction. After a pause to observe threats and measure the seriousness in an opponent’s eyes, the Boss counts to three again and anyone who doesn’t want to risk getting shot can chicken out and remove themselves from the round.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Negotiation
  • Take That
  • Open Drafting
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 8 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.25

Carcassonne: 20th Anniversary Edition

Carcassonne is a tile-placement game in which the players draw and place a tile with a piece of southern French landscape on it. The tile might feature a city, a road, a cloister, grassland or some combination thereof, and it must be placed adjacent to tiles that have already been played, in such a way that cities are connected to cities, roads to roads, etcetera. Having placed a tile, the player can then decide to place one of their meeples on one of the areas on it: on the city as a knight, on the road as a robber, on a cloister as a monk, or on the grass as a farmer. When that area is complete, that meeple scores points for its owner.

During a game of Carcassonne, players are faced with decisions like: “Is it really worth putting my last meeple there?” or “Should I use this tile to expand my city, or should I place it near my opponent instead, giving him a hard time to complete their project and score points?” Since players place only one tile and have the option to place one meeple on it, turns proceed quickly even if it is a game full of options and possibilities.

Carcassonne: 20th Anniversary Edition is a special edition of Carcassonne to celebrate the 20th anniversary of its Spiel des Jahres win in 2001. This edition includes the tiles from the Carcassonne base game, “The River” mini-expansion (with five new river tiles), “The Abbot” mini-expansion, and a new 15-tile “anniversary” mini-expansion. All tiles are adorned with UV-print, with many detailed easter eggs being hidden in the art. Costume stickers are included in case you wish to “dress” your meeples.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Map Addition
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~35 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.84

Canvas

In Canvas, you play as a painter competing in an art competition. Players will collect art cards, layering 3 of them together to create their own unique Painting. Each card contains a piece of artwork as well as a set of icons used during scoring. Icons will be revealed or hidden based on the way players choose to layer the cards making for an exciting puzzle. Paintings are scored based on a set of Scoring cards which will change each game. Once players have created and scored 3 paintings the game ends.

On your turn you may take an Art card or make a painting. Art cards are selected from a row of cards in the center of play. Each of these cards has a cost associated with their position. After selecting an Art card you must pay its cost by placing an Inspiration token on each of the cards to its left. If you do not have enough Inspiration tokens, you may not select that card. Any tokens on the card you have selected are kept for future turns. The far left card costs no Inspiration tokens to take.

If you have three or more Art cards you may choose to make a painting. Select 3 of your art cards, arrange them in any order and then score them by comparing the visible icons on your painting to the Scoring conditions.

Once all players have made 3 paintings the game ends.

The player with the most points wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.71

Can’t Stop

In this Sid Sackson classic, players must press their luck with dice and choose combinations tactically to close out three columns. The board has one column for each possible total of two six-sided dice, but the number of spaces in each column varies: the more probable a total, the more spaces in that column and the more rolls it takes to complete. On their turn, a player rolls four dice and arranges them in duos: 1 4 5 6 can become 1+4 and 5+6 for 5 & 11, 1+5 and 4+6 for 6 & 10, or 1+6 and 4+5 for 7 & 9. The player places or advances progress markers in the open column(s) associated with their chosen totals, then chooses whether to roll again or end their turn and replace the progress markers with markers of their color. A player can only advance three different columns in a turn and cannot advance a column which any player has closed out by reaching the end space; if a roll doesn’t result in any legal plays, the turn ends with that turn’s progress lost.

A predecessor from 1974, The Great Races, exists as a paper-and-pencil game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Push Your Luck
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.15

Camel Up

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

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!

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