Author: T3d-1978

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice

| T3d-1978

Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice is a co-operative miniature board game taking place in the heart of the Italian Renaissance through a story-driven campaign of 26 “memories” in Venice, in 1509. Choose your assassins according to their unique abilities, level up during the campaign, and unlock new skills for each of them.

Fight or stay incognito thanks to the equipment found in chests or manufactured by Leonardo Da Vinci. Evade your pursuers by climbing on roofs and towers, then synchronize to reveal new game elements. Bribe your enemies, use secret hideouts to escape patrols, and flip mechanisms to change the level layout. After each memory, fall back to your headquarters to heal your wounds, grow your brotherhood’s fame, and craft special equipment. The game features a save system that allows the number of players to vary between each campaign and the level of play adjusts according to the number of players.

The retail edition of Assassin’s Creed: Brotherhood of Venice features the same scenarios as the original Kickstarter release and therefore the same gameplay experience. What has changed is that all of the miniatures other than the five detailed assassin figurines have been replaced with standees, so the game includes 5 miniatures, 139 standees, 6 secret envelopes, 41 tiles, and more than 400 cards.

Many surprises await in the sealed envelopes. Meet the many famous personalities you’ve encountered in the Assassin’s Creed video games as well as four unique ones created especially for this game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative Game
  • Modular Board, Campaign
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Storytelling
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.13

Ascension: Dawn of Champions

| T3d-1978

Where there were once six realms, now only a single remains: New Vigil. In Ascension: Dawn of Champions, you take on the role of your faction’s Champion to guide them to victory in this world of new alliances and ancient foes.

New Champion cards let you play as a faction leader, building your reputation to unlock powerful cards and effects. This set also includes new multi-faction cards to acquire and defeat, including Constructs and Monsters!

As with all other Ascension sets, Ascension: Dawn of Champions can be played as a standalone game or combined with other Ascension games.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25

Artifacts, Inc.

| T3d-1978

New York, 1929: A frenzy of interest in antiquity is sweeping the nation! With museums hungry for mysterious and exotic artifacts — and you hungry for adventure — you start up your own archeology company. Untold wonders await within dangerous jungles, harsh deserts, and wind-swept mountains. Will you gain a reputation as the most intrepid and famous adventurer of all time?

In Artifacts, Inc., 2-4 players compete to grow the most famous archaeology company. Players roll dice, which represent their troop of adventurers, and place them on cards in order to find artifacts, sell them to museums, and purchase new cards representing their company assets. Players can choose to focus on making lots of money by selling artifacts, having museum majorities, creating the best combination of expeditions and buildings, or searching below the waves for lost cities and hidden treasures. The first player to reach 20 reputation triggers the end of the game, and the player with the most total reputation wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Open Drafting
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.16

Arcs

| T3d-1978

Arcs is a sharp, tactical space opera game, for 2–4 players, set in a dark yet silly universe. Players represent officials from a distant, decaying and neglectful Empire who are now free to vie for dominance whether through battle, gathering scarce resources or diplomatic intrigue. Ready yourself for dramatic twists and turns as you launch into this galactic struggle.

A deck of cards in 4 suits with ranks from 1-7 (2-6 for less than 4 players) defines the action selection system. These cards are played in a trick-taking adjacent system to select actions, take the initiative and declare Ambitions. The 3 declared Ambitions are what will score in that deal. Timing is everything. Bad hands must be mitigated by careful card play and benefitting from other players’ card play.

Battles are resolved quickly with the attacker choosing their level of risk. The defenders must be prepared with adequate defensive ships and cards in their tableau.

Each game contains a hundred wooden ships and agents, 18 custom engraved dice, a beautiful six-panel board, and tons of cards with over 60 pieces of unique art. The base game may be played without the optional Leaders and Lore cards (for an easier teach) or with them for a richer, fuller and asymmetric game. It is also the core of the campaign game (requiring the Blighted Reach Expansion), which provides an epic, more thematic experience.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Campaign
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Take That
  • Trick-taking
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.40

Arboretum

| T3d-1978

Arboretum is a strategy card game for 2-4 players, aged 10 and up, that combines set collection, tile-laying and hand management while playing in about 25 minutes. Players try to have the most points at the end of the game by creating beautiful garden paths for their visitors.

The deck has 80 cards in ten different colors, with each color featuring a different species of tree; each color has cards numbered 1 through 8, and the number of colors used depends on the number of players. Players start with a hand of seven cards. On each turn, a player draws two cards (from the deck or one or more of the discard piles), lays a card on the table as part of her arboretum, then discards a card to her personal discard pile.

When the deck is exhausted, players compare the cards that remain in their hands to determine who can score each color. For each color, the player(s) with the highest value of cards in hand of that color scores for a path of trees in her arboretum that begins and ends with that color; a path is a orthogonally adjacent chain of cards with increasing values. For each card in a path that scores, the player earns one point; if the path consists solely of trees of the color being scored, the player scores two points per card. If a player doesn’t have the most value for a color, she scores zero points for a path that begins and ends with that color. Whoever has the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Diffi0culty Weight 2.13

Aquabats!, The, Super Showdown

| T3d-1978

In The Aquabats! Super Showdown! card game, two to four players are villains competing to capture all five members of The Aquabats, the world’s greatest superhero rock band.

The game consists of three types of cards: Monster cards, Action cards, and Aquabats cards. Monster cards have colors and power levels. Each turn, a player plays a Monster card and draws a new Monster card. If the card played is of the same color and a higher power level than the card previously played, that player may draw both a Monster card and an Action card. At the start of a player’s turn, a Battle card or Epic Battle card may be played, challenging one player or all players respectively to a showdown. Each player in the battle must play a Monster card, and the winner may take an Aquabat card from the table or, if none remain, steal one from the defeated player.

Shrink Ray cards enable a challenged player to diminish the power of an aggressor; X-Ray cards allow one to peak at another player’s hand; Antibats cards foil the winner of a battle from taking a loser’s Aquabat card; and Steal cards can be used to acquire another player’s Aquabat card without a battle.

Play continues until one player acquires all five Aquabat cards or until War is mutually declared, in which case the winner of a single round Epic Battle is declared the game’s victor.

Game Mechanics:

  •  Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 10 – 20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

Apiary 🟡

| T3d-1978

In a far-distant future, humans no longer inhabit Earth. The cause of their disappearance (or perhaps their demise) is unknown, but their absence left a void ready to be filled by another sentient species.

Over the span of untold generations, one species of the humble honeybee evolved to fill that void. They grew in size and intelligence to become a highly advanced society. They call themselves Mellifera, and they have made substantial technological advances in addition to the technology they adapted from human ruins, up to and including space travel.

In Apiary, each player controls one of twenty unique factions. Your faction starts the game with a hive, a few resources, and worker bees. A worker-placement, hive-building challenge awaits you: explore planets, gather resources, develop technologies, and create carvings to demonstrate your faction’s strengths (measured in victory points) over one year’s Flow. However, the Dearth quickly approaches, and your workers can take only a few actions before they must hibernate! Can you thrive or merely survive?

Game Mechanics:

  • Income
  • Multi-Use Cards
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.97

Antiquity Quest 🔵

| T3d-1978

Your goal in Antiquity Quest is to have the highest score a the end of the game. You can choose to play either a single round for a quick game (20-30 min) or a complete game in which you’ll tally scores over three rounds (60-90 min)

Each player is dealt two sets of 10 cards at the start of a round. You’ll pick up one set, this is called a hand. The second set, called a cache, remains face down on the table until you’ve played all of the cards from your hand.

You’ll take turns drawing, playing, and discarding cards as you work on creating your own collections and sabotaging the collections that belong to other players.

Collections consist of Antiquity and Treasure cards. The six suits of Antiquity cards represent six ancient civilizations. Treasures are their own suit and are more rare and valuable. The more challenging a collection is to create. the more it’s worth.

A round ends once a player has completed at least five collections and played through all of the cards in their hand and cache. That player earns a bonus for going out first. Every other player takes on last turn and then scores are tallied.

Your score at the end of each round is the combination of bonus points from going out first, points for completing collections ,and points for the cards you play. The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins.

Here’s what to expect in this bold and exciting set collection game:

You’ll strive to create collections of Antiquities and Treasures.

The more challenging a collection is to create, the more it’s worth.

Beware! Your competitors can, and will seek to sabotage your efforts.

Careful planning, brilliant strategy, and a stroke of luck will bring you success!

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 8 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.20

Andromeda’s Edge 🟠

| T3d-1978

Behold, Andromeda’s Edge: A dazzling, uncharted region of space on the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy. Littered with the modular debris of the precursor civilization, patrolled by malicious extragalactic raiders, and bordered by dense nebulae, The Edge is a last resort for the brave and foolhardy who seek a new life beyond the oppressive reach of the Lords of Unity.

In this game, you lead a desperate faction seeking to build a new civilization on Andromeda’s Edge. You begin with only a space station, a few ships, and a handful of resources. By carefully placing your ships, you will gather resources, claim moons, acquire modules to add to your station, populate planets and build developments on them. You will battle opponents and compete with others to ascend the progress tracks: Science, Industry, Commerce, Civilization and Supremacy.

On your turn, you either launch a starship or return your ships to your station. Launching sends one of your starships to a region of Andromeda, either collecting resources from planetary systems or taking actions at Alliance Bases. If the region is occupied by your opponents or fearsome raiders, face off in a dice battle, with Supremacy on the line but where strategic manipulation can turn a loss into a reward. Returning to your station allows you to activate your engine, using the modules you’ve acquired to generate energy, gain resources and carry out actions.

Throughout the game you will build up your unique faction, building developments (Observatories, Factories, Spaceports, Cities and Obelisks) and gaining station modules which move you up the progress tracks. Advancement on the tracks is rewarded both during mid-game events and at the conclusion, and is the key to victory.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 80 – 160 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.71

Altiplano 🟡

| T3d-1978

Altiplano is a bag-building game along the lines of Orléans, set in the South American highlands of the Andes (the “Altiplano”). The competition for limited resources is considerable, as it was in Orléans, but the greater focus in Altiplano is on building up your own production to be the best that it can be – or at least better than that of the other players!

The object of the game is for players to use their goods to produce more goods that will be worth points in the end. Each player starts with a unique role tile, giving them access to different goods and methods of production. Players have limited access to production at the start, but they can acquire additional production sites during the game that open up new options. The various types of goods — such as fish, alpaca, cacao, silver and corn — all have their own characteristics and places where they can be used. For example, silver can be sold for a high price at the market, fish can be exchanged for other goods at the harbor and alpaca can produce wool at the farm that can then be made into cloth.

Aside from building up an effective production, players must fulfill their orders at the right time, develop the road in good time and store their goods cleverly enough to fill their warehouses in the most valuable way. Often, a good warehouse keeper is more relevant in the end than the best producer.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Contracts
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.29