Author: T3d-1978

Agent Avenue

| T3d-1978

Agent Avenue is a competitive card game that combines bluffing, strategic set collection, and a race to uncover your opponent’s identity. Set in a colorful anthropomorphic world, players assume the roles of retired spies in a suburban neighborhood, outsmarting each other with cards that can score points or trigger special effects. The game’s art brings to life a quirky neighborhood of animal spies.

Use a unique “I split, you choose” mechanic to play one card face-up and one face-down each turn. Your opponent chooses one, influencing both your strategies. Cards feature different agents and tools that impact scoring and game progress on a track, advancing the “catch me” race to uncover the opposing spy.

Outwit your opponents by strategically collecting agent sets and effectively using spy tools. The game ends when a player successfully uncovers their opponent, combining both strategic depth and bluffing elements.

Perfect for those who love a mix of strategy and lighthearted competition, “Agent Avenue” challenges you to think like a spy and act like a friendly neighbor.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Race
  • Set Collection
  • Track Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 10 – 20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.30

Dominion: Rising Sun

| T3d-1978

We journey now to the islands to the east – or west, depending on where you are relative to them. Here your title is Emperor. They tell you you’re just a figurehead, though you can still order whatever breakfast you want. They may be right; you did get that breakfast. Your ceremonial sword and armor are made of paper. The samurai never let you into their tea parties, and the ninjas are always tying your shoelaces together. And the epic poem they wrote about you is only 17 syllables long. Rice has been adopted as currency, and no-one seems to even be trying to get your face onto the grains. But when you wake up each morning and look out over the land, life doesn’t seem so bad. Now, what’s for breakfast?

This is the 16th expansion to Dominion.

It has 300 cards, with 25 new Kingdom card piles. There are Shadow cards that leap out from your deck, and Prophecies that will someday happen and change everything. Debt and Events return.

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck, Bag, and Pool Building
  • Delayed Purchase
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Doggerland

| T3d-1978

Doggerland was a landmass that connected Great Britain to mainland Europe that disappeared under the North Sea after the last ice age. Humans lived on these fertile lands where multiple resources and animals were found.

In Doggerland, you play a clan at around 15,000 BCE. Your goal is to expand your clan in order to leave a trace of its existence for centuries to come. Players increase their population, make crafts, paint murals in caves, raise megaliths for the gods, and (most of all) survive the rigors of the seasons. To do this, they explore the surrounding territory and adapt to the resources at their disposal. The territory differs in each game, thanks to modular tiles.

Each round, players program their actions, then carry them out. These actions vary, based on available resources, abundance or scarcity around their villages, and also based on the actions of other players. As time passes, resources run out, and clans must migrate to find what they need for their development and survival.

In each clan, there is a leader who brings bonuses, and a shaman who allows powerful and unique actions thanks to knowledge and magic. After 6-8 seasons, the clan with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Programmed Movement
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.29

Doctor Who: The Card Game

| T3d-1978

Daleks, Cybermen, Sontarans – The list of threats is endless and no place in the universe is ever truly safe from danger, but there is one man who has made it his mission to defend the defenseless, help the helpless, and save everyone he can: a mysterious stranger, a force of nature who has seen his own planet die, a madman with a box.

In Doctor Who: The Card Game, players act as the Doctor and his companions to defend specific locations while sending the Doctor’s enemies to conquer locations your opponents are trying to protect. Each player starts the game with one location, and cards in the deck consist of attackers, defenders, locations and support cards. To start a turn, you draw two cards, pick up any cards banked from a previous turn, and take the three cards passed to you earlier by the player on your left. You play or bank cards until you have only three in hand, then pass those to the player on your right and end your turn.

Attackers target specific locations and earn points for the player wielding them if they’re in play at the end of the game. Defenders try to remove attackers so that the location owner scores points for protecting the location. Support cards provide different abilities, such as enlarging your bank or providing time points (which can be used to draw additional cards). Whoever has the most points at the end of the game wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Secret Unit Deployment
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.97

Dungeons & Dragons: Castle Ravenloft Board Game

| T3d-1978

Castle Ravenloft Boardgame by Bill Slavicsek, Mike Mearls and Peter Lee
The master of Ravenloft is having guests for dinner – and you are invited!
Evil lurks in the towers and dungeons of Castle Ravenloft, and only heroes of exceptional bravery can survive the horrors within. Designed for 1-5 players, this boardgame features multiple scenarios, challenging quests, and cooperative gameplay.

Each player selects a hero; a ranger, rogue, warrior, cleric, or wizard. On their turn, each player can explore further into the dungeon (turn over new tiles), move through the already explored parts of the dungeon, and fight monsters. When a new dungeon tile is revealed, there is typically an encounter of some sort, and new monsters to fight are added. Slain monsters reward the players with treasure, and experience points, allowing them to level up and increase their skills during play. Players must cooperate to stay alive, slay the monsters, and achieve the goal of their quest. Each scenario has a different goal – from retrieving a relic, to slaying a vampire lord.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative Game
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Modular Board
  • Role Playing
  • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.50

Djinn

| T3d-1978

Once your ancestors found or created a source of magic – the exact knowledge of its origin, as far as you know, has long been lost. A small community has developed around the source, which seeks to protect this place and keep it as secret as possible.

Unfortunately, some magical beings — half corporeal, half ethereal — have now tracked down this source. These beings of dubious character, which you call “Djinn”, have appeared in various places of the city to dispute your access to the source. You are young members of the Magic Guild, and to prove your abilities, you are tasked with capturing the Djinn so that they can do no harm. You can control them permanently only if you catch them in special Djinn bottles. To seal these bottles, you also need corks made from the bark of a tree near the magic source.

Whichever of you succeeds best in protecting your small town will be accepted into the inner circle of the Magic Guild and will soon be allowed to learn even more secrets…

In Djinn, you take turns moving across a map that shows thirteen locations. These locations are linked to actions where you can get the resources you need and catch the Djinn that are in six locations. In those locations you can do things like receive bottles and corks, collect magical power, buy magical items, hire mages to accompany you, discover secret passages, and more.

In each round, you can reach only one of two or three of the locations, so you must plan carefully to have all the resources you need in time to catch the Djinn. The game ends when all six “Boss Djinn” have been captured and removed from the map, then you score points for all captured Djinn.

-description from developer

Game Mechanics:

  • End Game Bonuses
  • Grid Movement
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.92

Divinity Derby

| T3d-1978

Zeus has invited a bunch of divine friends, including a couple of new ones, from all around the Multiverse for a little get-together on Mount Olympus…and you are one of them! After a few rounds of ambrosia, soon the racing and betting begins, with the Olympic “All-father” as the ultimate judge.

Divinity Derby is a fun and fast betting and racing game for 3 to 6 players, with a clever “shared hand” card mechanism. Players, as god-like beings betting on the race of six flying creatures, share a cardholder with each neighbor, and every turn they play one card from each shared card holder. Are you able to guess what your neighbor’s intentions and secret bets are and make the best use of the shared knowledge to win your bets?

With beautiful components, colorful art, and simple but engaging gameplay, Divinity Derby is suitable for players of all ages and skill levels.

Game Mechanics:

  • Betting and Bluffing
  • Neighbor Scope
  • Open Drafting
  • Track Movement
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.91

Diplomacy

| T3d-1978

In Diplomacy, each player represents one of the seven “Great Powers of Europe” (Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy, Russia or Turkey) in the years prior to World War I. Play begins in the Spring of 1901, and players must negotiate and make deals with other players in order to have any success in expanding their borders. They will make both Spring and Autumn moves each year. with two kinds of military units: armies and fleets. On any given turn, each of your military units has limited options: it can move into an adjoining territory, support an allied unit in an attack on an adjoining territory, support an allied unit in defending an adjoining territory, or hold its position. Players instruct each of their units by writing a set of “orders.” The outcome of the various orders is basically determined by the total strength of the units involved. There are no dice rolls or other elements of chance. With its incredibly simplistic movement mechanism fused to a significant negotiation element, this system is highly respected by many gamers.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Area Movement
  • Negotiation
  • Player Elimination
  • Prisoner’s Dilemma
  • Simulation
  • Simultaneous Action Selection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 7 Players
  • 360 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.33

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write

| T3d-1978

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write is a roll-and-write version of the critically-acclaimed game Dinosaur Island.

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write is a unique game in which players draft dice and then use those drafted dice as workers in a worker placement phase. Then, a fun polyomino puzzle ensues as you try and fit all your attractions and Dinosaurs into your park while buildings roads and routes to the exits for bonus points. At the end of the game, have more victory points than your opponents to win!

Game Mechanics:

  • Connections
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Coverage
  • Network and Route Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Paper-and-Pencil
  • Worker Placement with Dice Workers

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.84

Big Sur

| T3d-1978

Cruise along California’s State Route 1 on the Big Sur Coast Highway to check out the views and landmarks along the most scenic driving route in the world — or rather, invite others to cruise on the highway that you build over the course of play.

In Big Sur, players draft cards to use them either as resources to build new road sections or as the road sections themselves. Your linear path of cards will score for connecting terrain types and meeting other conditions. You can also add notable landmarks to your highway for other unique scoring conditions; these landmarks are based on actual scenic lookouts and locations on Big Sur.

Game Mechanics:

  • Multi-Use Cards
  • Pattern Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00