Author: T3d-1978

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island

| T3d-1978
Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island is a game created by Ignacy Trzewiczek, the author of Stronghold. This time Trzewiczek takes the players to a deserted island, where they’ll play the parts of shipwreck survivors confronted by an extraordinary adventure. They’ll be faced with the challenges of building a shelter, finding food, fighting wild beasts, and protecting themselves from weather changes. Building walls around their homes, animal domestication, constructing weapons and tools from what they find, and much more await them on the island. The players decide in which direction the game will unfold and – after several in-game weeks of hard work – how their settlement will look. Will they manage to discover the secret of the island in the meantime? Will they find a pirate treasure, or an abandoned village? Will they discover an underground city or a cursed temple at the bottom of a volcano? Answers to these questions lie in hundreds of event cards and hundreds of object and structure cards that can be used during the game…

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island is an epic game from Portal. You will build a shelter, palisade, weapons, you will create tools like axes, knives, sacks, you will do everything you can to… to survive. You will have to find food, fight wild beasts, protect yourself from weather changes…

Take the role of one of four characters from the ship crew (cook, carpenter, explorer, or soldier) and face the adventure. Use your determination skills to help your teammates, discuss with them your plan, and put it into practice. Debate, discuss, and work on the best plan you all can make.

Search for treasures. Discover mysteries. Follow goals of six different, engaging scenarios. Start by building a big pile of wood and setting it on fire to call for help, and then start new adventures. Become an exorcist on cursed Island. Become a treasure hunter on Volcano Island. Become a rescue team for a young lady who’s stuck on rock island…

Let the adventure live!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Movement
  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Narrative Choice
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.80

Praga Caput Regni

| T3d-1978
Praga Caput Regni

Praga Caput Regni

Charles IV has been crowned King of Bohemia and ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. From his castle in Prague, he oversees construction of new fortifications: a bridge across the Vltava River, a university, and a cathedral rising within the walls of the castle itself. Prague is already among the largest cities in Europe. King Charles will make it the capital of an empire!

In Praga Caput Regni, players take the role of wealthy citizens who are organizing various building projects in medieval Prague. By expanding their wealth and joining in the construction, they gain favor with the king. Players choose from six actions on the game board — the “action crane” — that are always available, but which are weighted with a constantly shifting array of costs and benefits. By using these actions, you can increase your resources, improve the strength of your chosen actions, and build “New Prague City”, the Charles Bridge, or city walls. You can possibly gain additional actions or even participate in the construction of St. Vitus Cathedral.

Clever players will discover synergies between carefully timed actions and the rewards from constructing civic projects as all of the mechanisms mesh together. At the end of the game, the player who most impressed King Charles wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • City Building
  • Puzzle
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.74

Polis

| T3d-1978
Polis

Polis

Polis is a two-player civ-lite game set in the beginning of the conflict between the two major poleis of the 5th century B.C: Athens and the Delian League against Sparta and the Peloponnesian League. The winner will be the Empire with more population and prestige at the end of the game.

Both players must secure their supplies and the routes to five markets to trade with them. Every turn you get goods from a territory where you have population supporting your Empire, but you should feed them.

You can fight to control the territories and siege other polis or you might use your diplomacy to convince a polis to join your league. But polis are proud of their independence so you will have to create some projects to gain prestige needed for your military manoeuvres.

This new edition of Polis has updated revised rules and new art that will enhance your game experience.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.86

Pipeline

| T3d-1978
Pipeline

Pipeline

The refinement of oil has long been part of the government-controlled energy sector. Amassed with an incredibly complex and inefficient system of refineries, the government has felt the severe pressures of worldwide demand and the ever-increasing global standards for refinement. Unable to keep up with demand, the government has only one option: privatizing the oil industry.

This is where you come in. Seeking to capitalize on this new opportunity, in Pipeline you start a company in the oil business. You will focus on building a much more efficient pipeline network in your refinery, hiring experts that provide valuable benefits over your competitors, and managing the logistics of purchasing and selling your refined oil in the various markets. You will need more than strong economic skills – carefully crafting an interweaving network of pipelines just might ensure your victory!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Drafting
  • Economic
  • Network Building
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.89

Pax Pamir

| T3d-1978
Pax Pamir

Pax Pamir

In Pax Pamir, players assume the role of nineteenth century Afghan leaders attempting to forge a new state after the collapse of the Durrani Empire. Western histories often call this period “The Great Game” because of the role played by the Europeans who attempted to use central Asia as a theater for their own rivalries. In this game, those empires are viewed strictly from the perspective of the Afghans who sought to manipulate the interloping ferengi (foreigners) for their own purposes.

In terms of game play, Pax Pamir is a pretty straightforward tableau builder. Players spend most of their turns purchasing cards from a central market, then playing those cards in front of them in a single row called a court. Playing cards adds units to the game’s map and grants access to additional actions that can be taken to disrupt other players and influence the course of the game. That last point is worth emphasizing. Though everyone is building their own row of cards, the game offers many ways for players to interfere with each other directly and indirectly.

To survive, players will organize into coalitions. Throughout the game, the dominance of the different coalitions will be evaluated by the players when a special card, called a “Dominance Check”, is resolved. If a single coalition has a commanding lead during one of these checks, those players loyal to that coalition will receive victory points based on their influence in their coalition. However, if Afghanistan remains fragmented during one of these checks, players instead will receive victory points based on their personal power base.

After each Dominance Check, victory is checked and the game will be partially reset, offering players a fresh attempt to realize their ambitions. The game ends when a single player is able to achieve a lead of four or more victory points or after the fourth and final Dominance Check is resolved.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Negotiation
  • Open Drafting
  • Tableau Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.83

Ora & Labora

| T3d-1978
Ora & Labora

Ora & Labora

In Ora et Labora (Latin for ‘Pray and work’), each player is head of a monastery in the Medieval era who acquires land and constructs buildings – little enterprises that will gain resources and profit. The goal is to build a working infrastructure and manufacture prestigious items – such as books, ceramics, ornaments, and relics – to gain the most victory points at the end of the game.

Ora et Labora, Uwe Rosenberg’s fifth “big” game, has game play mechanisms similar to his Le Havre, such as two-sided resource tiles that can be upgraded from a basic item to something more useful. Instead of adding resources to the board turn by turn as in Agricola and Le Havre, Ora et Labora uses a numbered rondel to show how many of each resource is available at any time. At the beginning of each round, players turn the rondel by one segment, adjusting the counts of all resources at the same time.

Each player has a personal game board. New buildings enter the game from time to time, and players can construct them on their game boards with the building materials they gather, with some terrain restrictions on what can be built where. Some spaces start with trees or moors on them, as in Agricola: Farmers of the Moor, so they hinder development until a player clears the land, but they provide resources when they are removed. Clever building on your personal game board will impact your final score, and players can buy additional terrain during the game, if needed.

Players also have three workers who can enter buildings to take the action associated with that location. Workers must stay in place until you’ve placed all three. You can enter your own buildings with these workers, but to enter and use another player’s buildings, you must pay that player an entry fee so that he’ll move one of his workers into that building to do the work for you.

Ora et Labora features two variants: France and Ireland.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Economic
  • Network Building
  • Tableau Building
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.89

Operation Mercury

| T3d-1978
Operation Mercury

Operation Mercury

Early in the morning on 20 May 1941, as 30,000 Commonwealth soldiers on Crete were finishing breakfast, hundreds of German transport aircraft—some towing gliders—rumbled over the Mediterranean island. The air above was suddenly filled with parachutes as thousands of elite German paratroops—Fallschirmjäger—descended from the sky.

The invasion of Crete was one of the most dramatic battles of the Second World War. Over a nine-day period in May 1941, a mixed force of Commonwealth and Greek troops desperately tried to fight off the German assault. Despite appalling casualties, the paratroopers and glider-borne troops managed to secure a foothold and the critical Maleme Airfield to open the door for the German Gebirgsjäger (mountain troops) to land under fire. Together the Fallschirmjäger and Gebirgsjäger pushed the Commonwealth troops to their breaking point and forced a deadly battle of delay and pursuit.

This was a true soldier’s battle, with both sides in desperate situations often lacking higher-level control and support. The Germans had to quickly secure a usable airfield or face the annihilation of their entire airborne force. The Commonwealth needed to crush the German landings or—failing that—evacuate the bulk of its forces to continue the fight in North Africa and Syria.

The German invasion of Crete in May 1941 stands as a landmark in the history of airborne warfare. Up until that point, airborne operations were tactical operations to seize key objectives in advance of the ground forces. The German invasion of Crete (codenamed Operation Merkur) was the first strategic airborne operation.

Although casualties would mean Crete was the last hurrah for the German airborne in a major air assault, it set the stage for even larger future Allied airborne operations in the Mediterranean, Western Europe, and Asia.

Operation Mercury maintains the same level of detail and scale as other Grand Tactical Series (GTS) games. Players command divisions and maneuver company-sized units to fight one of the most desperate battles of the war. Using the GTS 2.0 rules, Operation Mercury offers two players or teams a wide range of scenarios ranging from a single small map with a few units on each side to the full battle including up to two German divisions and several Commonwealth and Greek brigades. Operation Mercury covers all the major airdrops and fighting across the island from Heraklion in the east, through Rethymnon, and from Maleme to Suda Bay then south to the Askifou Plain, scene of the last major fight during the withdrawal.

As the Commander of Allied forces on Crete, can you deny the Germans a precious airfield and negate their much-needed air-landing reinforcements for a quick victory? Of all operations of war, a withdrawal under heavy enemy pressure is probably the most difficult and perilous. Can you get the bulk of your forces to the southern evacuation ports? As the German, how quickly can you force the collapse of the Commonwealth morale and trigger their withdrawal?

Features include:

  • Shifting Allied morale state based on relative casualties and key events, which can trigger evacuation and end-game victory conditions.
  • Random events, including tank breakdowns, misdirected airstrikes, and partisan attacks.
  • An option for Commonwealth naval support at the risk of losing precious ships to German air attacks.

Thirteen scenarios include:

  • Separate one-map battles for the airdrops at Rethymnon, Heraklion, and the Maleme/Canea sector.
  • A one-map battle for the New Zealand counter-attack to retake Maleme airfield.
  • One-, two-, and three-map battles for the difficult German advance and Commonwealth delay and withdrawal.
  • The full campaign on all five maps or just the main event from Maleme to Askifou Plain on three maps.
  • Hypothetical German precision drops as well as a German free drop scenario.

Game Mechanics:

  • Chit-Pull System
  • Dice Rolling
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~300 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.53

Oath

| T3d-1978
Oath

Oath

In Oath, one to six players guide the course of history in an ancient land. Players might take the role of agents bolstering the old order or scheme to bring the kingdom to ruin. The consequences of one game will ripple through those that follow, changing what resources and actions future players may have at their disposal and even altering the game’s core victory condition.

If a player seizes control by courting anarchy and distrust, future players will have to contend with a land overrun by thieves and petty warlords. In a later game, a warlord might attempt to found a dynasty, creating a line of rulers that might last generations or be crushed by the rise of a terrible, arcane cult.

In Oath, there are no fancy production tricks, app-assisted mechanisms or production gimmicks. The game can be reset at any time and doesn’t require the same play group from one game to the next. A player might use the fully-featured solo mode to play several generations during the week and then use that same copy of the game for Saturday game-night with friends. There are no scripted narratives or predetermined end points. The history embedded in each copy of Oath will grow to be as unique as the players who helped build it.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Campaign
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Negotiation
  • Storytelling
  • Tableau Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.04

Now or Never

| T3d-1978
Now or Never

Now or Never

Far to the south of The Last Ruin lies a cliffside village called The Monument. For generations, it protected an ancient shrine until the day a crystal meteorite descended. The meteor’s denizens slowly crept out into the world—bizarre monstrosities from nightmare, attacking all in their path. As they spread across the land, there was no intelligent malice nor grand invasion strategy; the creatures acted like a fungus—spreading into new territory sporadically. After many fruitless attempts to expel the monsters, the people of The Monument fled as their village crumbled, exiled to distant lands, resigned to a nomadic existence.

Twenty years later, there are rumors that the bizarre monsters are growing weak. They’re slower, less impervious to attack, some undergoing a gradual petrification until they crumble to dust. Is it the atmosphere? Are they dying of old age? Do they suffer from a strange disease? No one is certain, but as the news spreads, various factions set their eyes on the vacant, ruined village of The Monument. The original villagers, now refugees, are desperate to return and rebuild. But they must do it quickly, before someone else claims their home. This is their chance. It’s now or never.

In Now or Never, you and up to three friends compete to best rebuild your ancestral village and guide the rest of the villagers on their journey home. Although the creatures of the meteorite have lost much of their strength, many of them remain, and you must fight them off to protect traveling villagers. Now or Never is the third game in the Arzium storybook series that includes Above and Below and Near and Far.

Now or Never is a competitive strategy game that allows you to:

  • Choose one of four asymmetrical characters to play.
  • Rebuild the village so that returning villagers have a place to live. You must carefully choose what and where to build to maintain an advantage, earning the biggest rewards for long-term planning.
  • Interact with other players by hiring their specialists to perform special actions.
  • Combat dangerous creatures to rescue villagers.
  • Explore a fantasy landscape filled with bizarre places, technology, and peoples.

Now or Never includes two modes of play: standard and story. When playing in story mode, you read from a storybook when you explore, making choices and learning more about the characters and the world. Each character has their own set of stories, unique to the locations they explore and diverse in plot, perspective, and motive, allowing you to choose what direction your own story will take.

Journey to The Monument and help rebuild your ancient home!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Drafting
  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.67

Nevada City

| T3d-1978
Nevada City

Nevada City

You and your family have come to Nevada City to set up a homestead and help the town grow. Will you be able to outperform the other homesteaders?

Each player in Nevada City starts the game with a nuclear family — mother, father, daughter, and son — and a homestead mat where you can establish farms, fence in livestock, and develop silver mines. You start the game with one mine, one farm, and one ranch, along with some money and an assortment of commodities. The town consists of a few buildings, and other buildings will become available for construction as the years advance, with the game lasting four years.

A year lasts a number of turns until all players have used all of their characters and hired workers. On a turn, a player chooses one of their characters and takes actions until all of that character’s actions are spent; a character can’t take the same action during a turn. A character can buy new property from city hall; mine, farm, or ranch their own property; claim a building; construct a building; use an existing building; reserve a contract that has conditions for improving the city; or work to fulfill that contract. Each character and worker has a different set of skills that can boost the actions they take, such as finding additional silver in a mine or bringing lumber to a construction site.

You earn victory points (VPs) for constructing buildings, in addition to fees from those buildings when other players use them. You earn VPs for completing contracts as well, with those contracts having different values depending on which buildings are in place at the time. Each player receives a private goal card at the start of the game, and all players score points for these goal cards based on how well they do relative to other players, so pay attention to their choices.

Each year, various events pop up, leaving players to suffer drought or reap the benefits of fertile land, among other things. At the end of a year, workers leave unless you marry them into a family, which will require spirits and other resources.

Nevada City also includes advanced rules that add additional buildings and events to the game, a gambling subgame of sorts, a more volatile production market to make life in the West less predictable, and extra sons and daughters. On top of all that, the unhired workers at the end of a year get rowdy and start shooting up the town, so you need to use your gunslinging abilities to bring them to heel and try to avoid getting wounded since you might lose out on a character’s abilities in the subsequent year.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Economic
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.55