Author: T3d-1978

Merchants of the Dark Road

| T3d-1978
Merchants of the Dark Road

Merchants of the Dark Road

After half a year of daylight, we must now prepare for the dark season. The roads will be treacherous but they will still need to be braved by a select few in order to keep our cities thriving. In Merchants of the Dark Road, you are one of these brave few merchants that travel the dangerous paths between cities. While the job is perilous, fame and fortune await.

Discover the capital city where most of your actions will take place using a rondel action system. Collect and produce items to add to your caravan, or sell these items to local heroes and hire them to travel with you. Manipulate the market price of items, visit the back alley sellers, or delve a nearby dungeon for magical items to gain the potential for even more coin and notoriety.

Gather lanterns to ease your passage along the dark roads as you guide your caravan to distant villages. Deliver goods and heroes to the best destinations and gain fame for your bravery! Balance the money you earn with the height of your fame because your final score after a number of game rounds will reflect the lowest of these two values.

After all, what good is a purse full of the coin if the people don’t sing songs about you, and what good is a song with an empty mug of ale?

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Rondel
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.12

Merchants & Marauders

| T3d-1978
Merchants & Marauders

Merchants & Marauders

Merchants & Marauders lets you live the life of an influential merchant or a dreaded pirate in the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy. Seek your fortune through trade, rumor hunting, missions, and of course, plundering. Modify your ship, buy impressive vessels, load deadly special ammunition, and hire specialist crew members. Will your captain gain eternal glory and immense wealth – or find his wet grave under the stormy surface of the Caribbean Sea?

In Merchants and Marauders, players take on the role of a captain of a small vessel in the Caribbean. The goal is to be the first to achieve 10 “glory” points through performing daring deeds (through the completion of missions or rumors), crushing your enemies (through defeating opponents and NPCs in combat), amassing gold, performing an epic plunder or pulling off the trade of a lifetime, and buying a grand ship. While some points earned from performing various tasks are permanent, players earn points for amassing gold, which can be stolen or lost (or at least diminished) if their captain is killed. Points due to gold are hidden so there’s some uncertainty about when the game will end.

A big component of the game is whether (or when) to turn “pirate” or remain as a trader or neutral party. Both careers are fraught with danger: pirates are hunted by NPCs (and other players) for their bounty and blocked to certain ports while traders are hunted by non-player pirates as well as their opponents and generally have to sacrifice combat capability for cargo capacity. Although players can kill each other, there is no player elimination as players may draw a new captain (with a penalty) so it’s possible to come back from defeat.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Movement
  • Dice Rolling
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.24

Mayhem: Looney Tunes

| T3d-1978
Mayhem: Looney Tunes

Mayhem: Looney Tunes

Teams of toons square off in Looney Tunes Mayhem, each racing to be the first team to collect 5 victory points (VP).

Looney Tunes Mayhem is built around the “Mayhem System”, a system for character vs. character team-based combat in which the most direct method for a team to gain VP is by KOing their opponents. Characters use items and powers to battle the enemy team, with battle damage changing each round based on the mayhem die. When a character is KOed, they are removed from the board and their opponent gains VPs, with the KOed character returning to play next round.

When you’re not fighting, you might be able to gain VPs from classic cartoon locations. The “Poker Stars” location, for example, allows a toon that moves onto it to try their luck; if you roll a star on the mayhem die, your team collects a VP immediately. The “Home Sweet Home” location gives your team a VP the first time both characters from your team arrive there. The “Desert Road” location gives out ACME deliveries, providing characters with additional effects to make their opponents go KABOOM!

Game Mechanics:

  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Massive Darkness 2

| T3d-1978
Massive Darkness 2

Massive Darkness 2

Ten years have passed since the Lightbringers drove back the hordes of the Darkness and sealed the Portal from whence they came. The heroes thought their job done, but the newfound peace was never meant to last. Dangerous new Portals have suddenly opened up all across the land. The Darkness and its hordes are flooding through, stronger than ever. It will not be enough to simply close the Portals this time. The Lightbringers must travel through them into the unknown to destroy the Darkness once and for all. Either Light will triumph, or the Darkness will consume every being in the world. This is where players find themselves in Massive Darkness 2, a new edition of the hit dungeon-crawler game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.64

Marvel Champions

| T3d-1978
Marvel Champions

Marvel Champions

“With great power, there must also come great responsibility.”
–Stan Lee, Amazing Fantasy #15

Iron Man and Black Panther team up to stop Rhino from rampaging through the streets of New York. Captain Marvel and Spider-Man battle Ultron as he threatens global annihilation. Do you have what it takes to join the ranks of these legendary heroes and become a champion?

Jump into the Marvel Universe with Marvel Champions: The Card Game, a cooperative Living Card Game for one to four players!

Marvel Champions: The Card Game invites players to embody iconic heroes from the Marvel Universe as they battle to stop infamous villains from enacting their devious schemes. As a Living Card Game, Marvel Champions is supported with regular releases of new product, including new heroes and scenarios.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Tableau Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.89

Margraves of Valeria

| T3d-1978
Margraves of Valeria

Margraves of Valeria

Margraves of Valeria is a hand-building worker-placement game set in the fantasy world of Valeria. It’s the fifth stand-alone game in the series that introduces new twists to Valeria world!

You are a Margrave, a military commander tasked with defending the land of Valeria and building magical Ward Towers at cities. Knights in Valeria can be commanded by you or your fellow Margraves to slay monsters or activate locations in an effort to gain influence over the 4 Guilds: Worker, Soldier, Shadow, and Holy. As you gain influence, you’ll cross thresholds that will earn you privilege tiles which give you bonuses.

At the end of the game, you’ll earn victory points based on how much influence you have over a Guild and how many icons you’ve gained of that Guild. The Margrave with the most victory points at the end of the game will be named a Duke or Duchess and given their own province to protect and grow!

Turns are deceptively simple as you only get to play 1 Citizen card from your hand. Each card can be played for action icons in the pennant (top-left), power text (at the bottom), or played face-down to perform one of the two actions on your player board (Recall your cards or Build a Ward Tower).

Key features include:

  • Hand Building – Much like deck-building, you are drafting cards into your hand increasing your powers, victory points, and options.
  • Multi-use Cards – Each card can be used in one of four ways, leaving you a lot of decision-making room to execute your strategy.
  • Worker-Placement – Each time you move your Margrave or a Knight into a location, you activate the power of that location much like a worker placement game.
  • Shared Workers – The Knights on the game board do not belong to a single player (anyone can use them) so be careful not to setup your opponents with powerful turns.
  • Resource Management – You have limited storage spots on your player board and using them effectively (without wasting tokens) is key to winning the game.
  • Hero Tombs – As you send Knights into battle, they die glorious deaths and are sent to tombs where you can collect bonuses in a well-integrated mini-game.
  • Influence Track – Gain influence over the 4 Guilds by moving your markers across the tracks which will earn you more victory points at the end of the game for icons you collect.
  • Fantastic Art – As with previous Valeria games, the Mico has really outdone himself by creating a rich and dynamic world full of color and life.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Deck Building
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.64

Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan

| T3d-1978
Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan

Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan

The journeys of Marco Polo continue in Marco Polo II: In the Service of the Khan, an epic follow-up to The Voyages of Marco Polo. After traveling to Beijing, your travels now take you back to the West in the service of the Khan, sending you to the farthest reaches of his empire in search of wealth and fame.

Marco Polo II is a standalone game based on The Voyages of Marco Polo, and you don’t need the original game to play this one. This new journey will present unique challenges, with new and different actions, new scoring rules, and a new good: rare and valuable Chinese jade.

Retread old paths with renewed purpose, or find new ones as you explore farther west, continuing to build the immortal legacy of Marco Polo!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.37

Mansions of Madness

| T3d-1978
Mansions of Madness

Mansions of Madness

In the skies above the Atlantic, a dirigible’s peaceful journey is interrupted by a bloody act of revenge and an oncoming storm. On the sea far below, a treacherous saboteur plants the explosives that will sink a ship. In the New England countryside, a train billows black smoke, desperately fleeing an unimaginable threat.

Horrific Journeys is a deluxe expansion for Mansions of Madness which unlocks three thrilling scenarios that take four new investigators far from Arkham, solving mysteries aboard a bustling transatlantic airship, a luxury ocean liner, and a scenic countryside train. With new map tiles, puzzles, monsters, and mythos events, these brave men and women must contend with hideous amphibian monstrocities and interdimensional creatures tearing holes in the fabric of reality all with the knowledge that one wrong move can destroy the very vessels they are trying to protect! In order to arrive at their destinations, the investigator of Arkham must first survive their journey!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Puzzle
  • Role Playing
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.66

The Magnificent

| T3d-1978
The Magnificent

The Magnificent

The Magnificent is a tightly designed Eurogame from the creators of Santa Maria set in a mystical world beautifully illustrated by French artist Martin Mottet.

In the game, players are competing to attract the largest audiences to their shows, featuring magnificent performers. In the process, you must expand your camp by placing Tetris-style tiles on your player board, gather elements needed for the shows, and set up performances in your tents.

On your turn, you take one die from the supply. The value of the chosen die is your strength. Add to this the value of all dice of the same color that you have already collected, then use this strength to carry out one of three main actions: build, travel or perform. The more strength you have, the better the action will be, but at the end of the round, you must pay — in coins — the total of your highest-valued dice color. Thus, taking dice of the same color makes for better actions, but will cost more coins.

After each player has taken four turns, the round ends. Each player must discard one of their ringmaster cards and score points according to its requirements. After three rounds, the game ends, and the player who has collected the most points wins.

In more detail, players start the game with four ringmaster cards and a unique trainer tile. Each ringmaster card provides a special ability (which is triggered when you place a die on it) and a unique end-of-round scoring opportunity. When you choose a ringmaster card to discard and score at the end of the round, you must therefore also take into consideration which special abilities you want to keep.

In addition to your main action, you may use trainers on your personal unique trainer tiles or on common trainer spaces on the game board for various benefits.

At the end of each round, in order of the players’ highest-ranked performances, players choose a new ringmaster card and a trainer tile, providing new abilities and scoring opportunities for the next round.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Dice Drafting
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Grid Coverage
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.14

Maglev Metro

| T3d-1978
Maglev Metro

Maglev Metro

In Maglev Metro, utilize state-of-the-art magnetic levitation technology to build a metropolitan rail system, transporting workers and robots beneath the city. Replace aging Manhattan and Berlin subway systems with newer, faster, quieter technology. Enhance your rail system’s abilities so that your passengers arrive at their destinations first.

Efficiency is your key to success in this pick-up-and-deliver, tile-laying, engine-building game. Transparent tiles allow your route to overlap your opponents’ tracks, winding you along from station to station. Robots efficiently upgrade and adjust your abilities, leveraging unique goals to maximize points. By the end of the game, the game board has morphed into a modern subway map, with brightly-colored routes connecting stations all over the city.

Maglev Metro contains two unique maps.

Game Mechanics:

  • Network Building
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.74