Author: T3d-1978

Kardashev Scale

| T3d-1978
Kardashev Scale

Kardashev Scale

The Kardashev scale is a method of measuring a civilization’s level of technological advancement based on the amount of energy it is able to use.

  • A Type I civilization, also called a Planetary civilization — can use and store all of the energy available on its planet.
  • A Type II civilization, also called a Stellar civilization — can use and control energy at the scale of its planetary system.
  • A Type III civilization, also called a Galactic civilization — can use and control energy at the scale of its entire host galaxy.

Race your neighboring planets for control of the galaxy by achieving technological and cultural advancements that harness the energy of your people and your planet. Engage in conflict, trade, or research as a means to cultivate your civilization, capture the energy of your home star, and ultimately the energy of the entire galaxy! The most advanced civilization at the end of the game wins!

Each round, you’ll choose one of four actions to perform at a Summit: collecting one of 3 types of resources or purchasing Advancements. In a rock-paper-scissors fashion, you will compare your chosen action to the actions chosen by your left and right neighbors. Win against one or both of them, and you’ll collect 2 of your chosen resources. Tie and you’ll gain 1. Lose, and you gain nothing. If you chose instead to Advance, you won’t get any resources (and your neighbors will each gain 2 of their chosen resource), you will be able to purchase an Advancement card which will give you VPs and allow you to start building your engine. The game ends once one player reaches 25 or more VPs, and the player with the most points is the winner!

Game Mechanics:

  • Civilization
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Kanagawa

| T3d-1978
Kanagawa

Kanagawa

1840: In Kanagawa, the great bay of Tokyo, the Master Hokusai decided to open a painting school to share his art with his disciples. You are one of these disciples, and more than anything, you want to prove yourself worthy of the “crazy, old artist”. Follow his teachings to expand your studio and paint your preferred subjects (Trees, Animals, Characters, Buildings), all while paying attention to the changing of the seasons in order to make the most harmonious print… the one that will become the work of your lifetime!

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.02

Kamigami Battles: River of Souls

| T3d-1978
Kamigami Battles: River of Souls

Kamigami Battles: River of Souls

Kamigami Battles: River of Souls is a standalone game and the first set for Kamigami Battles: Battle of the Nine Realms. The gameplay remains mostly the same as you play the role of a great God or a team of Gods, defending your reign from rival Gods by using the warriors and disciples loyal to you. However, in this version each player chooses to be a God of Egyptian or Babylonian Mythology and uses that God to take control of the cosmos.

When playing with 2 to 6 players, you win by reducing all of the other Gods to 0 energy or by reaching 25 energy. When in a Team Match, you play with 4 or 6 players teamed up in pairs of two. You will have one Main God and a Support God. A team wins together if they can eliminate the opposing team’s Main God.

River of Souls also includes six temple cards, your Gods place of worship. Temples provide the Gods, through a High Priest, Energy when they need it. They can be attacked instead of the opponent’s God and their Energy is reduced as in a normal attack. A Temple with 0 Energy is destroyed and turned face down.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Juicy Fruits

| T3d-1978
Juicy Fruits

Juicy Fruits

Each player has their own small island paradise where they grow delicious fruit. To win, you must gain the most points by cleverly supplying ships and by adding the best businesses to your island.

Your turn in Juicy Fruits works like this: First, you slide one of your fruit collector tokens a number of unblocked spaces and collect that many fruits of the token’s type: banana, orange, lime, pomegranate, or mangosteen. Then you may either fulfill the order of a ship on your shores or claim a business from a shared display and place it onto your island (or do nothing). Clever planning and timing is vital because until you supply the ships on your shores, they block valuable island space which could be used to collect more fruit — but if you concentrate too much on the ships, the most promising businesses may get snatched by your opponents. Also, the sooner businesses are claimed, the quicker the game might end.

With each play, Juicy Fruits poses new puzzles of how to move your tokens efficiently and how to balance clearing your island with claiming businesses. The game also includes an additional “juice factory” mode and four modes of solo play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Jaws

| T3d-1978
Jaws

Jaws

In JAWS, one player takes on the role of the killer shark off Amity Island, while the other 1-3 players take on the roles of Brody, Hooper and Quint to hunt the shark. Character and event cards define player abilities and create game actions for humans and the shark. Gameplay is divided into two acts — Amity Island and The Orca — played on a double-sided board to replicate the film’s story:

  • In the Amity Island phase, the shark menaces swimmers and avoids capture. Other players attempt to pinpoint the shark’s location and save swimmers from shark attacks.
  • In the Orca phase, played on the reverse side of the game board, Brody, Hooper and Quint are aboard the sinking ship engaging in a climactic battle against the shark, while using additional action and strategy cards to defend the Orca from targeted shark attacks.

If humans kill the shark, they win; if the shark attack on the Orca succeeds, the great white shark wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Movement
  • Hidden Movement
  • Player Elimination
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.20

Jamaica The Crew

| T3d-1978
Jamaica The Crew

Jamaica The Crew

Jamaica: The Crew is a set of twenty characters, each with a special power, that add flavor to the game without any big changes in the rules. The characters may be hired when you’re able to pay for the fee of a harbor, and they are “loaded” like any other resource, following the same rules.

You might find it enticing to add several characters to your boat — especially since most of them earn you additional gold at the end of the game — but with fewer holds dedicated to the regular resources, navigation becomes more dicey. All in all, more challenge, more silly fun, more Jamaica.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Racing

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.89

Iwari

| T3d-1978
Iwari

Iwari

Evermore have they walked the world of Iwari. Evermore have they embodied its spirit and shaped its lands. They are stewards of the earth. Five Titans that make the cosmos breath. On Iwari, there are no teeming masses, no continent-wide civilizations. Humanity is in its infancy, living in scattered tribes in forest, tundra, and desert.

Now we have left our ancestral homelands to explore the vast uncharted regions, encountering other fellow tribes and exchanging knowledge, culture and wisdom. In our journey, we all live in harmony with the Titans, and though distant to us, they decide our fate. And yet only we don’t know if they created us, or we created them.

Iwari is an abstract-like Eurogame in which players represent different tribes looking for their identity by traveling around far lands and expanding their settlements into five different regions on the board. In the game, players use cards for two different actions:

1) Place tents and expand their settlements into five different regions on the board in a majority game that scores on each territory.
2) Construct nature totems to bond with the Titans by placing them on regions and score points based on the totem majorities in adjacent territories.

During the game, players can complete missions that grant small perks and score points by having the majority of tents in each territory after the end of the first card cycle. At game end, the majority of tents will be scored again, along with the majorities of nature totems in two adjacent regions and settlements that players have created (i.e., four or more tents in an uninterrupted sequence along one of the roads on the board).

Iwari reimagines the award-winning game Web of Power by Michael Schacht by adding new layers of strategy, tribe player boards, different maps with their own set of rules, modules that can be added to the game, and unique co-operative and solo modes.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Area Control
  • Cooperative
  • Hand Management
  • Network Building
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.15

It’s a Wonderful World

| T3d-1978
It's a Wonderful World

It's a Wonderful World

In It’s a Wonderful World, you are an expanding Empire and must choose your path to your future. You must develop faster and better than your competitors. You’ll carefully plan your expansion to develop your production power and rule over this new world.

It’s a Wonderful World is a cards drafting and engine building game from 1 to 5 players. Each round, players will draft 7 cards and then choose which ones will be recycled to immediately acquire Resources, and which ones will be kept for construction to produce Resources each round and/or gain victory points.

When a card is fully built, it’s added to the player’s Empire to increase the player’s production capacity for each round. The mechanical twist being that the production phase works in a specific order. You’ll have to plan your constructions carefully!

Game Mechanics:

  • Civilization
  • Closed Drafting
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.30

It’s a Wonderful Kingdom

| T3d-1978
It's a Wonderful Kingdom

It's a Wonderful Kingdom

It’s a Wonderful Kingdom is a standalone solo or 2-player game in a Low-Fantasy universe. Inspired by the core mechanics of its predecessor “It’s a Wonderful World”, this new game offers more interaction, a bluff mechanism and new challenges.

The game is played using modules, each different and offering mechanical twists. Each game, players will choose one of the different modules to compete against each other. The game is divided into 4 rounds. Each round having 3 phases.

Split & Trap
Players take turns offering their cards to one another in two areas in the center of the table.

One player picks 2 cards from their hand and either places them in the same area or splits them between the two areas. The other player chooses an area and claims the card(s) in it. The players take turns repeating this step until both players have offered all of their cards. Each player has 2 Trap tokens which can be used to place cards face down, otherwise all cards are played face up.

Planification
Each player chooses which of the cards they have collected to build and which ones to recycle for immediate resources.

Sequential Production
Each player produces their Kingdom’s resources sequentially. Since resources are produced in a specific order, it is important to plan ahead to optimize your production and development.

At the end of the fourth round, the player with the most victory points wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 2 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.57

Istanbul

| T3d-1978
Istanbul

Istanbul

There’s hustle and bustle at Istanbul’s grand bazaar as merchants and their assistants rush through the narrow alleys in their attempt to be more successful than their competitors. Everything must be well organized: wheelbarrows must be filled with goods at the warehouses, then swiftly transported by the assistants to various destinations. Your goal? Be the first merchant to collect a certain number of rubies.

In Istanbul, you lead a group of one merchant and four assistants through 16 locations in the bazaar. At each such location, you can carry out a specific action. The challenge, though, is that to take an action, you must move your merchant and an assistant there, then leave the assistant behind (to handle all the details while you focus on larger matters). If you want to use that assistant again later, your merchant must return to that location to pick him up. Thus, you must plan ahead carefully to avoid being left with no assistants and thus unable to do anything…

In more detail, on a turn you move your merchant and his retinue of assistants one or two steps through the bazaar, either leave an assistant at that location or collect an assistant left earlier, then perform the action. If you meet other merchants or certain individuals at the location, you might be able to take a small extra action. Possible actions include:

  • Paying to increase your wheelbarrow capacity, which starts the game with a capacity of only two for each good.
  • Filling your wheelbarrow with a specified good to its limit.
  • Acquiring a special ability, and the earlier you come, the easier they are to collect.
  • Buying rubies or trading goods for rubies.
  • Selling special combinations of goods to make the money you need to do everything else.

When a merchant has collected five rubies in his wheelbarrow, players complete that round, then the game ends. If this player is the only one who’s reached this goal, he wins immediately; otherwise ties are broken by money in hand.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Network Building
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Racing
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.59