Category: Ω Board Games

God Save The King MISSING

| OTSG Staff

God Save the King thrusts players into the center of the conflict between warring kingdoms. The crown is threatened; the duty to take up arms falls to every living subject, whether knight, marshal, captain, footman, squire or cup-bearer. Even the Queen, herself may be called upon to give her life, in order that the King may be spared.

“God Save the King” is an abstract strategy game that can be played using a standard deck of 52 playing cards. However, the talented Inna Kozak has illustrated a custom deck of cards featuring thematically-rich characters, where every card is a unique face card.

Simple to learn, but with layers of complexity, players must use induction, deduction, and deception, in an attempt to seize the rival King(s) while protecting their own.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 0 Players
  • 5 – 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.50

Go Cuckoo!

| OTSG Staff

On your turn in Go Cukoo!, you take one standing stick and put it on the nest. If both ends of the stick have the same color, you may choose to lay an egg on it. Otherwise, you take another stick whose top color is the same as the hiding color of the previous one, up to three sticks. After laying an egg or putting the third stick with different colors, your turn ends. There are penalties for a stick touching the ground or eggs falling from the nest.

The first person to lay all of their eggs can then put the cuckoo on the nest and win the game.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 10 – 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

Go

| OTSG Staff

In Go, players alternately place stones on the empty intersections of a 19×19 grid. The goal: to enclose territory behind stone perimeters and, secondarily, to tightly surround and capture enemy stones. After both players pass, they add up their territory and deduct the number of captives lost, higher score wins.

As you see, the concept is simple, yet the challenge can enrich a lifetime. In truth many lifetimes, for Go has been played for thousands of years. With that long of a lineage and a worldwide following, it has come to be known by different names (Weiqi, Igo, Baduk) and to be played by slightly differing rules, but those differences seldom affect play.

So welcome to this masterpiece that is the game of Go, the race for geographical control of an unclaimed land. Experience running battles and swift reversals, bold invasions and painful sacrifices, each sally, each setback playing out to the dulcet tap of stone on wood.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 30 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.91

Gnome Hollow

| OTSG Staff

Since the beginning of time, gnomes have been the humble caretakers of nature. In secret, they emerge from their underground homes to maintain meticulous rings of mushrooms known to the human folk as “fairy rings”. But the work must be done quickly because as soon as a mushroom path is finished, the mushrooms are ready for picking. Who will be the cleverest gnome and harvest the most mushrooms by the end of the season?

Gnome Hollow is a spatial, tile-placement, worker-placement game in which you grow a tabletop garden of mushrooms and flowers. Every piece is a hand-painted watercolor that captures the whimsical feel of gnomes and nature. Turns are deceptively simple: Players place tiles into the garden, and move a gnome to take a single action on their turn. Come to Gnome Hollow and experience a peaceful garden, the thrill of competing to harvest buckets of mushrooms, and the reward of gathering in all your shiny treasures!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.38

Castle Nightingale

| OTSG Staff

Castle Nightingale looms out of the night, both intimidating and full of promise. Three ninjas have slipped inside, searching for the fabled treasure hidden within…yet a vigilant samurai patrols the halls, watching and listening for intruders.

Two players face off in Castle Nightingale, with the ninja player trying to steal five relics before the samurai player can capture the three ninja thieves. The castle is comprised of an inaccessible garden surrounded by four double-sided floor boards, each showing two secret passage spaces and areas in five colors.

Each turn, the ninja and samurai each choose one of three action cards in hand, with the samurai also choosing a nightingale tile not used on the previous turn. The ninja player resolves their action, then moves across the floor, marking each space of their movement with a footstep token. If they step on a colored space matching the samurai’s hidden nightingale tile, the ninja stands revealed; otherwise, next turn the ninja can treat any of their footsteps as their starting space.

If the ninja picks up a vase, the samurai can still recover it on their turn by either closing the final secret passage or landing on the ninja’s space…as long as the ninja has been revealed that turn. While the ninja moves space to space, the samurai treats each colored area as a single space, allowing them to move quickly within the castle.

Each player has specialized one-shot equipment they can use at any time, starting with one item and gaining more as they play certain cards. Each player has ten cards that they’ll cycle through until either the samurai has captured all three ninja or the ninja have stolen five of the six relics hidden in the eight vases.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25

Aquatica: Duellum

| OTSG Staff

Aquatica in a duel format: deeper, meaner and more intense.

Choose a Turtle King or a Squid Queen and improve your underwater realm by playing action cards and assembling locations on three-layered boards. After decades of turbulent times, it is time to unite the underwater world under the fin or tentacle of a single ruler!



New layer of depth is brought to the game by the dynamic market on a vortex board.



Be careful! The game can end not only when all players achieve their goals but also based on who is the fastest to collect the crowns. Tension is added by the tug of war mechanic.

Also, mantas will finally have the company of equally charming squids and turtles.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 2 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Cathedral

| OTSG Staff

In Cathedral, each player has a set of pieces of a different color. The pieces are in the shapes of buildings, covering from one to five square units. The first player takes the single neutral Cathedral piece and places it onto the board. Players then alternate placing one of their buildings onto the board until neither player can place another building. Players capture territory by surrounding areas that are occupied by at most one opponent or neutral building. A captured piece is removed and captured territory becomes off-limits to the opponent. The player with the fewest ‘square units’ of buildings that can’t be placed wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.79

Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs

| OTSG Staff

Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs is a solo play game, with an original campaign story written by Isaac Childres, that features a playstyle similar to Gloomhaven in a fraction of the size.

Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs is set after the events of Gloomhaven and Forgotten Circles. The Aesther recluse Hail has earned a reputation for being highly instrumental in saving the city from recurring disasters, and she absolutely hates it. Wannabe heroes are constantly barging in on her studies at the Crooked Bone, looking for help in becoming famous themselves — not to mention all the demons that come by looking for vengeance. She briefly considered moving, but as that would require effort, she instead just placed an enchantment on her front door: Anyone who attempts to open it becomes miniaturized and therefore is no longer a problem.

Your character is one such wannabe hero. In an ill-advised attempt at fame, they try to visit Hail, and poof. Now they’re the size of a mouse and have entered an entirely different realm of lawlessness and self-preservation. They must find a new way into the Crooked Bone to convince Hail to return them to their previous size.

Each scenario is a single card, pitting one mercenary against a handful of enemies with simplified actions and AI. Each mercenary has a hand of just four double-sided cards, but they can be used twice — both the front and the back — before they are discarded. Attacks are resolved using a die in conjunction with a modifier table, and both the table and the mercenary ability cards can be improved as you level up throughout the campaign.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.32

Gloom

| OTSG Staff

The world of Gloom is a sad and benighted place. The sky is gray, the tea is cold, and a new tragedy lies around every corner. Debt, disease, heartache, and packs of rabid flesh-eating mice—just when it seems like things can’t get any worse, they do. But some say that one’s reward in the afterlife is based on the misery endured in life. If so, there may yet be hope—if not in this world, then in the peace that lies beyond.

In the Gloom card game, you assume control of the fate of an eccentric family of misfits and misanthropes. The goal of the game is sad, but simple: you want your characters to suffer the greatest tragedies possible before passing on to the well-deserved respite of death. You’ll play horrible mishaps like Pursued by Poodles or Mocked by Midgets on your own characters to lower their Self-Worth scores, while trying to cheer your opponents’ characters with marriages and other happy occasions that pile on positive points. The player with the lowest total Family Value wins.

Printed on transparent plastic cards, Gloom features an innovative design by noted RPG author Keith Baker. Multiple modifier cards can be played on top of the same character card; since the cards are transparent, elements from previously played modifier cards either show through or are obscured by those played above them. You’ll immediately and easily know the worth of every character, no matter how many modifiers they have. You’ve got to see (through) this game to believe it!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.63

Glen More II: Chronicles

| OTSG Staff

Glen More II: Chronicles is a sequel to Glen More, expanding the gameplay substantially compared to the original game.

In Glen More II: Chronicles, each player represents the leader of a Scottish clan from the early medieval ages until the 19th century, a leader looking to expand their territory and wealth. The success of your clan depends on your ability to make the right decision at the right time, be it by creating a new pasture for your livestock, growing barley for whisky production, selling your goods on the various markets, or gaining control of special landmarks such as lochs and castles.

The game lasts four rounds, represented by four stacks of tiles. After each round, a scoring phase takes place in which players compare their number of whisky casks, scotsmen in the home castle, landmark cards, and persons against the player with the fewest items in each category and receives victory points (VPs) based on the relative difference. After four rounds, additional VPs are awarded for gold coins and some landmarks while VP penalties are assessed based on territory size, comparing each player’s territory to the smallest one in play.

The core mechanism of Glen More II: Chronicles and Glen More functions the same way: The last player in line takes a tile from a time track, advancing as far as they wish on this track. After paying the cost, they place this tile in their territory, with this tile activating itself and all neighboring tiles, triggering the production of resources, movement points, VPs, etc. Then the player who is last in line takes their turn.

Improvements over the original Glen More include bigger tiles, better materials, new artwork, the ability for each player to control the end of the game, and balancing adjustments to the tiles for a better suspense curve. The game is designed to consist of one-third known systems, one-third new mechanisms, and one-third improvements to Glen More.

The “Chronicles” in the title — a set of eight expansions to the base game — are a major part of these new mechanisms. Each Chronicle adds a new gameplay element to the base game. The “Highland Boat Race” Chronicle, for example, tells the story of a boat race in which the winner needs to be the first to reach their home castle after navigating their boat along the river through all the other players’ territories. The “Hammer of the Scots” Chronicle adds a neutral “Englishman” playing piece to the time track that players struggle to control to get an additional turn — if they can afford him, that is, as he is paid using the market mechanism. All Chronicles can be freely combined, although designer Matthias Cramer suggests that players use only one or two unless they want a “monster game”.

Another major change to the game is the ability to invest in famous Scottish people of the time, who are represented through a new “person” tile type. Persons not only have their own scoring, they also trigger one-time or ongoing effects on the tactical clan board. This adds a new layer of decision making, especially since the ongoing effects allow players to focus on a personal strategy of winning through the use of the clan board.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.01