Category: Beginner Games

DC Deck-Building Game

| OTSG Staff

ARE YOU READY TO GO DARK?

This entry in the DC Deck-Building Game series puts you in the supernatural shoes of the DC team that steps in when challenges arise that are too mystical for regular Super Heroes. Become a member of the Justice League Dark as you Seal the threats of magical Super-Villains and Transform your cards into more powerful forms!

Standalone game, but compatible with other games in DC Deck-Building Game series.

Craft your hero deck into a well-oiled machine to take on the most vile villains in the DC Universe in your quest for victory (points)!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

CV

| OTSG Staff

Have you ever wondered who you would have been if your life had gone differently? How would you direct your life if everything were up to you? Maybe you would be a magician, or travel around the world? Or maybe big business tempts you, and your goal would be to earn a million dollars?

“CV” means curriculum vitae – your resume – and in the dice and card game CV, you will lead a character through his entire life, making many choices about friends, relations, jobs, and activities. Everything is possible: a dream job, new relationships, and skills. You can be whoever you want!

Gameplay is built around the Yahtzee-style dice rolling and re-rolling system. On their dice, players are trying to roll sets of symbols that allow them to acquire cards; each round, these cards give benefits of some kind, such as new symbols and special abilities. At the end of the game, each kind of card scores points for the player.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.84

Cubitos

| OTSG Staff

Be fast or be last!

In Cubitos, players take on the role of participants in the annual Cube Cup, a race of strategy and luck to determine the Cubitos Champion. Each player has a runner on the racetrack and a support team, which is represented by all the dice you roll. Each turn, you roll dice and use their results to move along the racetrack, buy new dice, and use abilities — but you must be careful not to push your luck rolling too much or you could bust!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck, Bag, and Pool Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Market
  • Push Your Luck
  • Race
  • Re-rolling and Locking
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.17

CoraQuest

| OTSG Staff

CoraQuest is an exciting and accessible co-operative dungeon crawling game for one to four people, aged six and up.

In CoraQuest the players work together to guide four adventurers exploring a dungeon, avoiding traps, finding treasure, fighting monsters, and sometimes rescuing a gnome called Kevin.

CoraQuest is a game that kids and grown-ups can play together and get equal amounts of fun from. It’s also a game that sparks creativity – providing encouragement and guidance on how to create heroes, monsters and adventures to make CoraQuest your own.

All the artwork in CoraQuest is based on kids’ drawings, much of it sent in to us from all over the world by the wonderful CoraQuest community. The art has been brought together by our “chief-colourer-in”, Gary King, to make a unique and charming-looking game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative Game
  • Modular Board
  • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Coatl

| OTSG Staff

The election of the Aztec High Priest is imminent. In order to prove their value and merit, the contenders engage in a race for prestige to win the favor of the gods. Will you be able to make the most beautiful sculptures of feathered snakes (called Cóatl) to stand out and gain access to the coveted title of High Priest?

In Cóatl, players work to build the most beautiful and valuable serpents. The serpents, or Cóatl, are constructed with a head, a tail, and a number of body tiles, each made from chunky, colorful plastic. On a turn, players will either take tiles from the central board to their personal board, or work to construct one of their Cóatls with the different tiles they’ve collected.

The game end is triggered when one player finishes their third Cóatl. Players receive points for fulfilling objectives, and the one with the most is named the new High Priest!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.02

Clank! In! Space!

| OTSG Staff

The evil Lord Eradikus has all but conquered the galaxy and is now on a victory lap across the sector in his flagship, Eradikus Prime. He may rule with an iron grip, but his most prized artifacts are about to slip through his cyborg claws. You and your fellow thieves have challenged each other to sneak aboard his ship, hack your way into its command module, and steal from him.

Along the way, you’ll recruit allies and snatch up extra loot. But one false step and — Clank! Careless noise draws the attention of Lord Eradikus. Hacking into his command module and stealing his artifacts increases his rage. You’d better hope your friends are louder than you are if you want to make it to an escape pod and get out alive…

Clank! In! Space! is built on the same game system as Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure, with players building a personal deck of cards throughout the course of the game, with the cards allowing them to move through the spaceship, attack things, acquire new cards, and — oh yeah — make noise to attract Lord Eradikus and potentially seal their own doom.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck, Bag, and Pool Building
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Player Elimination
  • Push Your Luck

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.58

Clank! Catacombs

| OTSG Staff

The catacombs of the skeletal dragon Umbrok Vessna are mysterious and dangerous. Portals transport you all around the dungeon depths. Wayshrines offer vast riches to intrepid explorers. Prisoners are counting on you to free them. Ghosts, once disturbed, may haunt you to death. Despite all that, it’s time to leave the board behind with Clank! Catacombs, a standalone deck-building adventure.

Each trip into the catacombs is unique since you lay tiles to create the dungeon. You can play using only the all-new dungeon deck, or you can include cards from previous Clank! expansions.

Find your fortune (and escape the dragon!) in Clank! Catacombs.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck, Bag, and Pool Building
  • Map Addition
  • Map Deformation
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Player Elimination
  • Push Your Luck
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.50

Clank!: A Deck-Building Adventure

| OTSG Staff

Burgle your way to adventure in the deck-building board game Clank! Sneak into an angry dragon’s mountain lair to steal precious artifacts. Delve deeper to find more valuable loot. Acquire cards for your deck and watch your thievish abilities grow.

Be quick and be quiet. One false step and CLANK! Each careless sound draws the attention of the dragon, and each artifact stolen increases its rage. You can enjoy your plunder only if you make it out of the depths alive!

Clank! is a deck-building game. Each player has their own deck, and building yours up is part of playing the game. You start each of your turns with five cards in your hand, and you’ll play them all in any order you choose. Most cards will generate resources, of which there are three different kinds:

  • Skill, which is used to acquire new cards for your deck.
  • Swords, which are used to fight the monsters that infest the dungeon.
  • Boots, which are used to move around the board.

Every time you acquire a new card, you put it face up in your discard pile. Whenever you need to draw a card and find your deck empty, you shuffle your discard pile and turn it face down to form a new deck. With each shuffle, your newest cards become part of a bigger and better deck! Each player starts with the same cards in their deck, but they’ll acquire different cards during their turns. Because cards can do many different things, each player’s deck (and strategy) will become more and more different as the game unfolds.

During the game, you have two goals:

  • Retrieve an Artifact token and escape the dragon by returning to the place you started, outside of the dungeon.
  • Accumulate enough points with your Artifact and other loot to beat out your opponents and earn the title of Greatest Thief in the Realm!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck, Bag, and Pool Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Player Elimination
  • Push Your Luck
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.23

Citadels

| OTSG Staff

In Citadels, players take on new roles each round to represent characters they hire in order to help them acquire gold and erect buildings. The game ends at the close of a round in which a player erects their seventh building. Players then tally their points, and the player with the highest score wins.

Players start the game with a number of building cards in their hand; buildings come in five colors, with the purple buildings typically having a special ability and the other colored buildings providing a benefit when you play particular characters. At the start of each round, the player who was king the previous round discards one of the eight character cards at random, chooses one, then passes the cards to the next player, etc. until each player has secretly chosen a character. Each character has a special ability, and the usefulness of any character depends upon your situation, and that of your opponents. The characters then carry out their actions in numerical order: the assassin eliminating another character for the round, the thief stealing all gold from another character, the wizard swapping building cards with another player, the warlord optionally destroys a building in play, and so on.

On a turn, a player earns two or more gold (or draws two building cards then discards one), then optionally constructs one building (or up to three if playing the architect this round). Buildings cost gold equal to the number of symbols on them, and each building is worth a certain number of points. In addition to points from buildings, at the end of the game a player scores bonus points for having eight buildings or buildings of all five colors.

The 2016 edition of Citadels includes twenty-seven characters — eight from the original Citadels, ten from the Dark City expansion, and nine new ones — along with thirty unique building districts, and the rulebook includes six preset lists of characters and districts beyond the starter list, each crafted to encourage a different style and intensity of gameplay.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • City Building
  • Deduction
  • Set Collection
  • Take That
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 8 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.07

Chronicles of Avel

| OTSG Staff

Chronicles of Avel is a cooperative board game for the whole family. Take the role of brave heroes and heroines with a mission to save your magical land.

Create your character and give them a unique name. Get your equipment, upgrade it and prepare for battle. But remember to wisely choose what you carry as your backpack has limited space. Armed and ready, explore the land in search of adventure and fortune.

Answer the Queen’s call and fight together against the servants of the Black Moon. Defend the castle, banish the Beast, and save Avel!

In Chronicles of Avel players will be exploring the world of Avel, moving on a modular board created from hexagonal tiles (different every time). On their journey they will encounter dangerous monsters to fight and roll dice to determine success. Each victory leads to a prize – new weapon, armor, potions and gold – which will make heroes more powerful and unstoppable. But to earn equipment players will have to search through magical bag and choose using only their sense of touch. Victory awaits for those who will cooperate, prepare themselves and defeat the Beast and all his servants.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Modular Board

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92