Category: Competitive Games

Dungeons & Dragons: Edge of the Realms Fields of Faerun

| OTSG Staff

Every adventure needs a good map!

In Dungeons & Dragons: Edge of the Realms, you are explorers in the Forgotten Realms who will discover new terrain and magical places to prepare your adventurer’s journey, but everyone else is roaming the lands at the same time, so think fast.

On a turn, everyone draws a map card into their hand, then they choose and reveal one at the same time. Check to see whether you’ve completed quests and score points, then pass your hand to the left and play a new turn. Along the way, you want to match up terrain, activate landmarks, visit cities, and (of course) fulfill quests.

After fifteen turns, you’ll have a completed map ready for adventure, and the explorer who’s netted the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

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Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

East India Companies

| OTSG Staff

In the 18th and 19th centuries, shipping companies aimed to strengthen the trade between the West and the Far East that had begun in previous centuries. Tea, spices, coffee, and silk are commodities much consumed in Europe, and their buying and selling prices depend closely on supply and demand. Fortunes can be made and gambled depending on circumstances.

In East India Companies, players manage a large shipping company that trades with far flung trading posts in India. They must manage their ships and invest in buying shares of their own company or those of their competitors. Most importantly, players have to keep an eye on the constantly fluctuating market prices! Is it better to invest your money in the stock market or in buying goods? Do they prefer to use fast ships with low tonnage or slower ships with larger holds? Whatever the players choose, their strategies will influence those of their opponents.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Dungeon Petz

| OTSG Staff

Become the leader of an imp family that has just started a new business – breeding and selling petz. Sound simple and safe? Well, we forgot to mention that those petz are for Dungeon Lords. This means magical, playful, sometimes angry monsters that constantly desire attention and at the very moment you want them to demonstrate their qualities to buyers they are sick or they poop. Sometimes you are even glad that you got rid of them – but the profit is unbelievable.

Dungeon Petz is a standalone game set in the Dungeon Lords universe. The game consists of several rounds in which players use unusual worker placement mechanisms (players simultaneously prepare different sized groups of imps in order to play sooner than others) to prepare themselves for the uneasy task of raising creature cubs and pleasing their different needs (represented by cards) in order to sell them as grown and scary creatures to Dungeon Lords. In the meantime, they also attend various contests in which they show off their pets, scoring additional points.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.63

Dune: Imperium – Uprising

| OTSG Staff

In Dune: Imperium Uprising, you want to continue to balance military might with political intrigue, wielding new tools in pursuit of victory. Spies will shore up your plans, vital contracts will expand your resources, or you can learn the ways of the Fremen and ride mighty sandworms into battle!

Dune: Imperium Uprising is a standalone spinoff to Dune: Imperium that expands on that game’s blend of deck-building and worker placement, while introducing a new six-player mode that pits two teams against one other in the biggest struggle yet.

The Dune: Imperium expansions Rise of Ix and Immortality work with Uprising, as do almost all of the cards from the base game, and elements of Uprising can be used with Dune: Imperium.

The choices are yours. The Imperium awaits!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.52

Doggerland

| OTSG Staff

Doggerland was a landmass that connected Great Britain to mainland Europe that disappeared under the North Sea after the last ice age. Humans lived on these fertile lands where multiple resources and animals were found.

In Doggerland, you play a clan at around 15,000 BCE. Your goal is to expand your clan in order to leave a trace of its existence for centuries to come. Players increase their population, make crafts, paint murals in caves, raise megaliths for the gods, and (most of all) survive the rigors of the seasons. To do this, they explore the surrounding territory and adapt to the resources at their disposal. The territory differs in each game, thanks to modular tiles.

Each round, players program their actions, then carry them out. These actions vary, based on available resources, abundance or scarcity around their villages, and also based on the actions of other players. As time passes, resources run out, and clans must migrate to find what they need for their development and survival.

In each clan, there is a leader who brings bonuses, and a shaman who allows powerful and unique actions thanks to knowledge and magic. After 6-8 seasons, the clan with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.31

Diplomacy

| OTSG Staff

In Diplomacy, each player represents one of the seven “Great Powers of Europe” (Great Britain, France, Austria-Hungary, Germany, Italy, Russia or Turkey) in the years prior to World War I. Play begins in the Spring of 1901, and players must negotiate and make deals with other players in order to have any success in expanding their borders. They will make both Spring and Autumn moves each year. with two kinds of military units: armies and fleets. On any given turn, each of your military units has limited options: it can move into an adjoining territory, support an allied unit in an attack on an adjoining territory, support an allied unit in defending an adjoining territory, or hold its position. Players instruct each of their units by writing a set of “orders.” The outcome of the various orders is basically determined by the total strength of the units involved. There are no dice rolls or other elements of chance. With its incredibly simplistic movement mechanism fused to a significant negotiation element, this system is highly respected by many gamers.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Negotiation
  • Player Elimination
  • Simulation

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 7 Players
  • 360 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.33

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write

| OTSG Staff

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write is a roll-and-write version of the critically-acclaimed game Dinosaur Island.

Dinosaur Island: Rawr ‘n Write is a unique game in which players draft dice and then use those drafted dice as workers in a worker placement phase. Then, a fun polyomino puzzle ensues as you try and fit all your attractions and Dinosaurs into your park while buildings roads and routes to the exits for bonus points. At the end of the game, have more victory points than your opponents to win!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Network and Route Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Paper-and-Pencil
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.84

Deep Regrets

| OTSG Staff

Deep Regrets is an unfortunate fishing game about pulling progressively more horrifying things out of the ocean. Decide what to eat, what to sell, what to mount, and how many regrets you’re willing to carry, as you push yourself too far and spiral towards a conclusion in this strategic horror fishing game.

You’ll roll bespoke tackle dice at the start of each turn to determine your strength for that round and then decide whether you’ll stay at sea or return to port to sell fish, buy provisions, and recharge your energy.

Survey the sizes of shadows on the backs of 9 different fish shoals at three depths, determining what you think you can afford to catch and if you want to risk it for a potentially better reward. Flip fish, spend dice, add them to your collection – but beware of reveal and catch abilities that can have various effects on the game! As your eyes spy more and more horrifying things, you’ll collect Regrets cards – which drive up your madness but also give you access to more dice and increase the value of weirder fish. It’s a risk/reward scenario as you balance your madness, knowing that at the end of the game the player with the highest value of Regrets will have to discard their most valuable mounted fish.

Manage you resources, make strategic decisions, leverage madness to your benefit and suppress your Regrets as you try to catch the most valuable haul of weirder and weirder fish in this weird week at sea.

SOLO MODE:
In the solo mode (which you can also co-op), you’ll act as an ichthyologist on a mission to catch and catalog every fish in the sea. Over a campaign of dozens of games, you’ll try to reel in every last fish and document their attributes on provided catalog sheet. At the end of each game, you’ll have to discard an equal value of fish to the regrets you’ve collected and may have to let some fish go to return to another day. At the end of the campaign, you’ll have a catalog of all fish names, depths, values and difficulties that can be used by players in the multiplayer game to help identify what they might fish up!

—description from the designer

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative Game
  • Push Your Luck
  • Re-rolling and Locking
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.35

DC Forever

| OTSG Staff

In the deck-building game DC Forever, you pick two iconic characters pulled from the pages of DC Comics to form your own squad of heroes or rogues. These characters have unique powers that form the starting cards of your deck, along with basic resource cards.

During play, you recruit new characters to your team, each with unique decks and gameplay, and choose which of their cards to add to support your strategy as the game progresses. Heroes and rogues will clash at classic DC Comics locations from the shadowy alleyways of Gotham City to the subaquatic depths of Atlantis.

Rogues want to achieve their master plan by completing five schemes, but they’ll be equally happy to knock out all of the heroes since no one will remain to oppose them. For their part, the heroes want to either capture all of the rogues or place thirty citizens in sanctuary; you may not be able to stop the schemes, but if people are safe, then you’ll still call this a victory.

DC Forever features eighteen playable characters and hundreds of cards from which to choose during play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.20

Darwin’s Journey

| OTSG Staff

When all you can identify in the horizon for many long days is the line that detaches the sea from the sky, the glimpse of a distant shore appearing before you will make you shiver at the understanding that the adventure is about to begin.

You find yourself astonished, landing on the shore that will be the origin of an extensive exploration through the Galapagos, a magic place of inconceivable beauty and endless biodiversity. There, you will gather repertoires and expand your knowledge of the natural sciences. Your eyes will learn how to detect the hidden species in the tropical forest, gazing at the countless colors and textures of nature. After inspiring hours spent studying and getting to enlightening conclusions, you will rest under a sparkling sky, admiring the stunning complexity of the animal realm.

Darwin’s Journey is a worker-placement Eurogame in which players recall Charles Darwin’s memories of his adventure through the Galapagos islands, which contributed to the development of his theory of evolution.

With the game’s innovative worker progression system, each worker will have to study the disciplines that are a prerequisite to perform several actions in the game, such as exploration, correspondence, gathering, and dispatch of repertoires found on the island to museums in order to contribute to the human knowledge of biology. The game lasts five rounds, and thanks to several short- and long-term objectives, every action you take will grant victory points in different ways.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Pick-up and Deliver
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.90