Category: Competitive Games

Evenfall

| OTSG Staff

It’s Evenfall, and the Clans of Magic are preparing for a new era. Evenfall is the time when the boundaries of reality collapse and the supernatural awakens. The World-Tree opens its glowing gateways to unknown distant regions. Send Witches from your clan to discover and control new Places of Power. Use them for arcane rituals and battle for the favor of the Powerstones. But there is only one seat on the Enchanted Throne! Do you have the skills to lead the world into a new era?

Evenfall is a card-driven, engine-building game with both novel and familiar mechanisms for 1 to 4 players. Manage your resources, execute your actions in an efficient order, and discover card and action synergies that generate victory points. The game ends after three rounds, then the player with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.11

Evacuation

| OTSG Staff

“Hurry to the ship! Twelve houses from our town have already burned down!”

In Evacuation, life on our planet is being burned away thanks to increasingly intense sunlight, so everyone is trying to move all the people and factories in their territories from the “old” planet to a new one — and they have only four rounds in which to do so.

You start the game with a full functioning economy, and over the course of play, you must dismantle that economy and move it. Income on the old planet shrinks over time, and production probably won’t be much better until you establish yourself on the new planet and kick things into action. Resources can’t be mixed across the planets, so you need to take special care with your planning.

To do this, you choose actions from the player board, with the expert variant adding cards to your hand that allow you to choose additional actions and combine them. Each action has its own value, and the sum of these actions is important for an “end of the round” bonus. Additionally, players move their markers along the orbital track based on the value of their actions.

If you can raise production of three resources to level 8 and have three stadiums on the new planet, you win. Otherwise, players compare scores after four rounds. Evacuation includes modules to add new play options.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.98

Escape from New York

| OTSG Staff

“You go in, find the President, bring him out in less than 24 hours, and you’re a free man.”

In Escape from New York, an adaptation of the John Carpenter movie of the same name, you play as Snake, Brain, Maggie, or Cabbie and attempt to rescue the president and his precious tape and bring them to safety, while dealing with the gangs of the most dangerous prison in the world – all of Manhattan.

You will play the roles of the heroes, exploring the dangerous streets of New York, searching for the president, his case containing the government tape, and a diagram of the bridges so you can escape from the city without stepping on a landmine.

You can work together, searching for these three things, or you may decide to secretly satisfy your own personal objective at any moment during the game, escaping from New York alone and betraying your companions. Whatever your decision will be, you must face the Bands of Manhattan, headed by the Duke of New York, who will hinder you by moving Prisoners and Bosses to eat up as much of the short time-frame you have to complete your mission.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.57

Epochs: Course of Cultures

| OTSG Staff

In Epochs: Course of Cultures, you will lead your civilization and plan a path through the crossroads of history across three epochs. Be a pioneer to expand territories, be an innovator to foster study and research, or be a warmonger to raid using superior armaments. The choice is yours, and it is your strategic acumen that will shape the course of cultures and lead your people toward victory.

Within the game, you will compete with other leaders to become the most prestigious civilization over three epochs: ancient, medieval, and modern. You will introduce a total of nine inventions to customize your civilization. On your turn, you can choose to expand your territories on the shared map, build a city, establish a trade route, do academic research, change the form of government, and build magnificent wonders to consolidate your authority. Unfortunately, being peaceful is not always the best way to benefit your people as leaders can choose to declare war on others within an epoch. A wise leader may have to prepare for war by improving military units…just in case.

Immerse yourself in a re-imagination of human history in which every decision carries weight and every action shapes the course of your civilization. Will you be remembered as a benevolent ruler, revered for your cultural achievements? Or will you carve out a legacy through conquest, leaving a trail of triumph in your wake? The fate of your people rests in your hands. Be a visionary leader, and create a civilization that will stand the test of epochs.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.60

Endeavor: Deep Sea

| OTSG Staff

Plunge into the modern era, where our planet’s vast interconnected ocean scape is one of the last frontiers to discover and explore. Experience a deep new ever-changing adventure in this followup to the smash hit Endeavor: Age of Sail!

In Endeavor: Deep Sea, you head an independent research institute with the goal of developing sustainable projects and preserving the fragile balance of marine life. Throughout the game, you’ll recruit field experts and use their abilities to explore new locations, research dive sites, publish critical ecological papers, and launch conservation efforts.

Expand your expertise, develop your team, and learn as much as possible about the sea. The action your institute takes now, could mean a healthy ocean and a sustainable future for the planet.

Endeavor: Deep Sea is designed by the same creative team behind Endeavor: Age of Sail and Endeavor. This edition is set in a new era of nautical discovery, but uses streamlined rules which will be familiar to fans of the original game.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.92

Emberleaf

| OTSG Staff

Emberleaf is a competitive card-dancing and tile-placement board game.

As a brave Emberling, your mission is to rebuild your home in the heart of an ancient forest. To succeed, you’ll explore the wilderness, gather resources, clear dangerous areas, and construct new homes for your kin. Along the way, you’ll recruit heroes into your fellowship, each bringing unique skills that will help empower your team. But beware – space in the forest is limited, and other Emberlings have their own plans.

The game features:

  • Card Dancing: Place hero cards within your moving grid to activate skills and enhance your fellowship. Slide cards to trigger powerful combinations and charge them at the perfect moment for even greater effects.
  • Tile Placement: Build vibrant villages to address the diverse needs of your villagers.
  • Engine Building: Recruit heroes to acquire new skills and empower your existing fellowship.
  • Resource Management: Navigate the forest, clear dangerous areas, and collect essential resources.

Every decision you make shapes the destiny of your people. Can you rise to the challenge, guide your village to prosperity, and win the heart of your fellow Emberlings?

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.06

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:

[psot_tags]

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

Cthulhu: Dark Providence

| OTSG Staff

Set in the Cthulhu: Death May Die world and inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, Dark Providence is a competitive game in which players take on secret roles of Investigators and Cultists from the most influential cities of the United States during the Great Depression.

While the Cultists explore the nation’s vulnerability seeking to remake it into a twisted version of itself by consorting with unspeakable beings from nightmarish dimensions, Investigators take the opposite side, standing against this dark providence.

Each player’s secret alignment determines how they’ll score points at the end of the game, however, this is not a cooperative game. During the game players use Influence cubes to bid for the right to claim Asset cards, take control of cities, and gather Mythos cards. Each new Asset card acquired improves the players’ deck and therefore the resources and actions they can perform during a turn.

Trying to keep their identity secret and avoid insanity, players perform a multitude of actions, swaying Hired Agents to their side of the battle, assassinating other players’ Agents, gathering additional help from Mythos cards, blocking other players from claiming cards, and sealing or protecting Gates, among others to gain Victory Points.

At the end, only the player with the most Victory Points of the dominant side of the battle will win the game!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Secret Roles

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.25

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