Category: Ω Board Games

Trickerion

| T3d-1978
Trickerion

Trickerion

Trickerion is a competitive Euro-style strategy game set in a fictional world inspired by the late 19th century urban life and culture, spiced with a pinch of supernatural.

Players take on the roles of rival stage illusionists, each with their own strengths and characteristics. They are striving for fortune and fame in a competition hosted by a legendary magician, looking for a successor worthy of the mighty Trickerion Stone, which is fabled to grant supernatural power to its owner.

Using worker placement and simultaneous action selection mechanisms, the Illusionists and their teams of helpers — the Engineer, the Assistant, the Manager, and a handful of Apprentices – obtain blueprints and components for increasingly complex magic tricks, expand the team and set up performances by visiting the Downtown, Dark Alley, Market Row and Theater locations on the main game board depicting a late 19th century cityscape.

The tricks are stored and prepared on the Magician’s own Workshop game board, while the performances themselves take place at the Theater in the form of a tile placement mini-game with lots of player interaction. The performances yield Fame points and Coins to their owners based on the tricks they consist of. Fame points have multiple uses, but they also serve as a win condition – After turn 7, when the last Performance card is revealed, the game ends and the illusionist with the most Fame points wins.

The game offers 48 different Tricks to be learned from the Optical, Spiritual, Mechanical and Escape categories, over 90 character abilities, and 40 Special Assignment cards that influence the actions taken at the various game locations. The base game can be expanded with two optional rule modules to add further strategic depth to the game.

The “Dark Alley” expansion included in the base game adds a new location to the game. It also comes with 48 new Special Assignment cards, a new tier of Tricks, and 27 Prophecy tokens that can alter certain game rules turn by turn, giving the game additional variety.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Dice Rolling
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.24

On Mars

| T3d-1978
On Mars

On Mars

Following the success of unmanned rover missions, the United Nations established the Department of Operations and Mars Exploration (D.O.M.E.). The first settlers arrived on Mars in the year 2037 and in the decades after establishment Mars Base Camp, private exploration companies began work on the creation of a self-sustaining colony. As chief astronaut for one of these enterprises, you want to be a pioneer in the development of the biggest, most advanced colony on Mars by achieving both D.O.M.E. mission goals as well as your company’s private agenda.

In the beginning, you will be dependent on supplies from Earth and will have to travel often between the Mars Space Station and the planet’s surface. As the colony expands over time, you will shift your activities to construct mines, power generators, water extractors, greenhouses, oxygen factories, and shelters. Your goal is to develop a self-sustaining colony independent of any terrestrial organization. This will require understanding the importance of water, air, power, and food — the necessities for survival.

Do you dare take part in humankind’s biggest challenge?

On Mars is played over several rounds, each consisting of two phases – the Colonization Phase ​and the Shuttle Phase​.

During the Colonization Phase, each player takes a turn during which they take actions. The available actions depend on the side of the board they are on. If you are in orbit, you can take blueprints, buy and develop technologies, and take supplies from the Warehouse. If you are on the surface of the planet, you can construct buildings with your bots, upgrade these buildings using blueprints, take scientists and new contracts, welcome new ships, and explore the planet’s surface with your rover. In the Shuttle Phase, players may travel between the colony and the Space Station in orbit.

All buildings on Mars have a dependency on each other and some are required for the colony to grow. Building shelters for Colonists to live in requires oxygen; generating oxygen requires plants; growing plants requires water; extracting water from ice requires power; generating power requires mining minerals; and mining minerals requires Colonists. Upgrading the colony’s ability to provide each of these resources is vital. As the colony grows, more shelters are needed so that the Colonists can survive the inhospitable conditions on Mars.

During the game, players are also trying to complete missions. Once a total of three missions have been completed, the game ends. To win the game, players must contribute to the development of the first colony on Mars. This is represented during the game by players gaining Opportunity Points (OP). The player with the most OP at the end of the game is declared the winner.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • City Building
  • Closed Drafting
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.66

Mage Knight Board Game

| T3d-1978
Mage Knight Board Game

Mage Knight Board Game

The Mage Knight board game puts you in control of one of four powerful Mage Knights as you explore (and conquer) a corner of the Mage Knight universe under the control of the Atlantean Empire. Build your army, fill your deck with powerful spells and actions, explore caves and dungeons, and eventually conquer powerful cities controlled by this once-great faction! In competitive scenarios, opposing players may be powerful allies, but only one will be able to claim the land as their own. In cooperative scenarios, the players win or lose as a group. Solo rules are also included.

Combining elements of RPGs, deck-building, and traditional board games the Mage Knight board game captures the rich history of the Mage Knight universe in a self-contained gaming experience.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deck Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Role Playing

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.33

John Company

| T3d-1978
John Company

John Company

In John Company, players assume the roles of ambitious families attempting to use the British East India Company for personal gain. The game begins in the early eighteenth-century, when the Company has a weak foothold on the subcontinent. Over the course of the game, the Company might grow into the most powerful and insidious corporation in the world or collapse under the weight of its own ambition.

John Company is a game about state-sponsored trade monopoly. Unlike most economic games players often do not control their own firms. Instead, they will collectively guide the Company by securing positions of power, attempting to steer the Company’s fate in ways that benefit their own interests. However, the Company is an unwieldy thing. It is difficult to do anything alone, and players will often need to negotiate with one another. In John Company, most everything is up for negotiation.

Ultimately, this game isn’t about wealth; it’s about reputation. Each turn some of your family members may retire from their Company positions, giving them the opportunity to establish estates. Critically, players do not have full control over when these retirements happen. You will often need to borrow money from other players to make the best use for a chance of retirement. Players also gain victory points by competing in the London Season for prestige and securing fashionable properties.

John Company engages very seriously with its theme. It is meant as a frank portrait of an institution that was as dysfunctional as it was influential. Accordingly, the game wrestles many of the key themes of imperialism and globalization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how those developments were felt domestically. As such, this game might not be suitable for all players. Please make sure everyone in your group consents to this exploration before playing.

The second edition is extensively revised and is not a reprint.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bribery
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Negotiation
  • Push Your Luck
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 90 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.41

Gaia Project

| T3d-1978
Gaia Project

Gaia Project

Gaia Project is a new game in the line of Terra Mystica. As in the original Terra Mystica, fourteen different factions live on seven different kinds of planets, and each faction is bound to their own home planets, so to develop and grow, they must terraform neighboring planets into their home environments in competition with the other groups. In addition, Gaia planets can be used by all factions for colonization, and Transdimensional planets can be changed into Gaia planets.

All factions can improve their skills in six different areas of development — Terraforming, Navigation, Artificial Intelligence, Gaiaforming, Economy, Research — leading to advanced technology and special bonuses. To do all of that, each group has special skills and abilities.

The playing area is made of ten sectors, allowing a variable set-up and thus an even bigger replay value than its predecessor Terra Mystica. A two-player game is hosted on seven sectors.

Game Mechanics:

  • Civilization
  • Economic
  • Network Building
  • Tableau Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.38

FrostPunk

| T3d-1978
FrostPunk

FrostPunk

In Frostpunk: The Board Game, up to four players will take on the role of leaders of a small colony of survivors in a post-apocalyptic world that was hit by a severe ice age. Their duty is to effectively manage both its infrastructure and citizens. The core gameplay will be brutal, challenging, and complex, but easy to learn. The citizens won’t just be speechless pieces on the board. Society members will issue demands and react accordingly to the current mood, so every decision and action bears consequences.

The players will decide the fate of their people. Will you treat them like another resource? Are you going to be an inspiring builder, a fearless explorer, or a bright scientist? Is your rule going to be a sting of tyranny or an era of law and equality?

The game is based on a bestseller video game by 11bit studios, the creators of This War Of Mine. The original (digital) edition of Frostpunk is a highly successful strategy-survival-city-builder, a BAFTA-nominee that originally launched in 2018.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • City Building
  • Cooperative
  • Economic
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 120 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.30

Detective Rummy

| T3d-1978
Detective Rummy

Detective Rummy

Detective Rummy is a rummy-style card game with a storytelling element revealed in a series of seven different cases. Players take the roles of detectives vying to solve the cases and gain fame.

The story begins at the legendary Rummy Detective Agency, and each case takes you to various locations to solve a crime, including the diner with the best doughnuts in town, the cozy “Quarter to 3 Bar”, a ritzy fashion emporium, the circus, the most elite jazz nightclub in town, and more.

The cases in Detective Rummy can be played in two different ways: Campaign Mode and Case Mode. In Campaign Mode, you play all seven cases in order. In Case Mode, you can play cases 2 to 6 as standalone Detective Rummy games one at a time. Since new “Game Changer” cards are discovered in each case in different orders (if at all) each time you play, cases will never resolve the same way twice. You can play both the campaign mode or the individual cases as many times as you like.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • We don’t know how difficult this game is.

Coffee Traders

| T3d-1978

Thousands of coffee farmers all over the world support their families by using small stretches of hillside land for their coffee plantations. Farmers work day in and day out for very little, but the future of coffee farming is bright. Fair Trade organizations strive to improve living conditions for these farmers by helping them set up cooperatives. This enables them to establish better pricing agreements and take out loans for new plantations, all to help provide education and improve the quality of their lives, families, societies, and environment.

In Coffee Traders, set in 1970s Central and South America, Africa, and Asia, the delicious Arabica coffee beans farmers harvest are sold in Antwerp — and all over the world — to coffee roasters large and small. Work with your competitors to develop the regions you see fit for the best coffee beans while keeping a watchful eye on the market. Construct buildings to help your Fair Trade coffee plantations thrive while enhancing your network for trading coffee. Will your plantations fall to ruin, or will you rise to the top and become the world’s greatest coffee trader?

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Control
  • Economic

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 120 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.30

Who Goes There? Deluxe Edition

| T3d-1978
Who Goes There? Deluxe Edition

Who Goes There? Deluxe Edition

Who Goes There? is a cooperative game of growing paranoia. At the beginning of the game, all players are human and there is no reason not to trust each other completely, but as the temperature drops and mistakes are made, players start doubting everything and everyone around them.

You must build, trade, and upgrade to prepare yourself for the Antarctic Terrain, rabid dog attacks, crazed madmen…and most importantly, the alien entity that is now loose in the camp. Everything you build and upgrade has one purpose…keeping you alive and human! During the entire game, you will want to trade with other players and help each other build stronger weapons and better equipment, while also passing food and med kits around. Although, make sure your trust them, since trade is a huge opportunity for The Thing.

Staying inside may keep you from freezing to Death, but it won’t help you or your fellow humans win. The only way to secure victory is by venturing out of the camp! The problem with that is, being away from camp is the number one way to come across The Thing…leaving you vulnerable and exposed to infection. Whether fixing the boiler, repairing the door, or fighting the frigid temperatures outside, you will all need one another to survive. But trust is a hard thing to come by when you must be wary of…Who Goes There?

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Role Playing

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • ~110 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.50

West Kingdom Saga: Viscounts of the West Kingdom

| T3d-1978
West Kingdom Saga: Viscounts of the West Kingdom

West Kingdom Saga: Viscounts of the West Kingdom

Viscounts of the West Kingdom is set at a time when the King’s reign began to decline, circa 980 AD. Choosing peace over prosperity, our once strong King began offering our enemies gold and land to lay down their axes. But peace is a tenuous affair. As poverty spread, many people lost faith in his ability to lead and sought independence from the crown. Since finding favour in his courts, our future has also become uncertain. As viscounts, we must be wise and decisive. Loyalty is to be upheld, but gaining favour among the people must be our priority, should there be a sudden shift in power.

The aim of Viscounts of the West Kingdom is to be the player with the most victory points (VP) at game’s end. Points are gained by constructing buildings, writing manuscripts, working in the castle and acquiring deeds for new land. Players begin with a handful of townsfolk but should quickly seek out more suitable talents to advance their endeavors. Each turn they will be travelling around the kingdom, looking to increase their influence among the various areas of society. The game ends once the Kingdom reaches poverty or prosperity – or potentially both!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Rondel
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.45