Category: Ω Board Games

West Kingdom Saga: Paladins of the West Kingdom

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

West Kingdom Saga: Paladins of the West Kingdom

Paladins of the West Kingdom is set at a turbulent time of West Francia’s story, circa 900 AD. Despite recent efforts to develop the city, outlying townships are still under threat from outsiders. Saracens scout the borders, while Vikings plunder wealth and livestock. Even the Byzantines from the east have shown their darker side. As noble men and women, players must gather workers from the city to defend against enemies, build fortifications and spread faith throughout the land. Fortunately you are not alone. In his great wisdom, the King has sent his finest knights to help aid in our efforts. So ready the horses and sharpen the swords. The Paladins are approaching.

The aim of Paladins of the West Kingdom is to be the player with the most victory points (VP) at game’s end. Points are gained by building outposts and fortifications, commissioning monks and confronting outsiders. Each round, players will enlist the help of a specific Paladin and gather workers to carry out tasks. As the game progresses, players will slowly increase their faith, strength and influence. Not only will these affect their final score, but they will also determine the significance of their actions. The game is concluded at the end of the seventh round.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Tableau Building
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.70

Wendake

| T3d-1978
Wendake

Wendake

“Wendake” is the name that the Wyandot people use for their traditional territory. This population, also known as the Huron Nation, lived in the Great Lakes region, together with the tribes who formed the Iroquois Confederacy, and many others. In this game, you will explore the traditions and everyday life of these tribes during the 1756–1763 period, when the Seven Years’ War between the French and the English took place in these territories.

But this white man’s war is only a marginal aspect of the game; the focus is on life in the native villages, fields, and forests. In this game, you won’t find the traditional tipis, which were used by southwestern tribes who moved their camps to follow the bison herds. The natives of the Great Lakes were more sedentary, living in longhouses. The women farmed beans, corn, and pumpkins, while the men hunted beavers in the forests, mainly to sell their pelts as leather.

In Wendake, you step into the shoes of the chief of a Native American tribe. You will have to manage the most important aspects of your tribe’s daily existence, thereby earning points on the Economic, Military, Ritual, and Mask tracks. The core of the game is the action selection mechanism: you will have the opportunity to choose better and better actions over 7 years (i.e., rounds), and the winner will be the chief who finds the best combinations of actions and uses them to lead their tribe to prosperity!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Economic
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.61

Wayfarers of the South Tigris

| T3d-1978
Wayfarers of the South Tigris

Wayfarers of the South Tigris

Wayfarers of the South Tigris is set during the height of the Abbasid Caliphate, circa 820 AD. As brave explorers, cartographers and astronomers, players set off from Baghdad to map the surrounding land, waterways, and heavens above. Players must carefully manage their caravan of workers and equipment, while reporting back regularly to journal their findings at the House of Wisdom. Will you succeed in impressing the Caliph, or lose your way and succumb to the wilderness?

The aim of Wayfarers of the South Tigris is to be the player with the most victory points (VP) at the game’s end. Points are primarily gained by mapping the land, water, and sky. Players can also gain points from upgrading their caravans, by gaining inspiration from nobles, and by influencing the three guilds of science, trade and exploration. As they make discoveries, players will want to quickly journal their progress. The game ends once one player’s marker has reached the far right column of the journal track.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Tableau Building
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.64

War of the Ring

| T3d-1978
War of the Ring

War of the Ring

In War of the Ring, one player takes control of the Free Peoples (FP), the other player controls Shadow Armies (SA). Initially, the Free People Nations are reluctant to take arms against Sauron, so they must be attacked by Sauron or persuaded by Gandalf or other Companions, before they start to fight properly: this is represented by the Political Track, which shows if a Nation is ready to fight in the War of the Ring or not.

The game can be won by a military victory, if Sauron conquers a certain number of Free People cities and strongholds or vice versa. But the true hope of the Free Peoples lies with the quest of the Ringbearer: while the armies clash across Middle Earth, the Fellowship of the Ring is trying to get secretly to Mount Doom to destroy the One Ring. Sauron is not aware of the real intention of his enemies but is looking across Middle Earth for the precious Ring, so that the Fellowship is going to face numerous dangers, represented by the rules of The Hunt for the Ring. But the Companions can spur the Free Peoples to the fight against Sauron, so the Free People player must balance the need to protect the Ringbearer from harm, against the attempt to raise a proper defense against the armies of the Shadow, so that they do not overrun Middle Earth before the Ringbearer completes his quest.

Each game turn revolves around the roll of Action Dice: each die corresponds to an action that a player can do during a turn. Depending on the face rolled on each die, different actions are possible (moving armies, characters, recruiting troops, advancing a Political Track).

Action Dice can also be used to draw or play Event Cards. Event Cards are played to represent specific events from the story (or events that could possibly have happened) that cannot be portrayed through normal game-play. Each Event Card can also create an unexpected turn in the game, allowing special actions or altering the course of a battle.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Drafting
  • Action Points
  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Campaign
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Team Based
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 150 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.19

Virtu

| T3d-1978
Virtu

Virtu

It’s a time of upheaval, when the Middle Ages end and modernity is born. For those in the government, the situation is ripe for action. Your city must maintain its standing, and you, as its prince, must make this happen.

Virtù takes place during the Italian Renaissance, with each player embodying one of the powerful Italian cities of the time and trying to make it more powerful than all others through “virtù”, the ability to accomplish great things through a strong state (according to Machiavelli).

The foundation of the game is “wheelbuilding”, that is, creating a “wheel of actions” on your personal player board, which has a unique arrangement compared to other players and with you having a different set of starting family cards. Depending on how you place the cards, you have multiple options available and a starting strategy, but you can acquire and place new cards to alter your approach over the course of the game. You interact with others indirectly by taking cards they want or racing to goals or directly by sending agents to the palace or their cities as well as by attacking cities. Artists, merchants, and diplomats can also work to increase your prestige.

Virtù includes a two-player mode that is played differently from the game with 3-5 players.

Game Mechanics:

  • Rondel

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.89

Underwater Cities

| T3d-1978
Underwater Cities

Underwater Cities

In Underwater Cities, which takes about 30-45 minutes per player, players represent the most powerful brains in the world, brains nominated due to the overpopulation of Earth to establish the best and most livable underwater areas possible.

The main principle of the game is card placement. Three colored cards are placed along the edge of the main board into 3 x 5 slots, which are also colored. Ideally players can place cards into slots of the same color. Then they can take both actions and advantages: the action depicted in the slot on the main board and also the advantage of the card. Actions and advantages can allow players to intake raw materials; to build and upgrade city domes, tunnels and production buildings such as farms, desalination devices and laboratories in their personal underwater area; to move their marker on the initiative track (which is important for player order in the next turn); to activate the player’s “A-cards”; and to collect cards, both special ones and basic ones that allow for better decision possibilities during gameplay.

All of the nearly 220 cards — whether special or basic — are divided into five types according to the way and time of use. Underwater areas are planned to be double-sided, giving players many opportunities to achieve VPs and finally win.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Civilization
  • Hand Management
  • Network Building
  • Tableau Building
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 80 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.60

Tzolk’in

| T3d-1978
Tzolk'in

Tzolk'in

Tzolkin: The Mayan Calendar presents a new game mechanism: dynamic worker placement. Players representing different Mayan tribes place their workers on giant connected gears, and as the gears rotate they take the workers to different action spots.

During a turn, players can either (a) place one or more workers on the lowest visible spot of the gears or (b) pick up one or more workers. When placing workers, they must pay corn, which is used as a currency in the game. When they pick up a worker, they perform certain actions depending on the position of the worker. Actions located “later” on the gears are more valuable, so it’s wise to let the time work for you – but players cannot skip their turn; if they have all their workers on the gears, they have to pick some up. 

The game ends after one full revolution of the central Tzolkin gear. There are many paths to victory. Pleasing the gods by placing crystal skulls in deep caves or building many temples are just two of those many paths…

Game Mechanics:

  • Civilization
  • Economic
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.67

Twilight Struggle

| T3d-1978
Twilight Struggle

Twilight Struggle

“Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle…”
– John F. Kennedy

In 1945, unlikely allies toppled Hitler’s war machine, while humanity’s most devastating weapons forced the Japanese Empire to its knees in a storm of fire. Where once there stood many great powers, there then stood only two. The world had scant months to sigh its collective relief before a new conflict threatened. Unlike the titanic struggles of the preceding decades, this conflict would be waged not primarily by soldiers and tanks, but by spies and politicians, scientists and intellectuals, artists and traitors. Twilight Struggle is a two-player game simulating the forty-five year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States. The entire world is the stage on which these two titans fight to make the world safe for their own ideologies and ways of life. The game begins amidst the ruins of Europe as the two new “superpowers” scramble over the wreckage of the Second World War, and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.

Twilight Struggle inherits its fundamental systems from the card-driven classics We the People and Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage. It is a quick-playing, low-complexity game in that tradition. The game map is a world map of the period, whereon players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower. As with GMT’s other card-driven games, decision-making is a challenge; how to best use one’s cards and units given consistently limited resources?

Twilight Struggle’s Event cards add detail and flavor to the game. They cover a vast array of historical happenings, from the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1948 and 1967, to Vietnam and the U.S. peace movement, to the Cuban Missile Crisis and other such incidents that brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Subsystems capture the prestige-laden Space Race as well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending nuclear war.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Campaign
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Tug of War
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

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

Twilight of the Gods

| T3d-1978
Twilight of the Gods

Twilight of the Gods

In Twilight of the Gods you and your friends will each assume the role of a deity from myth and legend, and battle to the death to see who is the strongest god, using human armies, mystical beasts, and heroes of renown from both past and future.

These deities span multiple pantheons, from numerous civilizations, and each favors a particular method of strategy – Aggression, Negotiation, Mysticism, or Sanctuary – which influences how your battle will play out. Every deity also possesses a special, once per game power that can be used to further the tide of battle in your favor, or come back from what seems like overwhelming defeat, so never count an opponent out until they draw their last card.

Now go forth and let none stand in your way!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Memory
  • Open Drafting
  • Trading

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.71

Troyes

| T3d-1978
Troyes

Troyes

In Troyes (pronounced “troah”), players recreate four centuries of history of this famous city of the Champagne region of France. Each player manages their segment of the population (represented by a horde of dice) and their hand of cards, which represent the three primary domains of the city: religious, military, and civil. Players can also offer cash to their opponents’ populace in order to get a little moonlighting out of them — anything for more fame!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.46