Category: Ω Board Games

Viticulture

| T3d-1978
Viticulture

Viticulture

In Viticulture, the players find themselves in the roles of people in rustic, pre-modern Tuscany who have inherited meager vineyards. They have a few plots of land, an old crushpad, a tiny cellar, and three workers. They each have a dream of being the first to call their winery a true success.

The players are in the position of determining how they want to allocate their workers throughout the year. Every season is different on a vineyard, so the workers have different tasks they can take care of in the summer and winter. There’s competition over those tasks, and often the first worker to get to the job has an advantage over subsequent workers.

Fortunately for the players, people love to visit wineries, and it just so happens that many of those visitors are willing to help out around the vineyard when they visit as long as you assign a worker to take care of them. Their visits (in the form of cards) are brief but can be very helpful.

Using those workers and visitors, players can expand their vineyards by building structures, planting vines (vine cards), and filling wine orders (wine order cards). Players work towards the goal of running the most successful winery in Tuscany.

Game Mechanics:

  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.88

Vindication

| T3d-1978
Vindication

Vindication

Vindication (formerly Epoch: The Awakening) is a highly strategic, fantasy-based tabletop journey for 2-5 players. Play time is 15-30 minutes per player.

Thrown overboard for a life of wretchedness, you wash ashore a hostile island ruins — completely alone with nothing except the breath in your lungs and an undaunted spirit.

Through your advanced resource management, area control tactics, and freeform action selection, you’ll add companions to your party, acquire bizarre relics, attain potent character traits, and defeat a host of unusual monsters in the ultimate goal of mastering heroic attributes — and regaining honor.

You may perform 3 actions on each turn in the order you feel is most advantageous that turn: activate a companion, travel to a new location, and interact with a map tile. Many actions require the the use of your influence to gain attributes in a one-of-a-kind heroic attribute alchemy system, which is leveraged to gain the game’s most powerful rewards. For example, you can meditate at a spire to gain inspiration. You can train at a fort to gain strength. But then you can combine your inspiration and strength to gain the courage (inspired strength) which allows you to perform a bounty hunt.

There are distinctive end-game triggers that can be affected through game play, over 72 unique card abilities that can be merged in unusual ways for potent combinations, and fresh tile placement each game for high replayability.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Dice Rolling

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.06

Villainous Marvel: Infinite Power

| T3d-1978
Villainous Marvel: Infinite Power

Villainous Marvel: Infinite Power

Dominate the Marvel universe as an iconic comic book villain! Each villain follows a unique path to victory; each uses different abilities to face other villains and mighty heroes from across the universe. Choose Hela, Killmonger, Taskmaster, Thanos, or Ultron and fulfill your dark destiny!

In Marvel Villainous: Infinite Power, players move their villains to different locations within their domain, carry out the actions there, and deal twists of fate to their opponents from a shared fate deck. Three different game modes allow players to scale the difficulty of their game by facing more or fewer events — situations that extract a heavy toll on villains until they are resolved the only way villains know how. Specialty cards add to each villain’s ability, making them even more formidable as more specialty cards are played. With beginner and advance options, this game is an adventure for the whole family!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.65

Village

| T3d-1978
Village

Village

Life in the village is hard – but life here also allows the inhabitants to grow and prosper as they please. One villager might want to become a friar. Another might feel ambitious and strive for a career in public office. A third one might want to seek his luck in distant lands.

Each player will take the reins of a family and have them find fame and glory in many different ways. There is one thing you must not forget, however: Time will not stop for anyone and with time people will vanish. Those who will find themselves immortalized in the village chronicles will bring honor to their family and be one step closer to victory.

Village is a game full of tactical challenges. A smart and unique new action mechanism is responsible for keeping turns short and yet still tactically rich and full of difficult decisions. Also unique is the way this game deals with the delicate subject of death; as a natural and perpetual part of life in the village, thoughts of death will keep you focused on smart time-management.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Economic
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.07

Victoriana

| T3d-1978
Victoriana

Victoriana

Somewhere in the heart of 19th century London, shadowy forces are hatching a dire conspiracy. Queen Victoria has enlisted the aid of exceptional individuals to investigate the impending plot and save her realm from its calamitous consequences.

Victoriana is a cooperative game for 1-4 players. Players move throughout London marshaling and managing resources, investigating leads, and thwarting the agents of an unknown mastermind before time runs out.

Players take the role of investigators that have influence within different realms of British society (politics, science, occult, and the underworld). The conspiracy’s three elements (mastermind, plot, and locale) are represented by cards and tokens selected in secret before the game begins. Leads relating to the conspiracy are represented by facedown cards tied to notable London locations. Players move their figures throughout the city, revealing lead cards, expending their investigator’s influence tokens to acquire those leads, and deciding how to apply them toward the conspiracy’s hidden aspects.

Time is not on their side. Mismanaging the clock or their influence tokens causes leads to go cold, traumatizing investigators and bringing the conspiracy closer to its dreadful realization. Worse, as the investigators come closer to the truth, the mastermind dispatches agents to stymie their movements, disrupt their efforts (by forcing them to discard influence tokens), and assassinate them (by causing trauma).

Identifying the elements of the conspiracy leads the players to a climactic confrontation. If the precise combination of influence is accrued and the investigators assemble at the correct locale, the queen is saved and the British Empire preserved; however, if too many leads go cold, Big Ben strikes midnight, or the investigators are too traumatized, a dire fate awaits.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.67

Vendetta

| T3d-1978
Vendetta

Vendetta

Vendetta is a cooperative deductive murder mystery game where players must solve puzzles, follow clues and make decisions to solve a case. They do this using the included deck of cards, 12 hidden realistic clue documents, and the Internet. Through a choose-your-own-adventure mechanism, players make decisions that influence the course of the game and lead to solving the case in the end. One by one, they enter different realistically designed locations and encounter the various suspects. Then they choose from 3 different ways to deal with the situation and receive points based on their decisions. Complex puzzles and escape room elements must be solved in order to progress further in the case.

Thematically, the game moves in the environment of the mafia in today’s New york. As a member of the mafia you have to uncover the mole in your own ranks who caused the death of the eldest son of the godfather. It’s up to you whether you act morally or use other methods to make your victims talk.

The game is closely intertwined with the real world, and players have to keep using traditional apps like Google Maps or Wikipedia to gather information. Writing emails, detiallated web pages and cell phone calls are also part of the immersive gaming experience.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 180 – 300 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Vampire The Masquerade: Rivals

| T3d-1978
Vampire The Masquerade: Rivals

Vampire The Masquerade: Rivals

Vampire: The Masquerade Rivals Expandable Card Game puts you in control of a coterie of vampires who vie for control of the city of San Francisco. Through dominating mortals, using their political influence, and clashing with their rivals in the streets in the dark of the night, you’ll gather your allies and face off against one or more other players as you seek to push your agenda.

In Vampire: The Masquerade Rivals Expandable Card Game, each player plays with a Deck of Cards featuring a Clan from Vampire: The Masquerade Lore.

At the beginning of each player’s turn, a new challenge or objective will be revealed in the streets. Each player gets two actions on their turn such as draw or play cards, recruit vampires, claim a title, or attack! The other clans will oppose you for dominance in the streets or directly in haven.

Defeat your rival, or gain 13 Agenda Points to win the game and claim dominance over San Francisco.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 70 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.30

Vagrantsong

| T3d-1978
Vagrantsong

Vagrantsong

You trainhop aboard the Silver Ferryman, chasin’ a dream or runnin’ from the past. What you find is a welcomin’ hand – white glove, stretched skin… and a fiddle player in the distance, playin’ a tune that’s awfully inviting. Makes you never wanna leave.

In Vagrantsong, a cooperative and story-driven boss battler, you will take on the role of a Vagrant trapped on a supernatural ghost train. Face off against ghosts lingering on the train (called Haints), adjust your playstyle with Skills and Junk acquired along the way, and uncover the secrets of the Silver Ferryman in this spooky and challenging adventure.

In each of the 20+ Scenarios in Vagrantsong’s campaign, players will take turns spending their 3 Coins to take actions, such as: moving around the train board, investigating the unknown, and rummaging for items that might help them get out of a tight spot. Additionally, players can spend their Coins on more exclusive actions to remind a Haint of their lost Humanity, all in the hopes of freeing the spirit from the ghost train’s bone-chilling grip, and winning the Scenario in the process. But be careful! Each Haint has their own bag of tricks and gameplay mechanics. They will stop at nothing to make sure that the players lose all of their Humanity and stay aboard forever.

After each Scenario, players will have a moment to rest, allowing them the opportunity to change out their Skill and Junk cards, heal their Vagrant, and prepare for their next encounter aboard the Silver Ferryman.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Narrative Choice
  • Role Playing
  • Storytelling

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.08

Unmatched: For King and Country

| T3d-1978
Unmatched: For King and Country

Unmatched: For King and Country

Unmatched is a highly asymmetrical miniature fighting game for two or four players. Each hero is represented by a unique deck designed to evoke their style and legend. Tactical movement and no-luck combat resolution create a unique play experience that rewards expertise, but just when you’ve mastered one set, new heroes arrive to provide all new match-ups.

Unmatched: For King and Country features three characters from the Marvel comics universe: Black Widow, Black Panther, and Winter Soldier.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Hand Management
  • Take That
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 3 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Unfathomable

| T3d-1978
Unfathomable

Unfathomable

The year is 1913. The steamship SS Atlantica is two days out from port on its voyage across the Atlantic Ocean. Its unsuspecting passengers fully anticipated a calm journey to Boston, Massachusetts, with nothing out of the ordinary to look forward to. However, strange nightmares plague the minds of the people aboard the ship every night; rumors circulate of dark shapes following closely behind the ship just beneath the waves; and tensions rise when a body is discovered in the ship’s chapel, signs of a strange ritual littered around the corpse.

Lurking within the depths of the Atlantic Ocean are a swarm of vicious, unspeakable horrors: the Deep Ones, led by Mother Hydra and Father Dagon. For reasons unknown, they have set their sights on the Atlantica, and their minions, taking the form of human-Deep One hybrids, have infiltrated the steamship to help sink it from within. Each game of Unfathomable has one or more players assuming the role of one of these hybrids, and how well they can secretly sabotage the efforts of the other players might mean the difference between a successful voyage and a sunken ship.

If you’re a human, you need to fend off Deep Ones, prevent the Atlantica from taking too much damage, and carefully manage the ship’s four crucial resources if you want any hope of making it to Boston, all while trying to figure out which of your fellow players are friends and which are foes. Everyone shares the same resource pool, but humans will try to preserve them while traitors will strive to subtly deplete them. Being able to tell when someone is purposefully draining the group’s resources is harder than you think, especially when you take crises into account!

At the end of each player’s turn, that player must draw a mythos card. Each of these cards represents a crisis that the whole group must try to resolve together. Some of these crises, such as “Food Rationing”, call for a choice that could potentially put the ship’s passengers or resources at risk, while others, such as “Hull Leak”, call for a skill test in which failure could have disastrous consequences.

During a skill test, each player contributes skill cards from their hand to a face-down pile shared by the group. Once everyone has contributed (or chosen not to), the cards are shuffled, then revealed. If enough of the correct skills were contributed, then the group passes the test! But if the wrong skills were contributed, they can actually hinder the results, leading to failure. Thus, skill tests are dangerous opportunities for traitors to sabotage the humans’ efforts, so you have to stay on your toes at all times.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Hand Management
  • Hidden Roles
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 120 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.94