Category: Ω Board Games

Time of Empires

| T3d-1978
Time of Empires

Time of Empires

In Time of Empires, take charge of a civilization and lead it through the ages from antiquity through the Middle Ages and the Industrial Revolution to modern times.

Each epoch spans a preparation phase, an action phase, and a scoring phase. Other players have accepted the same charge you have and will be grappling with life through the action phase simultaneously with you in real time. Your two 30-second sand timers will trigger your actions — expanding your territory, building wonders, and discovering new technologies — while a soundtrack keeps the tempo of history. You probably won’t be able to look everywhere at the same time, so try to ensure that you don’t overlook a potential attack because you’re too busy helping to complete a wonder!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Civilization
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.29

Tidal Blades

| T3d-1978
Tidal Blades

Tidal Blades

Welcome Heroes! Many magnificent contestants have signed up for the tournament but only a handful will be chosen to join the Tidal Blades, the elite guards of our island realm. To succeed in the Tournament and be chosen as a Tidal Blade, you must compete in Challenges held in the 3 Arenas, rise to the top of the Champion’s Board, and protect the realm from the ever increasing threat of the Monsters from the mysterious Fold.

It has been fifteen years since the Great Battle; 15 years since the Arcanists from the Citadel of Time made their terrible choice and created the Fold; 15 years since the last assemblage of Tidal Blades. The Arcanists folded space and time to stop the onslaught of creatures from the depths, but now new Monsters have appeared, the hard-earned days of peace are coming to a close and the islands need protection. A tournament has been called, the Arenas are ready, the inhabitants of all the islands are gathering, and young heroes from across the realm are showing up to compete to be named a Tidal Blade: Hero of the Reef.

In Tidal Blades: Heroes of the Reef, each player takes the role of a young hero competing to be named a Tidal Blade. The tournament takes place over 5 Days and Nights. By gathering the needed resources, signing up to compete in Challenges and timing your arrival at different islands you can make the most of your Hero’s turns and rise in the ranks of the contestants.

Each day you will send your hero to take actions on the different Locations and to undertake Challenges. Each action will gain you the resource or effect listed on the action space as well as the Location bonus. At the Arenas you may then attempt a Challenge that matches your Location, and at the Fold you may battle a monster. Completing Challenges and fighting monsters will advance your character in the four traits of Focus, Spirit, Resilience and Synergy.

Each Tidal Blade will be judged at the end of the 5 rounds based on the Challenges they have completed, the level of each of their Traits, their standing on the Champions Board, and the monsters they have fought.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.87

Three Sisters

| T3d-1978
Three Sisters

Three Sisters

Three Sisters is a strategic roll-and-write game about backyard farming. Three Sisters is named after an indigenous agricultural technique still widely used today in which three different crops — pumpkins, corn, and beans — are planted close together. Corn provides a lattice for beans to climb, the beans bring nitrogen from the air into the soil, and the squash provides a natural mulch ground cover to reduce weeds and keep pests away.

In the game, you have your own player sheet with multiple areas: the garden, which is divided into six numbered zones, each containing the three crop types; the apiary; compost; perennials; goods; fruit; and the shed, which is filled with tools that have special abilities. All the crops, fruits, flowers, and hives are represented by tracks that you will mark off as you acquire these items. Many of the tracks are interconnected with other elements in the game, giving you bonuses along the way. A common feature of these tracks are circles that represent a harvest, which generates goods; get enough goods, and you unlock bonus actions. Advancing on all of these tracks offers various amounts of points, advancements, and bonuses.

The game lasts eight rounds. Each round, roll dice based on the number of players, group them by number, then place them on an action space of the circular action wheel, starting with the current position of the farmer; the farmer moves each round, which means that dice showing 1s, 2s, etc. will end up on different spaces each round. Once the dice have been placed, each player drafts one die and uses it as described below. Once everyone has drafted a die, all players get to use the lowest-valued die remaining on the action wheel. A die lets you do two things, which you can do in either order:

  • Plant or water the numbered zone matching the value of the die.
  • Take the action of the space from which you removed the die.

To plant, you mark the bottom space of two empty crop tracks. (Note that you can’t plant beans until the corn adjacent to the beans is tall enough to support them.) To water, you mark one space in all the crop tracks that already have at least one mark in them. As for the actions on the action wheel, you can:

  • Plant or water again in the same numbered zone.
  • Gain one compost (which lets you adjust die values) and four goods (which will get you bonuses at the farmer’s market).
  • Mark off the hive track, which can bring you points, goods, or bonus actions.
  • Mark one of the four fruit tracks. Each fruit is worth different points and different amounts of goods and has different track lengths and circle positions.
  • Visit the farmer’s market, which gives you points and bonuses based on the number of goods you’ve collected.
  • Mark one of the fifteen tool tracks in your shed. As soon as you complete a track, you gain that power or end-game scoring opportunity.

Perennials don’t have a direct action associated with them and are marked off only through actions in other areas, with the various perennials giving different bonuses as you mark them.

At the end of the round, all players receive a bonus action, either rain that waters all numbered zones in your garden, a trip to the shed, or a visit to the farmer’s market. After eight rounds, you score points for harvested crops, perennials, the apiary, fruit, and some shed items. Whoever has the most points wins.

Three Sisters has a solo mode in which you try to top your own score against an “opponent” that drafts dice and blocks areas of your sheet.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Drafting
  • Dice Rolling
  • Paper and Pencil
  • Rondel

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.62

The Thing: The Boardgame

| T3d-1978
The Thing: The Boardgame

The Thing: The Boardgame

The Thing is a game that mixes different mechanisms to create an experience that is as faithful as possible to that of the original film. It is a “hidden role” game, in which one player is initially the Thing and the others players are humans. The purpose of the Thing is to infect others, to prevent the survivors from escaping from the base (which can happen three different ways), or to try to escape with them by behaving as a human.

In addition to these elements, players also have to manage Outpost 31. On the map are the same rooms as seen in the film, and each of these rooms allows players to perform a different action. Human players have to feed themselves and keep the boiler and the generator on to avoid being in the cold and dark. The Thing will try to sabotage these places to make life difficult for humans…or not, trying to camouflage itself among the humans and infect them when the perfect opportunity presents itself.

The goal of the game designers was to bring the same personal emotions and paranoia that the protagonists of the film experienced to the gaming table.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Hidden Roles

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 8 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.89

That Time you Killed Me

| T3d-1978
That Time you Killed Me

That Time you Killed Me

You and your opponent are rival time travelers trying to erase each other from history. To prove you are the one true inventor of time travel, you must use your invention to find your enemy in time and murder them — before they get you!

Unfortunately, since your enemy has strewn many copies of themself across the timeline, you may have to do the terrible deed many, many times before it sticks. Just make sure you don’t get erased first!

That Time You Killed Me is an abstract narrative game of time and murder that introduces new scenarios with unique rules and components as you play. As with any game about mucking about across time, you must play through this content in a strict, unalterable order.

To set up, place three game boards in a row to represent past, present, and future. Each player starts with a player piece in the same location on each 4×4 board, with the start player having their focus token in the past while the other has it in the future.

On a turn, choose a single copy of yourself on the board where your focus token is located, then take two actions with this copy, with actions being movement to an adjacent orthogonal space, time travel forward to the next board (travel from the past to the future is not allowed), or time travel back to the previous board, leaving a copy of yourself in the current location when you do. Sure, you traveled to the past, but if you stick around long enough, you’ll be right back where you started, so now you’re there, too! At the end of your turn, move your focus token to a different board.

Under the basic rules, you murder a copy of your opponent by pushing them into the wall of the game board. You have a limited number of copies of yourself in reserve, and murdered copies don’t return to your reserve because that would be gross. If you run out of copies, you can no longer travel to the past since you can’t leave a copy of yourself behind.

If on your turn, your opponent has copies of themselves on only one board, you win!

Play through four chapters of escalating difficulty, adding more wild time-travel shenanigans and unlocking more content as you master the game!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Campaign
  • Grid Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.63

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

| T3d-1978
Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is an engine-building game in which players control interplanetary corporations with the goal of making Mars habitable (and profitable). You will do this by investing mega credits (MC) into project cards that will directly or indirectly contribute to the terraforming process. In order to win, you will want to accumulate a high terraform rating (TR) and as many victory points (VP) as you can. Players raise their TR by increasing global parameters: oceans, oxygen, and temperature. TR also determines each corporation’s basic income, and, at the end of the game TR counts as VP. Additional VP and production capabilities are awarded for building project cards and other actions taken during the game.

The game is played in rounds, and each round the players will choose one of five phases, which determines which activities will take place during that round. This means every round is different, but can consist of building new project cards, taking general and project-specific actions, producing income and resources (plants and heat), or researching to draw more project cards. Every player will take all the phases selected for the round, and will receive a special bonus during the phase that they selected. To speed up the game, within each phase, players can act simultaneously without waiting for each other!

The game board has tracks for oxygen, temperature, and terraform rating, as well as a place for all of the ocean tiles that will be flipped over the course of the game. The game ends when there is enough oxygen to breath (14%), oceans enough to allow Earth-like weather (9), and the temperature is well above freezing (+8°C). It will then be possible, if not comfortable, to live on the surface of Mars!

The winner is the player with the most VP at the end of the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection
  • Tableau Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.90

Terraforming Mars

| T3d-1978
Terraforming Mars

Terraforming Mars

In the 2400s, mankind begins to terraform the planet Mars. Giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment is habitable. In Terraforming Mars, you play one of those corporations and work together in the terraforming process, but compete for getting victory points that are awarded not only for your contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other commendable things.

The players acquire unique project cards (from over two hundred different ones) by buying them to their hand. The projects (cards) can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere. The cards can give you immediate bonuses, as well as increasing your production of different resources. Many cards also have requirements and they become playable when the temperature, oxygen, or ocean coverage increases enough. Buying cards is costly, so there is a balance between buying cards (3 megacredits per card) and actually playing them (which can cost anything between 0 to 41 megacredits, depending on the project). Standard Projects are always available to complement your cards.

Your basic income, as well as your basic score, is based on your Terraform Rating (starting at 20), which increases every time you raise one of the three global parameters (which are temperature, oxygen, and ocean coverage). However, your income is complemented with your production, and you also get VPs from many other sources.

Each player keeps track of their production and resources on their player boards, and the game uses six types of resources: MegaCredits, Steel, Titanium, Plants, Energy, and Heat. On the game board, you compete for the best places for your city tiles, ocean tiles, and greenery tiles. You also compete for different Milestones and Awards worth many VPs. Each round is called a generation (guess why) and consists of the following phases:

1) Player order shifts clockwise.
2) Research phase: All players buy cards from four privately drawn.
3) Action phase: Players take turns doing 1-2 actions from these options: Playing a card, claiming a Milestone, funding an Award, using a Standard project, converting plant into greenery tiles (and raising oxygen), converting heat into a temperature raise, and using the action of a card in play. The turn continues around the table (sometimes several laps) until all players have passed.
4) Production phase: Players get resources according to their terraform rating and production parameters.

When the three global parameters (temperature, oxygen, ocean) have all reached their goal, the terraforming is complete, and the game ends after that generation. Count your Terraform Rating and other VPs to determine the winning corporation!

Game Mechanics:

  • Closed Drafting
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection
  • Tableau Building
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

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

Terra Nova

| T3d-1978
Terra Nova

Terra Nova

Terra Nova is a simplified version of the strategy game Terra Mystica. In the game, up to four players each control one of ten factions, each with different abilities. Compete against one another to explore new territories in peaceful competition, erect buildings, and achieve certain goals from round to round. Use your faction’s special abilities in a clever way to control the largest territory at game’s end and finish with the most points.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.75

The Taverns of Tiefenthal

| T3d-1978
The Taverns of Tiefenthal

The Taverns of Tiefenthal

In the village of Tiefenthal lies “The Tavern of the Deep Valley”. There, all citizens from the area gather, but it’s important to attract new, wealthy guests for only then is there enough money to expand the tavern, which will then lure nobles into the tavern as well. But which tavern expansion is best? Should you focus on money? Or rather ensure that the beer will keep flowing?

In The Taverns of Tiefenthal, the challenge is to skillfully choose the dice and develop your personal deck of cards as profitably as possible. The game is structured with five modules so that your group can add extra levels of complexity as you become more familiar with the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Dice Drafting
  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.69

Tapestry

| T3d-1978
Tapestry

Tapestry

Tapestry is a two-hour game for 1-5 players designed by Jamey Stegmaier.

Create the civilization with the most storied history, starting at the beginning of humankind and reaching into the future. The paths you choose will vary greatly from real-world events or people — your civilization is unique!

In Tapestry, you start from nothing and advance on any of the four advancement tracks (science, technology, exploration, and military) to earn progressively better benefits. You can focus on a specific track or take a more balanced approach. You will also improve your income, build your capital city, leverage your asymmetric abilities, earn victory points, and gain tapestry cards that will tell the story of your civilization.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Tableau Building
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91