Category: Ω Board Games

Great Dragon Race, the

| OTSG Staff

Players compete as dragon riders using special cards to advance to the finish, while dodging attacks like ballista bolts and flaming balls. The victor wins the treasure – and even more priceless – a place in dragon-racing history!

The goal is to race from start to finish using a handful of cards to make strategic choices. Special cards that block other players’ actions mean you must pay attention – even when it is not your turn.

With the ability to steal other players’ cards and cards that are character-specific, sudden and significant reversals of fortune are common. Winning is never a foregone conclusion.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 25 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.33

Grand Central Skyport

| OTSG Staff

In Grand Central Skyport, you want to efficiently operate your airship station and attract the most prestigious tycoons to your city. During the game, you attract new airships to your skyport, and each airship has a color and an initial slotting movement. Try to maneuver your airships to group them by color so that they stack to score increasingly more points. Unfortunately, with each new ship entering your station, its movement will trigger the rearranging of previously placed airships, so ideally you can race other skyport owners around a central rondel to choose the incoming airships that are best for you.

Drafting tycoons to your skyport will bring unique advantages in manipulating your docked airships, as well as additional scoring opportunities at the end of the game.

Do you have the operational skills to handle the airships arriving at your station as efficiently as possible? If so, you may very well crown yours the grand central skyport.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Grand Carnival, The

| OTSG Staff

Ladies and gentlemen, step right up — the carnival is coming to town! In The Grand Carnival, players compete to create the most impressive carnival this town has ever seen. You’ll need to carefully plan your carnival’s layout, build attractions, hire staff, and manage the crowds, all while learning a few tricks of the trade.

Each turn, players cover a number on their player board, then select an action. The covered number determines the effectiveness of their action — and won’t become available again until the next round — so players need to think carefully about which number to use. Possible actions include:

• Place a Foundation Tile: Select a foundation tile to place on your fairground. The higher the number you cover, the more tile options you have. Each tile is a 2×2 grid and is made up of construction sites and walkways. Attractions can be placed only on construction sites, whereas guests can move only on walkways, so place your tiles carefully.

• Build an Attraction: Select a polyomino attraction and place it on the construction sites on your fairground. The size of the attraction you can select depends on the number you cover. Larger attractions can collect more tickets (and can be worth more points), but can be difficult for guests to move around.

• Move a Guest: Select a guest token and move it along the walkways on your fairground. The distance a guest can move depends on the number you cover. If a guest moves next to an attraction, place a ticket token on that attraction. If you move enough guests, you can hire a carnival barker; barkers help guests move quickly through your carnival, but take up precious space in your fairground.

After taking your action, see whether you qualify for any of the three “Tricks of the Trade” cards. Each trick has a requirement that must be met before you unlock its unique ability. Once a player unlocks a trick, each of their opponents has one turn to meet the same requirement or lose access to that trick for the rest of the game.

After seven rounds, the game ends. Players earn points from sets of the same size attractions, sets of each size of attraction, carnival barkers, guests that move all the way through your park, and their tickets. The player with the most points wins!

—description from the designer

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.21

Graft

| OTSG Staff

Graft is a card-drafting game in which 3-5 players race to collect sets of valuable goods and ship them back to Zenith.

Players simultaneously draft and play cards into their cargo manifest. Push your luck and chain combos of cards for high scores! But beware the cargo restrictions on some cards that limit what additional goods you can play – you’ll bust if your next hand has no valid option.

Ship your cargo to score points and claim bonus badges for specific sets of goods. Prepare additional groups of cards until the deck runs out. The player with the most points is recognized as the best pioneer by Zenith.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Good Cop Bad Cop (Third Edition)

| OTSG Staff

You’re a cop in a corrupted police district where you have to figure out who’s on your side and who’s not with the ultimate goal of eliminating the leader of the opposing team. You’ll use guns, equipment, deduction, and some social engineering to assist your allies and take down your enemies. But be quick ’cause there aren’t enough guns for everyone!

The 3rd Edition gives Good Cop Bad Cop, overall, makes the game a little easier to learn and play. It adds usability improvements in the graphic design of the cards, simplifies the wording of the equipment, reduces the rulebook to a single page, adds an equipment reference sheet, and removes player numbers on equipment entirely.

The set of equipment has been culled to provide a more consistent experience that keeps the game always moving towards a conclusion. One equipment was removed, one was added as new, and a few others were taken from expansions and promos.

The box art and design is new as well and it is the first game of the Pull the Pin Games line. The 3rd Edition is still compatible with all previous expansions and promos.

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 8 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.33

God Save The King MISSING

| OTSG Staff

God Save the King thrusts players into the center of the conflict between warring kingdoms. The crown is threatened; the duty to take up arms falls to every living subject, whether knight, marshal, captain, footman, squire or cup-bearer. Even the Queen, herself may be called upon to give her life, in order that the King may be spared.

“God Save the King” is an abstract strategy game that can be played using a standard deck of 52 playing cards. However, the talented Inna Kozak has illustrated a custom deck of cards featuring thematically-rich characters, where every card is a unique face card.

Simple to learn, but with layers of complexity, players must use induction, deduction, and deception, in an attempt to seize the rival King(s) while protecting their own.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 0 Players
  • 5 – 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.50

Go Cuckoo!

| OTSG Staff

On your turn in Go Cukoo!, you take one standing stick and put it on the nest. If both ends of the stick have the same color, you may choose to lay an egg on it. Otherwise, you take another stick whose top color is the same as the hiding color of the previous one, up to three sticks. After laying an egg or putting the third stick with different colors, your turn ends. There are penalties for a stick touching the ground or eggs falling from the nest.

The first person to lay all of their eggs can then put the cuckoo on the nest and win the game.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 10 – 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

Go

| OTSG Staff

In Go, players alternately place stones on the empty intersections of a 19×19 grid. The goal: to enclose territory behind stone perimeters and, secondarily, to tightly surround and capture enemy stones. After both players pass, they add up their territory and deduct the number of captives lost, higher score wins.

As you see, the concept is simple, yet the challenge can enrich a lifetime. In truth many lifetimes, for Go has been played for thousands of years. With that long of a lineage and a worldwide following, it has come to be known by different names (Weiqi, Igo, Baduk) and to be played by slightly differing rules, but those differences seldom affect play.

So welcome to this masterpiece that is the game of Go, the race for geographical control of an unclaimed land. Experience running battles and swift reversals, bold invasions and painful sacrifices, each sally, each setback playing out to the dulcet tap of stone on wood.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 30 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.91

Gnome Hollow

| OTSG Staff

Since the beginning of time, gnomes have been the humble caretakers of nature. In secret, they emerge from their underground homes to maintain meticulous rings of mushrooms known to the human folk as “fairy rings”. But the work must be done quickly because as soon as a mushroom path is finished, the mushrooms are ready for picking. Who will be the cleverest gnome and harvest the most mushrooms by the end of the season?

Gnome Hollow is a spatial, tile-placement, worker-placement game in which you grow a tabletop garden of mushrooms and flowers. Every piece is a hand-painted watercolor that captures the whimsical feel of gnomes and nature. Turns are deceptively simple: Players place tiles into the garden, and move a gnome to take a single action on their turn. Come to Gnome Hollow and experience a peaceful garden, the thrill of competing to harvest buckets of mushrooms, and the reward of gathering in all your shiny treasures!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.38

Castle Nightingale

| OTSG Staff

Castle Nightingale looms out of the night, both intimidating and full of promise. Three ninjas have slipped inside, searching for the fabled treasure hidden within…yet a vigilant samurai patrols the halls, watching and listening for intruders.

Two players face off in Castle Nightingale, with the ninja player trying to steal five relics before the samurai player can capture the three ninja thieves. The castle is comprised of an inaccessible garden surrounded by four double-sided floor boards, each showing two secret passage spaces and areas in five colors.

Each turn, the ninja and samurai each choose one of three action cards in hand, with the samurai also choosing a nightingale tile not used on the previous turn. The ninja player resolves their action, then moves across the floor, marking each space of their movement with a footstep token. If they step on a colored space matching the samurai’s hidden nightingale tile, the ninja stands revealed; otherwise, next turn the ninja can treat any of their footsteps as their starting space.

If the ninja picks up a vase, the samurai can still recover it on their turn by either closing the final secret passage or landing on the ninja’s space…as long as the ninja has been revealed that turn. While the ninja moves space to space, the samurai treats each colored area as a single space, allowing them to move quickly within the castle.

Each player has specialized one-shot equipment they can use at any time, starting with one item and gaining more as they play certain cards. Each player has ten cards that they’ll cycle through until either the samurai has captured all three ninja or the ninja have stolen five of the six relics hidden in the eight vases.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25