Category: Ω Board Games

Plunderbund

| OTSG Staff
Plunderbund

Plunderbund

You lead a guild striving to dominate the market for illegal goods in the Sprawl, a city rich in history and lawlessness. Recruit and task an army of agents, racketeers, spymasters and others to build your reputation by selling your goods and causing chaos for your rivals. Through a light deck building mechanism you attempt to create the strongest network of agents, racketeers and the most desirable black market goods. Winners and losers are determined by a fun, yet sophisticated, supply & demand mechanic.

Plunderbund combines the innate corruption and profiteering of prohibition Chicago and the lawlessness of the fantasy setting, the Sprawl.

It’s an era before cell phones, e-commerce and customer relationship management tools, an honest guild had to get business the hard way: thieving, sorcery, money laundering and bribery.

Plunderbund is your chance to lead your guild to fame, fortune or disaster as you navigate the whims of the notoriously picky Sprawl consumer and deal with underhanded tactics from rivals determined to steal your business.

Each player will lead a guild with the power to decide where your finite resources are invested. A light deck building mechanic enables you to acquire and improve your black market goods, add agents, add racketeers, disrupt your rivals’ operations or just wreak havoc. Cards are added to your deck through a simple snake draft from a limited selection of over twenty different recruits.

Your guild gains reputation (VPs) as a sophisticated yet simply implemented supply and demand mechanic helps you sell your black market goods to merchants. At the end of the game you will be compared to your rivals on the strength of your network of agents, number of racketeers and black market goods qualities. All this growth comes at a cost, you have to take favors as you try to build your operation without the benefit of any gold in your coffers. As they say “paybacks are hell”. Fail to payback your favors and you pay the price as you see your reputation diminished at the end of the game.

Over the course of twelve months, divided into four seasons, you will build your reputation on the backs of your guild recruits and their abilities.

All seasons have three months. Each month players:
1) Place demand coins
2) Draw cards and payback favors
3) Determine cards to put into play and pay for them
4) Calculate and receive goods

After three months have been played:
1) Compete for demand
2) Recruit guild member using a limited snake draft
3) Start the next season

After the end of the fourth season, the game is over and final reputation is tallied.

There are two key concepts in Plunderbund. The first is the supply and demand mechanism. The game starts with the placement of demand at open merchants. The demand generated is correlated with the products being offered by the guilds. In the early game, demand is mostly based on the appeal and ingenuity of the products. Later, as with any market, quality and price become more important. Each demand coin expresses a customer’s preference. Some customers want the best appeal, some want the best ingenuity, some want the best quality, and some want the lowest price.

Your goal is to win more demand coins than other guilds by having the best network of rogues and the best product. The rogues are your sales team. The more rogues you have in place, the more deals you can win and the more your guild reputation soars. Over the course of the game you will build out your ability to compete for demand.

To win a merchant’s demand coin, you must have an “Agent” on that merchant. If you have the only agent on a merchant, you are nearly certain to win. If another guild’s agent is on that merchant, then you must compete. The winner is the player who is leading in that product attribute. So, if the customer has expressed an interest in high quality then the guild with the best quality has a chance to win.

You can only win a demand coin if you can supply a good. Goods are earned (stolen, fenced, you name it) at the end of each month. The number of goods you generate each month is based on your investment in your supply chain (which lowers price) and quality. For each competition you win, you decide whether you want to take that specific demand coin or pass. If you pass, the demand coin either stays on the board or is won by a rival guild. Suffice it to say, you need goods to have a chance win Plunderbund.

The second key concept is the favor economy. Instead of paying money to get things done for your guild, you take favors. These favors are used to put your guild members to work (each card has a favor cost ranging from zero to four). These favor cards go in your discard pile. Fortunately, paying back a favor is easy. As soon as you draw the favor card into your play area, from your draw pile, it is immediately considered payed back. In this way, favors are an opportunity cost. If you end the game with favors that are not paid back, they are deducted from your end of game score. Favor management is an essential part of Plunderbund.

If you understand these key concepts, then you are ready to build your guild reputation and win Plunderbund.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Deck Building
  • Economic
  • Open Drafting
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.83

Planet B

| OTSG Staff
Planet B

Planet B

At some point in the not-so-distant future, we humans had to look for a new place to live. Just when we thought we’d have to settle for Mars, we suddenly discovered a new planet, one we lovingly christened “Planet B”. It was a second chance for humanity, and of course we were determined to do everything right this time because as everyone knows, we humans learn very well from our mistakes…

In Planet B, you slip into the role of corrupt governors. You make crooked deals with corporations to advance your own interests. You build your city, let the population work for you, rise in the favor of political factions, or control the news. Of course, all of this comes at a price — and by the time you’re vying for the presidency, you’ll want potential voters to be on your side. In the end, as always, only one thing counts: Who has managed to pocket the most government money?

Game Mechanics:

  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.28

The Pirate Republic

| OTSG Staff
The Pirate Republic

The Pirate Republic

The year is 1713. A rare peace comes to the Spanish Main, but peace has its consequences. With thousands of demobilized sailors, piracy explodes in the West Indies where the port city of Nassau serves as its headquarters. This is the sunrise of the Golden Age of Piracy. It’s a time of conquest and riches, indomitable spirit and fat treasure galleons, pirate utopias and watery graves.

The Pirate Republic is a modular fully cooperative to fully competitive thematic deck building, open-world adventure game for 1–5 players. You are an infamous pirate captain working towards completing mission objectives over three rounds of play. Your mission: Forge the ultimate empire, The Pirate Republic.

– Players can cooperatively work to complete Flying Gang mission objectives to forge the ultimate democracy, the Pirate Republic
– Players who enjoy Hidden Traitor mechanics can add optional Captain Missions that make some captains wily saboteurs who are secretly attempting to sink other players’ ambitions
– Competitive mode creates a race to amass the most Swagger (Victory Points) through daring feats and plunder on the high seas

Devastate merchant shipping lanes, commandeer new ships, raid and conquer heavily defended towns, and plunder New World riches one seaport at a time. Attack, strike fear, and duel your way across the high seas with custom action dice and a deck of unique captain cards. Pillage treasure fleets, squash mutinies, sack forts, recruit crew, duel pirate hunters, and seal your notoriety among the greatest captains. Along the way, battle and bring an end to Spanish, British, Dutch, French, and Danish imperial powers infesting your waters. The Pirate Republic brings the piracy story to life in this swashbuckling blend of adventure and strategy. Even across the centuries, it reminds that if denied the chance to live in freedom, best to go ahead and make your own.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Cooperative
  • Deck Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Tableau Building
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.93

Petrichor

| OTSG Staff
Petrichor

Petrichor

Petrichor is the earthy scent produced when rain falls on dry soil. The word is constructed from Greek (πέτρα) petra, meaning “stone”, and (ἰχώρ) īchōr, the fluid that flows in the veins of the gods in Greek mythology.

Welcome to the lush world of Petrichor; you are a cloud. Your entire purpose in life is to expand, sire other clouds and water crops. Unfortunately, your mates (who are also clouds) have a similar plan. It’s up to you to manipulate the weather and assimilate these rogue clouds to contribute to the growth of as many crops as possible – all in order to claim the title of Most Valuable Cloud.

Petrichor is a highly interactive board game, playable by 1-4 people (up to 5 with the expansion, see below). It’s an action selection/area influence game, with 4 simple actions which interact with the various fields in ever surprising ways. The players move clouds with water droplets, and then rain those droplets onto specific fields, to make sure they have the right amount of water for the Harvest. During a Harvest, crops that have been watered enough are scored! Players are able to influence when, and how often the harvest happens. Players need to strike a fine balance between maintaining control of the different fields as well as influencing Harvest, to make sure the two come together at the optimal time.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.99

Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game

| OTSG Staff
Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game

Pathfinder: Adventure Card Game

Your Adventure Begins Here!

Belhaim’s tower has just collapsed, its wizard is missing, and local kobolds are whispering the name of a long dead draconic nemesis. And that’s just your first day in town…

This complete cooperative strategy game pits 1 to 4 players against monsters, perils, and traps as you become the heroes of Belhaim. As the town’s new champions, an unending world of adventure awaits. Choose your character’s class; build a deck of equipment, magic, and allies; and explore lethal locations as you journey through an exciting fantasy tale. As your adventures continue, your characters add remarkable gear and breathtaking magic to their decks as they gain incredible powers, all of which they’ll need to challenge more and more powerful threats.

This set includes the storybook and cards for The Dragon’s Demand Adventure Path as well as a modular core for infinite scenarios that allows you to control the difficulty and speed of play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Deck Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Move Through Deck
  • Role Playing

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.72

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Mummy’s Mask

| OTSG Staff
Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Mummy's Mask

Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Mummy's Mask

On the Threshold of Discovery! The ancient lands of Osirion are blanketed by the sands of time, and eldritch secrets and vast riches lie just beneath the sun-blistered surface. As modern Osirion opens its tombs to outsiders for the first time in centuries, many of these lost treasures and secrets are now emerging—some more malign than others. Can your group of heroes brave terrible guardians, foul cults, and the burning sands of the desert to stop the rebirth of an ancient tyrant?

This complete cooperative strategy game pits 1 to 4 heroes against the monsters, curses, and traps of the Mummy’s Mask Adventure Path. Choose your character’s class, build a deck of equipment, magic, and allies; and explore dangerous locations as you journey through an exciting fantasy tale. As your adventures continue, your characters add unique gear and awesome magic to their decks as they gain incredible powers, all of which they’ll need to challenge more and more powerful threats.

The Pathfinder Adventure Card Game: Mummy’s Mask Base Set includes:

. More than 500 cards, featuring 7 character classes, a wide array of gear and magical treasures,
and dozens of allies, monsters, and villains from the Mummy’s Mask storyline.
. “The Half-Dead City Adventure Deck,” which begins your journey through the Mummy’s Mask Adventure Path.
. A complete set of 5 polyhedral dice.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Deck Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Move Through Deck
  • Role Playing

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.92

Path of Light and Shadow

| OTSG Staff
Path of Light and Shadow

Path of Light and Shadow

The Realms lay divided, their former wonder lost and forgotten. The Tyrant Queen has seized the throne, forcing the rightful heirs deep into exile. You are the sons and daughters of the once-great houses: Foxway, Gorga, Mherzeen, and Spyre. Under the tutelage of advisors, you have gathered your followers, your conscripts. The time has come to take back what is yours.

Path of Light and Shadow is a massive empire-building experience, combining area control, deck management, and civilization customization. As players vie for control of The Realms, they must enlist and promote supporters, outfit their burgeoning empire with powerful technologies, align with powerful leaders, and lay siege to rival exiles after the throne. Above all else, each player must decide what type of leader they will become, cruel or merciful. But choose wisely, for each path has its rewards and perils.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Civilization
  • Deck Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.16

Paleo

| OTSG Staff
Paleo

Paleo

Paleo is a co-operative adventure game set in the stone age, a game in which players try to keep the human beings in their care alive while completing missions. Sometimes you need a fur, sometimes a tent, but these are all minor quests compared to your long-term goal: Painting a woolly mammoth on the wall so that humans thousands of years later will know that you once existed. (Okay, you just think the mammoth painting looks cool. Preserving a record of your past existence is gravy.)

What might keep you from painting that mammoth? Death, in all its many forms.

Each player starts the game with a couple of humans, who each have a skill and a number of life points. On a turn, each player chooses to go to one location — possibly of the same type as other players, although not the same location — and while you have some idea of what you might find there, you won’t know for sure until you arrive, at which point you might acquire food or resources, or find what you need to craft a useful object, or discover that you can help someone else in their project, or suffer a snakebite that brings you close to death. Life is full of both wonders and terrors…

At the day’s end, you need food for all the people in your party as well as various crafts or skills that allow you to complete quests. Failure to do so adds another skull on the tote board, and once you collect enough of those, you decide that living is for fools and give up the ghost, declaring that future humans can just admire someone else, for all you care.

Paleo includes multiple modules that allow for a variety of people, locations, quests, and much more during your time in 10,000 BCE.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Memory

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.63

The Palace of Mad King Ludwig

| OTSG Staff
The Palace of Mad King Ludwig

The Palace of Mad King Ludwig

King Ludwig II of Bavaria has called all great architects to design his greatest achievement: a world-renowned palace. Only the best will do! Gorgeous appointments, white stone, surrounded by water, with swans everywhere. Oh, and the Ludwig touch? All the architects must design the palace together. The designer who shows the strongest influence will receive the order to build it.

In The Palace of Mad King Ludwig, each player builds rooms one at a time in a single gigantic palace. As rooms are completed, a moat slowly forms around the outside. Once the ends of the moat connect, the palace is finished, and the player who has contributed the most to the palace wins!

In more detail, this sequel to Castles of Mad King Ludwig shares a few similarities to its predecessor, such as tile-laying, room rewards, and the magic of watching a unique palace take shape through the course of the game, but the gameplay is entirely different, with no auction, a clever endgame timer that graphically builds pressure for players as the moat slowly closes in around the palace, and a twist on resource management with multi-colored swan tokens being used as currency, points, and the keys to new abilities.

Game Mechanics:

  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.94

The Others

| OTSG Staff
The Others

The Others

In The Others, the world stands on the brink of apocalypse, as the fanatics of the Hell Club have summoned the 7 Deadly Sins to lay waste to our reality. Slowly the Others have creeped into our lives, corrupting society from within. The city of Haven is the key to their invasion, but it will not go down without a fight, thanks to the actions of the paranormal organization known as F.A.I.T.H. (Federal Authority for the Interdiction of Transdimensional Horrors). Each session of The Others is played with one player controlling the forces of a single Sin, against the other players who control a team of 7 FAITH heroes. The heroes cooperate to survive the Sin’s attacks and accomplish the missions set before them, while the Sin attempts to thwart the heroes in all ways (preferably by destroying them).

The heroes are divided into different classes, each specialized in a different aspect of the game. Leaders are good at helping the other members of the team. Bruisers are excellent melee fighters. Snipers are experts at using guns to put down monsters from a distance. And Fixers have the resourcefulness and knowledge of the occult necessary to resolve supernatural crises that spread through the city. Each hero also has their own stats and unique abilities that set them apart from all others. Knowing when to bring in the right reinforcement can be key to FAITH’s victory.

Corruption is one of the main mechanics of the game. It is both a way for the Sin to consume heroes, and a way for heroes to accomplish amazing feats they wouldn’t be capable of normally. Taking corruption grants heroes powerful bonuses (as long as they keep taking corruption), but when they become fully corrupted, their darkest secrets may come back to haunt them and tear the team from within, or their flesh might simply succumb to the sinful influences.

The Sins player, on the other hand, has access to the different monsters of each Sin, including Abominations, a Controller, and the terrifying Avatar of Sin! These monsters can attempt to destroy the heroes, or simply hinder their progress on their missions. Each Sin provides the Sins Player with a different deck of Sins cards that can be played at different times to surprise players with different effects, often tied to the strategy of each Sin. Yes, because each Sin taints the game with an overarching mechanic that is always in effect. For example, Pride punishes prideful heroes that venture into the streets on their own, while Sloth punishes heroes who try to move quickly across the board. Heroes will need to learn to deal with the different influence of each Sin, which will always stand between them and their mission.

The Sins are also aided by Acolytes, with each session using a different type. These lowly corrupted servants of darkness can fight and stand in the way of heroes, but they also have a once per round special ability that reflects their previous lives. For example, corrupted hobos take equipment from heroes, corrupted nuns corrupt the city districts, and corrupted doctors keep heroes from healing.

There are 7 different stories that players can embark on for each session of The Others. Each of them brings different special rules, different dynamics, and a unique system of branching missions the heroes need to accomplish in order to be victorious. There are Terror stories, which are more straightforward, focusing on action and combat; Corruption stories revolve around the Corruption spreading through the city and the heroes themselves; and Redemption stories rely on saving the city and the few innocents that remain. Each story can be played on a different map setup, which further makes the dynamic of each session unique.

The board used in The Others is made up of several tiles, each depicting a different city district and different configurations of streets. As the city of Haven still belongs to humanity, and it’s the Sins that are attempting to take it over, the heroes can use it to get different benefits each district offers them. For example, they can go to the hospital to heal wounds, to the museum to get rid of corruption, to the RavenCorp tower to get new equipment, or to the police station to call in an orbital strike. What districts are available on each map, and their location, can greatly change the dynamic of the game.

As the game progresses, and depending on how badly the heroes fare against storyline plot twists and developments, the Apocalypse Track will advance, making the Sins gradually stronger and more terrifying. Apocalypse cards, tied to the type of story being played (Terror, Corruption, or Redemption) introduce new twists and challenges to the game, even bringing in the members of the Hell Club themselves!

Heroes will die. Either in noble sacrifice, torn apart by claws and tentacles, or consumed by the corruption welling up in their souls. The question is whether the FAITH team will manage to fulfill their final mission in time, or whether the Sins will reign supreme over humanity.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Dice Rolling
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.03