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Endeavor: Deep Sea

| T3d-1978

Plunge into the modern era, where our planet’s vast interconnected ocean scape is one of the last frontiers to discover and explore. Experience a deep new ever-changing adventure in this followup to the smash hit Endeavor: Age of Sail!

In Endeavor: Deep Sea, you head an independent research institute with the goal of developing sustainable projects and preserving the fragile balance of marine life. Throughout the game, you’ll recruit field experts and use their abilities to explore new locations, research dive sites, publish critical ecological papers, and launch conservation efforts.

Expand your expertise, develop your team, and learn as much as possible about the sea. The action your institute takes now, could mean a healthy ocean and a sustainable future for the planet.

Endeavor: Deep Sea is designed by the same creative team behind Endeavor: Age of Sail and Endeavor. This edition is set in a new era of nautical discovery, but uses streamlined rules which will be familiar to fans of the original game.

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Action Retrieval
  • Chaining
  • Cooperative Game
  • End Game Bonuses
  • Grid Movement
  • Map Addition
  • Modular Board
  • Scenario / Mission / Campaign Game
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Tech Trees / Tech Tracks
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91

Enchanters

| T3d-1978

In the fantasy card-drafting game Enchanters, you create an artifact and upgrade it each turn. Every card you take retains some of its power. As you grow stronger, you can take on more powerful monsters and, if you plan well, even defeat a dragon.

To set up the game, each player takes five crystals, then you shuffle together as many kingdom decks as the number of players, then lay out six cards (either items of enchantments) on the journey track. In the game, players take turns to embark on quests, collecting cards from the journey track by paying with crystals. Acquired cards are placed into adjacent stacks, with something like “Long Sword” going into the item stack and cards like “of Fire” going into the enchantment stack; combined, these cards create the “Long Sword of Fire”, and cards grant both temporary bonuses (upper icons and skills) and permanent ones (bottom icons).

Players may attack approaching monsters and defeat them in a simple combat encounter to score points. In combat, you compare your defense against the monster’s strength to determine whether you receive damage. Then, you need to accumulate as much attack as the monster’s health to defeat it. You keep defeated cards as trophies.

From time to time, you rest in the village to gain crystals or heal wounds. If you do, discard the first card from the journey track. At the end of each turn, replenish the journey track to six cards.

The game ends when the last card is taken or discarded.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.93

Enchanted Plumes

| T3d-1978

In Enchanted Plumes, players strive to complete magical peacocks by assembling plumes in sparkling rows from top to bottom.

Skillfully placing feather cards of the same color from row to row is key, as the top row value will count against your score, while all lower rows count as positive values.

Once the peahen card is revealed, the player with the most valuable plumes wins the game and is bestowed with the luck of the peacock!

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.38

Empire’s End

| T3d-1978

You lead a grand civilization at the height of its influence, but can you save it from collapse? In Empire’s End, 2-4 players compete to keep calamity at bay. Empire’s End marries the intuitive and elegant mechanism of reverse-bidding with engine-building, long-term planning, and strategic depth. The result is a game with a quick tempo, abundant tension, and multiple challenging paths to victory.

Players begin with a civilization at the height of its power. Play proceeds through a series of phases, varying as you progress through the game. During the Disaster phase, players face a common threat such as famine, a flood, or barbarians. The player who ends the bidding must take the disaster, which devastates one of their territories.

With each disaster that befalls an empire, its people grow in wisdom and resilience. In the style of the modern classic game No Thanks, resources bid by all players will end up in the hands of the player who ultimately takes the disaster card. That player also gains a new ability, an innovation that reflects their empire’s ability to adapt in the face of challenging times.

Each turn, players move along a progress track that dictates whether they will face a disaster or another type of phase. Players can gain new resources during Production phases, rebuild lost territories during Industry phases, and challenge one another during Military phases. At the end of the progress track, the game is concluded and the winner is the civilization with the greatest number of victory points. Intact territories contribute points, but innovations and military successes can provide alternative ways to win.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction / Bidding
  • Auction Compensation
  • Auction: Multiple Lot
  • Auction: Turn Order Until Pass
  • Closed Economy Auction
  • Constrained Bidding
  • End Game Bonuses
  • Events
  • Hand Management
  • Income
  • Increase Value of Unchosen Resources
  • Turn Order: Auction

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.40

Emberleaf

| T3d-1978

Emberleaf is a competitive card-dancing and tile-placement board game.

As a brave Emberling, your mission is to rebuild your home in the heart of an ancient forest. To succeed, you’ll explore the wilderness, gather resources, clear dangerous areas, and construct new homes for your kin. Along the way, you’ll recruit heroes into your fellowship, each bringing unique skills that will help empower your team. But beware – space in the forest is limited, and other Emberlings have their own plans.

The game features:

  • Card Dancing: Place hero cards within your moving grid to activate skills and enhance your fellowship. Slide cards to trigger powerful combinations and charge them at the perfect moment for even greater effects.
  • Tile Placement: Build vibrant villages to address the diverse needs of your villagers.
  • Engine Building: Recruit heroes to acquire new skills and empower your existing fellowship.
  • Resource Management: Navigate the forest, clear dangerous areas, and collect essential resources.

Every decision you make shapes the destiny of your people. Can you rise to the challenge, guide your village to prosperity, and win the heart of your fellow Emberlings?

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Kill Steal
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.05

Dungeons & Dragons: Edge of the Realms Fields of Faerun

| T3d-1978

Every adventure needs a good map!

In Dungeons & Dragons: Edge of the Realms, you are explorers in the Forgotten Realms who will discover new terrain and magical places to prepare your adventurer’s journey, but everyone else is roaming the lands at the same time, so think fast.

On a turn, everyone draws a map card into their hand, then they choose and reveal one at the same time. Check to see whether you’ve completed quests and score points, then pass your hand to the left and play a new turn. Along the way, you want to match up terrain, activate landmarks, visit cities, and (of course) fulfill quests.

After fifteen turns, you’ll have a completed map ready for adventure, and the explorer who’s netted the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Simultaneous Action Selection
  • Card Game

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight -.–

East India Companies

| T3d-1978

In the 18th and 19th centuries, shipping companies aimed to strengthen the trade between the West and the Far East that had begun in previous centuries. Tea, spices, coffee, and silk are commodities much consumed in Europe, and their buying and selling prices depend closely on supply and demand. Fortunes can be made and gambled depending on circumstances.

In East India Companies, players manage a large shipping company that trades with far flung trading posts in India. They must manage their ships and invest in buying shares of their own company or those of their competitors. Most importantly, players have to keep an eye on the constantly fluctuating market prices! Is it better to invest your money in the stock market or in buying goods? Do they prefer to use fast ships with low tonnage or slower ships with larger holds? Whatever the players choose, their strategies will influence those of their opponents.

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

  • Investment
  • Market
  • Pick-up and Deliver
  • Stock Holding
  • Turn Order: Stat-Based
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Cthulhu: Dark Providence

| T3d-1978

Set in the Cthulhu: Death May Die world and inspired by the writings of H.P. Lovecraft, Dark Providence is a competitive game in which players take on secret roles of Investigators and Cultists from the most influential cities of the United States during the Great Depression.

While the Cultists explore the nation’s vulnerability seeking to remake it into a twisted version of itself by consorting with unspeakable beings from nightmarish dimensions, Investigators take the opposite side, standing against this dark providence.

Each player’s secret alignment determines how they’ll score points at the end of the game, however, this is not a cooperative game. During the game players use Influence cubes to bid for the right to claim Asset cards, take control of cities, and gather Mythos cards. Each new Asset card acquired improves the players’ deck and therefore the resources and actions they can perform during a turn.

Trying to keep their identity secret and avoid insanity, players perform a multitude of actions, swaying Hired Agents to their side of the battle, assassinating other players’ Agents, gathering additional help from Mythos cards, blocking other players from claiming cards, and sealing or protecting Gates, among others to gain Victory Points.

At the end, only the player with the most Victory Points of the dominant side of the battle will win the game!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Secret Roles

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.25

Duel for Cardia

| T3d-1978

Cardia is a fast paced, strategic card game for two players: Choose your card wisely to win each encounter against your opponent.
In gratitude for her liberation, a mighty djinn created the wondrous city of Cardia. Legend has it that whoever wins over the four factions and gains their five powerful signet rings will rule the city. Your goal is set!

Players will each pilot one of two Decks, made up of the same cards for each, with values from 1-16 and with each card having unique abilities. Play your cards at the moment your opponent does not expect them and use their abilities wisely to outwit them!

Game Mechanics:

  •  Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.77

Dwarves, the: Big Box

| T3d-1978

The Dwarves face the dark threat of Orcs, Trolls and Älfar. To defeat evil they have to join forces and coordinate their actions. Based on the series of novels by Markus Heitz, the cooperative game for 2 to 6 players aged 10 and up throws players into various scenarios, in which they have to spend their action points wisely each turn, to gather equipment, fulfill missions, use their special abilities, travel the country and fight back the ever-advancing menace before their land succumbs to darkness.

The Dwarves Big Box combines 2012’s award-winning base game, the large Saga Expansion, the New Heroes Expansion, the story expansions Combined Might and The Triumph of the Dwarves as well as the Älfar Expansion in one appealing, highly re-playable package.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative Game
  • Dice Rolling

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.07