Tag: Area Control

When playing games with an Area Control aspect, players are typically rewarded for controlling the majority of a particular space.

Iquazu

| T3d-1978
Iquazu

Iquazu

The Inox people have been living peacefully in the Land of the Waterfalls for a long time, but now there is a dangerous threat. Evil Rhujas roaming the land want to capture the gemstones of the Inox. That’s why the Inox have selected the hardest to reach and most dangerous place to hide their gemstones: the rock wall behind the Iquazú waterfall. Their water dragon Silon blocks the waterfall so that the brave Inox can rappel down the rock wall behind it to place their gemstones there, out of harm’s way. The gushing water and the dangerous water snakes at the bottom will stop the Rhujas from getting the gemstones. Which player in Iquazú will manage to use their cards skillfully and place their colored gemstones in the best spots?

Each turn in Iquazú, players either draw four cards or play cards of a single color from their hand to place one of their gems in an empty space on the board the same color as the cards they played. If you place in the leftmost column, you play only one card, in the secondmost left column, two cards, and so on. The last player in turn order adds a water droplet to the highest empty spot in the leftmost column after their turn.

Once the leftmost column is full, players earn points based on how many gems they have in this column and they earn a bonus token if they have the most gems in a horizontal row. Bonus tokens can let you draw cards, ignore the color rule, earn points at the end of the game, and take another turn. Players then slide the waterfall right one column to make new bonuses appear and the leftmost gems disappear. Whoever holds the water droplet box passes it right. Players continue taking turns until the final column is filled, at which point players collect bonuses for the final time, then added any points collected to their score.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.86

Imhotep: Builder of Egypt

| T3d-1978
Imhotep: Builder of Egypt

Imhotep: Builder of Egypt

In Imhotep, the players become builders in Egypt who want to emulate the first and best-known architect there, namely Imhotep.

Over six rounds, they move wooden stones by boat to create five seminal monuments, and on a turn, a player chooses one of four actions: Procure new stones, load stones on a boat, bring a boat to a monument, or play an action card. While this sounds easy, naturally the other players constantly thwart your building plans by carrying out plans of their own. Only those with the best timing — and the stones to back up their plans — will prove to be Egypt’s best builder.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

If Wishes Were Fishes!

| T3d-1978
If Wishes Were Fishes!

If Wishes Were Fishes!

Players are fishermen, trying to catch the most valuable fish and sell them in the market for the best prices. With limited space for storing caught fish, players must use their wits to get the right fish to market at the right times. This is where the granting of wishes is most helpful. Just catch the fish who will grant the wish you want, throw it back, and you get your wish. Sounds simple, but the game does require a bit of thinking and planning. The wishes can help you increase the value of fish when sold, grant you extra storage space, and several other useful things.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.95

Gates of Delirium

| T3d-1978
Gates of Delirium

Gates of Delirium

You have finally set out to find the truth. You’ve heard the rumors of ancient runes and the lost pages of a scattered tome that tell of ancient and evil monstrosities, calling for their return. You’ve heard tales of those who came before you in this search losing grip on their sanity as they grew nearer to the truth. As you press on, you can’t help but notice that you feel less attached to reality yourself. Some days you lose track of time and can’t account for hours of the day. The whispers of secret gates to another world are growing stronger, and while no one knows who is building them, you have a dreadful hunch…

Could you be the hidden architect of the Gates of Delirium?

In Gates of Delirium, players have a hand of split action cards: one side sane, and the other insane. Every round, one player decides whether the round is sane or insane, and all players must play that side of their cards. During sane rounds, players search for maps and lost pages to a secret tome, while assigning investigators to help them in their cause. During insane rounds, players collect ancient runes and work to build gates to release the monstrosities that their sane selves have been trying so hard to understand and prevent. Earn the most victory points by the time the last monstrosity is released to win Gates of Delirium.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Four Humours

| T3d-1978
Four Humours

Four Humours

In Four Humours, you are a doctor in medieval times, and everyone knows that your personality is determined by an imbalance of your bodily fluids, a.k.a., the four humours:

  1. Choleric (Yellow bile) – Goal-oriented, decisive, ambitious.
  2. Sanguine (Red blood) – Talkative, enthusiastic, social.
  3. Melancholic (Black bile) – Analytical, detail-oriented, reserved.
  4. Phlegmatic (White phlegm) – Relaxed, peaceful, easy-going.

The kingdom — composed of six map tiles with various locations — is filled with all types of personalities, from choleric sorcerers to phlegmatic peasants. ​Prove you’re the best medieval doctor by visiting citizens throughout the kingdom so they can live out their life’s ambitions…or lack thereof.

Each turn, you play a personality potion from your hand onto a citizen on a scene card to determining that citizen’s personality. Each citizen can have one of two potion types played onto it, and you play each token face down so you know the personality of the citizen, but none of the other players do. Once all citizens on two of the scene cards are covered with potions, all potions are resolved in the following order:

  • A lone choleric wins, whereas two or more are discarded, after which…
  • Two or more sanguines win, whereas a single one is discarded, after which…
  • Exactly two melancholics win, whereas more than two are discarded and a single one sneaks away, after which…
  • Any number of phlegmatics win.

Place winning potions on the corresponding scene in the kingdom.. If a melancholic token sneaks away, place the potion on an adjacent scene connected by a path or bridge. After all potions have been placed, see whether you’ve completed any of the four randomized goals on display, such as having a potion on each of the six map tiles or occupying two pairs of locations that are connected by bridges. Then reveal four new scene cards and begin another round.

When a player completes an objective, the first party tile is resolved. Party tiles are similar to scenes with citizens, but they are available to play onto on your turn at any point in the game. Once the players at the table have completed six total objectives, the last party tile is resolved and the game ends. The player with the most objectives completed wins!

Alternatively, instead of using a shared kingdom board, you can play in “Fiefdom Mode”, with each player having their own fiefdom board. After resolving scene cards, players place their winning personality potion covering a matching character in your fiefdom. The objectives now encourage you to cover all characters of certain types or to create a specific pattern within your Fiefdom.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Network Building
  • Pattern Building

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Ethnos

| T3d-1978
Ethnos

Ethnos

In Ethnos, players call upon the support of giants, merfolk, halflings, minotaurs, and other fantasy tribes to help them gain control of the land. After three ages of play, whoever has collected the most glory wins!

In more detail, the land of Ethnos contains twelve tribes of fantasy creatures, and in each game you choose six of them (five in a 2/3-player game), then create a deck with only the creatures in those tribes. The cards come in six colors, which match the six regions of Ethnos. Place three glory tokens in each region at random, arranging them from low to high.

Each player starts the game with one card in hand, then 4-12 cards (double the number of players) are placed face up on the table. On a turn, a player either recruits an ally or plays a band of allies. In the former case, you take a face-up card (without replacing it from the deck) or the top card of the deck and add it to your hand. In the latter case, you choose a set of cards in your hand that match either in tribe or in color, play them in front of you on the table, then discard all other cards in hand. You then place one token in the region that matches the color of the top card just played, and you use the power of the tribe member on the top card just played.

At the end of the first age, whoever has the most tokens in a region scores the glory shown on the first token. After the second age, the players with the most and second most tokens score glory equal to the values shown on the first and second tokens respectively. Players score similarly after the third age, then whoever has the most glory wins. (Games with two and three players last only two ages.)

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.04

Dinner in Paris

| T3d-1978

The restaurant industry in Paris is buzzing after the inauguration of a new pedestrian square in a very popular district for Parisians and tourists from all around the globe. It is a golden opportunity for you, restaurant owners, to open one of the addresses that will contribute to the culinary diversity and the reputation of the French capital. However, there isn’t space for everyone and your opponents could throw a wrench in your gears!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Racing
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.23

The Court of Miracles

| T3d-1978
The Court of Miracles

The Court of Miracles

In The Court of Miracles, lead a guild of beggars, plot, use trickery and opportunism to build your renown and take over the old 16th century Paris.

Your goal is to establish your renown in Paris or to be the most influential when the Penniless King would have reached the end of his path…

At your turn, you may play a plot card, you have to place one of your (3) Rogue tokens, face down (secret ability), on any available spot in a neighborhood, and benefit from the effect of your spot (receive coins, draw plot cards or move the Penniless King forward along his path). You may then perform the action of the neighborhood.

When a neighborhood is fully occupied, settle a standoff revealing each player’s Rogue(s) token to know which player takes control of the neighborhood. Controlling a neighborhood will reward you each time another player performs its action.

You will be allowed to buy a 4th Rogue, cards or move the Penniless King Forward at the Renown Square.

Unless the Penniless King reaches the last space of his path before, the first player to place their 6th Renown token wins. Otherwise, the player with the most Renown tokens placed on the board wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Bluffing
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.22

Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers

| T3d-1978

Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers is a standalone game in the Carcassonne series set in the stone age.

As in other Carcassonne games, players take turns placing tiles to create the landscape and placing meeples to score points from the map they’re creating. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Instead of cities, roads, and farms, Carcassonne: Hunters and Gatherers has forests, rivers, lakes, and meadows. Players’ meeples can represent hunters (when placed in the meadows), gatherers (in a forest), or fishermen (on a river segment). They also have huts, which can be placed on rivers or lakes to get fish from the entire river system.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Map Addition
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~35 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92

Blue Skies

| T3d-1978

The year is 1979, and the U.S. government has just deregulated the airline industry, opening it to competition in terms of fares, routes, and the airline companies themselves. You represent a new airline that’s trying to set up business in the U.S., but you have an entire country open to you, so where will you set up shop and how can you profit more than the other newcomers to ensure that you survive?

In Blue Skies, the game board presents players with thirty airports in thirty cities. Each airport has four gates, with you using 2-4 gates depending on the number of players. To set up, draw airport demand cards from the deck to seed airports with passengers. Whenever you place passengers on the board, draw from a bag that initially contains 100 red cubes and 25 green cubes; for each airport, continue drawing until you draw a red cube, then redistribute passengers at the open gates of that airport as evenly as possible.

(Note that at most the first five airports drawn will have an open gate, and even those will start with only one open gate run by a local airline. All of the other passengers are just bunched up at the gate waiting for you to serve them!)

Each player starts with three demand cards in hand, and they take turns choosing two gates with a purchase price of at most 6. Players adjust their income from 0, with their income being set to equal the number of passengers now waiting at their gates, then the game begins.

On a turn, each player in turn buys new gates at airports of their choice, spending at most 6 points and adding any unspent points to their score. You can buy out a local airline, set up gates in new cities, or purchase multiple gates in the same airport to try to dominate that area.

Each player in turn then plays a demand card from their hand, drawing passengers form the bag to place one or more passengers at that location. Then demand cards equal to the number of players are drawn, and more passengers are ahead to those airports. The game board lists the number of cards for each airport, so you somewhat know the odds of where passengers might arrive.

Players adjust their income to account for the opening of new gates, the redistribution of existing passengers, and the arrival of new passengers, then they add their income to their score. If a player now has at least 100 points or has placed their twentieth and final gate, the game ends immediately; otherwise, you add a local airline gate to each airport with passengers but no open gates, pass the first player marker, then start a new round.

At game’s end, score the seven regions of the United States based on the player’s dominance of those regions. Each airport has a scoring value, e.g., ORD is worth 4, and each gate you have in Chicago is worth 4 for determining dominance in both the Midwest region and the Central region. (ORD is one of four airports in two regions, with the others being JFK, LAX, and DFW.) If you have the most dominance in the Central region, you score 13 points, whereas second place is worth only 6 points. Whoever has the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Economic
  • Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.14