Tag: Auction/Bidding

Auction and Bidding games typically have players place bids on in-game items and advantages to improve their position within the game.

Through the Ages

| T3d-1978
Through the Ages

Through the Ages

Through the Ages is a civilization building game. Each player attempts to build the best civilization through careful resource management, discovering new technologies, electing the right leaders, building wonders and maintaining a strong military. Weakness in any area can be exploited by your opponents. The game takes place throughout the ages beginning in the age of antiquity and ending in the modern age.

One of the primary mechanisms in TTA is card drafting. Technologies, wonders, and leaders come into play and become easier to draft the longer they are in play. In order to use a technology you will need enough science to discover it, enough food to create a population to man it and enough resources (ore) to build the building to use it. While balancing the resources needed to advance your technology you also need to build a military. Military is built in the same way as civilian buildings. Players that have a weak military will be preyed upon by other players. There is no map in the game so you cannot lose territory, but players with higher military will steal resources, science, kill leaders, take population or culture. It is very difficult to win with a large military, but it is very easy to lose because of a weak one.

Victory is achieved by the player whose nation has the most culture at the end of the modern age.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Civilization
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Tableau Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.17

Sidereal Confluence

| T3d-1978
Sidereal Confluence

Sidereal Confluence

Sidereal Confluence: Trading and Negotiation in the Elysian Quadrant is a singularly unique trading and negotiation game for 4-9 players. Over the course of the game, each race must trade and negotiate with the rest to acquire the resource cubes necessary to fund their economy and allow it to produce goods for the next turn. Scheming, dealing, and mutually beneficial agreements are key to success. While technically a competitive game, Sidereal Confluence has a cooperative feel during the trading phase as no race has the ability to thrive on its own. Trade well, and you’ll develop technologies and colonize planets to form a civilization that is the envy of the galaxy.

Each player chooses one of the nine unique and asymmetrical alien races that have come together to form a trade federation in their quadrant. Each race has its own deck of cards representing all the existing and future technologies it might research. Some races also have other cards related to unique features of their culture. These cards represent portions of the culture’s economy and require spending some number of cubes to use, resulting in an output of more cubes, ships, and possibly victory points. Since each culture’s outputs rarely match their inputs, players need to trade goods with one another to run their converters to create the resources they truly need to run their society most efficiently and have an effective economy. Almost everything is negotiable, including colonies, ships, and all kinds of resources.

Each game round contains an open trading phase in which all players can negotiate and execute deals for cubes, ships, colonies, even the temporary use of technologies! Players with enough resources can also research technologies, upgrade colonies, and spend resources on their race’s special cards during this phase. Once complete, all players simultaneously run their economies, spending resources to gain more resources. The Confluence follows, starting with players sharing newly researched technologies with all other races and following with bidding to acquire new colonies and research teams. Researching a new technology grants many victory points for the prestige of helping galactic society advance. When one race builds a new technology, it is shared with everyone else. Technologies can be upgraded when combined with other technologies.

The ultimate goal is victory points, which are acquired by researching technologies, using your economy to convert resources to goods, and converting your leftover goods into points at the end of the game.

The game is almost all simultaneous play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Economic
  • Negotiation
  • Trading

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 9 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.55

Dune

| T3d-1978

Imagine you can control the forces of a noble family, guild, or religious order on a barren planet which is the only source for the most valuable substance in the known universe.

Imagine you can rewrite the script for one of the most famous science fiction books of all time. Welcome to the acclaimed 40-year-old board game which allows you to recreate the incredible world of Frank Herbert’s DUNE.

In DUNE you will become the leader of one of six great factions. Each wishes to control the most valuable resource in the universe – melange, the mysterious spice only found at great cost on the planet DUNE. As Duke Leto Atreides says “All fades before melange. A handful of spice will buy a home on Tupile. It cannot be manufactured, it must be mined on Arrakis. It is unique and it has true geriatric properties.” And without melange space travel would be impossible. Only by ingesting the addictive drug can the Guild Steersman continue to experience visions of the future, enabling them to plot a safe path through hyperspace.

Who will control DUNE? Become one of the characters and their forces from the book and . . . You decide!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Bluffing
  • Bribery
  • Negotiation
  • Take That
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.96

A Game of Thrones 🟠

| T3d-1978

King Robert Baratheon is dead, and the lands of Westeros brace for battle.

In the second edition of A Game of Thrones: The Board Game, three to six players take on the roles of the great Houses of the Seven Kingdoms of Westeros, as they vie for control of the Iron Throne through the use of diplomacy and warfare. Based on the best-selling A Song of Ice and Fire series of fantasy novels by George R.R. Martin, A Game of Thrones is an epic board game in which it will take more than military might to win. Will you take power through force, use honeyed words to coerce your way onto the throne, or rally the townsfolk to your side? Through strategic planning, masterful diplomacy, and clever card play, spread your influence over Westeros!

To begin the game, each player receives an army of Footman, Knight, Siege Engine, and Ship units, as well as a set of Order tokens and other necessary components. Each player also receives a deck of unique House Cards, which are used as leaders in battles against rival Houses.

Each round in the game is made up of three phases: the Westeros Phase, the Planning Phase, and the Action Phase. The Westeros Phase represents special events and day-to-day activities in Westeros. There are three different Westeros Decks, and each denotes a different global action, potentially affecting all players.

The Planning Phase is perhaps the most important. Here you secretly assign orders to all of your units by placing one order token face down on each area you control that contains at least one unit (Knight, Footman, Ship, or Siege Engine). This portion of the game emphasizes diplomacy and deduction. Can you trust the alliance that you made? Will you betray your ally and march upon him? Players may make promises to each other (for aid or peace, for example), but these promises are never binding. The result is tense and compelling negotiations, often ending in backstabbing worthy of Westeros!

During the Action Phase, the orders are resolved and battle is entered! When armies meet in combat, they secretly choose one of their House cards to add strength to the battle. Finally, the Houses can consolidate their power in the areas they control and use that power in future turns to influence their position in the court of the Iron Throne and to stand against the wildling Hordes.

In addition to featuring updated graphics and a clarified ruleset, this second edition of A Game of Thrones includes elements from the A Clash of Kings and A Storm of Swords expansions, including ports, garrisons, Wildling cards, and Siege engines, while introducing welcome new innovations like player screens and Tides of Battle cards.

Tides of Battle cards are an optional mechanism that brings an element of unpredictability to combat, representing erratic shifts in the momentum of war due to factors such as weather, morale, and tactical opportunity. During each combat, both players draw one Tides of Battle card from a communal deck, and its value modifies the strength of his chosen House card. What’s more, such a card may also contain icons that can affect the outcome of the battle…all of which delivers a new level of intensity to your military engagements.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Bluffing
  • Hand Management
  • Negotiation
  • Racing
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 120 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.72

1848: Australia 🟠

| T3d-1978

1848 Australia, is a semi-historical railroad game from the 18xx set, and to which the designers credit some of this games’ systems to the originator of the series – Francis Tresham.

The game consists of two separate series of actions repeated until the game ends, these are stock rounds and operating rounds. During stock rounds, shares in the various railroading companies are bought & sold by players and are tracked on the stock market mat. During operating rounds, the player/directors of those railroading companies are allowed to build track & place station markers on the map, and then may buy trains from which to earn capital from running those trains along routes on the map. The capital earned may be paid out as dividends to shareholders or retained by the company for future expansion.

The game ends at a pre-determined point, whereupon the player with the most worth,(cash on hand & share certificate value) wins.

As with many games in this series, there are similarities within the rules, but many feature slight differences, and it is these that give each individual 18xx game its character.

1848 features an interesting array of differences described above. These include how private companies are purchased, the inclusion of The Bank Of England as a public company that extends loans and administers railroads that are in receivership, dealing with different track gauges between states and ‘The Ghan’ special train.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Economic
  • Network Building
  • Stock Holding
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 180 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.82

Yedo

| T3d-1978
Yedo

Yedo

Japan, 1605 – Hidetada Tokugawa has succeeded his father as the new Shogun, ruling from the great city of Edo (a.k.a. Yedo), the city known in present times as Tokyo. This marks the beginning of the golden age of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the so-called Edo Period that will last until 1868. Naturally, the most powerful families in Edo immediately try to curry favor with the new Shogun – and this is the opportunity our clan has been looking for, our chance at power and glory. Our clan will prove ourselves to be indispensable to the new Shogun. We will work from the shadows to acquire information about our rival clans. We will kidnap those who might oppose our ascent and assassinate those who prove a threat. We will use cunning to prevent our adversaries from doing the same to us. We will find glory and honor in the eyes of this new Shogun – or failing that we will end his rule by any means necessary.

In the strategy game Yedo, players assume the roles of Clan Elders in the city of Edo during the early years of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The object of the game is to amass Prestige Points, mainly by completing missions. To do so, players must gather the necessary assets and – most importantly – outfox their opponents and prevent them from completing their missions.

There are several ways to reach your goal. Will you try to complete as many missions as possible and hope that your efforts catch the Shogun’s eye? Or will you choose a more subtle way of gaining power by trying to influence the Shogun during a private audience? You can also put your rivals to shame by buying lots of luxury goods from the European merchants. It’s all up to you – but be careful to make the right choices, for in Yedo, eternal glory and painful disgrace are two sides of the same coin…

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.34

Tinner’s Trail

| T3d-1978
Tinner's Trail

Tinner's Trail

In Tinners’ Trail, set in 19th century Cornwall, you represent a mining conglomerate at the height of the tin and copper mining industry. You must buy plots of land across Cornwall in auctions and survey them for tin and copper, always managing your “work points” and money effectively.

Once you have a mine in place, it’s time to extract the ore and (ideally) make a profit, but the deeper your mine goes, the more expensive the process gets. To reduce the cost of mining, you can place developments, such as ports, train stations, and adits (drainage tunnels), but there’s only so many improvements to go around. Once you have made your money — trying to time the market to sell when prices are high — you can invest it in industries outside of Cornwall, which gains you victory points. The earlier you invest, the better the return. Can you outplay the competition and make the most money, or will you be left without two shillings to rub together?

This edition of Tinners’ Trail differs from the original 2008 version in several ways. The player count, for example, is now 1-5 instead of 3-4, and the resources on the board are now set up via tiles instead of die rolls to maintain variability while reducing the randomness. Dual-use cards are now an important part of the game, giving you information before an auction or an extra boost after an auction.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.83

Spectre

| T3d-1978
Spectre

Spectre

In SPECTRE: The Board Game, you take on the role of one of the many iconic villains from the James Bond film franchise, competing with one another to become Number One of the Special Executive for Counter-intelligence, Terrorism, Revenge, and Extortion, a.k.a., SPECTRE.

Are you simply in the game to acquire gold bullion, or are your aspirations more philosophical, safe in the knowledge that the world would be better off with you running it? Each villain has their own plot inspired by films such as Dr. No (1962) and Diamonds Are Forever (1971) driving them along the path to becoming SPECTRE’s Number One. No matter how hard you try, though, 007 is always there, waiting to disrupt your plans and reveal your secrets.

SPECTRE: The Board Game features iconic weapons, locations, and characters from the James Bond films. You will be able to assemble devices, spy on your opponents, blackmail your rivals in order to build your own criminal empire, and strategically deploy your agents around the globe to infiltrate key installations. You need to work behind the scenes to develop your nefarious plots and become 007’s biggest threat, so grab your Persian cat and call your favorite henchman as you prepare your newest monologue — it’s time to get down to business and start building that moon base and world-destroying megalaser!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Cooperative
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.67

Shogun Big Box

| T3d-1978
Shogun Big Box

Shogun Big Box

Shogun Big Box includes the base game of Shogun and its expansion Shogun: Tenno’s Court, as well as three small modules: Samurai, Military Leaders and Chambers, with the latter two unique to this release.

With Samurai, each player receives a stack of cards showing progressively better bonuses. At the beginning of each round, if a player controls provinces in at least four regions, they reveal the next card in their stack and select one of the bonuses depicted on it. These bonuses include war chests, armies placed directly into the tower tray, rice and victory points.

With Military Leaders, every player is given one military leader figure to place on one of their controlled provinces. A player’s leader provides extra benefits for performing actions in their province, such as reducing the cost for buildings or providing extra resources when collecting rice or taxes. At the end of a player’s turn, they move their leader to an adjacent province they control and leave a marker at the old location – if they don’t control any provinces adjacent to where their leader is, they move their leader to any of their controlled provinces without leaving a marker behind. The more markers a player has on the board at the end of the game, the more points will be awarded!

For Chambers, many offices have to be taken in order to rule the land. At the beginning of each round, six chamber markers are revealed and placed on the corresponding spaces on the chamber tableau, representing available offices that can be filled by the players. Whoever controls the most provinces in each region can fill the position by exchanging the chamber marker on the tableau with one of their own player markers. At the end of the game, players are awarded extra points for majorities in horizontal and vertical lines on the chamber tableau.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Economic

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 120 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.25

Rurik: Dawn of Kiev

| T3d-1978
Rurik: Dawn of Kiev

Rurik: Dawn of Kiev

Rurik: Dawn of Kiev is a euro-style realm building game set in an 11th century Eastern European Kingdom. It features area control, resource management, and a new game mechanic – “auction programming.”

You play as a potential successor to the throne following the death of your father, Vladimir the Great, in 1015. The people value a well-rounded leader, so you must establish your legacy by building, taxing, fighting, and accomplishing great deeds. Will you win over the hearts of the people to become the next ruler of Kievan Rus?

Rurik brings to life the ancient culture of Kievan Rus with game design by Russian designer Stanislav Kordonskiy and illustrations by Ukrainian artist Yaroslav Radeckyi.

In Rurik, players openly bid for actions with their advisors. Stronger advisors earn greater benefits at the cost of performing their action later than other players. Conversely, weaker advisors earn lesser benefits but perform their action quickly. This planning mechanism (“auction programming”) adds a fun tension to the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Area Movement
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Civilization
  • Economic
  • Open Drafting
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.07