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.

Isle of Skye: Big Box

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Isle of Skye: Big Box

Isle of Skye: Big Box

Get the full load (minus 4 expansions) of the modern classic tile-laying game with the Isle of Skye Big Box! The Big Box contains the award-winning Isle of Skye base game (Kennerspiel des Jahres 2016), the Druids expansion, and additional scoring and tunnel tiles. A new addition is the mini-expansion Randgebiete.

In the game, you embody one leader of each of the five traditional Scottish clans. You create your own small empire in order to gain the necessary victory points. But in each game only four of the included 24 score cards are in play. This makes each game different and requires different tactics and strategies.

In each round you can buy one of the tiles of a fellow player. Face down, all players simultaneously set the prices of the pieces they offer. A high price can lead to prosperity and much needed money. However, if no buyer can be found, the seller must add the tile to his empire himself and give up the money he has invested. In the end, the player who has scored the most victory points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Economic
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Geek Out! Disney

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Geek Out! is a party game that can determine once and for all which player is the most knowledgeable about your favorite pop culture subjects!

In the game, you draw cards asking you to list a certain number of things which fall under a certain category: comic books, fantasy, games, science fiction, and miscellaneous. Before you begin, however, the other players may try to steal your points (and bragging rights!) by bidding to list even more than the card requires. The bidding continues until one player is ready to “out-geek” their friends. Collect a predetermined number of cards, and you win!

Geek Out! Disney features 350 questions about ninety years of Disney productions.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 -99 Players (You could honestly have more)
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

Furnace

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Furnace is an engine-building Eurogame in which players take on the roles of 19th-century capitalists building their industrial corporations and aspiring to make as much money as they can by purchasing companies, extracting resources, and processing them in the best combinations possible.

Each player starts the game with a random start-up card, the resources depicted at the top of that card, and four colored discs valued 1-4.

The game is played over four rounds, and each round consists of two phases: Auction and Production. During the auction, 6-8 company cards are laid out with their basic sides face up. Players take turns placing one of their discs on one of these cards, but you cannot place a disc on a card if a disc of the same value or color is already present. Thus, you’ll place discs on four cards.

Once all the discs are placed, the cards are resolved from left to right. Whoever placed the highest-valued disc will claim this card, but first anyone with a lower-valued disc on this card will gain compensation, either the resources depicted multiplied by the value of their disc or a processing ability (exchange X for Y) up to as many times as the value of their disc.

Once all the cards have been claimed or discarded, players enter the production phase, using their cards in the order of their choice. Each company card has one action — either production or processing — on its basic side and two actions on its upgraded side. During the production phase, you can use each of your cards once to gain resources, process those resources into other resources or money, and upgrade your cards.

At the end of four rounds, whoever has the most money wins.

Furnace also includes capitalist cards that contain unique effects, and if you want, you can choose to deal one out to each player at the start of the game. For an additional challenge, you can require players to create a “production chain”, with each newly acquired company card being placed somewhere in that chain and locked in position for the remainder of the game.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.32

Dog Park

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Welcome to Dog Park, a mid-weight, competitive set-collection and point-to-point movement game in which players take on the role of dog walkers who recruit, walk, and care for their dogs over four rounds. Each round is split into four phases:

  1. Recruitment Phase: Players compete in two rounds of offers to add dogs to their kennels. Offers are made with players’ reputation (victory points), so must be placed wisely.
  2. Selection Phase: Players decide which dogs to place on their lead to walk this round.
  3. Walking Phase: Players journey through the dog park with their fellow walkers, collecting resources, earning reputation, and interacting with other walkers.
  4. Home Time Phase: Players earn reputation for their walked dogs, and lose reputation for any unwalked dogs in their kennel.

Players must choose their routes and dogs carefully to earn the best reputation and prove they are the most accomplished walker of them all. At the end of the game, the player with the most reputation wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction / Bidding
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.17

Cuzco

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Cuzco is a new 2018 edition of Java from French publisher Super Meeple that moves the action to South America, which is in line with the other titles in the Mask Trilogy as well as the authors’ original plans for the design.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Auction / Bidding
  • Hand Management
  • Map Addition
  • Tile Placement
  • Zone of Control

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.64

Cleopatra

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Designed by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects is a fun and engaging game that includes a three-dimensional palace that players compete to build. Players strive to become the wealthiest of Cleopatra’s architects by constructing the most magnificent and valuable parts of her palace.

Players, however, will be tempted to trade in materials of dubious origins in order to build faster. While these corrupt practices might allow an architect to stay a step ahead of the rest, they come with a high price: the cursed corruption amulets honoring Sobek, the crocodile-god. When Cleopatra finally reaches her new palace at the end of the game, she punishes the most corrupted architects (i.e., the ones with the most amulets), depriving them of riches or giving them as a sacrifice to her crocodile! The wealthiest architect from among those still alive wins.

This new edition of Cleopatra and the Society of Architects has a new graphic design by Miguel Coimbra, a free-standing 3D palace, and rulebook updated by the designers for simplicity and fluidity, which incorporates these gameplay changes:

  • The combinations of resource cards to discard in order to build pieces of the palace have been reworked.
  • The player rewards for building the palace’s pieces have been recalculated.
  • The consequences of corruption have been reviewed.
  • The Great Priest is no longer activated in the same way.
  • The player count has changed from 3-5 to 2-4.
  • There is a new specific system to manage the character cards, which are no longer part of the deck, and are instead handled separately.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.24

Bargain Quest

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Bargain Quest is a game of adventure and capitalism for 2-6 players. Players will take the role of shopkeepers in an adventuring town plagued by monsters. Players must draft items and then secretly choose which items to place in their windows to attract wealthy heroes to their shops.

Once all heroes have been equipped, they venture out to battle against monstrous threats, earning money and prestige for the shop they represent. Throughout the game players will encounter new heroes and monsters while upgrading their shops and hiring employees. Once the third monster is defeated the player who has earned the most gold and prestige is the winner.

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.01

Adventure Mart 🟢

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From dank dungeon entrances to magical market squares, Adventure Marts magically pop into existence wherever they are needed. Busier locations require more than one store, and each one needs a manager — that’s where you come in!

Outsmart your competition and serve a fantastical array of adventurers as you battle to make more gold than your opponents! Adventure Mart is a fresh new take on deck-building games with added twists and plenty of player interaction.

The life of a store manager is brief, but glorious. Can you become “Manager of the Week”? Or will you be banished to the abyss?

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

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

Abyss 🟢

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The Abyss power is once again vacant, so the time has come to get your hands on the throne and its privileges. Use all of your cunning to win or buy votes in the Council. Recruit the most influential Lords and abuse their powers to take control of the most strategic territories. Finally, impose yourself as the only one able to rule the Abyssal people!

Abyss is a game of development, combination and collection in which players try to take control of strategic locations in an underwater city. To achieve this, players must develop on three levels: first by collecting allies, then using them to recruit Lords of the Abyss, who will then grant access to different parts of the city. Players acquire cards through a draft of sorts, and the Lords of the Abyss acquired on those cards grant special powers to the cardholder — but once you use the cards to acquire a location, that power is shut off, so players need to time their land grabs well in order to put themselves in the best position for when the game ends.

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.34

Monopoly: David Bowie Edition

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Monopoly: David Bowie Edition

Monopoly: David Bowie Edition

Relive the fame and take things over in a special edition of the fast dealing, property trading game that pays homage to the Thin White Duke! MONOPOLY: David Bowie gathers the ultimate collection of the rock superstar’s greatest records for fans to buy, sell, and trade albums such as The Rise and Fall of Ziggy Stardust and The Spiders from Mars. Build Arenas and Stadiums atop Bowie’s discography with six custom sculpted tokens representing memorable studio albums: Major Tom, Black Star, Black Tie White Noise, Aladdin Sane, Diamond Dogs, and Ashes to Ashes. Sound and Vision cards will take you on the musical journey to be the furthest above the moon with any money to win!

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Economic
  • Negotiation
  • Player Elimination
  • Set Collection
  • Stock Holding
  • Trading

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.80