Tag: Card Game

Card Games are games that are played with a standard 52-card deck of playing cards.

Arctic Scavengers: Base Game+HQ+Recon

| OTSG Staff

In the year 2097, the entire Earth was enveloped in a cataclysmic shift in climate, plunging the globe into another ice age. Nearly 90% of the world’s population was eliminated, driving the survivors to band together into loose communities and tribes.

In Arctic Scavengers, you are the leader of a small tribe of survivors. Resources, tools, medicine, and mercenaries are all in scarce supply. You and your tribe are pitted against up to four other tribes in a fight for survival. Build up your tribe, skirmish against other players head-to-head, or even bluff your way to victory. The player with the largest tribe at the end of the game is declared the winner!

As the competing tribes develop and grow, headquarters are established for each tribe thanks to the components in the included HQ expansion. This base camp consists of a Tribal Leader (complete with special abilities) and the potential to construct buildings that can be used strategically during game play. Additionally, the game introduces alternative victory paths, new mercenaries, new tools, and the addition of the “engineering schematics” pile.

As the tribes evolve further and struggle for dominance, information becomes the most valuable currency. In the new world mapped out in the Recon, deception reigns, leading to a need for reconnaissance. This expansion adds new tribe leader roles, new mercenaries, new equipment, and new levels of player interaction (i.e., new ways to make your opponents feel pain).

Arctic Scavengers: Base Game+HQ+Recon comes with a plastic insert to organize all your cards for ease in play setup.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.26

Astro Knights: Eternity

| OTSG Staff

You and your group of rag-tag intergalactic scrappers are suddenly faced with the responsibility of defending your home world from those that seek to destroy it. Join forces and work together in this cooperative deck builder to strategically defeat the Boss before they destroy you and all you love. Play through all the scenarios and master the new mechanics introduced in this stand-alone continuation of the Astro Knights series!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.86

Assault on the Castle

| OTSG Staff

In Assault the Castle, players are fierce medieval Lords who want to destroy opponents’ castles by using fearsome siege machines. At the beginning of the game, players, by using cards, physically build their own castles upon a special basement mat. With regards to the building phase, there actually are no limits, as long as the castles can stand properly. During the game, players turn-by-turn draw siege cards that activate siege machines. In such cases, players will throw cards against their opponents castles, to make them fall.

The last standing castle wins the game!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

Ascension: Dawn of Champions

| OTSG Staff

Where there were once six realms, now only a single remains: New Vigil. In Ascension: Dawn of Champions, you take on the role of your faction’s Champion to guide them to victory in this world of new alliances and ancient foes.

New Champion cards let you play as a faction leader, building your reputation to unlock powerful cards and effects. This set also includes new multi-faction cards to acquire and defeat, including Constructs and Monsters!

As with all other Ascension sets, Ascension: Dawn of Champions can be played as a standalone game or combined with other Ascension games.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25

Artifacts, Inc.

| OTSG Staff

New York, 1929: A frenzy of interest in antiquity is sweeping the nation! With museums hungry for mysterious and exotic artifacts — and you hungry for adventure — you start up your own archeology company. Untold wonders await within dangerous jungles, harsh deserts, and wind-swept mountains. Will you gain a reputation as the most intrepid and famous adventurer of all time?

In Artifacts, Inc., 2-4 players compete to grow the most famous archaeology company. Players roll dice, which represent their troop of adventurers, and place them on cards in order to find artifacts, sell them to museums, and purchase new cards representing their company assets. Players can choose to focus on making lots of money by selling artifacts, having museum majorities, creating the best combination of expeditions and buildings, or searching below the waves for lost cities and hidden treasures. The first player to reach 20 reputation triggers the end of the game, and the player with the most total reputation wins!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.16

Arboretum

| OTSG Staff

Arboretum is a strategy card game for 2-4 players, aged 10 and up, that combines set collection, tile-laying and hand management while playing in about 25 minutes. Players try to have the most points at the end of the game by creating beautiful garden paths for their visitors.

The deck has 80 cards in ten different colors, with each color featuring a different species of tree; each color has cards numbered 1 through 8, and the number of colors used depends on the number of players. Players start with a hand of seven cards. On each turn, a player draws two cards (from the deck or one or more of the discard piles), lays a card on the table as part of her arboretum, then discards a card to her personal discard pile.

When the deck is exhausted, players compare the cards that remain in their hands to determine who can score each color. For each color, the player(s) with the highest value of cards in hand of that color scores for a path of trees in her arboretum that begins and ends with that color; a path is a orthogonally adjacent chain of cards with increasing values. For each card in a path that scores, the player earns one point; if the path consists solely of trees of the color being scored, the player scores two points per card. If a player doesn’t have the most value for a color, she scores zero points for a path that begins and ends with that color. Whoever has the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.13

Aquabats!, The, Super Showdown

| OTSG Staff

In The Aquabats! Super Showdown! card game, two to four players are villains competing to capture all five members of The Aquabats, the world’s greatest superhero rock band.

The game consists of three types of cards: Monster cards, Action cards, and Aquabats cards. Monster cards have colors and power levels. Each turn, a player plays a Monster card and draws a new Monster card. If the card played is of the same color and a higher power level than the card previously played, that player may draw both a Monster card and an Action card. At the start of a player’s turn, a Battle card or Epic Battle card may be played, challenging one player or all players respectively to a showdown. Each player in the battle must play a Monster card, and the winner may take an Aquabat card from the table or, if none remain, steal one from the defeated player.

Shrink Ray cards enable a challenged player to diminish the power of an aggressor; X-Ray cards allow one to peak at another player’s hand; Antibats cards foil the winner of a battle from taking a loser’s Aquabat card; and Steal cards can be used to acquire another player’s Aquabat card without a battle.

Play continues until one player acquires all five Aquabat cards or until War is mutually declared, in which case the winner of a single round Epic Battle is declared the game’s victor.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 10 – 20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

Antiquity Quest 🔵

| OTSG Staff

Your goal in Antiquity Quest is to have the highest score a the end of the game. You can choose to play either a single round for a quick game (20-30 min) or a complete game in which you’ll tally scores over three rounds (60-90 min)

Each player is dealt two sets of 10 cards at the start of a round. You’ll pick up one set, this is called a hand. The second set, called a cache, remains face down on the table until you’ve played all of the cards from your hand.

You’ll take turns drawing, playing, and discarding cards as you work on creating your own collections and sabotaging the collections that belong to other players.

Collections consist of Antiquity and Treasure cards. The six suits of Antiquity cards represent six ancient civilizations. Treasures are their own suit and are more rare and valuable. The more challenging a collection is to create. the more it’s worth.

A round ends once a player has completed at least five collections and played through all of the cards in their hand and cache. That player earns a bonus for going out first. Every other player takes on last turn and then scores are tallied.

Your score at the end of each round is the combination of bonus points from going out first, points for completing collections ,and points for the cards you play. The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins.

Here’s what to expect in this bold and exciting set collection game:

You’ll strive to create collections of Antiquities and Treasures.

The more challenging a collection is to create, the more it’s worth.

Beware! Your competitors can, and will seek to sabotage your efforts.

Careful planning, brilliant strategy, and a stroke of luck will bring you success!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 8 Players
  • 30 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.20

Aleph Null 🟢

| kithorning

As a successful Magician, you have been able to fund a lifetime of research by delivering to the petty demands of liars, philanderers, gluttons and the least of Humanity.

How refreshing, then, when a client should emerge with a commission of horrifying simplicity that has the potential for acquiring a vast amount of knowledge – perhaps the ultimate knowledge – albeit at the expense of many millions.

“Release the denizens of Hell into the Earth, with Baphomet – The Sabbath Goat – at their Head, for one night only and let them run amok. Let us see the consequences – for aesthetic reasons only, of course.”

However, do not expect this matter to proceed without interference from the Church and/or from Hell itself: the best-laid plans do not always go the way expected.

Inspired by the Black Easter novellas by James Blish, the aim of Aleph Null is to successfully summon the demonic Prince Baphomet who, when he appears, expects there to be no cards in your hand, the main deck and the discard pile; if there are any cards remaining in these ‘zones’, you lose. However, ‘not losing’ in this way doesn’t mean that you have won: any cards still in play also count against you – too many and you shall lose also. The sooner you ‘win’, the better your chance of surviving any due punishment.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 Player
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.70

Adventure Zone: Bureau of Balance, The 🔵

| kithorning

The Adventure Zone: Bureau of Balance, based on the very popular podcast and series of graphic novels of the same name, lets players embark on their own adventure as they attempt to rescue various artifacts of immense power. Battle a myriad of enemies, from scary to sarcastic, as you and your friends work through a dynamic dungeon made from numerous decks of cards – ensuring that each game will be different!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.71