Tag: Connections

Cascadero

| OTSG Staff

The kingdom is shattered, its towns are divided, and its people are distrusting. The newly crowned ruler, El Cascadero, seeks to reunite the land, but he can’t do it alone. Thus, he appoints four ministers to visit the people and restore civil harmony. While the ministers are obligated to bring prosperity to the entire land, each of them also has one dedicated responsibility: Farming, Crafting, Mining, and Markets. El Cascadero also records in his book the successes of his ministers…

Cascadero is the next epic tile placement strategy game from acclaimed designer Reiner Knizia. Ministers visit towns by placing their envoys adjacent to them; but towns are distrusting of single envoys, so newly placed envoys will only trigger town scoring when they are part of an established group or carry an official seal from El Cascadero himself. Towns with Royal Messengers at them or a history of envoy visits are even more valuable, as they willingly collaborate for even greater successes.

Players must decide between two competing strategies: build long chains of their envoys to achieve synergies and objectives, or establish smaller, separate groups of envoys to trigger timely town scoring. Both will award victory points, yet your victory points will mean nothing if you don’t also reach the end of your appointed success column.

By triggering town scoring, you’ll advance along that town’s matching success column, gaining bonuses as you pass over them. Bonuses include earning victory points, advancing further on any success column, claiming an official seal, repositioning an envoy, or even acquiring an additional turn. Through careful timing and clever plans, players can trigger a cascading combo of exciting bonuses that swing momentum in their favor.

Cascadero provides a wealth of replayability through emergent player interaction, variable board and tile setups, and an advanced player mode featuring traveling heralds. Yet the game will always end in one of two ways: when one player reaches fifty victory points or must place a tile but has no tiles left. The players who reached the end of their appointed success column qualify for victory, and whoever among them has the most victory points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Chaining
  • Connections
  • Network and Route Building
  • Tile Placement
  • Track Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.58

Campsite

| OTSG Staff

Campsite has players competing for the best camping spot. Play cards on top of each other to link elements like forests, mountains, and camping trails together to score the most points.

A clever card-based “tile” laying game that focus on maximizing your limited space!

Luck and strategy combine in the great outdoors (no actual camping required). Includes 72 cards 42 tokens, scorepad, and pencil.

Game Mechanics:

  • Connections
  • Map Addition
  • Melding and Splaying
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

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

Acquire 🟢

| OTSG Staff

In Acquire, each player strategically invests in businesses, trying to retain a majority of stock. As the businesses grow with tile placements, they also start merging, giving the majority stockholders of the acquired business sizable bonuses, which can then be used to reinvest into other chains. All of the investors in the acquired company can then cash in their stocks for current value or trade them 2-for-1 for shares of the newer, larger business. The game is a race to acquire the greatest wealth.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.50