Tag: Economic

Economic games encourage players to produce, distribute, and trade various resources.

Masters of Renaissance

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Masters of Renaissance

Masters of Renaissance

In Masters of Renaissance you are an important citizen of Florence and your goal is to increase your fame and prestige. Take resources from the market and use them to buy new cards. Expand your power both in the city and in the surrounding territories! Every card gives you a production power that transforms the resources so you can store them in our strongbox. Try to use the Leaders’ abilities to your advantage and don’t forget to show your devotion to the Pope!

Masters of Renaissance is a game with simple rules offering deep strategic choices of action selection and engine building.

Game Mechanics:

  • Economic
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.09

Lords of Vegas

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Lords of Vegas

Lords of Vegas

You and your opponents represent powerful developers in a burgeoning Nevada city. You will earn money and prestige by building the biggest and most profitable casinos on “The Strip,” the town’s backbone of dust and sin. You start with nothing but parking lots and dreams, but from there you build, sprawl, reorganize and gamble your way to victory. Score the most points investing in the most profitable development companies and putting the best bosses in control of the richest casinos. Put your dollars on the line . . . it’s time to roll!

The game board is broken into 6 different areas, each consisting of a number of empty ‘lots’. Players build lots by paying money and placing a die of the value matching the one shown on the lot’s space onto the lot, along with a casino tile of one of 7 colors. Adjoining lots of the same color are considered a single casino. The casino’s boss is the player whose die value is higher than any other in the casino. On each players turn, players turn over a new card representing a new lot they get. The card also is one of the casino colors. Any built casinos of the matching color will score both money and points. Money is earned for each lot in the casino, where each lot may be owned by a different player. Points go only to the casino’s owner. Players can expand their casinos; try to take over casinos owned by other players; make deals to trade lots, casinos and money; or gamble in opponents’ casinos to make more money. Ultimately, though, only points matter, and that means making yourself boss of the biggest casinos.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • City Building
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Tile Placement
  • Trading

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.34

Lizard Wizard

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Lizard Wizard

Lizard Wizard

Astoria is a land pulsing with magic and intrigue! A handful of Arch-Mages are vying for the loyalty of wizards across the land so that they can wield ultimate power.

Lizard Wizard is a game from the team that brought you Raccoon Tycoon. Aspects of gameplay will be familiar to fans of RT, and will add a bit of extra depth and strategy.

In Lizard Wizard, players compete to recruit wizards from seven unique schools of magic, build mystical towers, research powerful spells, summon helpful familiars, and search dark dungeons for gold and items of power. Only one Arch-Mage will rise above the rest and control the land. Will it be you?

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.12

Lions of Lydia

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Lions of Lydia

Lions of Lydia

The ancient world is changing. The kingdom of Lydia has minted the world’s first gold coin. Bartering and trading will soon be supplanted by coins as the dominant medium of exchange throughout civilization…

Lions of Lydia is a bag-management and engine-building game about the dawn of currency. As an influential leader, you send merchants out to barter for resources and increase your landholdings. When the nobles arrive, they bring their Lydian Lion coins into play—which have unparalleled buying power.

To achieve victory, you must manage the merchants in your bag and complement their abilities with the cards in your tableau. Traditional merchants produce basic resources, which are necessary to build your engine—but if you fail to convert your resources into coins, you will not be able to buy the most valuable cards! Thus, noble Lydian merchants—and their golden Lion coins—are the key to success. When enough properties are developed, the game ends, and a winner is declared!

Will you draft the best merchants to achieve your goals? Will you be the first to gain the most valuable properties? Will you master the new, golden currency: the Lions of Lydia?

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Deck Building
  • Economic
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92

Juicy Fruits

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Juicy Fruits

Juicy Fruits

Each player has their own small island paradise where they grow delicious fruit. To win, you must gain the most points by cleverly supplying ships and by adding the best businesses to your island.

Your turn in Juicy Fruits works like this: First, you slide one of your fruit collector tokens a number of unblocked spaces and collect that many fruits of the token’s type: banana, orange, lime, pomegranate, or mangosteen. Then you may either fulfill the order of a ship on your shores or claim a business from a shared display and place it onto your island (or do nothing). Clever planning and timing is vital because until you supply the ships on your shores, they block valuable island space which could be used to collect more fruit — but if you concentrate too much on the ships, the most promising businesses may get snatched by your opponents. Also, the sooner businesses are claimed, the quicker the game might end.

With each play, Juicy Fruits poses new puzzles of how to move your tokens efficiently and how to balance clearing your island with claiming businesses. The game also includes an additional “juice factory” mode and four modes of solo play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

It’s a Wonderful World

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It's a Wonderful World

It's a Wonderful World

In It’s a Wonderful World, you are an expanding Empire and must choose your path to your future. You must develop faster and better than your competitors. You’ll carefully plan your expansion to develop your production power and rule over this new world.

It’s a Wonderful World is a cards drafting and engine building game from 1 to 5 players. Each round, players will draft 7 cards and then choose which ones will be recycled to immediately acquire Resources, and which ones will be kept for construction to produce Resources each round and/or gain victory points.

When a card is fully built, it’s added to the player’s Empire to increase the player’s production capacity for each round. The mechanical twist being that the production phase works in a specific order. You’ll have to plan your constructions carefully!

Game Mechanics:

  • Civilization
  • Closed Drafting
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.30

Istanbul

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Istanbul

Istanbul

There’s hustle and bustle at Istanbul’s grand bazaar as merchants and their assistants rush through the narrow alleys in their attempt to be more successful than their competitors. Everything must be well organized: wheelbarrows must be filled with goods at the warehouses, then swiftly transported by the assistants to various destinations. Your goal? Be the first merchant to collect a certain number of rubies.

In Istanbul, you lead a group of one merchant and four assistants through 16 locations in the bazaar. At each such location, you can carry out a specific action. The challenge, though, is that to take an action, you must move your merchant and an assistant there, then leave the assistant behind (to handle all the details while you focus on larger matters). If you want to use that assistant again later, your merchant must return to that location to pick him up. Thus, you must plan ahead carefully to avoid being left with no assistants and thus unable to do anything…

In more detail, on a turn you move your merchant and his retinue of assistants one or two steps through the bazaar, either leave an assistant at that location or collect an assistant left earlier, then perform the action. If you meet other merchants or certain individuals at the location, you might be able to take a small extra action. Possible actions include:

  • Paying to increase your wheelbarrow capacity, which starts the game with a capacity of only two for each good.
  • Filling your wheelbarrow with a specified good to its limit.
  • Acquiring a special ability, and the earlier you come, the easier they are to collect.
  • Buying rubies or trading goods for rubies.
  • Selling special combinations of goods to make the money you need to do everything else.

When a merchant has collected five rubies in his wheelbarrow, players complete that round, then the game ends. If this player is the only one who’s reached this goal, he wins immediately; otherwise ties are broken by money in hand.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Network Building
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Racing
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.59

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

Isle of Skye

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Isle of Skye

Isle of Skye

Isle of Skye is one of the most beautiful places in the world, with soft sand beaches, gently sloping hills, and impressive mountains. The landscape of Isle of Skye is breathtaking and fascinates everyone.

In the tile-laying game Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King, 2–5 players are chieftains of famous clans and want to build their kingdoms to score as many points as possible—but in each game only four of the sixteen scoring tiles will be scored.

Thanks to the scoring tiles, each game is different and leads to different tactics and strategies, but having enough money is useful no matter what else is going on. Managing that money can be tricky, though. Each turn, each player places two area tiles in front of them and sets the selling price for the tiles. Setting a high price is great, but only so long as someone actually pays the price because if no one opts to buy, then the seller must buy the tiles at the price they previously requested.

In the end, the player with the best kingdom—and not the richest player—becomes the sovereign of the island.

Game Mechanics:

  • Economic
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25

If Wishes Were Fishes!

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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