Tag: Hand Management

Hand Management is a game mechanic in which players are rewarded for playing cards in a specific order. This mechanic often encourages players to hold cards for later turns.

Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs

| OTSG Staff

Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs is a solo play game, with an original campaign story written by Isaac Childres, that features a playstyle similar to Gloomhaven in a fraction of the size.

Gloomhaven: Buttons & Bugs is set after the events of Gloomhaven and Forgotten Circles. The Aesther recluse Hail has earned a reputation for being highly instrumental in saving the city from recurring disasters, and she absolutely hates it. Wannabe heroes are constantly barging in on her studies at the Crooked Bone, looking for help in becoming famous themselves — not to mention all the demons that come by looking for vengeance. She briefly considered moving, but as that would require effort, she instead just placed an enchantment on her front door: Anyone who attempts to open it becomes miniaturized and therefore is no longer a problem.

Your character is one such wannabe hero. In an ill-advised attempt at fame, they try to visit Hail, and poof. Now they’re the size of a mouse and have entered an entirely different realm of lawlessness and self-preservation. They must find a new way into the Crooked Bone to convince Hail to return them to their previous size.

Each scenario is a single card, pitting one mercenary against a handful of enemies with simplified actions and AI. Each mercenary has a hand of just four double-sided cards, but they can be used twice — both the front and the back — before they are discarded. Attacks are resolved using a die in conjunction with a modifier table, and both the table and the mercenary ability cards can be improved as you level up throughout the campaign.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.32

Gloom

| OTSG Staff

The world of Gloom is a sad and benighted place. The sky is gray, the tea is cold, and a new tragedy lies around every corner. Debt, disease, heartache, and packs of rabid flesh-eating mice—just when it seems like things can’t get any worse, they do. But some say that one’s reward in the afterlife is based on the misery endured in life. If so, there may yet be hope—if not in this world, then in the peace that lies beyond.

In the Gloom card game, you assume control of the fate of an eccentric family of misfits and misanthropes. The goal of the game is sad, but simple: you want your characters to suffer the greatest tragedies possible before passing on to the well-deserved respite of death. You’ll play horrible mishaps like Pursued by Poodles or Mocked by Midgets on your own characters to lower their Self-Worth scores, while trying to cheer your opponents’ characters with marriages and other happy occasions that pile on positive points. The player with the lowest total Family Value wins.

Printed on transparent plastic cards, Gloom features an innovative design by noted RPG author Keith Baker. Multiple modifier cards can be played on top of the same character card; since the cards are transparent, elements from previously played modifier cards either show through or are obscured by those played above them. You’ll immediately and easily know the worth of every character, no matter how many modifiers they have. You’ve got to see (through) this game to believe it!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.63

Gladius

| OTSG Staff

In Gladius, play as cunning Roman spectators trying to make the most money by betting on gladiators competing in the gladiatorial games. Through the skillful use of underhanded tactics, players can help and hinder teams to alter the outcome of each battle. Can you outwit your opponents to turn a profit, or will you be left empty-handed?

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.71

Fantasy Realms: Greek Legends

| OTSG Staff

In the standalone card game Fantasy Realms: Greek Legends, you build your realm, one card at a time, as you collect heroes, quests, monsters, and more! Each card is unique, and scores points based on the other cards in your hand. You start with seven cards, and each turn, you draw a new card from the deck or discard area, then discard one card from your hand, always trying to improve your realm. Whoever’s realm scores the most points wins.

Fantasy Realms: Greek Legends takes the classic Fantasy Realms formula and adds new twists to match its theme. In addition to combining the right suits and attribute tags, you will:

  • Send cards to the afterlife, costing precious points but unlocking powerful abilities
  • Complete quests with unique card combinations
  • Vanquish legendary monsters with the right heroes

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Ghosts Love Candy Too

| OTSG Staff

It’s a little-known fact that ghosts love to eat candy. But they can only eat it one night a year…Halloween! On that night, the ghosts travel through the neighborhood looking for delicious candy. Using their best scare tactics, ghosts will haunt the costumed kiddos to steal their sweet sweet candy. But they have to be careful not to scare them away. Ghosts just want a candy delight, not to cause them a fright.

This new edition expands upon the original version with more kids (100 total!), a new “junk” set of treats that you do not want to collect (like toothbrushes, rocks, ketchup packets, pennies, etc.) and new ghosts.

Playing the game is easy. Select one of your ghost cards to bid for turn order. Then resolve by choosing a kid to haunt, taking their candy then using their unique ability. Treats score at the end of the game based on your ghosts specific preferences.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Borealis: Arctic Expeditions

| OTSG Staff

Become the leaders of scientific teams venturing into uncharted boreal territories to observe and photograph the Arctic’s most adorable inhabitants.

Play cards from your hand to one of 3 locations on your player board to snap a photo and send your scientists sliding to the left and to the right – but only if their colors match the ones printed on your card!

Line up vehicle symbols, race to claim objectives, and arrange animals in pre-determined end-game scoring patterns to earn the most points and gain everlasting fame at the Society for Polar Inquiry. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even get your own tiny snow-covered island named after you.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Galactic Cruise

| OTSG Staff

Hello, and welcome to Galactic Cruise. Here, we offer our guests something special: the comfort of a luxury cruise with the innovation of space travel. As the first company to offer extended-stay space vacations, we are excited to have you working for us! As a supervisor of this company, you’ll be expected to not only build these ships and satisfy our guests, but also to help the company thrive by enhancing our company network, inventing new technologies, and growing our workforce. We are a united company, and you’ll often find that what another supervisor does will make your job easier. Let me be clear, though, this is a competition. Our current CEO will be stepping down in three years, and the supervisor who comes out on top will take his place.

On your turn, you will either place a worker to take two actions in the ever-expanding network, launch a ship and send one of your workers to space as a pilot, or recall all your earthbound workers to collect funding bonuses. Actions include acquiring blueprints, constructing ships, attracting guests, and building developments–connections between locations that increase action selection throughout the game. You will also be affecting resource markets that ebb and flow with the actions of all the players.

Throughout the game, you will also be competing with your fellow supervisors to complete company goals, which will earn you progress cubes throughout the game. Progress cubes are also placed when you launch ships, and when a certain number of cubes are placed onto the company’s progress track, the game ends, and the player with the most Victory Points becomes the new CEO of Galactic Cruise.

Do you still think you have what it takes to work for us? You do? Great. Let’s get started.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1- 4 Players
  • 90 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.99

Fruitoplay

| OTSG Staff

Fruitoplay is a set collection game with simultaneous card selection that’s played over three rounds, with each round lasting seven turns.

At the start of the round, create a river of seven “target fruit” cards that correspond to the seven turns. On a turn, each player considers the current target fruit card, then chooses and plays a fruit card at the same time. Whoever plays a card of the same color with the smallest difference from the target fruit wins the target. (If no played cards are of the same color as the target card, the card closest in value to the target card wins it. If cards are tied for closest, ignore them.)

After seven turns, you add your remaining cards in hand to your collection, separating the types of fruit, then you score points by multiplying the value of the column with the most fruit by the value of the column with the fewest fruit. If you have only one column, then you multiply that value by itself…so you don’t necessarily want to win cards!

After three rounds, the player with the highest score wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.20

Friday

| OTSG Staff

Friday, the second game in the Friedemann Friese Series: Freitag-Project (Friedemann Friese), is based on the story of Robinson Crusoe and his loyal partner Friday (Freitag). You play as Friday, and when Robinson Crusoe crashes his ship on your island, your peaceful times are disturbed. You must help Robinson to survive the island and prepare him to defeat the pirates that are coming for the island.

Friday is a solitaire deck-building game in which you optimize your deck of fight cards in order to defeat the hazards of the island. During a turn the player will attempt to defeat hazard cards by playing fight cards from their deck. If defeated, a hazard card will become a fight card and is added to the player’s deck. If failed, the player will lose life points but also get the opportunity to remove unwanted cards from their fight deck. In the end, the player will use their optimized fight deck to defeat the two pirate ships coming for the island, allowing Robinson Crusoe to escape the island and allowing you to finally have your peace back!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 Players
  • ~25 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.15

Fox in the Forest, The

| OTSG Staff

The Fox in the Forest is a trick-taking game for two players. Aside from the normal ranked- and suited-cards used to win tricks, fairy characters such as the Fox and the Witch have special abilities that let you change the trump suit, lead even after you lose a trick, and more.

You score points by winning more tricks than your opponent, but don’t get greedy! Win too many tricks, and you will fall like the villain in so many fairy tales…

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.60