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.

Dominion: Guilds & Cornucopia

| T3d-1978

Dominion: Guilds & Cornucopia combines the Dominion: Guilds and Dominion: Cornucopia small box expansions — originally the fifth and the eighth expansions — into a single large box expansion.

The cards from Dominion: Cornucopia — 13 new Kingdom cards, plus 5 unique cards — are focused on variety, with cards that reward you for having a variety of cards in your deck, in your hand, and in play, in addition to cards that help you get that variety.

Dominion: Guilds also consists of 13 new Kingdom cards, with some of these cards allowing you to get more out of them by paying extra when you buy them. In addition, this expansion contains coin tokens that you can save to spend later.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.50

Dominion: Intrigue

| T3d-1978

In Dominion: Intrigue (as with Dominion), each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can “buy” as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy, and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end.

From the back of the box: “Something’s afoot. The steward smiles at you like he has a secret, or like he thinks you have a secret, or like you think he thinks you have a secret. There are secret plots brewing, you’re sure of it. At the very least, there are yours. A passing servant murmurs, “The eggs are on the plate.” You frantically search your codebook for the translation before realizing he means that breakfast is ready. Excellent. Everything is going according to plan.”

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.42

Dominion: Hinterlands

| T3d-1978

The world is big and your kingdom small. Small when compared to the world, that is; it’s moderate-sized when compared to other kingdoms. But in a big world like this one – big when compared to smaller worlds anyway, if such things exist; it’s moderate-sized when compared to worlds of roughly the same size, and a little small when compared to worlds just a little larger – well, to make a long story short – short when compared to longer stories anyway – it is time to stretch your borders. You’ve heard of far-off places – exotic countries, where they have pancakes but not waffles, where the people wear the wrong number of shirts, and don’t even have a word for the look two people give each other when they each hope that the other will do something that they both want done but which neither of them wants to do. It is to these lands that you now turn your gaze.

Dominion: Hinterlands is the sixth addition to the game of Dominion. It adds 26 new Kingdom cards to Dominion, including 20 Actions, 3 Treasures, 3 Victory cards, and 3 Reactions. The central theme is cards that do something immediately when you buy them or gain them.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.55

Dominion: Alchemy

| T3d-1978

There are strange things going on in your basement laboratories. They keep calling up for more barrels of quicksilver, or bits of your hair. Well it’s all in the name of progress. They’re looking for a way to turn lead into gold, or at least into something better than lead. That lead had just been too good of a bargain to pass up; you didn’t think, where will I put all this lead, what am I going to do with this lead anyway. Well, that will all be sorted out. They’re also looking for a universal solvent. If they manage that one, you will take whatever they use to hold it in and build a castle out of it. A castle that can’t be dissolved! Now that’s progress.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.46

Dominion

| T3d-1978

You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams! You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion! In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums. All are small bits of land, controlled by petty lords and verging on anarchy. You will bring civilization to these people, uniting them under your banner.

But wait! It must be something in the air; several other monarchs have had the exact same idea. You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way. To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. Your parents wouldn’t be proud, but your grandparents, on your mother’s side, would be delighted.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.35

Dinner in Paris

| T3d-1978

The restaurant industry in Paris is buzzing after the inauguration of a new pedestrian square in a very popular district for Parisians and tourists from all around the globe. It is a golden opportunity for you, restaurant owners, to open one of the addresses that will contribute to the culinary diversity and the reputation of the French capital. However, there isn’t space for everyone and your opponents could throw a wrench in your gears!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Racing
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.23

Cvlizations

| T3d-1978

In CVlizations, you take the role of a leader of a tribe, and you are charged with the task of “writing” its CV (Curriculum Vitae – résumé). To do so, you choose which orders to give and which inventions, tools, buildings and ideologies to develop. The happiness of your people depends on you.

Gameplay is built around action selection. Each turn, every player chooses two order cards, and the strength of the action depends on how many other players have chosen that action. Players manage their resources to develop ideas, and in the end the one who collected the most happiness points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Civilization
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.88

CV

| T3d-1978

Have you ever wondered who you would have been if your life had gone differently? How would you direct your life if everything were up to you? Maybe you would be a magician, or travel around the world? Or maybe big business tempts you, and your goal would be to earn a million dollars?

“CV” means curriculum vitae – your resume – and in the dice and card game CV, you will lead a character through his entire life, making many choices about friends, relations, jobs, and activities. Everything is possible: a dream job, new relationships, and skills. You can be whoever you want!

Gameplay is built around the Yahtzee-style dice rolling and re-rolling system. On their dice, players are trying to roll sets of symbols that allow them to acquire cards; each round, these cards give benefits of some kind, such as new symbols and special abilities. At the end of the game, each kind of card scores points for the player.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.85

Creature Feature

| T3d-1978

In this game of hand management and bluffing by Richard Garfield, you are a movie agent representing actors who excel at particularly monstrous roles. Try to get them the part in the feature film! Or, failing that, at least a part in SOME film.

Each round you will assign a Co-star and a Star (cards with a number value and possibly a special ability) to audition for a role (a tile worth points). Everyone will reveal their co-stars and then have the opportunity to change what they are auditioning for and instead try for lesser films worth fewer points. Winning a part scores points – but there’s a twist! If your star has a lower value than your co-star, you can’t win unless everyone else stops competing for that film… but if everyone DOES back off, you score extra points!

The game ends after a fixed number of rounds, and the player with the most points wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Hand Management

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Cosmic Encounter

| T3d-1978

Players represent alien races that are seeking to spread themselves onto five foreign worlds. To accomplish this, they make challenges against other players and enlist the aid of interested parties. But alien powers, which are unique to each race, give players ways to bend or outright break some rule in the game.

The game continues until one player occupies five planets in other systems to win. Shared victories are possible, and a player need not occupy one’s own system to win.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Hand Management
  • Negotiation
  • Racing
  • Take That
  • Trading

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.58