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

| 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 1.89

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:

  • Contracts
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.84

Cuzco

| T3d-1978

Cuzco is a new 2018 edition of Java from French publisher Super Meeple that moves the action to South America, which is in line with the other titles in the Mask Trilogy as well as the authors’ original plans for the design.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Auction / Bidding
  • Hand Management
  • Map Addition
  • Tile Placement
  • Zone of Control

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.64

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 2.67

Creature Comforts

| T3d-1978

Life in the forest is a lot of fun, at least while the sun is shining and the leaves are on the trees. Those days don’t last forever though, and long before the weather starts to change, the wise animals start to harvest for the long cold winter ahead. You will spend many months tucked into your burrow and you want to make it as cozy as possible. A nice bowl of soup, a comfortable rocking chair, and some toys and games will go a long way to make those dark winter days pass by quickly.

In Creature Comforts, you spend the Spring, Summer, and Fall gathering different goods from the forest and spending them to collect items that will make your home more inviting while the world outside is covered in a layer of snow. Each round you send family members out to various locations in an attempt to gain supplies. If they fall short of their goal, they’ll learn a lesson and be better prepared next time. The family that has created the most comfortable den wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Events
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.36

Cosmic Encounter

| T3d-1978

Build a galactic empire…

In the depths of space, the alien races of the Cosmos vie with each other for control of the universe. Alliances form and shift from moment to moment, while cataclysmic battles send starships screaming into the warp.

This classic game of alien politics returns from the warp once more!

In Cosmic Encounter, each player becomes the leader of one of dozens of alien races, each with its own unique power. On a player’s turn, he or she becomes the offense. The offense encounters another player on a planet by moving a group of his or her ships through the hyperspace gate to that planet. Both sides can invite allies and play cards to try and tip the encounter in their favor.

The object of the game is for players to establish colonies in other players’ planetary systems by landing their ships on the other players’ planets. The winner(s) are the first player(s) to have five colonies on planets outside his or her home system. The players must use force, cunning, and diplomacy to ensure their victory. And, because alliances are a key part of the game, multiple players can win together!

Game Mechanics:

  • Alliances
  • Hand Management
  • Interrupts
  • Negotiation
  • Race
  • Take That
  • Trading
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

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

Coatl

| T3d-1978

The election of the Aztec High Priest is imminent. In order to prove their value and merit, the contenders engage in a race for prestige to win the favor of the gods. Will you be able to make the most beautiful sculptures of feathered snakes (called Cóatl) to stand out and gain access to the coveted title of High Priest?

In Cóatl, players work to build the most beautiful and valuable serpents. The serpents, or Cóatl, are constructed with a head, a tail, and a number of body tiles, each made from chunky, colorful plastic. On a turn, players will either take tiles from the central board to their personal board, or work to construct one of their Cóatls with the different tiles they’ve collected.

The game end is triggered when one player finishes their third Cóatl. Players receive points for fulfilling objectives, and the one with the most is named the new High Priest!

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.02

Cleopatra

| T3d-1978

Designed by Bruno Cathala and Ludovic Maublanc, Cleopatra and the Society of Architects is a fun and engaging game that includes a three-dimensional palace that players compete to build. Players strive to become the wealthiest of Cleopatra’s architects by constructing the most magnificent and valuable parts of her palace.

Players, however, will be tempted to trade in materials of dubious origins in order to build faster. While these corrupt practices might allow an architect to stay a step ahead of the rest, they come with a high price: the cursed corruption amulets honoring Sobek, the crocodile-god. When Cleopatra finally reaches her new palace at the end of the game, she punishes the most corrupted architects (i.e., the ones with the most amulets), depriving them of riches or giving them as a sacrifice to her crocodile! The wealthiest architect from among those still alive wins.

This new edition of Cleopatra and the Society of Architects has a new graphic design by Miguel Coimbra, a free-standing 3D palace, and rulebook updated by the designers for simplicity and fluidity, which incorporates these gameplay changes:

  • The combinations of resource cards to discard in order to build pieces of the palace have been reworked.
  • The player rewards for building the palace’s pieces have been recalculated.
  • The consequences of corruption have been reviewed.
  • The Great Priest is no longer activated in the same way.
  • The player count has changed from 3-5 to 2-4.
  • There is a new specific system to manage the character cards, which are no longer part of the deck, and are instead handled separately.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.24