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.
Come join the Hive! Compete to link honeycomb shaped cards to the growing hive. The more sides you match, the greater the payoff. Special cards help earn extra plays and deliver stings to your rivals. Just be careful to avoid those pesky honey-grubbin’ bears!
Game Mechanics:
Game Specifications:
This new re-themed version of Battle Line is a two-player strategy card game built around the theme of Medieval warfare. This re-themed version of Battle Line features 60 beautiful new cards by illustrator Roland MacDonald, as well as 10 full-color tactics “wildcards” that give players extra flexibility and choices and help make each new battle wildly different from the last.
Battle Line takes about 30 minutes to play. To win, you must create powerful formations along your side of the line of battle that are superior to those of your enemy. Victory goes to the player who wins 5 of the 9 battle flags (an envelopment) or three adjacent flags (a breakthrough). Based on Reiner Knizia’s original design published in Germany as Shotten-Totten, Battle Line enhances and expands that game system to give players even more tactical options and gut-wrenching decisions.
Battle Line places you in command of your army’s strategies. How will you muster your formations? Will you use your powerful KingsGuard to vanquish your enemy, or perhaps send the King of England or France to the front to win a critical flag? Or perhaps you”ll rely on your spies to determine the enemy”s strengths and weaknesses before committing your best forces. You’ll always have plenty of choices. With every card play, you’ll determine the strength and direction of your attack while plotting to fend off your enemy’s advances.
In Battle Line, you and your opponent lead the combined arms of the greatest units of the era. Will you, like the great Kings of yore, reign supreme? Play Battle Line, and find out.
Game Mechanics:
Game Specifications:
You and your group of rag-tag intergalactic scrappers are suddenly faced with the responsibility of defending your home world from those that seek to destroy it. Join forces and work together in this cooperative deck builder to strategically defeat the Boss before they destroy you and all you love. Play through all the scenarios and master the new mechanics introduced in this stand-alone continuation of the Astro Knights series!
Game Mechanics:
Game Specifications:
A 15-minute light strategy game for adults of duck matching, a UFO, and logic! Players are all interns on an alien UFO, working for an intergalactic corporation that has one main function: abducting ducks. (For research purposes, duh).
But, ducks need to be collected in specific formations, and you’ll have to use spatial logic and cunning to rearrange your ducks before your opponents to win!
Abduct (collect) ducks in specific formations by using action cards to move your (or your opponent’s) ducks around. Each player gets an individual stream board that can hold 10 ducks. Put the ducks into patterns by moving them around with action cards. When your ducks in a single color match a pattern on one of the shared formation cards, you earn the card and abduct the ducks into the UFO. Grab more ducks out of the UFO and try to make another pattern before the cards run out.
Game Mechanics:
Game Specifications:
Arcs is a sharp, tactical space opera game, for 2–4 players, set in a dark yet silly universe. Players represent officials from a distant, decaying and neglectful Empire who are now free to vie for dominance whether through battle, gathering scarce resources or diplomatic intrigue. Ready yourself for dramatic twists and turns as you launch into this galactic struggle.
A deck of cards in 4 suits with ranks from 1-7 (2-6 for less than 4 players) defines the action selection system. These cards are played in a trick-taking adjacent system to select actions, take the initiative and declare Ambitions. The 3 declared Ambitions are what will score in that deal. Timing is everything. Bad hands must be mitigated by careful card play and benefitting from other players’ card play.
Battles are resolved quickly with the attacker choosing their level of risk. The defenders must be prepared with adequate defensive ships and cards in their tableau.
Each game contains a hundred wooden ships and agents, 18 custom engraved dice, a beautiful six-panel board, and tons of cards with over 60 pieces of unique art. The base game may be played without the optional Leaders and Lore cards (for an easier teach) or with them for a richer, fuller and asymmetric game. It is also the core of the campaign game (requiring the Blighted Reach Expansion), which provides an epic, more thematic experience.
Game Mechanics:
Game Specifications:
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:
Your goal in Antiquity Quest is to have the highest score a the end of the game. You can choose to play either a single round for a quick game (20-30 min) or a complete game in which you’ll tally scores over three rounds (60-90 min)
Each player is dealt two sets of 10 cards at the start of a round. You’ll pick up one set, this is called a hand. The second set, called a cache, remains face down on the table until you’ve played all of the cards from your hand.
You’ll take turns drawing, playing, and discarding cards as you work on creating your own collections and sabotaging the collections that belong to other players.
Collections consist of Antiquity and Treasure cards. The six suits of Antiquity cards represent six ancient civilizations. Treasures are their own suit and are more rare and valuable. The more challenging a collection is to create. the more it’s worth.
A round ends once a player has completed at least five collections and played through all of the cards in their hand and cache. That player earns a bonus for going out first. Every other player takes on last turn and then scores are tallied.
Your score at the end of each round is the combination of bonus points from going out first, points for completing collections ,and points for the cards you play. The player with the highest score at the end of the game wins.
Here’s what to expect in this bold and exciting set collection game:
You’ll strive to create collections of Antiquities and Treasures.
The more challenging a collection is to create, the more it’s worth.
Beware! Your competitors can, and will seek to sabotage your efforts.
Careful planning, brilliant strategy, and a stroke of luck will bring you success!
Game Mechanics:
Game Specifications:
Behold, Andromeda’s Edge: A dazzling, uncharted region of space on the edge of the Andromeda Galaxy. Littered with the modular debris of the precursor civilization, patrolled by malicious extragalactic raiders, and bordered by dense nebulae, The Edge is a last resort for the brave and foolhardy who seek a new life beyond the oppressive reach of the Lords of Unity.
In this game, you lead a desperate faction seeking to build a new civilization on Andromeda’s Edge. You begin with only a space station, a few ships, and a handful of resources. By carefully placing your ships, you will gather resources, claim moons, acquire modules to add to your station, populate planets and build developments on them. You will battle opponents and compete with others to ascend the progress tracks: Science, Industry, Commerce, Civilization and Supremacy.
On your turn, you either launch a starship or return your ships to your station. Launching sends one of your starships to a region of Andromeda, either collecting resources from planetary systems or taking actions at Alliance Bases. If the region is occupied by your opponents or fearsome raiders, face off in a dice battle, with Supremacy on the line but where strategic manipulation can turn a loss into a reward. Returning to your station allows you to activate your engine, using the modules you’ve acquired to generate energy, gain resources and carry out actions.
Throughout the game you will build up your unique faction, building developments (Observatories, Factories, Spaceports, Cities and Obelisks) and gaining station modules which move you up the progress tracks. Advancement on the tracks is rewarded both during mid-game events and at the conclusion, and is the key to victory.
Game Mechanics:
Game Specifications:
Althingi is a quick set-up, fast-play game of strength and influence for 2-4 players based in Viking-Age Iceland. Each player takes on the role of a powerful Chieftain and tries to take control of the annual gathering known as the Althingi through good old-fashioned bribery, coercion, and intimidation.
The game takes place over a series of days each with three rounds: Morning, Afternoon, and Evening. In the morning Chieftains gather Loot which has value both in bribing Vikings and in equipping them for holmgang (a duel). In the afternoon phase Chieftains strategically bribe the new Vikings that arrive that round to join their camp using their Loot cards while retaining enough resources to defend themselves in the Evening phase. During the Evening, Chieftains can use Vikings in their camp to challenge holmgang (a duel) against Vikings from other camps. The aim of the game is to gain the most influence, which is acquired by having Vikings join your camp and by winning holmgangs (duels). The player with the most influence at the end of the game controls the Althingi and wins!
The aesthetic of this game is gritty and raw, with striking original illustrations by Lada Shustova. Special attention was paid to historical details such as clothing, weapons, and bartering goods, so rest assured that there are no horned helmets in this game! If you’ve visited Iceland, then you’ll recognize the landscape art as the fields of Thingvellir. And Viking history buffs might recognize the meaning of the two runes used in the game, symbols for Strength and for Influence.
Game Mechanics:
Game Specifications:
As a successful Magician, you have been able to fund a lifetime of research by delivering to the petty demands of liars, philanderers, gluttons and the least of Humanity.
How refreshing, then, when a client should emerge with a commission of horrifying simplicity that has the potential for acquiring a vast amount of knowledge – perhaps the ultimate knowledge – albeit at the expense of many millions.
“Release the denizens of Hell into the Earth, with Baphomet – The Sabbath Goat – at their Head, for one night only and let them run amok. Let us see the consequences – for aesthetic reasons only, of course.”
However, do not expect this matter to proceed without interference from the Church and/or from Hell itself: the best-laid plans do not always go the way expected.
Inspired by the Black Easter novellas by James Blish, the aim of Aleph Null is to successfully summon the demonic Prince Baphomet who, when he appears, expects there to be no cards in your hand, the main deck and the discard pile; if there are any cards remaining in these ‘zones’, you lose. However, ‘not losing’ in this way doesn’t mean that you have won: any cards still in play also count against you – too many and you shall lose also. The sooner you ‘win’, the better your chance of surviving any due punishment.
Game Mechanics:
Game Specifications:
