Tag: Income

Carnegie

| OTSG Staff

Carnegie was inspired by the life of Andrew Carnegie who was born in Scotland in 1835. Andrew Carnegie and his parents emigrated to the United States in 1848. Although he started his career as a telegraphist, his role as one of the major players in the rise of the United States’ steel industry made him one of the richest men in the world and an icon of the American dream.

Andrew Carnegie was also a benefactor and philanthropist; upon his death in 1919, more than $350 million of his wealth was bequeathed to various foundations, with another $30 million going to various charities. His endowments created nearly 2,500 free public libraries that bear his name: the Carnegie Libraries.

During the game you will recruit and manage employees, expand your business, invest in real estate, produce and sell goods, and create transport chains across the United States; you may even work with important personalities of the era. Perhaps you will even become an illustrious benefactor who contributes to the greatness of his country through deeds and generosity!

The game takes place over 20 rounds; players will each have one turn per round. On each turn, the active player will choose one of four actions, which the other players may follow.

The goal of the game is to build the most prestigious company, as symbolized by victory points.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • End Game Bonuses
  • Income
  • Network and Route Building
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Tech Trees / Tech Tracks
  • Variable Phase Order
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.81

Endless Winter: Paleoamericans

| OTSG Staff

Endless Winter: Paleoamericans takes place in North America, around 10,000 BCE. Players guide the development of their tribes across several generations—from nomadic hunter-gatherers to prosperous tribal societies. Over the course of the game, tribes migrate and settle new lands, establish cultural traditions, hunt paleolithic megafauna, and build everlasting megalithic structures.

Endless Winter is a euro-style game that combines worker placement and deck building in an innovative way. Each round, players send their tribe members to various action spaces, and pay for the actions by playing cards and spending resources. Tribe cards grant additional labor, while Culture cards provide a variety of unique effects. As an alternative, cards can be saved for an end-of-round Eclipse phase, where they are simultaneously revealed to determine the new player order, and trigger various bonus actions.

The game features a novel blend of interwoven systems and mechanisms, such as multi-use cards, area influence, tile placement, and set collection. Plus, there are many viable paths to victory. After four brisk rounds, scores are tallied, and the tribe with the most points wins!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.32

Distilled

| OTSG Staff

Distilled is a highly thematic strategy card game about crafting spirits in a distillery, with resource management and push-your-luck elements. In the game, you have inherited a distillery and are hoping to someday achieve the title of master distiller through purchasing goods, building up your distillery, and creating the world’s most renowned spirits.

Use cards to purchase new ingredients and invest in upgrades to your distillery, all while eventually distilling the spirit and sending it to the warehouse. Once in the warehouse, age your spirit to enhance its flavor and bottle it to sell it for major profits!

Achieve the title of Master Distiller by having the most victory points at the end of the game. Points are obtained by distilling and selling spirits.

Game Mechanics:

  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Income
  • Market
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.03

Dinosaur World

| OTSG Staff

The triumph of science that led to dinosaurs returning to the world once more has become public knowledge. New parks spring up regularly, often beginning operations even before everything has been finalized. There is no shortage of patrons eager to be entertained by these returned species in new and exciting ways. However, as with any form of entertainment, elements of triumph are often accompanied by elements of tragedy. This means it is of the utmost importance that you take every precaution by ensuring each visitor signs the safety waiver before enjoying the wonders of Dinosaur World!

Each round in Dinosaur World, you draft a new résumé card to acquire new workers; spend workers to take public actions building your park and acquiring DNA; spend further workers to take private actions improving that park; then drive your jeep around experiencing the wonder and excitement of what you have built! Throughout the game you acquire victory points through a variety of means — and possibly a few visitor deaths as a natural consequence of overly enthusiastic dinosaur encounters. At the end of the game, you lose points if you accumulated too many deaths, then the player with the most points wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Income
  • Movement Points
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.27

Furnace

| OTSG Staff

Furnace is an engine-building Eurogame in which players take on the roles of 19th-century capitalists building their industrial corporations and aspiring to make as much money as they can by purchasing companies, extracting resources, and processing them in the best combinations possible.

Each player starts the game with a random start-up card, the resources depicted at the top of that card, and four colored discs valued 1-4.

The game is played over four rounds, and each round consists of two phases: Auction and Production. During the auction, 6-8 company cards are laid out with their basic sides face up. Players take turns placing one of their discs on one of these cards, but you cannot place a disc on a card if a disc of the same value or color is already present. Thus, you’ll place discs on four cards.

Once all the discs are placed, the cards are resolved from left to right. Whoever placed the highest-valued disc will claim this card, but first anyone with a lower-valued disc on this card will gain compensation, either the resources depicted multiplied by the value of their disc or a processing ability (exchange X for Y) up to as many times as the value of their disc.

Once all the cards have been claimed or discarded, players enter the production phase, using their cards in the order of their choice. Each company card has one action — either production or processing — on its basic side and two actions on its upgraded side. During the production phase, you can use each of your cards once to gain resources, process those resources into other resources or money, and upgrade your cards.

At the end of four rounds, whoever has the most money wins.

Furnace also includes capitalist cards that contain unique effects, and if you want, you can choose to deal one out to each player at the start of the game. For an additional challenge, you can require players to create a “production chain”, with each newly acquired company card being placed somewhere in that chain and locked in position for the remainder of the game.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.32

Dinner in Paris

| OTSG Staff

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 Majority / Influence
  • Contracts
  • Hand Management
  • Income
  • Race
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.16

CATAN: 3D Edition

| OTSG Staff

In CATAN, players try to be the dominant force on the island of Catan by building settlements, cities, and roads. On each turn, dice are rolled to determine what resources — sheep, wheat, wood, brick and ore — the island produces. Players spend these resources to build settlements, roads, and cities and to purchase development cards that have different effects. Each settlement and city you have is worth points, and you can gain additional points by building the longest road, acquiring the largest army, or collecting certain development cards. The first player to collect 10 points wins.

In CATAN: 3D Edition, the island of Catan rises off the table for an immersive experience like no other. Your settlements grow from fertile grain fields, and your cities nestle into the sides of majestic mountains. The look of the land is based on terrain tiles hand-sculpted by game designer Klaus Teuber. All of the terrain is hand-painted for stunning color, and the intricately designed player pieces are antiqued for a look that’s full of history and character.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Income
  • Modular Board
  • Network and Route Building
  • Trading
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.80

CATAN

| OTSG Staff

In CATAN (formerly The Settlers of Catan), players try to be the dominant force on the island of Catan by building settlements, cities, and roads. On each turn dice are rolled to determine what resources the island produces. Players build by spending resources (sheep, wheat, wood, brick and ore) that are depicted by these resource cards; each land type, with the exception of the unproductive desert, produces a specific resource: hills produce brick, forests produce wood, mountains produce ore, fields produce wheat, and pastures produce sheep.

Setup includes randomly placing large hexagonal tiles (each showing a resource or the desert) in a honeycomb shape and surrounding them with water tiles, some of which contain ports of exchange. Number disks, which will correspond to die rolls (two 6-sided dice are used), are placed on each resource tile. Each player is given two settlements (think: houses) and roads (sticks) which are, in turn, placed on intersections and borders of the resource tiles. Players collect a hand of resource cards based on which hex tiles their last-placed house is adjacent to. A robber pawn is placed on the desert tile.

A turn consists of possibly playing a development card, rolling the dice, everyone (perhaps) collecting resource cards based on the roll and position of houses (or upgraded cities—think: hotels) unless a 7 is rolled, turning in resource cards (if possible and desired) for improvements, trading cards at a port, and trading resource cards with other players. If a 7 is rolled, the active player moves the robber to a new hex tile and steals resource cards from other players who have built structures adjacent to that tile.

Points are accumulated by building settlements and cities, having the longest road and the largest army (from some of the development cards), and gathering certain development cards that simply award victory points. When a player has gathered 10 points (some of which may be held in secret), he announces his total and claims the win.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Income
  • Modular Board
  • Network and Route Building
  • Trading
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.29