Tag: Modular Board

Flotilla

| OTSG Staff

In 1954, with an explosion over a hundred thousand times more powerful than even the wildest estimates, the Castle Bravo nuclear test obliterated the Bikini Atoll, and ruptured the Earth down to its mantle.

As water levels rose in the aftermath, the remnants of humanity fled their homes and took to the sea. World leadership came together to build a massive Flotilla, mankind’s last bastion of civilization.

Now, ten years after the disaster, the Flotilla is home to the very last of us.

Flotilla features two distinct and interwoven modes of gameplay, as you try to outpace your opponents in bringing prosperity to humanity’s new home. You begin the game as a “Sinkside” Fleet Commander, commissioned by world leaders to explore the new face of the ocean, scour the depths for resources, and rescue any survivors you come across. At any point in the game, you may choose to turn “Skyside,” by selling your skiffs, and leaving your seafaring life behind to now grow the Flotilla itself.

The choice of if or when to switch from a “Sinkside” explorer to a “Skyside” settler defines the very core experience of Flotilla. They represent two similar but distinct game experiences, utilizing the same game components, seamlessly intertwined among all players. If you switch, you’ll flip over all of your accumulated game components, watching your crew grow into new roles with new art for the same characters, while finding entirely new uses for your ocean tiles and resources, and beginning to trade with the “Sinkside” players as you go after new objectives. As players turn “Skyside,” different niches are filled, forever changing the game’s economy. Mastering this ebb and flow will be critical if you’re to shape the new face of humanity!

As a “Sinksider,” you will explore the ocean with your skiffs, pulling some of the 92 hexagon-shaped ocean tiles out of a bag, and arranging them to help you effectively collect resources, discover valuable artifacts from the sunken civilization, all while trying to avoid toxic radiation left from the disaster. You’ll dive for supplies, rolling a pool of custom dive dice that vary based on the depth level of your skiffs. You’ll also carefully manage your resources, trading them on the open market for the currency you can use to buy more skiffs and outposts, or stockpiling them for when you turn “Skyside.”

As a “Skysider,” you will use your resources to build an expansive network of watercraft and docks, using the “Skyside” of your ocean tiles. Your divers will also have new jobs as researchers, rolling custom, multicolor Research dice, to discover new technologies that allow the Flotilla to manage a growing population. You’ll also build Sonar stations, making life a little easier for the “Sinksiders” still out exploring the unknown, while earning quite a few points for yourself.

On both sides, you’ll also grow your relationships with the four different governing guilds, each giving you unique bonuses and more powerful crew. The players with the strongest relationships will also earn valuable points at the end of the game!

The components in Flotilla are unique, immersive, and interconnected. Your skiffs will be able to actually carry up to four resource barrels, and come in a unique shape for each player color. Artifact tokens slot into matching spaces in a double-layered hub board and art on the ocean tiles lines up to create a unique layout for your growing Flotilla each time you play.

In Flotilla, you’ll find significant strategic depth and variety, while giving players the freedom to tell their own story. Will you build the Flotilla by being the first to go Skyside, or stay Sinkside for the whole game, becoming the most powerful seafarer of them all?

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 5 Players
  • 90 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.82

Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition

| OTSG Staff

Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition brings back the classic game of exploration, expansion, and development with the Clash of Cultures base game and the Civilizations and Aztecs expansions in one box! Grow your civilization, advance your culture and tech, and leave your mark by building wonders, with this edition of the game including fully-sculpted miniatures of the Seven Wonders.

In Clash of Cultures, each player leads a civilization from a single settlement to a mighty empire. Players must explore their surroundings, build large cities, research advances and conquer those who stand in the way. The game features a modular board for players to explore, 48 distinct advances, seven mighty wonders, and loads of miniatures and cards. The winner will create a culture that will be remembered and admired for millennia.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Modular Board
  • Tech Trees / Tech Tracks
  • Trading
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 180 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.72

Black Rose Wars

| OTSG Staff

Black Rose Wars is a competitive fantasy game of deck-building, strategy, and combat set in the hectic universe of Nova Aetas in Italy. Each player is one of powerful mages of the Black Rose Order who aspires to become the new Supreme Magister in order to acquire the mighty power of the Black Rose Artifact and the Forgotten Magic. Mages must fight, fulfill Black Rose desires, and gain strength with their spells until their power reaches the containment threshold of the prison where they are exiled, finally freeing themselves. Each mage has at their disposal six schools of magic, each one with its own strategy to annihilate their opponents and increase their power.

At the start of the battle, mages start with a grimoire of six cards; as mages study more spells during play, their grimoire will increase. Every spell in Black Rose Wars has two different effects, increasing a player’s adaptability during a fight.

Mages fight each other in a modular arena of hexagons called “rooms”. They summon powerful creatures, cast destructive spells, or devise dark deceptions with their enchantments. The game system is divided into different phases. Each turn, after choosing new spells from the six schools of magic, players plan their strategy in advance, placing cards face down. Later, they reveal the played cards to kill each other, solve missions, summon creatures, or destroy the prison rooms, one against each other and against the Black Rose (the playing system).
After being killed, mages are reborn immediately, allowing them to re-enter the fight without delay — although their death still fed energy to those mages who caused it.
The mage with the most power at the end of the battle will be crowned Supreme Magister of the Order by the Black Rose itself.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Bluffing
  • Campaign
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Modular Board
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.47

Arkham Horror: The Card Game

| OTSG Staff

Something evil stirs in Arkham, and only you can stop it. Blurring the traditional lines between role-playing and card game experiences, Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a Living Card Game of Lovecraftian mystery, monsters, and madness!

In the game, you and your friend (or up to three friends with two Core Sets) become characters within the quiet New England town of Arkham. You have your talents, sure, but you also have your flaws. Perhaps you’ve dabbled a little too much in the writings of the Necronomicon, and its words continue to haunt you. Perhaps you feel compelled to cover up any signs of otherworldly evils, hampering your own investigations in order to protect the quiet confidence of the greater population. Perhaps you’ll be scarred by your encounters with a ghoulish cult.

No matter what compels you, no matter what haunts you, you’ll find both your strengths and weaknesses reflected in your custom deck of cards, and these cards will be your resources as you work with your friends to unravel the world’s most terrifying mysteries.

Each of your adventures in Arkham Horror LCG carries you deeper into mystery. You’ll find cultists and foul rituals. You’ll find haunted houses and strange creatures. And you may find signs of the Ancient Ones straining against the barriers to our world…

The basic mode of play in Arkham LCG is not the adventure, but the campaign. You might be scarred by your adventures, your sanity may be strained, and you may alter Arkham’s landscape, burning buildings to the ground. All your choices and actions have consequences that reach far beyond the immediate resolution of the scenario at hand—and your actions may earn you valuable experience with which you can better prepare yourself for the adventures that still lie before you.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.55

Ginkgopolis

| OTSG Staff

2212: Ginkgo Biloba, the oldest and strongest tree in the world, has become the symbol of a new method for building cities in symbiosis with nature. Humans have exhausted the resources that the Earth offered them, and humanity must now develop cities that maintain a delicate balance between resource production and consumption. Habitable space is scarce, however, and mankind must now face the challenge of building ever upwards. To develop this new type of city, you will gather a team of experts around you, and try to become the best urban planner for Ginkgopolis.

In Ginkgopolis, the city tiles come in three colors: yellow, which provides victory points; red, which provides resources; and blue, which provides new city tiles. Some tiles start in play, and they’re surrounded by letter markers that show where new tiles can be placed.

On a turn, each player chooses a card from his hand simultaneously. Players reveal these cards, adding new tiles to the border of the city in the appropriate location or placing tiles on top of existing tiles. Each card in your hand that you don’t play is passed on to your left-hand neighbor, so keep in mind how your play might set up theirs!

When you add a new tile to the city, you take a “power” card of the same color, and these cards provide you additional abilities during the game, allowing you to scale up your building and point-scoring efforts.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91

Ghost Stories

| OTSG Staff

Ghost Stories is a cooperative game in which the players protect the village from incarnations of the lord of hell – Wu-Feng – and his legions of ghosts before they haunt a town and recover the ashes that will allow him to return to life. Each Player represents a Taoist monk working together with the others to fight off waves of ghosts.

The players, using teamwork, will have to exorcise the ghosts that appear during the course of the game. At the beginning of his turn, a player brings a ghost into play and places it on a free spot, and more than one can come in at the same time. The ghosts all have abilities of their own – some affecting the Taoists and their powers, some causing the active player to roll the curse die for a random effect, and others haunting the villager tiles and blocking that tile’s special action. On his turn, a Taoist can move on a tile in order to exorcise adjacent ghosts or to benefit from the villager living on the tile, providing it is not haunted. Each tile of the village allows the players to benefit from a different bonus. With the cemetery, for example, Taoists can bring a dead Taoist back to life, while the herbalist allows to recover spent Tao tokens, etc. It will also be possible to get traps or move ghosts or unhaunt other village tiles.

To exorcise a ghost, the Taoist rolls three Tao dice with different colors: red, blue, green, yellow, black, and white. If the result of the roll matches the color(s) of the ghost or incarnation of Wu-Feng, the exorcism succeeds. The white result is a wild color that can be used as any color. For example, to exorcise a green ghost with 3 resistance, you need to roll three green, three white, or a combination of both. If your die rolls fall short, you can also use Tao tokens that match the color in addition to your roll. You may choose to use these after your roll. Taoists gain these tokens by using certain village tiles or by exorcising certain ghosts. One of the Taoists has a power that allows him to receive such a token once per turn.

To win, the players must defeat the incarnation of Wu-Feng, a boss who arrives at the end of the game. There are also harder difficulty levels that add more incarnations of Wu-Feng, in which to win, you must defeat all of them.

There are many more ways to lose, however. The players lose if three of the village’s tiles are haunted, if the draw pile is emptied while the incarnation of Wu-Feng is still in play, or if all the priests are dead.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91

Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala

| OTSG Staff

Crossing into the Land of 1001 Nights, your caravan arrives at the fabled Sultanate of Naqala. The old sultan just died and control of Naqala is up for grabs! The oracles foretold of strangers who would maneuver the Five Tribes to gain influence over the legendary city-state. Will you fulfill the prophecy? Invoke the old Djinns and move the Tribes into position at the right time, and the Sultanate may become yours!

Designed by Bruno Cathala, Five Tribes builds on a long tradition of German-style games that feature wooden meeples. Here, in a unique twist on the now-standard “worker placement” genre, the game begins with the meeples already in place – and players must cleverly maneuver them over the villages, markets, oases, and sacred places tiles that make up Naqala. How, when, and where you dis-place these Five Tribes of Assassins, Elders, Builders, Merchants, and Viziers determine your victory or failure.

As befitting a Days of Wonder game, the rules are straightforward and easy to learn. But devising a winning strategy will take a more calculated approach than our standard fare. You need to carefully consider what moves can score you well and put your opponents at a disadvantage. You need to weigh many different pathways to victory, including the summoning of powerful Djinns that may help your cause as you attempt to control this legendary Sultanate.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.84

Far Away

| OTSG Staff

Far Away is a two-player co-operative board game about discovery, survival, and the crushing loneliness of being the only two humans for lightyears.

Join the Federation Alliance, a bureaucracy with an ambitious charter of mapping new worlds and a minimalist budget. Succeed in a variety of missions on randomly generated worlds with unique ecosystems, without luxuries like radios, landing gear, and medical supplies. Trust in your partner is paramount since, without radios, you can’t communicate (in real life) after separating on the game board.

Survive, and you’ll be rewarded with a meager paycheck. Succumb to the planet, and you’ll find help is too far away.

The Far Away Program

The Federation Alliance started the Far Away program nearly 50 cycles ago to discover and explore new worlds. The missions we undertake are of vital importance to galactic prosperity. However, budget setbacks have forced us to reduce operational expenses. That’s where you, the willing explorer, can help!

Explorer Duties

The Federation has several active missions for you to choose. Each offers unique challenges and potential sub-objectives we would love for you to accomplish off-the-clock. Thanks to the randomly generated universe, every mission attempt will be different.

Once you’ve selected a mission and crashed into the planet (landing gear has been deemed “optional”), you must begin surviving. Your goal is to complete the mission and rebuild your ship. You will fail if you die of hunger, loneliness, or multiple grievous injuries. Don’t fail!

Be forewarned: communication will be a challenge. Radios will not be provided, so the only way to communicate with your partner is to be in close physical proximity. Plan ahead! This not only allows you to strategize, but also prevents the psychological meltdown that comes with being alone on an alien world.

Alien Creatures

Each planet has a unique ecosystem. Experts have identified upwards of 32 creatures in the known universe, each with their own behavioral patterns.

Explorers will be tasked to Realistically and Objectively Log Events Performed Logically by Animals and Yourself (ROLEPLAY). Creature behavior is dictated by their diet, temperament, and other factors. Explorers are provided a quick guide to educate them on default creature movement, but we encourage explorers to embrace their inner-alien and log the creature actions with creativity and vibrant storytelling.

The Far Away Recruitment Kit

Your exploration kit can be delivered straight to your home. Inside the 5.75# box, you’ll find over 800 pieces. We have included an instruction manual so you can assemble your spaceship with minimal government intervention. Please register your DNA online so we can credit your account upon mission completion.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 90 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.84

Fallout

| OTSG Staff

Fallout is a post-nuclear adventure board game for one to four players. Based on the hit video game series by Bethesda Softworks, each Fallout scenario is inspired by a familiar story from the franchise. Survivors begin the game on the edge of an unexplored landscape, uncertain of what awaits them in this unfamiliar world. With just one objective to guide them from the very beginning, each player must explore the hidden map, fight ferocious enemies, and build the skills of their survivor as they attempt to complete challenging quests and balance feuding factions within the game.

As they advance their survivors’ stories, players come across new quests and individual targets, leading them to gain influence. Who comes out ahead depends on how keenly and aggressively each player ventures through the game; however, if a single faction is pushed to power too quickly, the wasteland will be taken for their own, and the survivors conquered along with it.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.01

Everdell: The Complete Collection

| OTSG Staff

Dive tailfirst into the world of Everdell with the Complete Collection. Build a city of critters and constructions and explore the Emerald Valley and beyond; celebrate the Bellfaire, wonder at Newleaf’s mechanical marvels, trek into the Spirecrest Mountains, explore the underwater depths of Pearlbrook, and chance the dangers of Mistwood. Play against automated opponents including the dastardly Rugwort and cunning Nightweave and meet heroes of renown like Corrin Evertail himself. Everdell is easy to learn, yet offers satisfying strategic depth and endless replayability. Will the sun shine brightest on your city?

Everdell Complete Collection contains 23 different types of Critter meeples, player powers for asymmetric play, Giant Critters with saddles to ride on, and an amazing array of pieces including wooden twigs, squishy berries, smooth pebbles, amber resin, glass pearls, and more. Featuring deluxe components, including the shiny metal point tokens and the wooden Ever Tree, this Complete Collection is the ultimate edition of Everdell.

Includes all content from:

– Everdell
– Pearlbrook
– Spirecrest
– Bellfaire
– Newleaf
– Mistwood
– Wooden Ever Tree
– Collector’s upgrade packs (Freshwater, Glimmergold, and Trailblazers)
– Everdell Big Ol’ Box of Storage

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 40 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.07