Tag: Open Drafting

Games with Open Drafting mechanics allow players to choose new resources from a shared pool. The pool of resources is public, meaning all players will see available options.

Iki

| T3d-1978
Iki

Iki

Edo — what we now know today as Tokyo, Japan — was a thriving city with an estimated population of one million, half townspeople and half samurai. With a huge shopping culture, Edo’s main district, Nihonbashi, was lined with shops, selling kimonos, rice, and so much more.

Nihonbashi is the focus of IKI: A Game of EDO Artisans, which brings you on a journey through the famed street of old Tokyo. Hear the voices of Nihonbashi Bridge’s great fish market. Meet the professionals, who carry out 700­-800 different jobs. Enter the interactivity of the shoppers and vendors. Become one with the townspeople.

One of the main professions in the world of Edo is the artisan. Each of the Edo artisans uses their own skill of trade to support the townspeople’s lives. In this game, not only are there artisans, but street vendors, sellers at the shops, and professions unique to this time and age. Meet the puppet masters, putting on a show. Meet the ear cleaners that people would line up for.

The goal of this game is to become the annual Edoite, best personifying what is known as “IKI”, an ancient philosophy believed to be the ideal way of living among people in Edo. Knowing the subtleties of human nature, being refined and attractive — these are all elements of a true IKI master.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Rondel
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.99

Honey Buzz

| T3d-1978
Honey Buzz

Honey Buzz

The bees have discovered economics. The queens believe that if they sell honey to the bears, badgers, and woodland creatures, they will find peace and prosperity. Spring has arrived and it’s time to build the hive, find nectar, make honey, and, for the first time ever, set up shop.

Honey Buzz is a worker bee placement game where players expand a personal beehive by drafting various honeycomb tiles that grant actions that are triggered throughout the game. Each tile represents a different action. Whenever a tile is laid so that it completes a certain pattern, a ring of actions is triggered in whatever order the player chooses. A tile drafted on turn one could be triggered up to three times at any point during the game. It all depends on how the player places their beeples (bee+meeple) and builds their hive. After all, in the honey business, efficiency is queen.

As you continually expand your hive, you’ll forage for nectar and pollen, make honey, sell different varieties at the bear market, host honey tastings, and attend to the queen and her court. There’s only so much nectar to go around, and finding it won’t be easy. Players will have to scout out the nectar field and pay attention to other players searches to try to deduce the location of the nectar they need for themselves.

Game Mechanics:

  • Economic
  • Grid Movement
  • Memory
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.75

Gutenberg

| T3d-1978
Gutenberg

Gutenberg

Gutenberg is a board game for 1-4 people in which players will play as the pioneers of printing in the 15th century. By carrying out orders, they will build their wealth and fame. By improving their printing workshops and gaining the support of patrons, they will develop their production capacity. The game will be won by a printer who boasts the greatest recognition and wealth.

By bidding for specific actions, players will develop their workshop, acquire new fonts, inks and decorations. The unique system of rotating gears allows you to combine bonuses and earn a large number of points.

The game is won by the player with the most points after six rounds.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Open Drafting
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.63

Glass Road

| T3d-1978
Glass Road

Glass Road

The game Glass Road commemorates the 700-year-old tradition of glass-making in the Bavarian Forest. (Today, the “Glass Road” is a route through the Bavarian forest that takes visitors to many of the old glass houses and museums of that region.) You must skillfully manage your glass and brick production in order to build the right structures that help you keep your business flowing. Cut the forest to keep the fires burning in the ovens, and spread and remove ponds, pits, and groves to supply yourself with the items you need. Fifteen specialists are there at your side to carry out your orders…

In more detail, the game consists of four building periods. Each player has an identical set of fifteen specialist cards, and each specialist comes with two abilities. At the beginning of each building period, you choose a hand of five specialists. If during this building period, you play a specialist that no other player has in hand, you may use both abilities on that card; if two or more players play the same specialist, each of them may use only one of the two abilities. Exploiting the abilities of these specialists lets you collect resources, lay out new landscape tiles (e.g., ponds and pits), and build a variety of buildings, which come in three types:

  • Processing buildings
  • “Immediate” buildings with a one-time effect
  • Buildings that provide bonus points at the end of the game for various accomplishments

Mastering the balance of knowing the best specialist card to play and being flexible about when you play it — together with assembling a clever combination of buildings — is the key to this game.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Economic
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.97

Ginkgopolis

| T3d-1978
Ginkgopolis

Ginkgopolis

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:

  • Area Control
  • City Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Tableau Building
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

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

Gentes: Deluxified Edition

| T3d-1978
Gentes: Deluxified Edition

Gentes: Deluxified Edition

“Gentes” is the Latin plural word for greater groups of human beings (e.g., tribes, nations, people; singular: “gens”). In this game, players take the role of an ancient people who are attempting to develop by building monuments and colonizing or founding new cities in the Mediterranean sea.

The game is played in six rounds, each consisting of two phases: action phase, and tidying up. There are three eras — rounds 1-2, 3-4, 5-6 — with new monument cards entering the game at the beginning of rounds 1, 3 and 5. Each player has a personal player mat with a time track for action markers and sand timer markers. In the action phase of a round, the players take their turns in clockwise order, conducting one action per turn. Each action requires an action marker from the main board that is placed on the time track. Depending on the information on the action marker, you have to also pay some money or take sand timers that are placed on the time track. When you have no free spaces on your time track, you must pass for the remainder of the round. Therefore, the number of actions per player in a single round may vary significantly if, for example, you choose double sand timers instead of two single ones or take action markers that require more money but fewer sand timers. Single sand timers are dropped in the tidying up phase, while double sand timers are flipped to become single sand timer markers and stay for another round. The actions are:

Buy new cards from the common display
Build monuments (playing cards from your hand to your personal display for victory points and new options)
Train/Educate your people
Build/found cities
Take money
To play a card, you must meet the requirements printed on that card, such as having specific persons on your personal board (e.g., two priests and four soldiers). These requirements are why training — i.e., getting specific people — is important, but that is not that easy because there are six different types of people — three on the left and three on the right side of your personal player board — and you have only six spaces in total for the two types in the same line. If you have three merchants, for example, you move your marker for counting merchants three spaces toward the side of the soldiers and thus you have only three spaces left for soldiers. By educating a fourth soldier and moving your soldier marker forward to its fourth space, you automatically lose one merchant because that marker is pushed back to its second space.

It is crucial to generate additional actions by using the specific functions of monuments in your display and cities you have built. Cities are expensive, but they create benefits at the end of each round or provide new options for taking an action without acquiring an action marker, gaining only a sand timer marker instead.

Try to have a steady income to avoid wasting actions to take money. Pay attention to the display of common cards, which is new in every single game, because the monument cards are shuffled randomly within the decks of eras I, II and III. Collect identical achievement symbols on the cards to benefit from the increasing victory points for a series of symbols. Build cities to enlarge your options!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Civilization
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 75 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.26

Genotype

| T3d-1978
Genotype

Genotype

Gregor Mendel is the 19th Century Augustinian Friar credited with the discovery of modern genetics. In Genotype, you play as his assistants, competing to collect experimental data on pea plants by trying to control how the plants inherit key Traits from their parents: seed shape, flower color, stem color, and plant height. The observable Traits of a Pea Plant (its Phenotype) are determined by its genetic makeup (its Genotype). The relationship between Genotype and Phenotype and the nature of genetic inheritance are at the heart of Genotype: A Mendelian Genetics Game.

During the game, players get Pea Plant Cards which show a set of Phenotype Traits they hope to produce and collect (such as pink flowers and tall height) in order to score points. Each round, Dice are rolled to represent Plant breeding, which may result in the Traits players are looking for. After the Dice Roll, players take turns drafting Dice towards completing their Pea Plant Cards or advancing their Research. The Traits produced during the Dice Roll come through the science of Punnett Squares, which show how the parent genes combine, one from each parent plant. By changing the genes of these parent plants, players can influence the likelihood of rolling the Traits they need. The completion of Pea Plant Cards via the Dice Draft is the main way players score points.

Each round consists of 3 phases: Worker Placement, Dice Drafting, and Upgrades.
1) During Worker Placement, players take actions to get more Plant Cards, change the genes of a parent plant, Garden, Research, stake Phenotype claims, gather new Tools, or even position themselves ahead of other players for the Dice Drafting Phase in a couple of ways.
2) Dice Drafting features a couple of interest steps, including the possibility to get first pick of dice, but only for one type of Trait (like plant height), or the possibility to get a pick of any dice, but only after those first picks have happened. De Novo Mutation Dice allow players to change the Trait of other Dice or gain additional Research.
3) The Upgrades phase lets players spend their Research to gain upgrades that let them work on more Plant Cards, draft more Dice each round, or gain additional Workers to be used during the Worker Placement Phase of each round.

Players work to match their Pea Plant Cards to the outcome of the Dice Draft and complete the cards for points. If they’ve placed a Phenotype marker, they will earn bonus points for every completed card that matches their claim. At the end of 5 rounds, the player with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.80

Galileo Project

| T3d-1978
Galileo Project

Galileo Project

Thirty years after sending the first colonial ships from Ganymede, humanity decided to launch Project Galileo! Its goal: Settle the four main satellites of Jupiter (Io, Europa, Ganymede and Callisto) in order to broaden human presence in the solar system. This project is named after the Italian intellectual Galileo, the first to observe these four satellites in the sky in 1610.

In Galileo Project, you play as the same corporations involved in the events of Ganymede and settle the four satellites of Jupiter by acquiring robots from Earth and Mars, recruiting experts, developing technologies, and building superstructures.

Galileo Project is a standalone game in the Ganymede universe, combining combos and engine-building.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.86

Feudalia

| T3d-1978
Feudalia

Feudalia

After an everlasting period of wars, it’s finally time to collect the spoils. The King has named the feudal lords who will bring glory and prosperity to the conquered lands. To that end, the nobles will have to hire workers and master craftsmen to make their feuds grow as well as helping in the construction of a glorious cathedral, a symbol of the King’s proximity to God.

Feudalia is a deck-building and resource management game for 1-4 players, who will take the roles of the feudal lords of the new lands. Each player will rule three feuds, and all the vassals living in them, who will work those lands to improve their territories, all of it while trumping your opponent’s progress with military incursions into their territories. But the King wants his share too, and the tax collector will appear frequently, taking part of the resources stored by the players.

The goal of the game is to be the first player to earn 10 points. Players earn points by building, either developing their own feuds or helping in the different phases of the construction of the cathedral. During a turn, each player plays their vassals from their hand to gather money and resources, to further invest in new workers or new buildings. Resources can be saved, but be careful! the tax collector will show at your door when you least expect him, and he’ll take half your resources from each feud.

Manage your vassals wisely, hire the best master craftsmen, spend your resources in the cathedral before the tax collector arrives, and become the most prosperous feudal lord in Feudalia!

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Civilization
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Negotiation
  • Open Drafting
  • Trading
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.11

Everdell

| T3d-1978
Everdell

Everdell

Within the charming valley of Everdell, beneath the boughs of towering trees, among meandering streams and mossy hollows, a civilization of forest critters is thriving and expanding. From Everfrost to Bellsong, many a year have come and gone, but the time has come for new territories to be settled and new cities established. You will be the leader of a group of critters intent on just such a task. There are buildings to construct, lively characters to meet, events to host—you have a busy year ahead of yourself. Will the sun shine brightest on your city before the winter moon rises?

Everdell is a game of dynamic tableau building and worker placement.

On their turn a player can take one of three actions:

a) Place a Worker: Each player has a collection of Worker pieces. These are placed on the board locations, events, and on Destination cards. Workers perform various actions to further the development of a player’s tableau: gathering resources, drawing cards, and taking other special actions.

b) Play a Card: Each player is building and populating a city; a tableau of up to 15 Construction and Critter cards. There are five types of cards: Travelers, Production, Destination, Governance, and Prosperity. Cards generate resources (twigs, resin, pebbles, and berries), grant abilities, and ultimately score points. The interactions of the cards reveal numerous strategies and a near infinite variety of working cities.

c) Prepare for the next Season: Workers are returned to the players supply and new workers are added. The game is played from Winter through to the onset of the following winter, at which point the player with the city with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.81