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.

GraVwell

| T3d-1978
GraVwell

GraVwell

In Gravwell, players command spaceships that have been pulled through a black hole, transporting them into a different dimension. With each ship lacking fuel to get home, each player must collect basic elements from surrounding asteroids, using the gravity of the dimension and what little resources they have in order to reach the warp gate that will take them home. But in this dimension, moving ships will travel towards the nearest object, which is usually another ship, and when those objects are moving either forward or backward, reaching the warp gate isn’t always easy. Time is running out to save your crew and your ship! As a grim reminder of the cost of failing to escape, the frozen hulks of dead spacecraft litter the escape route — but with careful card play, you can slingshot past these derelict craft and be the first to escape from the Gravwell!

Gravwell uses 26 alphabetized cards to determine movement order and thrust; most cards move your ship towards the nearest object, but a few move you away from it. At the start of each round, players draft fuel cards, picking up three pairs of two cards, with only the top card of each pile being visible; you get some information as to which moves you can expect from the other spaceships, but you won’t know which moves you’ll be forced to make when you draft your cards!

During a round, each player will play all of their fuel cards in the order of their choosing. During each phase of a round, each player chooses one card, then all cards are revealed and resolved in alphabetical order. When your opponents move in ways you didn’t expect, you won’t always be heading in the direction you thought you would! Each player holds an “Emergency Stop” card that they may tactically play only once per round to avoid such a situation.

Whoever first reaches the warp gate wins, but if no one has escaped after six rounds, then the player who is closest to the gate wins.

Gravwell: 2nd Edition features the same gameplay as earlier editions of the game, but now 40 fuel cards are included, which allows up to six players in the game at the same time. (Earlier editions maxed out at four players.) Additionally, ship ability cards are included that can give a unique power to each ship’s captain trying to find their way home.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.83

Gods Love Dinosaurs

| T3d-1978
Gods Love Dinosaurs

Gods Love Dinosaurs

How do you make an ecosystem flourish with just enough of every life form in the chain to supply you with dinosaurs to dominate the lands? Resources are scarce, animals can go extinct in an area, and everyone must eat to survive — so moves must be cunning. Life hangs in the balance…

In Gods Love Dinosaurs, a cheeky, wild, and timeless take on the scientific tale as old as life itself, you are a god who has been tasked with designing an ecosystem with a sustainable food chain of predator and prey animals. But you just love dinosaurs, so all you really want to do is to make as many of them as possible!

Each turn, you’ll add one tile to your ecosystem, which will add new animals and give them room to grow. Every so often, your dinosaurs will tromp around your ecosystem eating all the animals. The more they eat, the more eggs they lay — and the more points you score! Just be careful not to overeat, or there won’t be enough food to keep your dinosaurs alive the next time.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Grid Movement
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.38

Goblin Firework Fight

| T3d-1978
Goblin Firework Fight

Goblin Firework Fight

Goblins have come to the town of Sandpoint, intent upon stealing their fireworks for an upcoming festival. Do you have the goblin grit to pillage your way to victory and emerge from the town with the most fireworks?

The game is played over a number of rounds. Each round, every goblin takes a turn pulling a loot token from the town’s treasure pile. These tokens might represent useful tools or valuable treasure like fireworks, dogslicers (goblin knives), or shields. Unfortunately, the tribe’s most fearsome beast, a pig called Squealy Nord, is also hiding in the treasure, bringing mayhem and chaos to any who draw his token from the pile. You never know what you might get.

Fighty goblins can choose dogslicers and just steal from their neighbors instead of raiding the village. Smart goblins will take some shields to defend themselves from their peers. Crafty goblins with leadership qualities may choose instead to take the badge of leadership, the Pickle Token, signifying for all their prominence and importance as well as the right to pick first next time.

After 10 rounds and one last free for all opportunity to steal from each other on the way back home, one goblin is declared the “bestest goblin of the raid” and basks in glory and the admiration of their peers. Until the next raid…

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Party Game
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Glow

| T3d-1978
Glow

Glow

In Glow, you are an adventurer who builds their company by recruiting a new traveling companion each turn, trying to combine their powers as best as possible. You’ll roll the dice to activate the advantages that your companions bring you…or their disadvantages. Gather many slivers of light to dispel the darkness, restore the colors, travel the land to reach landmarks, and (yes) score points.

In short, Glow is a card-drafting, dice-rolling, and combinations game. The box contains lots of colorful dice, two game boards for two different gaming experiences. You have also to count on luck sometimes, but be attentive to your card combinations, too.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.03

Gizmos

| T3d-1978
Gizmos

Gizmos

The smartest minds of our generation are gathering together at the Great Science Fair. Everyone’s been working hard on their creations, but only one will be crowned champion. Contestants have to think on the fly to build their machines quickly and efficiently. Whose project will be the best?

In Gizmos, you win the game by gaining victory points from building engines. And engines help you get things done faster. Whoever builds the greatest machine and collects the most victory points wins!

At the beginning of the game, you have 4 actions:

  • File: Put a card in the public to your Archive, allow you to build it later.
  • Pick: Take one energy marble from the 3D marble dispenser to your storage.
  • Build: Build one machine and put it on action! You have to pay the marbles with colors corresponding to the card cost.
  • Research: Draw some cards, and you can then File or Build one of the drawn cards. The rest go to the bottom of their deck.

Machines give you victory points and allow you to do more actions when conditions are met. As you build, new attachments can trigger chain reactions, letting you do even more on your turn.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Tableau Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.01

Ganymede

| T3d-1978
Ganymede

Ganymede

Ganymede is a development and tableau-building game in which players are corporations specialized in sending settlers to colonize the universe. To do so, you will recruit settlers on Earth, use shuttles to transport them to Mars, then to Ganymede where the settlers’ ships launch base is located.

The game ends when a player has launched four settlers’ ships into space. Players score VP from their launched ships and from their reputation track.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Set Collection
  • Tableau Building

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.30

Furnace

| T3d-1978
Furnace

Furnace

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:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Economic
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.23

Funfair

| T3d-1978
Funfair

Funfair

Can you build the best theme park in town?

Choose and build an exciting mix of attractions in your very own theme park. Upgrade them to match blueprints, or just to stack up towering rides that pull in the crowds and make the most cash. Hire staff members and build super attractions to maximise your park’s strategy for the win!

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.14

Free Radicals

| T3d-1978
Free Radicals

Free Radicals

In Free Radicals, players take control of one of ten fully asymmetrical factions, each with its own path to earn resources, power, and the knowledge stored in the “Free Radicals”, which are giant mysterious objects that appeared around the world, causing a huge evolutionary leap in technology. You might play as the merchants, using action points to travel to different markets, and grow in influence and efficiency; the Couriers, using your drones to pick up and deliver valuable goods; the Entertainers, using card placement and abilities to maximize powerful abilities; or one of seven other entirely unique factions!

Players also interact through the main board, where they can visit each other’s buildings and try to unlock the technology in one of the free radicals. You can even help your opponents’ research in return for influence and other rewards!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Economic
  • Negotiation
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.50

Football Highlights 2052

| T3d-1978
Football Highlights 2052

Football Highlights 2052

Welcome to Football Highlights 2052!

Football Highlights 2052 is like watching TV highlights of early 21st-century football games, with the game play being full of theme but with no time-outs or commercial breaks and all without bogging down in a play-by-play football simulation.

In this quick and interactive game, two players manage their teams, combining both strategy (building your team) and tactics (playing the game) without any downtime. During each half, players alternate playing ten cards to simulate a full game’s highlights. Each card represents both an offensive and a defensive play, both of which will be used to resolve your opponent’s and your own offensive plays.

Do you try to thwart your opponent’s threatened offense, or put up a strong offense of your own? The player who makes the best use of their plays will score the most points through touchdowns, field goals, and even safeties to win the game!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.36