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.

Iwari

| T3d-1978
Iwari

Iwari

Evermore have they walked the world of Iwari. Evermore have they embodied its spirit and shaped its lands. They are stewards of the earth. Five Titans that make the cosmos breath. On Iwari, there are no teeming masses, no continent-wide civilizations. Humanity is in its infancy, living in scattered tribes in forest, tundra, and desert.

Now we have left our ancestral homelands to explore the vast uncharted regions, encountering other fellow tribes and exchanging knowledge, culture and wisdom. In our journey, we all live in harmony with the Titans, and though distant to us, they decide our fate. And yet only we don’t know if they created us, or we created them.

Iwari is an abstract-like Eurogame in which players represent different tribes looking for their identity by traveling around far lands and expanding their settlements into five different regions on the board. In the game, players use cards for two different actions:

1) Place tents and expand their settlements into five different regions on the board in a majority game that scores on each territory.
2) Construct nature totems to bond with the Titans by placing them on regions and score points based on the totem majorities in adjacent territories.

During the game, players can complete missions that grant small perks and score points by having the majority of tents in each territory after the end of the first card cycle. At game end, the majority of tents will be scored again, along with the majorities of nature totems in two adjacent regions and settlements that players have created (i.e., four or more tents in an uninterrupted sequence along one of the roads on the board).

Iwari reimagines the award-winning game Web of Power by Michael Schacht by adding new layers of strategy, tribe player boards, different maps with their own set of rules, modules that can be added to the game, and unique co-operative and solo modes.

Game Mechanics:

  • Abstract Strategy
  • Area Control
  • Cooperative
  • Hand Management
  • Network Building
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.15

It’s a Wonderful Kingdom

| T3d-1978
It's a Wonderful Kingdom

It's a Wonderful Kingdom

It’s a Wonderful Kingdom is a standalone solo or 2-player game in a Low-Fantasy universe. Inspired by the core mechanics of its predecessor “It’s a Wonderful World”, this new game offers more interaction, a bluff mechanism and new challenges.

The game is played using modules, each different and offering mechanical twists. Each game, players will choose one of the different modules to compete against each other. The game is divided into 4 rounds. Each round having 3 phases.

Split & Trap
Players take turns offering their cards to one another in two areas in the center of the table.

One player picks 2 cards from their hand and either places them in the same area or splits them between the two areas. The other player chooses an area and claims the card(s) in it. The players take turns repeating this step until both players have offered all of their cards. Each player has 2 Trap tokens which can be used to place cards face down, otherwise all cards are played face up.

Planification
Each player chooses which of the cards they have collected to build and which ones to recycle for immediate resources.

Sequential Production
Each player produces their Kingdom’s resources sequentially. Since resources are produced in a specific order, it is important to plan ahead to optimize your production and development.

At the end of the fourth round, the player with the most victory points wins the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 2 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.57

The Isle of Cats

| T3d-1978
The Isle of Cats

The Isle of Cats

The Isle of Cats is a competitive, medium-weight, card-drafting, polyomino cat-placement board game for 1-4 players.

In the game, you are citizens of Squalls End on a rescue mission to The Isle of Cats and must rescue as many cats as possible before the evil Lord Vesh arrives. Each cat is represented by a unique tile and belongs to a family, you must find a way to make them all fit on your boat while keeping families together. You will also need to manage resources as you:

  • Explore the island (by drafting cards)
  • Rescue cats
  • Find treasures
  • Befriend Oshax
  • Study ancient lessons

Each lesson you collect gives you another personal way of scoring points, and 38 unique lessons are available. Complete lessons, fill your boat, and keep cat families together to score points, and the player with the most points after five rounds wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Closed Drafting
  • Grid Coverage
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.31

Island Siege

| T3d-1978
Island Siege

Island Siege

Island Siege is a fast-playing game of fort-building and colonization in the Caribbean Sea. Players build shoreside forts to defend their colonists from attack and to score points. Forts allow you to put colonists in play, which in turn can safely build ships and buildings which provide abilities and points. Attacking allows you to chip away at your opponent’s fort while gaining cubes which are used to build forts of your own. Your goal is to score 20 coins or get all of your colonists in play!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 12 – 48 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.33

If Wishes Were Fishes!

| T3d-1978
If Wishes Were Fishes!

If Wishes Were Fishes!

Players are fishermen, trying to catch the most valuable fish and sell them in the market for the best prices. With limited space for storing caught fish, players must use their wits to get the right fish to market at the right times. This is where the granting of wishes is most helpful. Just catch the fish who will grant the wish you want, throw it back, and you get your wish. Sounds simple, but the game does require a bit of thinking and planning. The wishes can help you increase the value of fish when sold, grant you extra storage space, and several other useful things.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.95

The Hunger

| T3d-1978
The Hunger

The Hunger

The Hunger is a race in which each vampiric player must optimize their card deck, hunt humans to gain victory points, fulfill secret missions, and eventually acquire a rose and return to the castle before sunrise. The more you hunt, the slower both you and your deck become, which will make it harder and harder to get back before daybreak. Can you become the most notorious vampire without burning to ashes at sunrise?

During the game, players spend “speed” to move their vampires around the map, hunt humans worth victory points, and add new cards to their deck.

The game ends at dawn, after which the surviving player with the most victory points on their cards wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Deck Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.24

Hadara

| T3d-1978
Hadara

Hadara

Hadara carries you off into the world of cultures and countries of this earth. Over three epochs, you will experience the transformation of your new world from a small settlement to a high culture. You want to populate this world with people who come from different cultures and continents as well as different ages. To bring glory and honor to your world, you should choose the persons and accomplishments skillfully. But you should not ignore agriculture, culture, and military power, otherwise one of your competitors might get bigger and more successful than you. Who will succeed first in creating a new flourishing high culture?

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Civilization
  • Memory
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.20

Habitats

| T3d-1978
Habitats

Habitats

In Habitats, each player builds a big wildlife park without cages or fences. The animals in your park need their natural habitats: grassland, bush, rocks or lakes. The zebra needs a big area of grass and some water adjacent, for example, while a bat needs rocks and bush and water, a hart needs bush and grass, and a crocodile needs mainly water. There is a snake, baboon, bee, elephant, otter, lizard, turtle, eagle, meerkat, scorpio, hog, catfish, rhino, etc., each with its own landscape requirements — 68 different animals in total.

Each player starts their individual park with an entrance tile, and they are each represented in the marketplace of animal tiles by a ceramic figure (or a wooden ranger meeple in some editions). On a turn, a player takes the tile to their left, right or front; moves their figure to the space just vacated; then draws a tile to place where their figure started the turn.

When adding an animal tile in your park, you add its main landscape — the base space for the animal — to your park, too. While placing this new animal, its own piece of landscape can help to fulfill the requirements of your other animals’ requirements, e.g., the water on a hippo tile fulfilling the adjacent otter’s need for water. Thus, fulfilling every animal’s desire for land becomes a more and more difficult task with each tile you add.

Aside from expanding your park with different landscape types, flora and animals, you can improve its profitability by building extra entrance roads, trek spots, and watchtowers.

Habitats lasts three seasons, with each season giving each player 6-9 new tiles for their parks. Whoever has best met the goal of the season receives bonus points, with a smaller number of points for second and third place. At the end of the game, each player scores for each tile in their park based on whether that tile’s requirements are satisfied. Whoever scores the most points wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Grid Movement
  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Puzzle
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.25

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