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.

CATastrophe: A Game of 9 Lives

| T3d-1978

Catastrophe is a game as spontaneous and unexpected as cats themselves.

Players start with 9 lives. Your goal is to survive the chaotic mayhem. The last cat standing is crowned champion! Power Cats will help guide you to victory with unique abilities. But, be careful, it’s no catwalk!

One second, you’re slapping down attack and curiosity cards, the next you’re rolling a die and playing fun catastrophic mini-games to determine your destiny. However, magical Yarn Balls may alter your fate. You are eliminated when you lose all of your lives. Beware of the villain, the Grim Reapurr, who is plotting your untimely demise and attempting to be the sole victor!

This is an all-out claws out kind of game with only one victor and many catfights! Will your strategy be to play with caution… or wild abandon… Either way, you’re in for a treat.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Player Elimination
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.00

Cat Packs

| T3d-1978

Cat Packs is a fast-paced card game mixed with tile-laying in which you’ll cleverly put together the cat gang of your most whimsical dreams! The game includes over one hundred unique illustrated cats by artist Liselotte Eriksson.

On each turn, players draft a new cat from the alley and use resources to play out cards from their hand to add to their cat pack. All cats have different requirements and benefits, but not all cats fit well together, so players must carefully consider their positions. The goal of the game is to earn the most “catshine”, which players receive by collecting sets of five cat types, surrounding certain cards with other cards, matching corners of four cards together in a catshine symbol, or winning the power struggle taking place after each round!

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Cat Lady

| T3d-1978

In Cat Lady, players are cat ladies, part of an elite group of people including Marie Antoinette and Ernest Hemingway. During the game, you and your fellow cat ladies will draft cards three at a time, collecting toys, food, catnip, costumes, and of course lovable cats. But watch out! Make sure you have enough food for all of your feline friends or your hungry cats will subtract points from your score. The player with the highest total victory points wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 15 – 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.38

Cat Ass Trophy

| T3d-1978

How low can you go? In Cat Ass Trophy, you want to score as few points as possible, but to do that you need to collect the right cards in hand.

The deck consists of 56 cards, with cards numbered 1-8 in seven colors. Each player starts with nine cards in hand, and five, seven or nine cards start face-up on the table depending on the number of players. On a turn, you either knock on the table to pass or you swap one card in hand for one card on the table. After the second knock, whether from the same player or a different one, all players other than the second knocker have one final chance to swap, after which they reveal and score their hands. If you have five or more cards of the same color or number in hand, then those cards score 0 points. For each other number you have, no matter how many copies, you score points equal to that card’s value. Thus, having one to four 7s in hand is worth 7 points.

If, however, you manage to collect both five cards of a color and five cards of a number in hand (with one card fitting in both sets), then you can declare “Cat Ass Trophy!” and end the round immediately, with everyone else scoring points as usual.

After a number of rounds equal to the number of players, whoever has the lowest score wins!

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.23

Bärenpark

| T3d-1978

Up to two thousand pounds in weight and over ten feet tall, the bear is considered the biggest and heaviest terrestrial carnivore in the world. Of course, there is not just “one bear;” on the contrary, there are plenty of subspecies that differ from each other in various aspects. For instance, only the Kodiak bear (ursus arctos middendorffi) weighs about 2,000 lbs. The polar bear (ursus maritimus) weighs “only” 1,100 lbs., but gets much bigger than the Kodiak bear, being as much as 11 ft. tall!

Bärenpark takes you into the world of bears, challenging you to build your own bear park. Would you like another polar bear enclosure or rather a koala* house? The park visitors are sure to get hungry on their tour through the park, so build them places to eat! Whatever your choices are, make sure you get the next building permit and use your land wisely! (* No, koalas aren’t bears but they’re so cute, we couldn’t leave them out of this game!)

In more detail, each player in Bärenpark builds their own bear park, attempting to make it as beautiful as they can, while also using every square meter possible. The park is created by combining polyomino tiles onto a grid, with players scoring for animal houses, outdoor areas, completed construction, and more. The sooner you build it, the better! Cover icons to get new tiles and park sections. The game ends as soon as one player has finished expanding their park, then players tally their points to see who has won.

Game Mechanics:

  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.66

Captain Is Dead, The

| T3d-1978

Imagine that you are one of the crew in your favorite science fiction TV show. Now imagine that in the last 10 minutes of the show things have gone so badly that the captain is dead and you and the surviving members of your crew have to pull together and save the day yourselves!

The Captain Is Dead is a co-op game for 2 to 7 players. All you have to do is get the ship’s engines (aka “Jump Core”) back online and you win, but because there is a hostile alien ship trying to destroy you, that is easier said than done.

You have an impressive star ship full of useful systems that will help you fend off the aliens, and get the Jump Core back online. Each system gives you an advantage while it remains online. The assault from the hostile alien ship tends to keep knocking those systems offline however. So you need to balance your time between keeping the ships system’s online, fending off the alien threat, and completing your objective.

Each member of your crew has special abilities and skills. You need to work as a group to maximize the potential of each role. If someone tries to be a hero, you’ll all die.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative Game
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 7 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.39

Arctic Scavengers: Base Game+HQ+Recon

| T3d-1978

In the year 2097, the entire Earth was enveloped in a cataclysmic shift in climate, plunging the globe into another ice age. Nearly 90% of the world’s population was eliminated, driving the survivors to band together into loose communities and tribes.

In Arctic Scavengers, you are the leader of a small tribe of survivors. Resources, tools, medicine, and mercenaries are all in scarce supply. You and your tribe are pitted against up to four other tribes in a fight for survival. Build up your tribe, skirmish against other players head-to-head, or even bluff your way to victory. The player with the largest tribe at the end of the game is declared the winner!

As the competing tribes develop and grow, headquarters are established for each tribe thanks to the components in the included HQ expansion. This base camp consists of a Tribal Leader (complete with special abilities) and the potential to construct buildings that can be used strategically during game play. Additionally, the game introduces alternative victory paths, new mercenaries, new tools, and the addition of the “engineering schematics” pile.

As the tribes evolve further and struggle for dominance, information becomes the most valuable currency. In the new world mapped out in the Recon, deception reigns, leading to a need for reconnaissance. This expansion adds new tribe leader roles, new mercenaries, new equipment, and new levels of player interaction (i.e., new ways to make your opponents feel pain).

Arctic Scavengers: Base Game+HQ+Recon comes with a plastic insert to organize all your cards for ease in play setup.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck, Bag, and Pool Building
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.26

Anachrony 🟠

| T3d-1978

It is the late 26th century. Earth is recovering from a catastrophic explosion that exterminated the majority of the population centuries ago and made most of the surface uninhabitable due to unearthly weather conditions. The surviving humans organized along four radically different ideologies, called Paths, to rebuild the world as they see fit: Harmony, Dominance, Progress, and Salvation. Followers of the four Paths live in a fragile peace, but in almost complete isolation next to each other. Their only meeting point is the last major city on Earth, now just known as the Capital.

By powering up the mysterious Time Rifts that opened in the wake of the cataclysm, each Path is able to reach back to specific moments in their past. Doing so can greatly speed up their progress, but too much meddling may endanger the time-space continuum. But progress is more important than ever before: if the mysterious message arriving through the Time Rift is to be believed, an even more terrible cataclysm is looming on the horizon: an asteroid bearing the mysterious substance called Neutronium is heading towards Earth. Even stranger, the scientists show that the energy signature of the asteroid matches the explosion centuries ago…

Anachrony features a unique two-tiered worker placement system. To travel to the Capital or venture out to the devastated areas for resources, players need not only various specialists (Engineers, Scientists, Administrators, and Geniuses) but also Exosuits to protect and enhance them — and both are in short supply.

The game is played in 4-7 turns, depending on the time when the looming cataclysm occurs — unless, of course, it is averted! The elapsed turns are measured on a dynamic timeline. By powering up the Time Rifts, players can reach back to earlier turns to supply their past “self” with resources. Each Path has a vastly different objective that rewards it with a massive amount of victory points when achieved. The Paths’ settlements will survive the impact, but the Capital will not. Whichever Path manages to collect most points will be the new seat for the Capital, thus the most important force left on the planet…

Game Mechanics:

  • Economic
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.01

Bruxelles 1893

| T3d-1978

Bruxelles 1893 is a worker placement game with elements of bidding and majority control. Each player is an architect of the late 19th century and is trying to achieve, through various actions, an architectural work in the Art Nouveau style. The most successful building yields the most points. Each player can also create works of art to increase his score.

The action board is modular, with not every player having access to each action each turn. Some actions cost money – acquiring high-quality materials, building a level of your personal house, finding a patron, creating a work of art, selling that art for money and prestige – while other actions are free but can potentially cause you to lose one of your workers; these latter actions include acquiring low-quality materials, activating your patrons, visiting the stock exchange, and taking one of the actions with a cost. Once everyone has passed on taking more actions, the round ends and players have an art exhibition during which they can sell works. After this, players receive prestige points or bonus cards based on the symbols they’ve placed their workers next to on the action board.

After five rounds, the game ends and players score bonus points based on their architect level, their bonus cards, how well they’ve completed their work, and their money on hand. The player with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Auction / Bidding
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 50 – 125 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.59

Botanik

| T3d-1978

In the hushed intimacy of her laboratory, the eminent researcher Beatrix Bury has just discovered a technology allowing to mechanically generate all kinds of edibles. Subtropical plants, stellar potatoes, Orion mandarins, this new technology opens a way to save the people of Forharms, prisoners of a world made of rust and toxic vapors. It’s in the urgency of a threatened world that the scientist puts two of her best teams in charge of developing her plan… that can seem quite demanding at times. Each team is engrossed in its mission and Beatrix’s laboratory becomes the battlefield of fierce competition to produce the best performing machine. You are promoted to the head of one of these two teams, and must prove yourself worthy of the head researchers’ trust. Rise up to the challenge!

Develop the most effective network of mecha-botanics, the combination of plants and science! Botanik offers fluid mechanics (one action per turn), in addition to an ingenious exchange system, associated with tiles of different groups/colours.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.76