Tag: Push Your Luck

In games with a Push Your Luck mechanic, players must decide when to settle on existing resource gains for a turn, or risk those gains for further rewards.

All Aboard!

| T3d-1978

“We sink!” shouts the elephant, “That mouse is too heavy!” “Don’t worry!” whispers the lion, “If I eat the giraffe, we can lose a little weight.”

In All Aboard! you must get your gang of animals to safety in the different boats, but be careful not to exceed their capacity, or else they will sink. Designed by Paco Yánez and illustrated by Monsuros, this fun card game can be played as a couple or in groups of up to 5 players, from 7 years old, in games lasting about 20 minutes.

Before starting, each player receives a set of 12 cards with the 12 different animals in the game (mouse, peacock, fox, octopus, monkey, sloth, elk, zebra, giraffe, lion, bear and elephant). The game is played over 4 rounds and each one consists of two phases: boarding the boats and setting sail. In the boarding phase, players will place one of the animals face up in any of the boats, taking into account that there can be no more than 3 animals in each one. In the second turn, they will place a new animal in any of the available boats, but this time face down; Finally, in the third turn a third animal will board the available boats, again face up.

At the beginning of the setting sail phase, all animal cards that have been played face down are revealed and then a check is made to see if there are two or more animals of the same species. If there are 2, they both fall in love (and the players will receive points for it). If there are 3, they fight and the boat sinks. Next, the animals activate their effects and finally the sum of the weight of the animals on board the boat is checked. If the weight of the animals is equal to or less than the weight that the boat can withstand, the animals manage to set sail and will score at the end of the game. Each player takes their animals and places them in a pile of saved animals in their playing area. If, on the other hand, the boat sinks, the animals are discarded.

Knowing when to play each animal is one of the keys to the game. However, depending on how your rivals play the cards, unforeseen situations can arise on the ships. Each animal has its own power, which can unleash chaos or balance the scales. Will you be able to save as many animals as possible?

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Push Your Luck
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.60

Circus Flohcati

| T3d-1978

Board Game Overview

In Circus Flohcati, you’re competing to collect all 10 acts (colors) from the flea circus before anyone else can. You do so by flipping through cards from the deck – but be careful! You don’t want the same-colored cards, you’ll only score one card for each act. If you do ever have three cards of the same color in your hand, though, you can play them to get an automatic 10 points. Push your luck in this fun and easy game!

Game Mechanics:

  •  Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.23

Ancient Terrible Things: Reawakened 🟢

| T3d-1978

Ancient Terrible Things: Reawakened is a pulp-horror tabletop game for 1-4 players.
You play the role of an intrepid and foolish adventurer exploring a dark jungle river for Secrets.
Each turn you must travel to a Fateful Location and face an Ominous Encounter.
If you overcome the Encounter (using a combination of dice, tokens and cards) you gain Secrets.
The object of the game is to be the player with the most Secrets when the game ends at the Inexplicable Event.

Game play involves rolling dice to achieve combinations: runs, pairs, three or more of a kind, and single die showing a particular number or higher. Dice combinations are spent to overcome Encounters and to acquire the four resources used in the game: Focus, Mystery, Treasure and Feat tokens.

  • Focus tokens are used to activate Swag cards to better manipulate dice results.
  • Mystery tokens are spent to overcome any Encounter when visiting the Yawning Chasm.
  • Treasure tokens are spent to purchase useful Swag cards from the Trading Post which give you a permanent game effect.
  • Feat tokens are spent to play one-shot Feat cards from your hand.

Ancient Terrible Things: Reawakened is the third implementation of the Dicequest game system as previously used in Ancient Terrible Things (1st/2nd Edition) and Konja.
The third edition incorporates edited and revised content from all previous iterations and expansions of the game, renovated art and language-independent graphic design into a new and definitive edition of ATT.

Game Mechanics:

  • Push Your Luck
  • Re-rolling and Locking
  • Set Collection
  • Solo / Solitaire Play

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.17

Biblios: Quill and Parchment

| T3d-1978

A “roll and write” version of the popular Biblios.

The life of a monastic scribe is not easy. Every day you spend long hours in the monastery copying books, praying, and performing tasks. Through hard work and prayer, earn the abbot’s trust and display your dedication to the pious life.

The object of the game is to score the most piety points. The game consists of 8 days (i.e., rounds). In the first 4 days, players simultaneously roll their own dice (that show various book types, abbot influence and travel points) and may do so up to 3 times. After each roll, the players have 3 options: (1) to keep the dice as shown, (2) to reroll exactly one die or (3) to roll all the dice.

Most of the dice are resource dice showing books monks are copying, but there are also abbot influence dice (abbot influences is accrued in the first half, but spent in the second half of the game), and a travel die (allowing a player’s novice to go out into towns to do good works and find more books).

In the last 4 rounds, players use their abbot influence to bid for a priority of tasks.

This is a rare (if not unique) “roll + write” game that includes auctions and, unlike many roll + write game; it is highly interactive.

After 8 days, the game ends and the players calculate scores. As in the original Biblios, the relative value of books changes during the game, so players are unsure of which books will be most valuable until the end of the game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~40 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.08

BANG! The Dice Game

| T3d-1978

In the U.S. wild west, the eternal battle between the law and the outlaws keeps heating up. Suddenly, a rain of arrows darken the sky: It’s an Indian attack! Are you bold enough to keep up with the Indians? Do you have the courage to challenge your fate? Can you expose and defeat the ruthless gunmen around you?

BANG! The Dice Game keeps the core of the Bang! card game in place. At the start of the game, players each take a role card that secretly places them on a team: the Sheriff and deputies, outlaws, and renegades. The Sheriff and deputies need to kill the outlaws, the outlaws win by killing the Sheriff, and the renegades want to be the last players alive in the game.

Each player also receives a character card which grants him a special power in the game. The Sheriff reveals his role card and takes the first turn of the game. On a turn, a player can roll the five dice up to three times, using the results of the dice to shoot neighboring players, increase the range of his shots, heal his (or anyone else’s) life points, or put him in range of the Indians, which are represented by nine tokens in the center of the table. Each time a player rolls an arrow, he takes one of these tokens; when the final token is taken, each player loses one life point for each token he holds, then the tokens are returned to the center of the table.

If a player collects a trio of Gatling symbols on the dice, he fires one shot at everyone else and rids himself of Indian tokens. Who’ll get his shot off first? Play continues until one team meets its winning condition – and death won’t necessarily keep you from winning as long as your teammates pull through!

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hidden Roles
  • Party Game
  • Player Elimination
  • Push Your Luck
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 8 Players
  • ~15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.28

John Company

| T3d-1978
John Company

John Company

In John Company, players assume the roles of ambitious families attempting to use the British East India Company for personal gain. The game begins in the early eighteenth-century, when the Company has a weak foothold on the subcontinent. Over the course of the game, the Company might grow into the most powerful and insidious corporation in the world or collapse under the weight of its own ambition.

John Company is a game about state-sponsored trade monopoly. Unlike most economic games players often do not control their own firms. Instead, they will collectively guide the Company by securing positions of power, attempting to steer the Company’s fate in ways that benefit their own interests. However, the Company is an unwieldy thing. It is difficult to do anything alone, and players will often need to negotiate with one another. In John Company, most everything is up for negotiation.

Ultimately, this game isn’t about wealth; it’s about reputation. Each turn some of your family members may retire from their Company positions, giving them the opportunity to establish estates. Critically, players do not have full control over when these retirements happen. You will often need to borrow money from other players to make the best use for a chance of retirement. Players also gain victory points by competing in the London Season for prestige and securing fashionable properties.

John Company engages very seriously with its theme. It is meant as a frank portrait of an institution that was as dysfunctional as it was influential. Accordingly, the game wrestles many of the key themes of imperialism and globalization in the eighteenth and nineteenth centuries and how those developments were felt domestically. As such, this game might not be suitable for all players. Please make sure everyone in your group consents to this exploration before playing.

The second edition is extensively revised and is not a reprint.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bribery
  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Negotiation
  • Push Your Luck
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 90 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.41

In Too Deep

| T3d-1978
In Too Deep

In Too Deep

In Too Deep is a unique, narrative that thrusts you into the future in a tense, strategic board game for 1-5 players. Draft characters and spend actions to complete objectives and collect sets. What side of the law will you end up on?

In the year 2087, central governments have fallen. What remains are fragmented citystates like New Dawn City, struggling to keep chaos at bay. The sinister Syndicate targets these weakened cities for domination by usurping, organizing, and enhancing the existing criminal elements. In the world of In Too Deep, you are part of a secret agency dedicated to stopping the Syndicate at all costs.

Cybernetic implants give Syndicate operatives a technological advantage, but you have found a way to exploit that power. By infiltrating their cerebral upgrades, you can gain control of these criminals. Going deep undercover into the minds of your targets, you’ll coordinate crimes of escalating seriousness to get your hands on the critical evidence needed to foil the Syndicate’s looming plot.

Each turn, you can hook into a new criminal and manipulate their activities throughout the city, accessing powerful skills and increased stamina as you grow familiar with their minds. Your physical body is in a secret lab far from the actual action, but you are by no means safe. Entering the mind of criminals takes its toll on your morality.

Orchestrate crimes, strive to put the information you gather to the best use, wrestle with dangerously corrupting dilemmas, and try to hold yourself together. It will take everything you’ve got to avoid going In Too Deep.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Cooperative
  • Hand Management
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.43

Arkham Horror: The Card Game

| T3d-1978

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:

  • Campaign
  • Cooperative
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Limited Communication
  • Push Your Luck
  • Role Playing
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

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

A Feast for Odin 🟠

| T3d-1978

A Feast for Odin is a saga in the form of a board game. You are reliving the cultural achievements, mercantile expeditions, and pillages of those tribes we know as Viking today — a term that was used quite differently towards the end of the first millennium.

When the northerners went out for a raid, they used to say they headed out for a viking. Their Scandinavian ancestors, however, were much more than just pirates. They were explorers and founders of states. Leif Eriksson is said to be the first European in America, long before Columbus.
In what is known today as Normandy, the intruders were not called Vikings but Normans. One of them is the famous William the Conqueror who invaded England in 1066. He managed to do what the king of Norway failed to do only a few years prior: conquer the Throne of England. The reason why the people of these times became such strong seafarers is due to their unfortunate agricultural situation. Crop shortfalls caused great distress.

In this game, you will raid and explore new territories. You will also experience their day-to-day activities: collecting goods to achieve a financially secure position in society. In the end, the player whose possessions bear the greatest value will be declared the winner.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Economic
  • Grid Coverage
  • Push Your Luck
  • Puzzle
  • Tableau Building
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.85

Zona: The Secret of Chernobyl

| T3d-1978
Zona: The Secret of Chernobyl

Zona: The Secret of Chernobyl

Zona is an adventure board game designed for 1-4 players. To win the game, player must reach the sarcophagus of Chernobyl Nuclear Power Plant before other players. The sarcophagus opens only when player had previously collected 2 Secrets from underground facilities known as Secret Locations. Players must hurry because there is a time limit to the game. When the Final Emission strikes, everything is lost…

GAMEPLAY
Each turn players take 2 Actions (move, explore, combat etc.) and then everyone read an Event Card which contains text for short adventure. At the end of turn, a News Card is drawn by the first player and resolved by him.

MOOD
This board game emphasizes the aspect of survival. Zone depicted on the playing board is an extremely hazardous and isolated area with very limited access to functional equipment and supplies. Players must remember to frequently repair their Items and buy new ones. It is also crucial to rest to reduce Fatigue and heal Damage.

STALKERS
Each player takes role of 1 Scavenger from the 10 included in the game. Each Scavenger has their own Special Skill, set of basic Skills and starting equipment. Values of stats such as Awareness, Agility or Intellect determine how good they are in avoiding dangers and traps, fighting mutants or gathering Artifacts from anomalies. The story of Scavenger explains his/herPersonal Goal – the reason for arriving to the Zone. Differences between Scavengers makes playing each one of them completely unique.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Dice Rolling
  • Push Your Luck

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.76