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.

Expedition to Newdale

| T3d-1978
Expedition to Newdale

Expedition to Newdale

At the beginning of the game you have your personal board, a coal mine as your start building and 5 hand cards. Depending on which chapter you are playing, the appropriate game board sits in the middle of the table. Each round is divided into 5 phases which are played in order (or partially parallel, once you become more familiar with the game). 

 

In phase 1, a new event is revealed which usually alters the course of play in this round slightly (e. g., by introducing new buildings). Additionally the event card shows a fixed amount of workers which are available this round. An information which is much appreciated, as you have to place your action markers in phase 2. The latter are numbered 1 — 4 which is important for phase 4 and means that you need to plan ahead. But first phase 3: in this phase, more workers are drawn from a bag and get added to the others. This means that productions which would have been impossible before (because workers were missing) are now easily done. Pushing your luck might be beneficial! Phase 4 is the opposite to phase 2. Instead of placing your workers, you resolve their chosen action in order of their numbers. We hope you had a backup plan in place if your desired workers were not drawn in phase 3, because this can trigger an unpleasant chain of events! 

Not enough workers could mean that a production does not happen, which then means that you might not have enough money to build the building with your second action marker. Oh, and your third marker was planned to directly produce in the newly built building? Well, where there is no building, there’s no place to produce in, right? Clearly: planning ahead, a little luck and good alternatives are the way to success. In Phase 5, all players can either use a free building action or draw new hand cards. 

The last phase is used to resolve all buildings which do not need workers, e. g., an automatic coal production or a building which offers the conversion of a certain good to victory points. Afterwards the next round starts, of which you play a total of seven. A final scoring at the end of round seven will then show if you win or lose.

Game Mechanics:

  • Campaign
  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Push Your Luck
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Distilled

| T3d-1978

Distilled is a highly thematic strategy card game about crafting spirits in a distillery, with resource management and push-your-luck elements. In the game, you have inherited a distillery and are hoping to someday achieve the title of master distiller through purchasing goods, building up your distillery, and creating the world’s most renowned spirits.

Use cards to purchase new ingredients and invest in upgrades to your distillery, all while eventually distilling the spirit and sending it to the warehouse. Once in the warehouse, age your spirit to enhance its flavor and bottle it to sell it for major profits!

Achieve the title of Master Distiller by having the most victory points at the end of the game. Points are obtained by distilling and selling spirits.

Game Mechanics:

  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.89

Dead of Winter

| T3d-1978

“Crossroads” is a game series from Plaid Hat Games that tests a group of survivors’ ability to work together and stay alive while facing crises and challenges from both outside and inside. Dead of Winter: A Crossroads Game, the first title in this series, puts 2-5 players in a small, weakened colony of survivors in a world in which most of humanity is either dead or diseased, flesh-craving monsters. Each player leads a faction of survivors, with dozens of different characters in the game.

Dead of Winter is a meta-cooperative psychological survival game. This means players are working together toward one common victory condition, but for each individual player to achieve victory, they must also complete their personal secret objective, which could relate to a psychological tick that’s fairly harmless to most others in the colony, a dangerous obsession that could put the main objective at risk, a desire for sabotage of the main mission, or (worst of all) vengeance against the colony! Games could end with all players winning, some winning and some losing, or all players losing. Work toward the group’s goal, but don’t get walked all over by a loudmouth who’s looking out only for their own interests!

Dead of Winter is an experience that can be accomplished only through the medium of tabletop games, a story-centric game about surviving through a harsh winter in an apocalyptic world. The survivors are all dealing with their own psychological imperatives, but must still find a way to work together to fight off outside threats, resolve crises, find food and supplies, and keep the colony’s morale up.

Dead of Winter has players making frequent, difficult, heavily-thematic, wildly-varying decisions that often have them deciding between what’s best for the colony and what’s best for themselves. The rulebook also includes a fully co-operative variant in which all players work toward the group objective with no personal goals.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Area Movement
  • Bluffing
  • Cooperative
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Narrative Choice
  • Push Your Luck
  • Storytelling
  • Trading

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.01

Cult of the Deep

| T3d-1978

You are a cultist, trying to establish your faction’s rise to power. Fight over rituals and mythical monsters as you seek victory and control of the cult.

Roles

 

Each player is given a role that will remain hidden throughout the game, except the High Priest. This role will determine your win condition:

  • High Priest – Root out corruption in the cult. Kill all Cabalists, the Heretic, and survive.
  • Cabalists – Seek to take control of the cult. Kill the High Priest.
  • Faithful – Protect the High Priest from threats to their power. Kill all Cabalists, the Heretic, and the High Priest must survive.
  • Heretic – Burn the whole cult to the ground. Kill the entire cult, yourself included if necessary.

Extra abilities

 

Each player will also be given a:

  • Character card that determines their starting health, special ability, and a power symbol that provides an additional way to gain life from the dice.
  • Secret sigil card, which gives each cultist a once per game power, will also be given to each player.

Mechanics

 

A player will take a turn by first rolling their dice up to 3 times. They then decide where to commit their dice: to rituals to gain altar effects to temporarily empower themselves, finish a ritual in order to gain its powerful effects permanently, stab other cultists, gain life, or give life to other cultists.

If a player is killed, they are not eliminated. Instead, they become a wraith. They will roll dice on their turn still, just less. They cannot commit dice like normal but instead haunt the dice of enemies and allies by giving, replacing, or discarding dice.

Game Mechanics:

  • Bluffing
  • Bribery
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hidden Roles
  • Push Your Luck
  • Team Based

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 8 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.67

Vengeance Roll & Fight: Episode 2

| T3d-1978
Vengeance Roll & Fight: Episode 2

Vengeance Roll & Fight: Episode 2

Vengeance: Roll & Fight is a real-time, roll-and-write game, where the frantic action around the table mimics the kick-arse fighting action in the game-world! Set in the world of Vengeance and designed by Dávid Turczi, Noralie Lubbers and Gordon Calleja, Vengeance: Roll & Fight is a stand-along game that transforms the fast-paced dice puzzles of the original Vengeance into roll-and-write mechanics where you’re building combos, striking off enemies and scoring points for an action-packed, brain-teasing fighting game that’s easy to learn and hard to master.

The aim of Vengeance: Roll & Fight is to infiltrate a gang den, carve your way through it’s rooms and killing the Boss, while completing side objectives printed on the dens themselves.

The game is split into three parts: planning, fighting and montage. In the planning phase players roll and re-roll 4 dice in real time, aiming to roll a combination of dice that match an ability they wish to trigger in the upcoming, fight phase. Assigning dice to an ability allows players to fill their hand back to 4 dice from a large, common pool and repeat the process as quickly as they can manage.

Once the dice pool is depleted, the fighting proper begins. Here players take a set of dice assigned to an ability and execute that ability, moving their piece through rooms full of enemies, and crossing them out when they are hit with the multitude of available abilities. Finally, players heal and upgrade their characters, bring new abilities and items into play to help them on their road to vengeance.

Vengeance: Roll and Fight comes in two boxes: Episode 1 and Episode 2. Both episodes are stand-alone games with the same rules, but with entirely different content: different heroes, dens, bosses, abilities and items. Each episode accommodates up to 4 players so combining the two increases the player count from 1-4 to 1-8! Content in both Episodes can be switched like-for-like as you choose.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Dice Rolling
  • Paper and Pencil
  • Push Your Luck

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.33

Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries

| T3d-1978
Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries

Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries

Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries takes you on a Nordic adventure through Denmark, Finland, Norway, and Sweden as you travel to the great northern cities of Copenhagen, Oslo, Helsinki, and Stockholm. This version was initially available only in the Nordic Countries of Denmark, Norway, Sweden, and Finland; a worldwide limited-edition release occurred in August 2008 and it has since been kept in print again by Days of Wonder.

The goal in “Nordic” remains the same as base Ticket to Ride: collect and play cards to place your trains on the board, attempting to connect the different cities on your ticket cards. The map incorporates tunnels from Europe and also has routes containing ferries. Ferries will require a certain number of Locomotives to be played, as well as other cards, in order to be claimed. Locomotives are handled a bit differently as well. On your turn you may take 2 Locomotives if you want, but you can only use them on ferries, tunnels, or the special 9 length route.

Unlike the USA or Europe maps, Nordic is designed for 2-3 players only and has a heavier focus on blocking your opponent and more aggressive play.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Network Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 3 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.98

Ticket to Ride: Europe

| T3d-1978
Ticket to Ride: Europe

Ticket to Ride: Europe

Ticket to Ride: Europe takes you on a new train adventure across Europe. From Edinburgh to Constantinople and from Lisbon to Moscow, you’ll visit great cities of turn-of-the-century Europe. Like the original Ticket to Ride, the game remains elegantly simple, can be learned in 5 minutes, and appeals to both families and experienced gamers. Ticket to Ride: Europe is a complete, new game and does not require the original version.

More than just a new map, Ticket to Ride: Europe features brand new gameplay elements. Tunnels may require you to pay extra cards to build on them, Ferries require locomotive cards in order to claim them, and Stations allow you to sacrifice a few points in order to use an opponent’s route to connect yours. The game also includes larger format cards and Train Station game pieces.

The overall goal remains the same: collect and play train cards in order to place your pieces on the board, attempting to connect cities on your ticket cards. Points are earned both from placing trains and completing tickets but uncompleted tickets lose you points. The player who has the most points at the end of the game wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Network Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.93

Ticket to Ride

| T3d-1978
Ticket to Ride

Ticket to Ride

With elegantly simple gameplay, Ticket to Ride can be learned in under 15 minutes. Players collect cards of various types of train cars they then use to claim railway routes in North America. The longer the routes, the more points they earn. Additional points come to those who fulfill Destination Tickets – goal cards that connect distant cities; and to the player who builds the longest continuous route.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Network Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.84

Sub Terra

| T3d-1978
Sub Terra

Sub Terra

A 1-6 player cooperative game of terrifying cave escape. Players take the role of amateur cavers attempting to escape an unexplored network of subterranean tunnels, before the lights flicker out or the darker things beneath the Earth catch up to them…

In Sub Terra players spend their turn exploring and revealing the tunnel system around them, attempting to survive the various perils of the cave, from floods and cave ins to gas leaks and scree. Players each have a role which gives them specialist abilities, such as an Engineer with dynamite to blast a new route or a Scout to find a route more easily.

New tiles are placed from a randomised stack of cave features, which determines whether you’ll be hit with a dead end or a range of new options.

At the end of each turn, players face the reality of their situation, with a hazard card drawn to determine what danger causes them damage or cuts off their way out of the horror below.

These cards are finite, and when they run out, your torches flicker and the air feels tight, and your chance of survival diminishes quickly.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Grid Movement
  • Push Your Luck
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.14

Studies in Sorcery

| T3d-1978
Studies in Sorcery

Studies in Sorcery

Studies in Sorcery is an engine building and drafting game in which players are trying to complete projects in Alchemy, Reanimation, and more to finally complete their thesis statement and graduate from the Academy of the Dark Arts.

Each field of study at the Academy of Dark Arts is different and requires different skills. Alchemy takes time but can grant you abilities instantly. Reanimation requires just the right ingredients if you want to really impress the professors and can help you build future projects even faster. Sorcery takes work, but can grant you new abilities depending on the phase of the moon.

On their turn, players can choose to scavenge for ingredients or to go get more projects to work on. At the end of each round, players can commit their ingredients to projects and hopefully finish a project so they can reap the rewards of a job well done.

The game ends after four semesters have passed and players present their projects for review. Choose your thesis and fields of study wisely and even you can get your degree in darkness!

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.50