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.

Back to the Future: Back In Time

| T3d-1978

“Wait a minute, Doc, are you telling me you built a time machine…out of a DeLorean?”

The photo of the McFly family is slowly fading… It’s 1955, and you’re wrapped up in a time paradox with Biff, Lorraine, George, and Doc Brown! Cooperate to move around Hill Valley to get the DeLorean ready, avoid Biff and his gang, help George and Lorraine fall in love, and crank the DeLorean up to 88 MPH — all just in time for the lightning to strike the Clock Tower, sending you back to the future!

In the fully co-operative game Back to the Future: Back in Time, each player takes on the role of a major character from the movie: Marty McFly, Doc Brown, Jennifer Parker, or Einstein the dog. The objective of the game is to have the characters move around 1955 Hill Valley, collecting certain items in an effort to fix Doc’s famous DeLorean time machine, defeat Biff Tannen and his gang of trouble-making friends, while ensuring that Marty’s parents fall in love. Only when that is accomplished can players then accelerate the DeLorean to 88 MPH down Main Street before the clock tower strikes 10:04 pm!

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Push Your Luck
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.40

Atlantis Rising

| T3d-1978

The isle of Atlantis, your home, is sinking. Will you be able to save your people in time?

Atlantis Rising is a co-operative worker placement game in which you must work together with up to six other players to deploy citizens across your homeland, gathering resources in order to build a cosmic gate that can save your people. Workers placed close to the shoreline are more rewarding, but are more likely to be flooded and the actions lost.

Every turn, each player draws a misfortune card that will flood certain locations along the ever-shrinking Atlantis shoreline, or may otherwise work to undermine your efforts to save your people. So you must race to gather the necessary resources to build and power the gate, before the island disappears beneath the waves forever.

This edition contains all new art and graphic design, created to bring even more attention to the thematic setting of the game. The Athenians Attack phase has been replaced with the Wrath of the Gods phase, requiring more strategic planning and adding to the sense of urgency. Now, instead of placing workers in an Atlantean Navy, players must cooperatively decide to flood a set number of tiles at the end of each round. To further aid them in their task, Councilor player powers have been expanded and made more impactful, and the knowledge deck has similarly been revised and expanded. The variable gate components, once built, no longer offer one-time bonuses, but create new worker placement spots where players can send Atlantean workers to unleash actions to help save their island.

Game Mechanics:

  • Civilization
  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Push Your Luck
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 7 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.44

Abyss 🟢

| T3d-1978

The Abyss power is once again vacant, so the time has come to get your hands on the throne and its privileges. Use all of your cunning to win or buy votes in the Council. Recruit the most influential Lords and abuse their powers to take control of the most strategic territories. Finally, impose yourself as the only one able to rule the Abyssal people!

Abyss is a game of development, combination and collection in which players try to take control of strategic locations in an underwater city. To achieve this, players must develop on three levels: first by collecting allies, then using them to recruit Lords of the Abyss, who will then grant access to different parts of the city. Players acquire cards through a draft of sorts, and the Lords of the Abyss acquired on those cards grant special powers to the cardholder — but once you use the cards to acquire a location, that power is shut off, so players need to time their land grabs well in order to put themselves in the best position for when the game ends.

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Hand Management
  • Memory
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.34

Zombie Kittens

| T3d-1978
Zombie Kittens

Zombie Kittens

Zombie Kittens is still the highly strategic, kitty-powered version of Russian Roulette that you love, but it introduces a brand new deck of cards so that your game doesn’t end just because you blow up. Only living players can win the game, but dead players now get to keep the cards in their hands when they explode. They also get to play certain cards to torment the living players. And they can even come back from the dead to win the game. Zombie Kittens can be played by itself or can be combined with Exploding Kittens.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Push Your Luck

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.33

Yahtzee: Dungeons & Dragons

| T3d-1978
Yahtzee: Dungeons & Dragons

Yahtzee: Dungeons & Dragons

Yahtzee is a classic dice game played with 5 dice. Each player’s turn consists of rolling the dice up to 3 times in hope of making 1 of 13 categories. Examples of categories are 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, straight, full house, etc. Each player tries to fill in a score for each category, but this is not always possible. When all players have entered a score or a zero for all 13 categories, the game ends and total scores are compared.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Paper and Pencil
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 10 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.18

The Wizard Always Wins

| T3d-1978
The Wizard Always Wins

The Wizard Always Wins

The Wizard Always Wins…but the question is, WHO is the true Wizard? Round by exciting round, players jockey for new roles –from the Trader and the Oracle to the Apprentice and more. Each of the seven roles offer different abilities that are useful for leveling up your power. Yet only the player who is the true Wizard will pull their own gem from the Bag of Fate and claim victory!

Game Mechanics:

  • Bag Building
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.71

Unspeakable Words

| T3d-1978
Unspeakable Words

Unspeakable Words

Decode the ancient secrets of R’lyeh by forming words with the letters you find in this sanity-sapping letter game. The more angles that appear in the words, the greater their mystical value, but beware! For each word that is created, you must roll a sanity check against its value to see if the word’s power drives you mad!

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Player Elimination
  • Push Your Luck
  • Word Game

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.32

Stella

| T3d-1978
Stella

Stella

Starseekers! Explore the sky and bring some light back to your world.

Stella is a competitive game in the Dixit universe. In each round, players interpret Dixit cards on a board after receiving a common clue word. Each player observes the Dixit cards and secretly associates these cards with the clue word, marking on their erasable personal slates the cards that they choose. Selecting the same cards as the other players allows you to score more points. Conversely, selecting a card that no one else chooses may cost you dearly.

At the end of the fourth round, each player calculates their total score. Whoever has the most points — which is possibly more than one person — wins.

Take calculated risks, but beware of the fall.

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Party Game
  • Push Your Luck

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 6 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.14

Sea of Clouds

| T3d-1978
Sea of Clouds

Sea of Clouds

​In Sea of Clouds, as captain of a flying pirate ship, recruit a cutthroat crew, collect relics and unearth the best rum by gathering shares of Loot. Then send your pirates aboard enemy ships to plunder their treasure!

In each round of the game, players take turns divvying up shares of Loot to gain Rum, Relics, Objects, and Pirates. In some rounds, when ships are flying close together, they will also clash in a Boarding action, using the effects of any Pirates they picked up to gain Doubloons and plunder Loot.

On your turn, take the first of the three shares of Loot on the table, and look at it secretly. You must decide to either take all the cards in the Share then add the top card from the deck face-down to this Loot space, or to leave the Share and look at the next one. If you choose to do the latter, add the top card from the deck to the Share you declined (or a Doubloon, if there’s already three cards), thus increasing its value for the next player. If no shares interest you, blindly take the top card of the deck.

The card backs give you a hint about what’s in the next Shares: Pirates to board other ships, legendary Relics to collect, Rum to be scored at the end of the game, and Items with permanent, immediate, or secret effects.

Every 4 or 5 rounds (depending on the number of players), Boarding action will occur! Add the strength of your Captain and your Pirates, apply any bonuses or penalties, and face your two neighbors! For each victory, your Pirates will gain Doubloons or steal some Loot! After the fight, all Pirates are discarded.

The game ends after 12 (or 15) rounds. Players then add the value of their Doubloons and their Loot cards to determine who’s the winner.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.74

Port Royal: Big Box

| T3d-1978
Port Royal: Big Box

Port Royal: Big Box

The merchant players in Port Royal, which won the Austrian Game Designers Competition under the title Händler der Karibik, are trying to earn as much as they can out of the Caribbean Sea, but if they set their goals too high, they might take home nothing for the day.

The 120-card deck depicts a coin on the back of each card — with players earning and paying coins throughout the game — and different items on the card fronts. On a turn, a player can first draw as many cards as he likes, one at a time from the deck, placing them in the harbor (an area near the deck). Each card shows one of the following:

  • Person, who stays in a face-up row next to deck.
  • Ship, which the player can attack immediately if he has enough swords on his people cards, after which the ship is discarded; otherwise, the ship stays in the harbor.
  • Expedition, which remains above the harbor until a player fulfills it by discarding people who have the items required for the expedition.
  • Tax Increase, which forces everyone with twelve or more coins to discard half their money, after which the card is discarded.

If the player draws a ship with the same name as a ship already in the harbor, he’s spent too much time dilly-dallying and his turn ends (after using the ship to attack, if possible), with all the cards in the harbor being discarded. Otherwise, the player can stop whenever he likes, then use/acquire one card if three or fewer ships are in the harbor, two cards if four ships are present, and three cards if five ships are present. Players rob ships, collecting the number of coins shown on them, then discarding the card, while they hire people, paying the number of coins depicted. After the active player takes his 1-3 cards, each other player may pay the active player one coin in order to take one card in the same way.

When one player has at least twelve influence points — which are on both people and expedition cards — the game is played to the end of the round, giving everyone the same number of turns, then the player with the most influence points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Economic
  • Move Through Deck
  • Open Drafting
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 20 – 50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.67