Tag: Rondel

A Rondel is a wheel-shaped game mechanic that represents all actions available to players in a game.

Grand Central Skyport

| OTSG Staff

In Grand Central Skyport, you want to efficiently operate your airship station and attract the most prestigious tycoons to your city. During the game, you attract new airships to your skyport, and each airship has a color and an initial slotting movement. Try to maneuver your airships to group them by color so that they stack to score increasingly more points. Unfortunately, with each new ship entering your station, its movement will trigger the rearranging of previously placed airships, so ideally you can race other skyport owners around a central rondel to choose the incoming airships that are best for you.

Drafting tycoons to your skyport will bring unique advantages in manipulating your docked airships, as well as additional scoring opportunities at the end of the game.

Do you have the operational skills to handle the airships arriving at your station as efficiently as possible? If so, you may very well crown yours the grand central skyport.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00

Glasgow

| OTSG Staff

In Glasgow, players travel the city (in an abstract manner) to collect resources, take special actions, and most important of all construct buildings. Build a factory, and you’ll receive more goods from it when other buildings are constructed in the right areas in relation to it; build a train station, and you may or may not score from it depending on what else you build; build a monument, and you’ll merely collect a lot of points — and in the end, points are what matters.

In slightly more detail, to set up the game, lay out a ring of town figures at random, with two of them being removed from play each game. Whoever is farther behind in the circle around town takes the next turn, advancing to whichever town figure they want to visit. Most of them give you resources — brick, steel, or money — and you have a limit on how many resources of each type you can hold. Some figures have two random building plans at them, and if you visit one with the right resources, you can pay them, then build something. If you pay extra, you can then build something else, too!

The first building is placed anywhere in the midst of play, then each subsequent building is placed adjacent to something already built, with the buildings eventually filling in a 4×5 (or 5×4, determined as the game progresses) grid of the players’ own creation. As soon as the twentieth building is erected, the game ends and players score points for what they built. Who has contributed more to the current state of Glasgow?

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.02

Galileo Galilei

| OTSG Staff

“And yet it moves”, he said.

Galileo Galilei is a Euro-style game in which you take on the role of an astronomer who will discover new planets, find unknown star systems, develop their telescope, and make a scientific breakthrough in the difficult ages of obscurantism.

Use your telescope to select one of the five actions available, with you being able to evolve these actions into better ones. Collect cards of different planets and star systems. Collect lenses of the three main colors to make a discovery. Be wary of inquisitors as they might arrive unwelcomed and ruin your fame in no time. Better find a way to profit from their visit instead.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 50 – 100 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.04

Fromage

| OTSG Staff

You are a French cheesemaker in the early 20th century making, aging, and selling your artisanal cheeses. Become the most prestigious cheesemaker in all of France by running a highly successful creamery and crafting exceptional cheese.

Fromage is a simultaneous worker-placement game where players place Workers to make cheese and gather resources from the quadrant of the board facing them. Once all players have placed their Workers, the board rotates, aging any cheese that was made, and presenting each player with a new quadrant to place Workers into. Score Prestige Points by selling cheese to the four locations, and by efficiently managing and upgrading your creamery.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.38

Fountains

| OTSG Staff

Welcome to the elegant city of Florimelle, where a grand beautification effort has begun. In Fountains, you’ll become a master Fountaineer tasked with transforming Florimelle’s gardens and plazas by creating the most magnificent Fountain the world has ever seen!

Fountains is a take-and-make game in which each player starts with a round fountain that features a spout and room for four features.

On a turn, move one of the tokens 1-3 spaces clockwise around the central board, skipping occupied spaces, to land on an empty space. You then take the top tile next to this token and add it to your board. You can expand out or up or both, but you want to ensure that you have a spout at your highest level and water flowing through all of your lower levels or else you’ll have dead zones that won’t score. If you stop next to the tiny oval features instead of a tile stack, choose one of these features and add it to an empty space in your fountain.

When someone lands on the green, blue, or white space with the matching colored token, everyone scores for the linked item: lilypads, separate pools linked by constant water flow, and fish. (Fish come in three types, and the player who scores fish chooses which color scores.) For each item, you score 1, 2, 3, etc. points if the item is on the first, second, third, etc. level.

When a player hits a point threshold, players then score for all three colors once again, as well as endgame bonuses such as 2 points per coin icon and 4 points for a set of fish in the three colors.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.18

Formaggio

| OTSG Staff

You are an Italian cheesemaker in the early 20th century making, aging, and selling your artisanal cheeses. Become the most prestigious cheesemaker in all of Italy by running a highly successful creamery and crafting exceptional cheese. Formaggio is a standalone expansion for Fromage. With both games put together, you can combine any 4 board quadrants, and draft any combination of structure tiles for more variety and more paths to victory.

Formaggio is a simultaneous worker-placement game where players place Workers to make cheese and gather resources from the quadrant of the board facing them. Once all players have placed their Workers, the board rotates, aging any cheese that was made, and presenting each player with a new quadrant to place Workers into. Score Prestige Points by selling cheese to the four locations, and by efficiently managing and upgrading your creamery.

Formaggio features 4 new board quadrants with all new puzzling mini-games:
• Pair your cheese with the wines at the Vigneto.
• Sell cheese to restaurants along the Venetian canals and attract customers.
• Distribute cheese across the Regioni of Italy.
• Deposit cheese in the Banca. (Yes, there is a real bank in Italy that accepts cheese as collateral for loans!)

Other new features:
• Platinum-tier cheeses.
• Reap various rewards in each of the Seasons.
• All new abilities on the Player Boards and Structure tiles.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.53

First in Flight

| OTSG Staff

First in Flight is a push-your-luck, deck-building game about the race to early flight. Players take on the roles of the Wright Brothers, Samuel Langley, and other flight pioneers, racing to build and pilot the “flyers” that preceded modern airplanes.

Each player’s flyer design is represented by a deck of cards that they can steadily improve and refine, and which may include unknown design flaws that threaten their success.

Flying is a blackjack-style challenge to test a design, break new records, and gain experience — hopefully without crashing. Then, players head back to the workshop to refine their flyers and improve their chances on future flights. There are dozens of available technologies, pilot skills, and friends in the field available for players to customize their own play style and strategy.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 75 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.31

Finca

| OTSG Staff

The gameboard of Finca shows the mediterranean island of Mallorca. Players try to crop and deliver the fruits of Mallorca (such as oranges, lemons, almonds, grapes etc.) by means of moving workers on a traditional windmill. Object of the game is to distribute your crop as effectively as possible in order to deliver faster than your opponents.

From the Box: Mallorca, Island of the Wind. A place of golden beaches and a light-blue sea. The almond harvest is at hand, in addition, juicy oranges, lemons, and figs are ready to be picked and taken to the market. Olive trees bewitch the country with their curled branches and sumptuous vineyards invite passers-by to walk among their warm earth. In the midst of this landscape, your centuries-old natural stone farmhouse provides a home and supports your large windmill: your FINCA.
Listen to the wind, which propels your windmill! Then take in the course of the yearly harvest the sweetest and most valuable fruits from the land. Load them on your old donkey cart and travel around the island, selling them everywhere. If you manage this quickly, you will soon be the richest farmer on the island.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.07

Daitoshi

| OTSG Staff

We have finally perfected the power of steam, and we can now use it to our advantage! We live in an unprecedented era of progress, and new steam-powered inventions are developed faster than ever. Cities are growing, trade is flourishing, and we are developing our most ambitious machine ever: a giant contraption that will bring even more progress to the city. Yes, some trees are being cut down, and the river doesn’t flow as plentifully as before, but there’s still an abundance of trees and water, and we can use the extra space to expand our city — and it’s not like the old creatures on those forests can do anything about it.

On your turn in Daitoshi, you either produce or move your magnate to a new district in which you will be able to send your workers to work, command the exploit of forest or river hexes to fuel your endless need for steam, and perform an action to expand and show your greatness to the city.

These actions not only help you in your search for acknowledgement, but help all the inhabitants of the big city. You will expand the city and electrify its districts, discover and develop new steam-powered inventions, and trade with faraway cities. You may even help the city build its gargantuan project: the mega-machine. Some forests might be cut down, and some rivers may be dried up, but in your generosity, you will help the displaced workers from those areas by giving them new jobs at your service.

Old legends suggest the forests and rivers are guarded by Yōkai, but progress can’t be stopped because of some old fairy tales. Just in case, though, it could be wise to participate on some reforestation projects and hide your participation in the abuse of the natural resources…

—description from the publisher

Game Mechanics:

  • Follow
  • Modular Board
  • Rondel
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.94

Atlantis Exodus

| OTSG Staff

The legendary Atlantis is shrouded in so many stories and myths, an island realm that was reputed to have completely drowned in only one night.

Atlantis Exodus presents the player kings with the challenge of rescuing as many citizens as possible before the impending downfall and, by doing so, saving the knowledge they have acquired for a different world and time.

Thanks to an innovative rotation mechanism, 1-4 kings have to face constantly changing conditions and keep adjusting their own strategy to the different action possibilities in order to ultimately become the savior of the achievements of their time.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.24