Tag: Set Collection

Games with Set Collection mechanics require players to collect resources in sets to achieve various rewards.

Draftosaurus

| T3d-1978

Your goal in Draftosaurus is to have the dino park most likely to attract visitors. To do so, you have to draft dino meeples and place them in pens that have some placement restrictions. Each turn, one of the players roll a die and this adds a constraint to which pens any other player can add their dinosaur.

Draftosaurus is a quick and light drafting game in which you don’t have a hand of cards that you pass around (after selecting one), but a bunch of dino meeples in the palm of your hand.

Game Mechanics:

  • Closed Drafting
  • Dice Rolling
  • Die Icon Resolution
  • Set Collection
  • Simultaneous Action Selection

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 15 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.25

Doomlings

| T3d-1978

Somewhere on a doomed and distant planet, life has emerged, competing for supremacy until the world’s inevitable destruction. The object of the game is to score the most points by the time the world ends. Score points by playing Traits for your Doomlings’ species, making them more adaptable, resilient, and mischievous. As your Doomlings assert their dominance, Catastrophes will befall the planet, causing setbacks for each competing species. When the third Catastrophe inevitably strikes, the world ends, and the Doomlings with the strongest set of traits gets to look the Apocalypse in the eye and declare…“I scored the most points!”

Throughout the game, players draw Trait cards from a community pile, and then play them for points. Traits can also have special abilities and bonuses, allowing players to build a wide range of winning combinations. The game is played in rounds, using Age cards, which have different rules that players must follow. But be warned, hidden in the Ages are Catastrophes: special rounds with adverse effects that force players to adapt their strategy.

Doomlings adds a fun twist to hand management, by introducing the “Gene Pool” mechanic. Your Gene Pool is your hand size: it is unique to you, and it can increase or decrease through special Traits, or even Catastrophes. Doomlings includes 6 colorful Gene Pool counter cards, elegantly tracking how many cards you should hold at the end of your turn. There are opportunities to increase your Gene Pool (hand size), which can give your species a leg up by providing a larger pool of Traits to select from each turn.

A lightweight card game for 2-6 players, Doomlings can be played casually amongst friends, or competitively by the gaming enthusiast family. Because there are no duplicate cards, and Age cards are chosen randomly, no two games are ever the same. While the game itself can be learned in 5 minutes or less, don’t be fooled: with 100+ unique Traits—in Red, Blue, Green, Purple and Colorless—and rare, powerful Dominant Traits, there are countless combinations of play to be discovered.

A typical game takes between 20-45 minutes, depending on the number of players and sequence of events. Advanced-play expansion packs are also available, including a Hidden Objective expansion for a fun twist to the game. Doomlings requires no dice or additional pieces, just a jolly embrace of the inevitable end of the world!

—description from the designer

Game Mechanics:

  • End Game Bonuses
  • Events
  • Finale Ending
  • Hand Management
  • Move Through Deck
  • Set Collection
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 20 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.67

Agent Avenue

| T3d-1978

Agent Avenue is a competitive card game that combines bluffing, strategic set collection, and a race to uncover your opponent’s identity. Set in a colorful anthropomorphic world, players assume the roles of retired spies in a suburban neighborhood, outsmarting each other with cards that can score points or trigger special effects. The game’s art brings to life a quirky neighborhood of animal spies.

Use a unique “I split, you choose” mechanic to play one card face-up and one face-down each turn. Your opponent chooses one, influencing both your strategies. Cards feature different agents and tools that impact scoring and game progress on a track, advancing the “catch me” race to uncover the opposing spy.

Outwit your opponents by strategically collecting agent sets and effectively using spy tools. The game ends when a player successfully uncovers their opponent, combining both strategic depth and bluffing elements.

Perfect for those who love a mix of strategy and lighthearted competition, “Agent Avenue” challenges you to think like a spy and act like a friendly neighbor.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Race
  • Set Collection
  • Track Movement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 10 – 20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.30

Djinn

| T3d-1978

Once your ancestors found or created a source of magic – the exact knowledge of its origin, as far as you know, has long been lost. A small community has developed around the source, which seeks to protect this place and keep it as secret as possible.

Unfortunately, some magical beings — half corporeal, half ethereal — have now tracked down this source. These beings of dubious character, which you call “Djinn”, have appeared in various places of the city to dispute your access to the source. You are young members of the Magic Guild, and to prove your abilities, you are tasked with capturing the Djinn so that they can do no harm. You can control them permanently only if you catch them in special Djinn bottles. To seal these bottles, you also need corks made from the bark of a tree near the magic source.

Whichever of you succeeds best in protecting your small town will be accepted into the inner circle of the Magic Guild and will soon be allowed to learn even more secrets…

In Djinn, you take turns moving across a map that shows thirteen locations. These locations are linked to actions where you can get the resources you need and catch the Djinn that are in six locations. In those locations you can do things like receive bottles and corks, collect magical power, buy magical items, hire mages to accompany you, discover secret passages, and more.

In each round, you can reach only one of two or three of the locations, so you must plan carefully to have all the resources you need in time to catch the Djinn. The game ends when all six “Boss Djinn” have been captured and removed from the map, then you score points for all captured Djinn.

-description from developer

Game Mechanics:

  • End Game Bonuses
  • Grid Movement
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Set Collection
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.92

Defrag

| T3d-1978

It’s 1995…you’ve got a paper due first thing in the morning and your trusty computer has chosen tonight to slow to a crawl. You reboot, you task kill, you pet the monitor gently, no dice. You’re filled with dread as you realize you have only one option left. That’s right.

Clear your schedule, baby, it’s time to D-D-D-DEFRAG!

Defrag is a hand management grid puzzle game in which you are attempting to rearrange and consolidate various file fragments before exhausting your resources. Defrag has several solo and multiplayer game modes, including a series of increasingly difficult challenges with unique goals.

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Hand Management
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 2 Players
  • 15 – 25 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Deep Regrets

| T3d-1978

Deep Regrets is an unfortunate fishing game about pulling progressively more horrifying things out of the ocean. Decide what to eat, what to sell, what to mount, and how many regrets you’re willing to carry, as you push yourself too far and spiral towards a conclusion in this strategic horror fishing game.

You’ll roll bespoke tackle dice at the start of each turn to determine your strength for that round and then decide whether you’ll stay at sea or return to port to sell fish, buy provisions, and recharge your energy.

Survey the sizes of shadows on the backs of 9 different fish shoals at three depths, determining what you think you can afford to catch and if you want to risk it for a potentially better reward. Flip fish, spend dice, add them to your collection – but beware of reveal and catch abilities that can have various effects on the game! As your eyes spy more and more horrifying things, you’ll collect Regrets cards – which drive up your madness but also give you access to more dice and increase the value of weirder fish. It’s a risk/reward scenario as you balance your madness, knowing that at the end of the game the player with the highest value of Regrets will have to discard their most valuable mounted fish.

Manage you resources, make strategic decisions, leverage madness to your benefit and suppress your Regrets as you try to catch the most valuable haul of weirder and weirder fish in this weird week at sea.

SOLO MODE:
In the solo mode (which you can also co-op), you’ll act as an ichthyologist on a mission to catch and catalog every fish in the sea. Over a campaign of dozens of games, you’ll try to reel in every last fish and document their attributes on provided catalog sheet. At the end of each game, you’ll have to discard an equal value of fish to the regrets you’ve collected and may have to let some fish go to return to another day. At the end of the campaign, you’ll have a catalog of all fish names, depths, values and difficulties that can be used by players in the multiplayer game to help identify what they might fish up!

—description from the designer

Game Mechanics:

  • Cooperative
  • Dice Rolling
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 30 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.39

Deep Dive

| T3d-1978

Deep Dive is a press-your-luck set-collection game in which you use your waddle of penguins to dive deep into the ocean to amass the most bountiful collection of food!

Turns are simple: Flip over an ocean tile, and see what you reveal. You can take what you reveal in the shallows or dive deeper, hoping for a larger catch — but the deeper you go, the more plentiful the predators become. As you surface with food, you build sets of three colors. Target the colors you need to complete sets and score the maximum number of points.

When one of the depths of the ocean has been fully explored, the game ends and the penguin waddle with the best sets of food wins!

—description from publisher

Game Mechanics:

  • Memory
  • Push Your Luck
  • Set Collection

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 15 – 20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.13

Botanicus

| T3d-1978

How about creating your own botanical garden? As an aristocrat in the late 19th century, you have bought land, hired a gardener and set out to find the best plants there are.

As you know, the visitors are very picky about the plants they want to see, so your job is not only to acquire the plants, but also to sort them according to the visitors’ preferences.

In Botanicus, you compete for the best action-spots in a unique selection mechanism, and then make the most of the options available to you. You have to collect new plants, take care of them, water them and keep an eye on the gardener. Last but not least, you have to collect some money along the way to pay for all this.
In the end, what counts is how many visitors you satisfy and how beautiful your garden is. Will you be able to outdo the gardens of your competitors?

Game Mechanics:

  • Modular Board
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.40

Darwin’s Journey

| T3d-1978

When all you can identify in the horizon for many long days is the line that detaches the sea from the sky, the glimpse of a distant shore appearing before you will make you shiver at the understanding that the adventure is about to begin.

You find yourself astonished, landing on the shore that will be the origin of an extensive exploration through the Galapagos, a magic place of inconceivable beauty and endless biodiversity. There, you will gather repertoires and expand your knowledge of the natural sciences. Your eyes will learn how to detect the hidden species in the tropical forest, gazing at the countless colors and textures of nature. After inspiring hours spent studying and getting to enlightening conclusions, you will rest under a sparkling sky, admiring the stunning complexity of the animal realm.

Darwin’s Journey is a worker-placement Eurogame in which players recall Charles Darwin’s memories of his adventure through the Galapagos islands, which contributed to the development of his theory of evolution.

With the game’s innovative worker progression system, each worker will have to study the disciplines that are a prerequisite to perform several actions in the game, such as exploration, correspondence, gathering, and dispatch of repertoires found on the island to museums in order to contribute to the human knowledge of biology. The game lasts five rounds, and thanks to several short- and long-term objectives, every action you take will grant victory points in different ways.

Game Mechanics:

  • Set Collection
  • Worker Placement
  • Contracts

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.90

Cities

| T3d-1978

You’ve been tasked by the city council to put together a plan to transform a whole neighborhood in the city. You have the opportunity to build new housing, office buildings, parks, and leisure areas near the waterfront. It is in your hands to make the city a better place.

Cities is a city-building game in which you draft the best projects and arrange them in your own playing area. With action and resource draft mechanisms, it will give you the opportunity to visit the cities of Sydney, Venice, New York, Barcelona, Rio de Janeiro, Lisbon, Mexico City, and Buenos Aires. Can you design the most magnificent neighborhood?

The game is played over eight rounds (or four rounds in a two-player game). Each round, players use their workers to collect 1 scoring card, 1 city tile, 1-2 feature tiles, and 2-4 building pieces. City tiles are made up of park spaces, water spaces, and building spaces. Building pieces are placed on building spaces of the same color to form buildings, which can be 1-4 stories high. Whenever a player fulfills an achievement, they place one of their discs on the achievement board. At the end of the game, players add up the points they have gained from all of their scoring cards and achievements.

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Pattern Building
  • Set Collection
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92