Tag: Take That

Games with a “Take That” mechanic allows players to take actions that actively hinder an opponent’s progress in-game.

Imperium The Contention Deluxe Edition

| T3d-1978
Imperium The Contention Deluxe Edition

Imperium The Contention Deluxe Edition

Only one may wield the Void Scepter.

Seize the Void Scepter in Imperium: The Contention, the 4X card game. Choose one of six factions, each with a preconstructed deck, or build your own from a complete collection of over 300 cards! Expand your empire, deploy your fleet, move your ships into position, and battle your enemies. Seizing the Imperial Capital may lead you to victory… or ruin.

There are many paths to ruling the Imperium. Your favor represents your Imperial influence. Gain 8 favor, or claim 8 worlds, and the Void Scepter will be yours! Gain the Imperium’s favor by destroying enemy worlds or through political intrigue. Employ politicians, spies, megacorps, and mercs. Take the Imperial Capital by force, and use the seat of power to convince the Imperium only you are worthy.

Now is the time! Lead your civilization to new heights and claim the Void Scepter!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Civilization
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.82

Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North

| T3d-1978
Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North

Imperial Settlers: Empires of the North

 

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Civilization
  • Hand Management
  • Tableau Building
  • Take That
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.84

Imperial Settlers

| T3d-1978
Imperial Settlers

Imperial Settlers

Settlers from four major powers of the world have discovered new lands, with new resources and opportunities. Romans, Barbarians, Egyptians and Japanese all at once move there to expand the boundaries of their empires. They build new buildings to strengthen their economy, they found mines and fields to gather resources, and they build barracks and training grounds to train soldiers. Soon after they discover that this land is far too small for everybody, then the war begins…

Imperial Settlers is a card game that lets players lead one of the four factions and build empires by placing buildings, then sending workers to those buildings to acquire new resources and abilities. The game is played over five rounds during which players take various actions in order to explore new lands, build buildings, trade resources, conquer enemies, and thus score victory points.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Civilization
  • Closed Drafting
  • Hand Managment
  • Open Drafting
  • Tableau Building
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.77

Guild Master

| T3d-1978
Guild Master

Guild Master

Guild Master is a fantasy tabletop game for 2-4 players. Players manage an adventuring guild, competing with each other to become the most famous guild as an escalating series of events threaten the land. In each of the nine rounds, players simultaneously and secretly program orders to send teams of adventurers out to do the following:

  • Recruit more adventurers.
  • Attempt increasingly difficult contracts to gain money, fame and other rewards.
  • Hire builders to upgrade their guild to increase their capacity to do all of that more.

All players then sequentially resolve their planned orders, starting with each players’ 1st order, then 2nd order and so on, and in the order they appear on the board (builders, then adventurers A-F then contracts 1-6).

Players plan and program orders carefully around other players’ likely moves, various strategies, risks, and rewards. They manage their guilds’ growth and optimize combinations between their adventurer abilities and contract rewards to achieve their goals. As the game advances, guilds become more powerful and must rise to meet an increasing number of game state changing threats. Recruiting increasingly powerful adventurers and upgrading your guild capacity are both key to victory. There are various ways to exert control over the board, your dice rolls, and your chances to get what you want.

Most orders are resolved by paying coin or rolling dice based on your adventurers’ skills. Sometimes players resolve these orders alone, and sometimes cooperating with, or in conflict with, other guild’s adventuring teams attempting the same thing at the same time. When players’ orders overlap, coins and negotiated prisoners’ dilemma cooperate/conflict skill checks resolve the contest. Negotiation over shared goals, contract bonuses and reward splits is encouraged and rewarding, but not absolutely required to win.

Everything you do earns you fame (victory points) and other rewards. At the end of nine rounds, any remaining coins are converted to fame at a rate of 5 coins = 1 fame. Then any special prestige upgrade fame is added. The most famous guild is then declared the winner.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Deck Building
  • Deduction
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Negotiation
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.89

Five Tribes

| T3d-1978
Five Tribes

Five Tribes

Crossing into the Land of 1001 Nights, your caravan arrives at the fabled Sultanate of Naqala. The old sultan just died and control of Naqala is up for grabs! The oracles foretold of strangers who would maneuver the Five Tribes to gain influence over the legendary city-state. Will you fulfill the prophecy? Invoke the old Djinns and move the Tribes into position at the right time, and the Sultanate may become yours!

Designed by Bruno Cathala, Five Tribes builds on a long tradition of German-style games that feature wooden meeples. Here, in a unique twist on the now-standard “worker placement” genre, the game begins with the meeples already in place – and players must cleverly maneuver them over the villages, markets, oases, and sacred places tiles that make up Naqala. How, when, and where you dis-place these Five Tribes of Assassins, Elders, Builders, Merchants, and Viziers determine your victory or failure.

As befitting a Days of Wonder game, the rules are straightforward and easy to learn. But devising a winning strategy will take a more calculated approach than our standard fare. You need to carefully consider what moves can score you well and put your opponents at a disadvantage. You need to weigh many different pathways to victory, including the summoning of powerful Djinns that may help your cause as you attempt to control this legendary Sultanate.

Game Mechanics:

  • Auction/Bidding
  • Set Collection
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.85

Evolution: Climate

| T3d-1978
Evolution: Climate

Evolution: Climate

Evolution: Climate is a standalone game that introduces climate into the Evolution game system.

In Evolution: Climate, players adapt their species in a dynamic ecosystem where food is scarce, predators lurk, and the climate can swing between scorching hot and icy cold. Traits like a Hard Shell and Horns can protect your species from Carnivores while a Long Neck will help them get food that others cannot reach. Heavy Fur and Migratory can protect your species from the cold while being Nocturnal or Burrowing will provide protection from the cruel desert sun. With over 200,000 ways to evolve your species, every game evolves into a different adventure.

The Climate standalone game dramatically changes game play with several simple additions to the Evolution base set:

  • Players draw 4 cards +1 per species per round (instead of 3 cards + 1 per species).
  • Each species may have up to 4 traits (instead of 3).
  • The climate moves along a Climate Track based upon the food cards played each round.
  • There are additional trait cards that provide protection from the heat and cold.

Evolution: Climate changes Evolution from a two-dimensional game (dealing with the threat of Starvation and Carnivores) into a three-dimensional game (dealing with the threat of Starvation, Carnivores, and Climate effects) while increasing the vividness of the theme. It adds additional layers into what was already a dynamically strategic game.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Hand Managment
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.77

Dungeonology

| T3d-1978
Dungeonology

Dungeonology

Welcome to Rocca Civetta, a charming town in the Italian hinterland, which hosts one of the most bizarre universities that the human mind has ever conceived.
In fact, this university hosts the chair of Dungeonology, which deals with the study of the environments and organization of different cultures, especially the most atypical and strange… almost Mythical!
Recently, the faculty lost its professor, and the Dean is looking for a skilled replacement. You are the ideal candidates for this job.

Set in the renaissance world of Nova Aetas, Dungeonology will lead you to the discovery of different Civilizations in order to learn their histories and customs. But be careful: the locals will not always be happy with your intrusion.

The aim of the game is to explore a Dungeon as a Scholar, gathering as much information as possible about the people who live there. Information yields Points, and the Scholar collecting the highest number of Points will present the best Thesis on the studied race.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Hand Management
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 45 – 105 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.23

Dune Imperium

| T3d-1978
Dune Imperium

Dune Imperium

Dune: Imperium is a game that finds inspiration in elements and characters from the Dune legacy, both the new film from Legendary Pictures and the seminal literary series from Frank Herbert, Brian Herbert, and Kevin J. Anderson.

As a leader of one of the Great Houses of the Landsraad, raise your banner and marshal your forces and spies. War is coming, and at the center of the conflict is Arrakis – Dune, the desert planet.

Dune: Imperium uses deck-building to add a hidden-information angle to traditional worker placement.

You start with a unique leader card, as well as a deck identical to those of your opponents. As you acquire cards and build your deck, your choices will define your strengths and weaknesses. Cards allow you to send your Agents to certain spaces on the game board, so how your deck evolves affects your strategy. You might become more powerful militarily, able to deploy more troops than your opponents. Or you might acquire cards that give you an edge with the four political factions represented in the game: the Emperor, the Spacing Guild, the Bene Gesserit, and the Fremen.

Unlike many deck-building games, you don’t play your entire hand in one turn. Instead, you draw a hand of cards at the start of every round and alternate with other players, taking one Agent turn at a time (playing one card to send one of your Agents to the game board). When it’s your turn and you have no more Agents to place, you’ll take a Reveal turn, revealing the rest of your cards, which will provide Persuasion and Swords. Persuasion is used to acquire more cards, and Swords help your troops fight for the current round’s rewards as shown on the revealed Conflict card.

Defeat your rivals in combat, shrewdly navigate the political factions, and acquire precious cards. The Spice must flow to lead your House to victory!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deck Building
  • Open Drafting
  • Take That
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.00

Court of the Dead: Mourner’s Call

| T3d-1978

Everyone is already dead in the Underworld. It’s time to join the factions of Bone, Flesh and Spirit as they work to achieve the goal of the Underworld: to gather enough forces to take on the celestials of Heaven and Hell to end their ceaseless war. If the players work diplomatically in Court of the Dead: Mourners Call to maintain a balance, they can ensure the Underworld survives long enough for them to also complete their collective and hidden individual objectives. The player who best contributes to these goals will earn Death’s favor and a place among the elite of the Underworld.

You are a Mourner — an allegiant of Death — dedicated to realizing his noble ambition to end the celestial war and restore balance to the universe. However, Death’s purpose includes your own ulterior motives. You and your fellow Mourners must unite and rise, or fall together. But only one Mourner will achieve their particular vision of the Underworld united. Your task will not be easy. While the Underworld is united in its purpose, it is divided in its strategy to achieve that aim. There are three factions in the Land of the Dead: Bone, Flesh, Spirit. Each is a unique path to rise up against Heaven and Hell.

You will need to strategically manipulate your influence within these factions, their strongholds and guilds, and within the Court of the Dead if you wish to achieve your ends. But beware: The power within mortal souls — known as Etherea — is a perilous substance. Use it carelessly, and you risk invoking the Dreadsgrip – a destructive force within every Mourner that consumes all it touches, including its former master. Failing to satiate the celestials’ war need, or triggering the Dreadsgrip, has dire consequences for all Mourners. Are you strong enough to achieve your own ambitions and be the champion for the uniting force for which all Mourners Call?

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Control
  • Auction/Bidding
  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Take That
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.94

Cosmic Frog

| T3d-1978

Cosmic Frog is a game of collection, combat, and theft on a planetary scale. Each player controls a two-mile-tall, immortal, invulnerable frog-like creature that exists solely to gather terrain from the Shards of Aeth, the fragments of a long-ago shattered world. The First Ones seek to use the lands from the Shards to reconstruct the world of Aeth, and your frogs are their terrain harvesters.

At the start of the game, your frogs descend from the Aether, the cosmic sea between the worlds, onto a terrain-rich Shard of Aeth. Once on the Shard, you harvest land and store it in your massive gullet. When your gullet is sufficiently full, you leap into the Aether and disgorge your gullet contents into your inter-dimensional vault for permanent storage, then return to the Shard to collect more land. Although your frogs’ collective mission is to gather as much land as possible for the First Ones, your private goal is to prove yourself to be the greatest of their harvesters by delivering to them the most valuable vault. To do this, you have to fill your vault strategically in a manner that both maximizes linear sets of identical lands and maximizes the diversity of lands in your vault at the end of the game.

Throughout the game, you’re free to keep to yourself and focus on harvesting at your own pace…or you may attack other frogs and try to take lands directly from their gullets. You may even raid another frog’s vault and steal the lands they have gathered if they have been knocked into the dreaded Outer Dimensions. As you are all immortal and invulnerable, no frog is ever wounded or killed — just irritated and inconvenienced.

But don’t ever get too comfortable with your carefully crafted plans as the Aether is a chaotic and unstable place. Waves of Aether Flux will prompt you to mutate, and you may have to change your strategy in accordance with your new powers. And Splinters of Aeth, tiny slivers of the old world that swirl madly about in the Aether, will periodically fall from their orbit and crash into the Shard, destroying large areas of terrain and blasting apart the very Shard itself!

The game ends when the Shard is stripped of all harvestable land or when a Splinter shatters it. When the game ends, the player with the highest valued vault wins, and the frogs move to the next Shard to gather more land for the First Ones…

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Pattern Building
  • Pick-Up and Deliver
  • Set Collection
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.06