Tag: Take That

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

Five Tribes: The Djinns of Naqala

| OTSG Staff

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:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 40 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.84

Evolution: Climate

| OTSG Staff

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:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.73

Dune Imperium

| OTSG Staff

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:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.07

Court of the Dead: Mourner’s Call

| OTSG Staff

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 Majority / Influence
  • Auction / Bidding
  • Closed Drafting
  • Contracts
  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Take That
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.95

Cosmic Frog

| OTSG Staff

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:

  • Map Reduction
  • Pattern Building
  • Pick-up and Deliver
  • Set Collection
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.01

Caylus 1303

| OTSG Staff

A classic game is back! As one of the first worker placement games, Caylus stands among the true board game classics of the 2000s. The original designers’ team, together with the Space Cowboys, have now created a revamped version!

The mechanisms of Caylus 1303 have been streamlined and modernized for an intense and shorter game. Don’t be fooled, though, as the game has kept both its depth and ease of play while a lot of new features have been added:

  • Variability of the starting position for a virtual infinity of possibilities. No more pre-set strategies!
  • Characters with special abilities, with a wavering loyalty, offer their services to the players.
  • And of course, brand new graphics!

The King calls you again, so it’s time to go back to Caylus!

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.88

Blood Rage

| OTSG Staff

“Life is Battle; Battle is Glory; Glory is ALL”

In Blood Rage, each player controls their own Viking clan’s warriors, leader, and ship. Ragnarök has come, and it’s the end of the world! It’s the Vikings’ last chance to go down in a blaze of glory and secure their place in Valhalla at Odin’s side! For a Viking there are many pathways to glory. You can invade and pillage the land for its rewards, crush your opponents in epic battles, fulfill quests, increase your clan’s stats, or even die gloriously either in battle or from Ragnarök, the ultimate inescapable doom.

Most player strategies are guided by the cards drafted at the beginning of each of the three game rounds (or Ages). These “Gods’ Gifts” grant you numerous boons for your clan including: increased Viking strength and devious battle strategies, upgrades to your clan, or even the aid of legendary creatures from Norse mythology. They may also include various quests, from dominating specific provinces, to having lots of your Vikings sent to Valhalla. Most of these cards are aligned with one of the Norse gods, hinting at the kind of strategy they support. For example, Thor gives more glory for victory in battle, Heimdall grants you foresight and surprises, Tyr strengthens you in battle, while the trickster Loki actually rewards you for losing battles, or punishes the winner.

Players must choose their strategies carefully during the draft phase, but also be ready to adapt and react to their opponents’ strategies as the action phase unfolds. Battles are decided not only by the strength of the figures involved, but also by cards played in secret. By observing your opponent’s actions and allegiances to specific gods, you may predict what card they are likely to play, and plan accordingly. Winning battles is not always the best course of action, as the right card can get you even more rewards by being crushed. The only losing strategy in Blood Rage is to shy away from battle and a glorious death!

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Closed Drafting
  • Hand Management
  • Memory
  • Open Drafting
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.88

Villainous: Wicked to the Core

| OTSG Staff
Villainous: Wicked to the Core

Villainous: Wicked to the Core

In Villainous: Wicked to the Core, each player takes control of one of three Disney characters, each one a villain in a different Disney movie, specifically the Evil Queen from Snow White, Hades from Hercules, and Dr. Facilier from The Princess and the Frog. Each player has their own villain deck, fate deck, player board, and 3D character.

On a turn, the active player moves their character to a different location on their player board, takes one or more of the actions visible on that space (often by playing cards from their hand), then refills their hand to four cards. Cards are allies, items, effects, and conditions. You need to use your cards to fulfill your unique win condition.

One of the actions allows you to choose another player, draw two cards from that player’s fate deck, then play one of them on that player’s board, covering two of the four action spaces on one of that player’s locations. The fate deck contains heroes, items, and effects from that villain’s movie, and these cards allow other players to mess with that particular villain.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 3 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.43

Villainous: The Worst Takes it All

| OTSG Staff
Villainous: The Worst Takes it All

Villainous: The Worst Takes it All

In Villainous, each player takes control of one of six Disney characters, each one a villain in a different Disney movie. Each player has their own villain deck, fate deck, player board, and 3D character.

On a turn, the active player moves their character to a different location on their player board, takes one or more of the actions visible on that space (often by playing cards from their hand), then refills their hand to four cards. Cards are allies, items, effects, conditions, and (for some characters) curses. You need to use your cards to fulfill your unique win condition.

One of the actions allows you to choose another player, draw two cards from that player’s fate deck, then play one of them on that player’s board, covering two of the four action spaces on one of that player’s locations. The fate deck contains heroes, items, and effects from that villain’s movie, and these cards allow other players to mess with that particular villain.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Managment
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~50 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.45

Villainous: Perfectly Wretched

| OTSG Staff
Villainous: Perfectly Wretched

Villainous: Perfectly Wretched

In Disney Villainous: Perfectly Wretched, each player takes control of one of three Disney characters, each one a villain in a different Disney movie, specifically Cruella de Vil from 101 Dalmatians, Mother Gothel from Tangled, and Pete from Steamboat Willie. Each player has their own villain deck, fate deck, player board, and 3D character.

On a turn, the active player moves their character to a different location on their player board, takes one or more of the actions visible on that space (often by playing cards from their hand), then refills their hand to four cards. Cards are allies, items, effects, and conditions. You need to use your cards to fulfill your unique win condition.

One of the actions allows you to choose another player, draw two cards from that player’s fate deck, then play one of them on that player’s board, covering two of the four action spaces on one of that player’s locations. The fate deck contains heroes, items, and effects from that villain’s movie, and these cards allow other players to mess with that particular villain.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Take That

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 3 Players
  • 40 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.31