Tag: Tile Placement

Games with Tile Placement mechanics require players to place tiles on a game board to create and modify the game’s environment.

Doggerland

| T3d-1978

Doggerland was a landmass that connected Great Britain to mainland Europe that disappeared under the North Sea after the last ice age. Humans lived on these fertile lands where multiple resources and animals were found.

In Doggerland, you play a clan at around 15,000 BCE. Your goal is to expand your clan in order to leave a trace of its existence for centuries to come. Players increase their population, make crafts, paint murals in caves, raise megaliths for the gods, and (most of all) survive the rigors of the seasons. To do this, they explore the surrounding territory and adapt to the resources at their disposal. The territory differs in each game, thanks to modular tiles.

Each round, players program their actions, then carry them out. These actions vary, based on available resources, abundance or scarcity around their villages, and also based on the actions of other players. As time passes, resources run out, and clans must migrate to find what they need for their development and survival.

In each clan, there is a leader who brings bonuses, and a shaman who allows powerful and unique actions thanks to knowledge and magic. After 6-8 seasons, the clan with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Programmed Movement
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.29

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

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

Curious Cargo

| T3d-1978

I stumbled upon a midnight market. It wasn’t selling flowers or farm goods. It was a more curious sort of cargo: energy capacitors, strange crystalline material, and something green and jiggly. Since then, I’ve been dragged into it, deep into the thick of it.

I paid a stranger more than I should have for manufacturing plans I hardly understood. Worse yet, they sold the same stuff to my best friend. Now, I have to get my supply lines up and running to prepare for shipping my cargo — and if my friend starts shipping some of this curious cargo, I’ll have to intercept their trucks and corner the market that way.

By hook or by crook, I’m going to be the king of curious cargo…

Curious Cargo is a two-player game in which you go head-to-head against your opponent by building up the infrastructure of your facility, calling in trucks at the right moment, all while perfectly timing the shipping and receiving of cargo to score the most points. Connect an interweaving web of lines to your shipping and receiving spaces. Play with two-color conveyor tiles, or step it up for an advanced experience and play with all three colors. Ship your custom-shaped cargo tokens to your opponent to interfere with their logistics plans!

The puzzling nature of Ryan Courtney’s Pipeline comes alive in Curious Cargo! With six unique player boards for each player and two game modes, a skillful challenge awaits even the sharpest competitor.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Points
  • Network and Route Building
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.18

Crafting the Cosmos

| T3d-1978

Welcome to Crafting the Cosmos, where you get to construct your very own universe! Each player’s turn is split into two phases: the Energy Phase and the Craft Phase, followed by a collective End Phase. During the Energy Phase, players will move their energy token around the board to gather resources, which they will then use in the Craft Phase to construct their own galaxy. You can create stars, nebulas, and even life to maximize your points and create the best universe!

Game Mechanics:

  • Contracts
  • Map Addition
  • Tile Placement
  • Track Movement
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.93

Colonists, the

| T3d-1978

In The Colonists, a.k.a. Die Kolonisten, each player is a mayor of a village and must develop their environment to gain room for new farmers, craftsmen, and citizens. The main goal of the game is full employment, so players must create new jobs, educate the people, and build new houses to increase their population. But resources are limited, and their storage leads to problems that players must deal with, while also not forgetting to upgrade their buildings. Players select actions by moving their mayor on a central board.

The Colonists is designed in different levels and scenarios, and even includes something akin to a tutorial, with the playing time varying between 30 minutes (for beginners) and 180 minutes (experts).

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Movement
  • Hand Management
  • Modular Board
  • Open Drafting
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Tile Placement
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 360 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.06

Chomp

| T3d-1978

The era of the dinosaurs is here! Your goal in Chomp is to form herds of dinos and make sure they are all fed. Herbivores and carnivores both need food sources, but if the carnies are not properly fed, they don’t mind chomping an herbie to fill their bellies!

Gameplay involves dual rows of goal tiles and dino tiles, and each turn players select one tile to add to their personal arrangement. Goal tiles stay off to the side for endgame scoring, and dino tiles are arranged in front of each player. Dino tiles include three sizes each of herbivores and carnivores. Each tile must overlap previous ones, either on top of a quarter tile, half tile, or even a whole tile, ensuring that any covered dinos are completely hidden.

Adjacent dinos of the same species form herds, which will eat together if connected to a single food source — or die together if they are unfed, adjacent to a tar pit, or next to an otherwise unfed carnivore!

At the end of the game, each living and fed dino scores 1-3 points depending on its size, and the player with the highest score wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.56

Big Boss

| T3d-1978

Big Boss is a game of founding companies, expanding existing companies, taking over smaller companies and share buying. The game is explicitly based on the Sid Sackson classic Acquire and shares many similarities to that game though mergers are not as prevalent or crucial in Big Boss. The main differences between the two games include the three dimensional aspect of Big Boss, and the existence of a strong monetary incentive to expand companies that you do not control.

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Market
  • Stock Holding
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.36

Cat Packs

| T3d-1978

Cat Packs is a fast-paced card game mixed with tile-laying in which you’ll cleverly put together the cat gang of your most whimsical dreams! The game includes over one hundred unique illustrated cats by artist Liselotte Eriksson.

On each turn, players draft a new cat from the alley and use resources to play out cards from their hand to add to their cat pack. All cats have different requirements and benefits, but not all cats fit well together, so players must carefully consider their positions. The goal of the game is to earn the most “catshine”, which players receive by collecting sets of five cat types, surrounding certain cards with other cards, matching corners of four cards together in a catshine symbol, or winning the power struggle taking place after each round!

Game Mechanics:

  • Hand Management
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.00