Tag: Variable Player Powers

Dominant Species Marine

| OTSG Staff

Sixty-Something Millions of Years Ago — A great ice age has ended. With massive warming altering the globe, another titanic struggle for supremacy has unwittingly commenced between the varying animal species.

Dominant Species: Marine is a game that abstractly recreates a small portion of ancient history: the ending of an onerous ice age and what that entails for the living creatures trying to adapt to the slowly-changing earth.

Each player will assume the role of one of four major aquatic-based animal classes — reptiles, fish, cephalopod or crustacean. Each begins the game more or less in a state of natural balance in relation to one another. But that won’t last: It is indeed “survival of the fittest.”

Through wily action pawn placement, you will attempt to thrive in as many different habitats as possible in order to claim powerful card effects. You will also want to propagate your individual species in order to earn victory points for your animal. You will be aided in these endeavors via speciation, migration and adaptation actions, among others.

All of this eventually leads to the end game – the final ascent of a vast tropical ocean and its shorelines – where the player having accumulated the most victory points will have their animal crowned the Dominant Species.

But somebody better become dominant quickly, because there’s a large asteroid heading this way….

Game Play

The large hexagonal tiles are used throughout the game to create an ever-expanding interpretation of the main ocean on earth as it might have appeared tens of millions of years ago. The smaller Hydrothermal Vent tiles will be placed atop some of the larger tiles throughout play, converting them into Vents in the process.

The action pawns drive the game. Each pawn allows a player to perform the various actions that can be taken—such as speciation, environmental change, migration or evolution. When placed on the action display, a pawn will immediately trigger that particular action for its owning player. Dominant Species: Marine includes new “special” pawns that can be acquired during the course of play. These special pawns have enhanced placement capabilities over the “basic” pawns that each player begins the game with.

Generally, players will be trying to enhance their own animal’s survivability while simultaneously trying to hinder that of their opponents’—hopefully collecting valuable victory points along the way. The various cards will aid in these efforts, giving players useful one-time abilities, ongoing benefits, or an opportunity for recurring VP gains.

Throughout the game species cubes will be added to, moved about on, and removed from the tiles in play (“earth”). Element disks will be added to and removed from both animals and earth.

When the game ends, players will conduct a final scoring of each tile and score their controlled special pawns—after which the player controlling the animal with the highest VP total wins the game.

Dominant Species Veterans

For players of the original Dominant Species, this iteration introduces several key evolutions to the system (pun definitely intended):

  1. Actions are taken immediately whenever a pawn is placed instead of waiting to execute actions after all pawns are on the board. This gives players a bit more flexibility in their strategy, doesn’t increase game time when more pawns are acquired by players, and lessens the brain-burn quite a bit since it alleviates the burden of having to plan out an entire turn in advance.
  2. Domination is no longer on a per-tile basis, and is no longer ‘competitive’ with other players. In this game you check dominance for each element type over the entire earth, and whether or not you dominate an element type is independent of whether one or more opponents also dominate it. Domination of an element is how you acquire – and try to maintain – control of the special pawns.
  3. Animals no longer have default special abilities. Now, players are dealt 3 Trait cards during setup, choosing one to keep and putting the others back in the box. The chosen Trait gives their animal one of eighteen unique abilities spread amongst the Trait cards.
  4. Acquiring special pawns through domination gives a player great flexibility in planning and executing a strategy. Special pawns can ‘bump’ an opponent’s basic pawn in order to take an action that would otherwise be blocked. They can be placed anywhere on the action display (where basic pawns must be placed in top-to-bottom order only). There are powerful action spaces where only a special pawn can be placed. And at the end of the game, each special pawn awards its owner VPs according to its highest achieved dominance value.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Map Addition
  • Open Drafting
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 90 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.69

Dominant Species

| OTSG Staff

90,000 B.C. — A great ice age is fast approaching. Another titanic struggle for global supremacy has unwittingly commenced between the varying animal species.
Dominant Species is a game that abstractly recreates a tiny portion of ancient history: the ponderous encroachment of an ice age and what that entails for the living creatures trying to adapt to the slowly-changing earth.
Each player will assume the role of one of six major animal classes—mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid, or insect. Each begins the game more or less in a state of natural balance in relation to one another. But that won’t last: It is indeed “survival of the fittest”.
Through wily action pawn placement, players will strive to become dominant on as many different terrain tiles as possible in order to claim powerful card effects. Players will also want to propagate their individual species in order to earn victory points for their particular animal. Players will be aided in these endeavors via speciation, migration, and adaptation actions, among others.
All of this eventually leads to the end game—the final ascent of the ice age—where the player having accumulated the most victory points will have his animal crowned the Dominant Species.
But somebody better become dominant quickly, because it’s getting mighty cold…

Game Play
The large hexagonal tiles are used throughout the game to create an ever-expanding interpretation of earth as it might have appeared a thousand centuries ago. The smaller tundra tiles will be placed atop the larger tiles—converting them into tundra in the process—as the ice age encroaches.
The cylindrical action pawns (or “AP”s) drive the game. Each AP will allow a player to perform the various actions that can be taken, such as speciation, environmental change, migration, or glaciation. After being placed on the action display during the Planning Phase, an AP will trigger that particular action for the owning player during the Execution Phase.
Generally, players will be trying to enhance their own animal’s survivability while simultaneously trying to hinder that of their opponents’—hopefully collecting valuable victory points (or “VP”s) along the way. The various cards will aid in these efforts, giving players useful one-time abilities or an opportunity for recurring VP gains.
Throughout the game, species cubes will be added to, moved about in, and removed from the tiles in play (the “earth”). Element disks will be added to and removed from both animals and earth.
When the game ends, players will conduct a final scoring of each tile—after which the player controlling the animal with the highest VP total wins.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Map Addition
  • Take That
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 120 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.04

Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition

| OTSG Staff

Clash of Cultures: Monumental Edition brings back the classic game of exploration, expansion, and development with the Clash of Cultures base game and the Civilizations and Aztecs expansions in one box! Grow your civilization, advance your culture and tech, and leave your mark by building wonders, with this edition of the game including fully-sculpted miniatures of the Seven Wonders.

In Clash of Cultures, each player leads a civilization from a single settlement to a mighty empire. Players must explore their surroundings, build large cities, research advances and conquer those who stand in the way. The game features a modular board for players to explore, 48 distinct advances, seven mighty wonders, and loads of miniatures and cards. The winner will create a culture that will be remembered and admired for millennia.

Game Mechanics:

  • City Building
  • Hand Management
  • Modular Board
  • Tech Trees / Tech Tracks
  • Trading
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 180 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.72

Circadians: Chaos Order

| OTSG Staff

The initial quakes were only minor tremors, but as the land began to unravel, so did our sense of security. We watched the cliffs of Hytazch fall into the sea. Mighty trees of old, swallowed up by the caverns below. As the waters rose, a great roar was heard across the plains. This was no cry of disbelief or heartache, but of jubilance. Songs began to fill the air as our once peaceful hosts, now readied themselves for war. Suddenly on the horizon, what appeared as huge bolts of energy shoot out into the depths of space, before disappearing again. Despite the inevitable shock wave heading our way, the clans continued to cheer as they made haste towards the origin of the blaze. What could cause such elation? Why abandon caution in favour of chaos? Had we missed something – some crucial misunderstanding of this planet and its inhabitants? Upon reaching the site, we were immediately plunged into combat. Across the landscape lay six massive structures, towering over the forces fighting below. They seemed to pulse and flicker with a golden haze. Could these be the ancient relics the Oxataya spoke of? There is so much we still do not understand, but we cannot concede to indecision. Will we stay and fight, or retreat back to Moontide?

In Circadians: Chaos Order, players take on the role of 1 of 6 asymmetric factions. Each faction has their own means of winning the game, unique leaders, attribute cards and other abilities.

Game Mechanics:

  • Action Drafting
  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Hand Management
  • Variable Player Powers
  • Wargame

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • 120 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.84

Black Rose Wars

| OTSG Staff

Black Rose Wars is a competitive fantasy game of deck-building, strategy, and combat set in the hectic universe of Nova Aetas in Italy. Each player is one of powerful mages of the Black Rose Order who aspires to become the new Supreme Magister in order to acquire the mighty power of the Black Rose Artifact and the Forgotten Magic. Mages must fight, fulfill Black Rose desires, and gain strength with their spells until their power reaches the containment threshold of the prison where they are exiled, finally freeing themselves. Each mage has at their disposal six schools of magic, each one with its own strategy to annihilate their opponents and increase their power.

At the start of the battle, mages start with a grimoire of six cards; as mages study more spells during play, their grimoire will increase. Every spell in Black Rose Wars has two different effects, increasing a player’s adaptability during a fight.

Mages fight each other in a modular arena of hexagons called “rooms”. They summon powerful creatures, cast destructive spells, or devise dark deceptions with their enchantments. The game system is divided into different phases. Each turn, after choosing new spells from the six schools of magic, players plan their strategy in advance, placing cards face down. Later, they reveal the played cards to kill each other, solve missions, summon creatures, or destroy the prison rooms, one against each other and against the Black Rose (the playing system).
After being killed, mages are reborn immediately, allowing them to re-enter the fight without delay — although their death still fed energy to those mages who caused it.
The mage with the most power at the end of the battle will be crowned Supreme Magister of the Order by the Black Rose itself.

Game Mechanics:

  • Area Majority / Influence
  • Bluffing
  • Campaign
  • Deck Building
  • Hand Management
  • Modular Board
  • Variable Player Powers

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.47

Best of the West

| OTSG Staff

Best of the West is an open-world game set in the Wild West! It features asymmetrical gameplay where you can go it alone as a Pioneer or join up with the co-op Bandit Gang. Since the game is heavily player vs player, it requires both Pioneers and Bandits in similar numbers. A single Round consists of the Pioneer turns (rotating player order) and then Bandit Gang’s turn (any order). Either the Bandit Gang team or the Pioneer with the highest Reputation at the end of 25 Rounds wins the game.

For Pioneers, Reputation is mostly earned by doing a job (Panning or Mining for Gold, Herding Livestock, Trapping for Furs). For Bandits, Reputation is primarily gained by robbing the Pioneers. Additional cash and Reputation can be earned by robbing the Train, Saloon, and Bank or by performing a Jailbreak. Cash allows you to load up with Weapons, Items, and Pets. Power Cards that grant extra abilities, upgrades, and utility bonuses can be collected around the map at the Indian Village, Saloon, and Ghost Town.

Pioneers move using Movement Cards and can also ride the Train that travels around the map every Round. Bandits move either by using Movement Cards or Ambush Cards. Ambush Cards allow a Bandit to secretly hide on a space on the board. Battling is primarily dice-based, but also includes Power Cards and character abilities.

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 6 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.00

Barrage

| OTSG Staff

In the dystopic 1930s, the industrial revolution pushed the exploitation of fossil-based resources to the limit, and now the only thing powerful enough to quench the thirst for power of the massive machines and of the unstoppable engineering progress is the unlimited hydroelectric energy provided by the rivers.

Barrage is a resource management strategic game in which players compete to build their majestic dams, raise them to increase their storing capacity, and deliver all the potential power through pressure tunnels connected to the energy turbines of their powerhouses.

Each player represents one of the four international companies who are gathering machinery, innovative patents and brilliant engineers to claim the best locations to collect and exploit the water of a contested Alpine region crossed by rivers.

Barrage includes two innovative and challenging mechanisms. First, the players must carefully plan their actions and handle their machinery, since both their action tokens and resources are stored on a Construction Wheel and will only be available after a full turn of the wheel. The better you manage your wheel, the earlier your resources and actions come back to you.

Second, the water flow on the rivers depicted on the board is a shared and contested resource. Players have to intercept and store as much of the water as they can, build dams (upstream dams are expensive but can block part of the water before it reaches the downstream dams), raise the dams to increase their capacity, and build long tunnels to channel the water to their powerhouses. Water is never consumed — its flow is just used to produce energy —, it is instead released back to the rivers, so you have to strategically place your dams to recover the water diverted by you and the other players.

Over five rounds, the players must fulfill power requirements represented by a common competitive power track and meet specific requests of personal contracts. At the same time, by placing a limited number of engineers, they attempt to enhance their machinery to acquire new and more efficient construction actions and to build and activate special unique-effect buildings to forward their own developing strategy.

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.12

Arkham Horror: The Card Game

| OTSG Staff

Something evil stirs in Arkham, and only you can stop it. Blurring the traditional lines between role-playing and card game experiences, Arkham Horror: The Card Game is a Living Card Game of Lovecraftian mystery, monsters, and madness!

In the game, you and your friend (or up to three friends with two Core Sets) become characters within the quiet New England town of Arkham. You have your talents, sure, but you also have your flaws. Perhaps you’ve dabbled a little too much in the writings of the Necronomicon, and its words continue to haunt you. Perhaps you feel compelled to cover up any signs of otherworldly evils, hampering your own investigations in order to protect the quiet confidence of the greater population. Perhaps you’ll be scarred by your encounters with a ghoulish cult.

No matter what compels you, no matter what haunts you, you’ll find both your strengths and weaknesses reflected in your custom deck of cards, and these cards will be your resources as you work with your friends to unravel the world’s most terrifying mysteries.

Each of your adventures in Arkham Horror LCG carries you deeper into mystery. You’ll find cultists and foul rituals. You’ll find haunted houses and strange creatures. And you may find signs of the Ancient Ones straining against the barriers to our world…

The basic mode of play in Arkham LCG is not the adventure, but the campaign. You might be scarred by your adventures, your sanity may be strained, and you may alter Arkham’s landscape, burning buildings to the ground. All your choices and actions have consequences that reach far beyond the immediate resolution of the scenario at hand—and your actions may earn you valuable experience with which you can better prepare yourself for the adventures that still lie before you.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.55

Arkham Horror

| OTSG Staff

The year is 1926, and it is the height of the Roaring Twenties. Flappers dance till dawn in smoke-filled speakeasies, drinking alcohol supplied by rum runners and the mob. It’s a celebration to end all celebrations in the aftermath of the War to End All Wars.

Yet a dark shadow grows in the city of Arkham. Alien entities known as Ancient Ones lurk in the emptiness beyond space and time, writhing at the thresholds between worlds. Occult rituals must be stopped and alien creatures destroyed before the Ancient Ones make our world their ruined dominion.

Only a handful of investigators stand against the Arkham Horror. Will they prevail?

Arkham Horror (Third Edition) is a cooperative board game for one to six players who take on the roles of investigators trying to rid the world of eldritch beings known as Ancient Ones. Based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, players will have to gather clues, defeat terrifying monsters, and find tools and allies if they are to stand any chance of defeating the creatures that dwell just beyond the veil of our reality.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 120 – 180 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.36

Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game

| OTSG Staff

It is the late 1930s, and the world is in turmoil. Humanity is on the brink of war as imperialist nations in the Far East and Europe work aggressively to expand their domination. The Nazis have taken control of Germany and now spread darkness across the globe in their hunt for powerful occult artifacts that can give them the upper hand in the days to come. But the spirit of adventure and freedom won’t be stamped out so easily.

Heroic adventurers from around the world answer the call, racing against time to hunt down ancient artifacts, explore deadly temples, and fight back the powers of darkness from engulfing the world in flames. It is a race of good versus evil, and only a cunning and agile explorer can claim the ultimate prize of… Fortune and Glory!

Fortune and Glory: The Cliffhanger Game is a fast-paced game of high adventure, vile villains, edge-of-your-seat danger, and cliffhanger pulp movie action. Players take on the role of a treasure hunter, traveling the globe in search of ancient artifacts and fending off danger and villains at every turn in a quest for the ultimate reward of fortune and glory!

Featuring a beautifully rendered adventure map of the world as the game board, eight pulp adventure heroes to choose from (such as Jake Zane the Flying Ace, Li Mei Chen the Night Club Singer and Martial Artist, or Dr. Zhukov Master of Science), an army of ruthless villains and thugs (including the Chicago Mob and the dreaded occult-hunting Nazis), ancient Mayan temples to explore with a zeppelin hovering overhead, a wealth of coins to horde as heroes collect fortune and glory throughout the game, and a unique mechanism of dangers to overcome and the classic cliffhanger moments of suspense that can result. Fortune and Glory is designed to create a pulp serial cinematic feel as the story and game unfold.

So strap on your adventure boots and goggles, fire up the engines on the seaplane, and grab some extra ammo for your revolver…the Nazis already have a head start and in this race for fortune and glory, and there’s no prize for second place!

Features:

  • Designed for strong Competitive and Cooperative play as players race against one another or work together to overcome a Vile Organization bent on world domination through powerful occult artifacts.
  • Photographic artwork for Immersive Pulp Adventure movie action.
  • Thirty-nine highly detailed plastic 28mm miniatures including Heroes, Villains, Enemy Soldiers, Mayan Temples, and a Zeppelin air ship.
  • Comes with an original cd soundtrack to creep its way into the players’ subconscious and raise tension and excitement.
  • No two games are ever the same! Many Heroes, villains to fight, game cards, and dynamically generated artifacts to hunt for offer limitless combinations.
  • Expandable design allows for many expansions and strong web support to create a loyal fan base/community.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 8 Players
  • 90 – 240 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.87