Tag: Variable Set-up

Earth

| OTSG Staff

Earth is a tableau builder with simple rules and countless strategic possibilities. With its encyclopedic nature and a near-infinite number of tableau combinations, every single game will allow you to discover new synergies and connections, just as our vast and fascinating world allows us to do!

It’s time to jump into these rich environments and create some amazing natural synergies that replicate and extrapolate on Earth’s amazing versatility and plethora of natural resources. Over thousands of years of evolution and adaptation the flora and fauna of this unique planet have grown and developed into amazing life forms, creating symbiotic ecosystems and habitats.

Players create a self-supporting engine of growth, expansion and supply where even your unused plants become compost for future growth. They use their cards to choose actions (which affect all players) and gain resources. The first player to complete their Tableau triggers the end of the game. The player with the most points wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 5 Players
  • 45 – 90 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.91

Bites

| OTSG Staff

New version of the Spiel des Jahres Recommended Big Points with a new theme, more engaging components, and rule tweak cards to make sure every play is different.

Four page illustrated rulebook. 20min play time. Highly interactive with no direct conflict.

Players move ants along a trail and collect food as they go. However, the value of that food depends on how the other ants move.

Shared incentives mean you are always trying to figure out what the other players are up to. Variable “rules cards” tweak the rules to every game so that each play is fresh.

During setup, a trail of food is laid out. On each player’s turn, they can move any ant to the next food in the trail that matches their color (red ant to apple, purple ant to grapes, etc). Then the player takes the food token directly in front of or behind the ant, saving it to score at the end of the game.

However, players don’t know for sure how much the food is going to be worth until the matching ant makes it to the ant hill at the end of the trail. This creates shared incentives as players work together to advance some ants and hold others back.

Along the way players also have the chance to pick up chocolate, which can be turned into special actions, and wine, which provides a way to score bonus points.

There are four decks of cards that define the rules for the game. Each game, one card is chosen from each deck to provide a unqiue combination. Players have to adapt their strategy to the actions the other players are taking and the unique rules for this game. The “rule decks” are:

  • Ant Hill – Food tokens are worth more points if the matching ant gets to the hill FIRST. Or, food tokens are worth more points if the matching ants get to the ant hill LAST.
  • Wine – The wine tokens have a different way of scoring in every game.
  • Chocolate – The chocolate tokens provide a different special power in every game. And, the best way to use that power will change based on the other special rules in play.
  • Variant – One special rule that applies to this game which offers an extra twist.

Your actions will change the incentives for the other players. Can you manage these cascading effects to collect the most valuable food collection?

Game Mechanics:

  • Modular Board
  • Set Collection
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 5 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.46

Gaia Project

| OTSG Staff

Gaia Project is a new game in the line of Terra Mystica. As in the original Terra Mystica, fourteen different factions live on seven different kinds of planets, and each faction is bound to their own home planets, so to develop and grow, they must terraform neighboring planets into their home environments in competition with the other groups. In addition, Gaia planets can be used by all factions for colonization, and Transdimensional planets can be changed into Gaia planets.

All factions can improve their skills in six different areas of development — Terraforming, Navigation, Artificial Intelligence, Gaiaforming, Economy, Research — leading to advanced technology and special bonuses. To do all of that, each group has special skills and abilities.

The playing area is made of ten sectors, allowing a variable set-up and thus an even bigger replay value than its predecessor Terra Mystica. A two-player game is hosted on seven sectors.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 150 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 4.40

Edge of Darkness

| OTSG Staff

Edge of Darkness is the third Card Crafting Game from Alderac Entertainment Group designed by John D. Clair. Edge of Darkness combines Card Crafting, Worker Placement, shared deck-building, and a whole new Threat Challenge system in a medium-weight euro-style board game of 60 to 120 minutes for 1 to 4 players.

Players are the heads of powerful guilds in the City. Each Guild vies with the others to become the leaders of the City in a desperate struggle against great evil. But the Guilds must also work together because the dangers facing the city can harm them all.

The Guilds exert their control in the city by sending agents to various locations where they can generate resources or abilities and enable the Guild to take actions. Guilds grow in power as they maneuver their agents and loyalists into positions of importance in the districts and organizations of the City. Over time the Guilds can seek to create synergies between the places their agents have been assigned and the tendrils of influence the Guilds have connected to the City’s infrastructure.

To win a Guild must have the most power in the city when the game ends. Power is gained having the allegiance of important citizens and nobles, by accumulating wealth, and by undertaking actions beneficial to the City such as defending it from external and internal threats.

Here are some highlights of the mechanics in the game:

  1. Card Crafting: Similar to the original card-crafting game, Mystic Vale, all cards are constructed of crafting slips which have game content on one third (1/3) of the slip and are transparent on the other two thirds (2/3). During the game players will construct cards, combining (sleeving) different effects onto one card (ideally in ways that make strategic sense). However, unlike Mystic Vale, the transparent cards are double-sided, and when you upgrade the “good” side of the cards (front), you also add strength to the “bad” side of the cards (back).
  2. Group deckbuilding using one shared deck: Rather than having your own deck, there is a central deck that all players draw from and discard to. Different players will have the allegiance of different cards in that deck. Using other players’ cards means you have to pay them. During the game you can claim allegiance of more cards in the deck by sleeving a slip into the card with your color and seal.
  3. Card-driven worker placement: While your actions are card-driven, most costs in the game are in the form of opportunity cost. Advancements don’t have a cost, instead they require the use of workers to a greater or lesser degree depending on the power of the card. e.g. many effects require placing or pulling workers from different city locations as dictated by the card effects. Since you have a limited number of workers to use, you will constantly be choosing to forgo one useful thing in order to do another.
  4. Threat Tower: There is a Threat Tower which dictates when and whom Threats will attack. Cards leave the shared deck and enter the Threat Board, where they accumulate Threat Cubes on each player’s turn. These cubes are color-coded, and when a threshold number of cubes of a given color accumulate on a card, it attacks the City. If the color matches one of the players, it attacks that player. If the color is black, it attacks all players!
  5. Modular set up: Edge of Darkness will come with 12 Locations. Each game you use only 10 of these Locations, which can be specifically selected or chosen randomly, making for a lot of variety from game-to-game in the types of challenges you will face and the strategies you will need to employ. These Locations are comprised of a Location Board and Crafting Slips. Location Boards may specify special rules for worker placement, or extend the basic rules with all new systems. For example, a combination of Location Boards can be used to assemble a party of heroes to take the fight to the Threat Tower and engage in a Monster Hunt!

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.47

Brass: Birmingham

| OTSG Staff

Brass: Birmingham is an economic strategy game sequel to Martin Wallace’ 2007 masterpiece, Brass. Brass: Birmingham tells the story of competing entrepreneurs in Birmingham during the industrial revolution, between the years of 1770-1870.

As in its predecessor, you must develop, build, and establish your industries and network, in an effort to exploit low or high market demands.

Each round, players take turns according to the turn order track, receiving two actions to perform any of the following actions (found in the original game):

1) Build – Pay required resources and place an industry tile.
2) Network – Add a rail / canal link, expanding your network.
3) Develop – Increase the VP value of an industry.
4) Sell – Sell your cotton, manufactured goods and pottery.
5) Loan – Take a £30 loan and reduce your income.

Brass: Birmingham also features a new sixth action:

6) Scout – Discard three cards and take a wild location and wild industry card. (This action replaces Double Action Build in original Brass.)

The game is played over two halves: the canal era (years 1770-1830) and the rail era (years 1830-1870). To win the game, score the most VPs. VPs are counted at the end of each half for the canals, rails and established (flipped) industry tiles.

Birmingham features dynamic scoring canals/rails. Instead of each flipped industry tile giving a static 1 VP to all connected canals and rails, many industries give 0 or even 2 VPs. This provides players with the opportunity to score much higher value canals in the first era, and creates interesting strategy with industry placement.

Iron, coal, and cotton are three industries which appear in both the original Brass as well as in Brass: Birmingham.

New “Sell” system

Brewing has become a fundamental part of the culture in Birmingham. You must now sell your product through traders located around the edges of the board. Each of these traders is looking for a specific type of good each game. To sell cotton, pottery, or manufactured goods to these traders, you must also “grease the wheels of industry” by consuming beer. For example, a level 1 cotton mill requires one beer to flip. As an incentive to sell early, the first player to sell to a trader receives free beer.

Birmingham features three all-new industry types:

Brewery – Produces precious beer barrels required to sell goods.

Manufactured goods – Function like cotton, but features eight levels. Each level of manufactured goods provides unique rewards, rather than just escalating in VPs, making it a more versatile (yet potentially more difficult) path vs cotton.

Pottery – These behemoths of Birmingham offer huge VPs, but at a huge cost and need to plan.

Increased Coal and Iron Market size – The price of coal and iron can now go up to £8 per cube, and it’s not uncommon.

Game Mechanics:

  • Economic
  • Hand Management
  • Variable Set-up,

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.87

Boonlake

| OTSG Staff

With a group of pioneers, you have left civilization behind to settle along the shores of Boonlake, a long-forgotten region inhabited by humans long ago. This unexplored area beckons you! Become part of a new community and commit yourself to the common good. Explore the landscapes, build houses and settlements, raise cattle, produce raw materials, and develop an infrastructure. Do your best to automate these processes. Seize the opportunity to make the best of your new life in Boonlake.

Boonlake is an expert game in which you are finding yourself improving your life — and your group’s life — in this new territory…but how you accomplish this is completely up to you! Due to a novel action mechanism, each game progresses differently. Each action needs to be considered carefully since the other players also benefit from the action you choose. Besides this, the action determines how far you may move your ship — the further and faster, the better!

Game Mechanics:

  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 80 – 160 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.80

Black Angel

| OTSG Staff

Humanity, through its irresponsible behavior, has exhausted the natural resources of Earth, making it almost uninhabitable. In a burst of lucidity, pressed by the irreversible degradation of your planet, the great nations are forced to put aside their differences and share their knowledge in order to create the most vast spacecraft ever constructed. Thus, the BLACK ANGEL project is launched.

The Black Angel, the first intergalactic frigate in history, must transport the genetic heritage of humanity beyond known worlds, over a journey that is likely to last several thousand years. Her crew will be composed of only robots. Because no nation is willing to trust creation of the AI (artificial intelligence) that will control this crew to any other nation, a compromise is found: The Black Angel will be co-managed by several AIs, and the utility of each decision will be evaluated in VP (Validation Process).

At the completion of this long and perilous voyage, when a new inhabitable planet has been reached, the AI that has earned the most VP will be entrusted with reawakening Humanity, and overseeing its new start….

All the reports are in agreement: The Black Angel is approaching Spes, a planet with the highest probability for habitability by the human species. Take advantage of our approach to maintain the good relations you have gradually woven with the benevolent Alien species populating the galaxy, and watch out for the dreaded Ravagers, who would do anything to prevent you from reaching Spes.

Game Mechanics:

  • Dice Rolling
  • Hand Management
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Set-up
  • Worker Placement

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 60 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.86

Glass Road

| OTSG Staff

The game Glass Road commemorates the 700-year-old tradition of glass-making in the Bavarian Forest. (Today, the “Glass Road” is a route through the Bavarian forest that takes visitors to many of the old glass houses and museums of that region.) You must skillfully manage your glass and brick production in order to build the right structures that help you keep your business flowing. Cut the forest to keep the fires burning in the ovens, and spread and remove ponds, pits, and groves to supply yourself with the items you need. Fifteen specialists are there at your side to carry out your orders…

In more detail, the game consists of four building periods. Each player has an identical set of fifteen specialist cards, and each specialist comes with two abilities. At the beginning of each building period, you choose a hand of five specialists. If during this building period, you play a specialist that no other player has in hand, you may use both abilities on that card; if two or more players play the same specialist, each of them may use only one of the two abilities. Exploiting the abilities of these specialists lets you collect resources, lay out new landscape tiles (e.g., ponds and pits), and build a variety of buildings, which come in three types:

  • Processing buildings
  • “Immediate” buildings with a one-time effect
  • Buildings that provide bonus points at the end of the game for various accomplishments

Mastering the balance of knowing the best specialist card to play and being flexible about when you play it — together with assembling a clever combination of buildings — is the key to this game.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 20 – 80 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.96

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

Everdell: The Complete Collection

| OTSG Staff

Dive tailfirst into the world of Everdell with the Complete Collection. Build a city of critters and constructions and explore the Emerald Valley and beyond; celebrate the Bellfaire, wonder at Newleaf’s mechanical marvels, trek into the Spirecrest Mountains, explore the underwater depths of Pearlbrook, and chance the dangers of Mistwood. Play against automated opponents including the dastardly Rugwort and cunning Nightweave and meet heroes of renown like Corrin Evertail himself. Everdell is easy to learn, yet offers satisfying strategic depth and endless replayability. Will the sun shine brightest on your city?

Everdell Complete Collection contains 23 different types of Critter meeples, player powers for asymmetric play, Giant Critters with saddles to ride on, and an amazing array of pieces including wooden twigs, squishy berries, smooth pebbles, amber resin, glass pearls, and more. Featuring deluxe components, including the shiny metal point tokens and the wooden Ever Tree, this Complete Collection is the ultimate edition of Everdell.

Includes all content from:

– Everdell
– Pearlbrook
– Spirecrest
– Bellfaire
– Newleaf
– Mistwood
– Wooden Ever Tree
– Collector’s upgrade packs (Freshwater, Glimmergold, and Trailblazers)
– Everdell Big Ol’ Box of Storage

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 40 – 120 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 3.07