Tag: Variable Set-up

Cascadia

| OTSG Staff

Cascadia is a puzzly tile-laying and token-drafting game featuring the habitats and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest.

In the game, you take turns building out your own terrain area and populating it with wildlife. You start with three hexagonal habitat tiles (with the five types of habitat in the game), and on a turn you choose a new habitat tile that’s paired with a wildlife token, then place that tile next to your other ones and place the wildlife token on an appropriate habitat. (Each tile depicts 1-3 types of wildlife from the five types in the game, and you can place at most one tile on a habitat.) Four tiles are on display, with each tile being paired at random with a wildlife token, so you must make the best of what’s available — unless you have a nature token to spend so that you can pick your choice of each item.

Ideally you can place habitat tiles to create matching terrain that reduces fragmentation and creates wildlife corridors, mostly because you score for the largest area of each type of habitat at game’s end, with a bonus if your group is larger than each other player’s. At the same time, you want to place wildlife tokens so that you can maximize the number of points scored by them, with the wildlife goals being determined at random by one of the four scoring cards for each type of wildlife. Maybe hawks want to be separate from other hawks, while foxes want lots of different animals surrounding them and bears want to be in pairs. Can you make it happen?

Game Mechanics:

  • Open Drafting
  • Pattern Building
  • Solo / Solitaire Game
  • Tile Placement
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 4 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.85

Bad Company

| OTSG Staff

Build your own gang and customize it to suit your plans. Gather resources to complete heists and money to recruit new gang members. And make sure you escape the police! A unique and fun game from the award-winning designers of Automania and Trails of Tucana.

Bad Company supports up to 6 players with very little downtime. It also includes a solo mode where you try to outsmart the police.

Each player has a player board with 11 gang members. You may upgrade them by placing overlapping cards onto them. This way, the visual appearances of your gang members change as they gain more abilities.

Each round, the active player rolls four dice and divides them into two pairs (pay coins to reroll). Each pair of dice activates one gang member on the active player’s board. All other players may use one of the pairs to activate a single gang member on their own boards.

Activating a gangster provides resources needed to complete heists, money to upgrade your gang members, or advance your car through the city.
You want to advance your car, because you need to stay ahead of the police in order to collect loot along the city route.

You gain points by completing heists, upgrading your gang and by driving your car through the city.
Some completed heists provide special abilities which you can build your strategy around.

The game ends when a player completes their 6th heist, or when any car reaches the dock on the city track, and the player with the most points wins.

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.92

Adventure Land 🟢

| OTSG Staff

In Adventure Land, King Agamis rules from his castle. Rich cities, vast forests and rugged mountain ranges dominate the country. The large river is known to be lined with gold and the forests filled with medicinal herbs, but dangers lurk beneath the fog! Only the bravest adventurers dare to face the challenges. When you move your adventurer tactically and bravely fight the fog creatures, you’ll win the favor of the king. Illustrated by Franz Vohwinkel and designed by acclaimed duo Wolfgang Kramer and Michael Kiesling who between them have won the highly coveted Spiel des Jahres award 5 times.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 – 4 Players
  • ~45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.84

7 Wonders Duel 🟢

| OTSG Staff

In many ways 7 Wonders Duel resembles its parent game 7 Wonders as over three ages players acquire cards that provide resources or advance their military or scientific development in order to develop a civilization and complete wonders.

What’s different about 7 Wonders Duel is that, as the title suggests, the game is solely for two players, with the players not drafting cards simultaneously from hands of cards, but from a display of face-down and face-up cards arranged at the start of a round. A player can take a card only if it’s not covered by any others, so timing comes into play as well as bonus moves that allow you to take a second card immediately. As in the original game, each card that you acquire can be built, discarded for coins, or used to construct a wonder.

Each player starts with four wonder cards, and the construction of a wonder provides its owner with a special ability. Only seven wonders can be built, though, so one player will end up short.

Players can purchase resources at any time from the bank, or they can gain cards during the game that provide them with resources for future building; as you acquire resources, the cost for those particular resources increases for your opponent, representing your dominance in this area.

A player can win 7 Wonders Duel in one of three ways: each time you acquire a military card, you advance the military marker toward your opponent’s capital, giving you a bonus at certain positions; if you reach the opponent’s capital, you win the game immediately; similarly, if you acquire any six of seven different scientific symbols, you achieve scientific dominance and win immediately; if none of these situations occurs, then the player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 2 Players
  • ~30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.22

7 Wonders 🟢

| OTSG Staff

You are the leader of one of the 7 great cities of the Ancient World. Gather resources, develop commercial routes, and affirm your military supremacy. Build your city and erect an architectural wonder which will transcend future times.

7 Wonders lasts three ages. In each age, players receive seven cards from a particular deck, choose one of those cards, then pass the remainder to an adjacent player. Players reveal their cards simultaneously, paying resources if needed or collecting resources or interacting with other players in various ways. (Players have individual boards with special powers on which to organize their cards, and the boards are double-sided). Each player then chooses another card from the deck they were passed, and the process repeats until players have six cards in play from that age. After three ages, the game ends.

In essence, 7 Wonders is a card development game. Some cards have immediate effects, while others provide bonuses or upgrades later in the game. Some cards provide discounts on future purchases. Some provide military strength to overpower your neighbors and others give nothing but victory points. Each card is played immediately after being drafted, so you’ll know which cards your neighbor is receiving and how her choices might affect what you’ve already built up. Cards are passed left-right-left over the three ages, so you need to keep an eye on the neighbors in both directions.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 7 Players
  • 30 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 2.32

Dungeon Party

| OTSG Staff

Dungeon Party is a quick-play fantasy role-playing game played with coasters and a coin.

Dungeon Party is easy to learn, playable in a short time (or extended if that is desirable), has all of the aspects of a classic RPG adventure, and is playable in a bar, restaurant, or at home. The combat mechanism is fun and adds an element of luck and skill without much complexity. The game system is infinitely expandable.

Players will assemble a “dungeon” by creating a stack of coasters that includes rooms, monsters, and treasures. They then adventure through the dungeon by turning over tiles, battling the rooms, defeating the monsters, and looting the treasure. Along the way, they may pick up magical treasures or spells that can help them in their quest. If they survive the dungeon, the player with the most treasure points wins. If they do not, the dungeon wins. But either way, there will be laughs and maybe even a drink or two!

Battles are resolved by players trying to drop quarters on coasters. If they miss, players take hit damage. If they land on the coaster, the monsters take damage. Battles continue until either monster or player is eliminated.

Game Mechanics:

Game Specifications:

  • 1 – 6 Players
  • 30 – 60 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.25

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong

| OTSG Staff

Deception: Murder in Hong Kong is a game of deduction and deception for 4-12 players that plays in about 20 minutes.

In the game, players take on the roles of investigators attempting to solve a murder case – but there’s a twist. The killer is one of the investigators! Each player’s role and team are randomly assigned at the start of play and include the unique roles of Forensic Scientist, Witness, Investigator, Murderer, and Accomplice. While the Investigators attempt to deduce the truth, the murderer’s team must deceive and mislead. This is a battle of wits!

The Forensic Scientist has the solution but can express the clues only using special scene tiles while the investigators (and the murderer) attempt to interpret the evidence. In order to succeed, the investigators must not only deduce the truth from the clues of the Forensic Scientist, they must also see through the misdirection being injected into the equation by the Murderer and Accomplice!

Find out who among you can cut through deception to find the truth and who is capable of getting away with murder!

Game Mechanics:

  • Deduction
  • Hidden Roles
  • Storytelling
  • Team-Based Game
  • Traitor Game
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 4 – 12 Players
  • ~20 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.59

Camel Up

| OTSG Staff

In Camel Up, up to eight players bet on five racing camels, trying to suss out which will place first and second in a quick race around a pyramid. The earlier you place your bet, the more you can win — should you guess correctly, of course. Camels don’t run neatly, however, sometimes landing on top of another one and being carried toward the finish line. Who’s going to run when? That all depends on how the dice come out of the pyramid dice shaker, which releases one die at a time when players pause from their bets long enough to see who’s actually moving!

Game Mechanics:

  • Betting
  • Variable Set-up

Game Specifications:

  • 3 – 8 Players
  • 30 – 45 Minutes
  • Difficulty Weight 1.50