Heavy 9 - Shut Up & Sit Down

Panamax

In Panamax each player manages a shipping company established in the Colón Free Trade Zone. Companies accept contracts from both US coasts, China and Europe and deliver cargo in order to make money, attract investment and pay dividends. At the same time the players accumulate their own stock investments and try to make as much money as possible in an effort to have the largest personal fortune and win the game.

Panamax features several original mechanisms that blend together; an original dice (action) selection table, pickup-and-deliver along a single bi-directional route, a chain reaction movement system – “pushing” ships to make room throughout the Canal and a level of player interaction that is part self-interest, part mutual advantage and the freedom to choose how you play.

Space Cadets: Resistance Is Mostly Futile is the first expansion for the original Space Cadets game.

A variety of new missions, map obstacles, and enemies are included to challenge both novice and veteran crews. Even missions for just two players! Blast parasites, save a space station and stop the mighty Star Kraken, an enemy unlike any you have faced before.

Also Cadets, be sure to welcome your new crew mate, the Science Officer! Any difficulty can be bested with one of his helpful inventions… If only they weren’t made of parts of the ship.

Survive lasers and tentacles and the well-meaning Science Officer tearing apart your ship and prove that you deserve the title of a true Space Cadet!

The classic collectible card game Deadlands: Doomtown returns as an Expandable Card Game in Doomtown: Reloaded. Featuring four factions fighting for control of Gomorra, California. Doomtown: Reloaded allows you to build your own deck from a fixed set of cards in the box. Play your dudes to control deeds in the town, and use actions, hexes, and more to thwart your opponents.

Shootouts are resolved via a poker mechanism as every card has a suit and value. Preparing for the hands you want to draw is as much a part of deck building as choosing the actions and dudes you’ll want to play. Your deck is built around an Outfit, one of the four main groups attempting to control Gomorra, California, and these outfits are:

The Law Dogs: The Sheriff and his deputies, tasked with enforcing law and order in an extremely chaotic town.
The Sloane Gang: The main cause of a lot of the chaos, the Sloane Gang takes what they want, no matter who it costs.
The Morgan Cattle Company: Progress and investment, Morgan Cattle has moved into the surrounding ranch lands and uses its deep pockets to influence the town.
The Fourth Ring: It’s that circus that’s been here for months, but I swear it just arrived…

The base set of Doomtown: Reloaded will be followed by Saddlebag expansions, in-store OP events, and the Badge Series of tournaments.

Vietnam, 1964. The most wrenching US engagement of the Cold War would be far more than GI versus Charlie. The conflict had set tribesman against nationalist, Buddhist against Catholic, mandarin against villager, and of course Northerner against Southerner—even among the communists. As revolutionary change burned through that ancient civilization, Washington would apply its armament and its operations research. To get out, the US counterinsurgency would have to motor deeper and deeper in. In the end, culture and will would overcome technology and math and signal the end of the primacy of industrial might in modern warfare.

Volume IV in GMT’s COIN Series dives headlong into the momentous and complex battle for South Vietnam. A unique multi-faction treatment of the Vietnam War, Fire in the Lake will take 1 to 4 players on US heliborne sweeps of the jungle and Communist infiltration of the South, and into inter-allied conferences, Saigon politics, interdiction of the Ho Chi Minh Trail, air defense of Northern infrastructure, graduated escalation, and media war.

In Russian Railroads, players compete in an exciting race to build the largest and most advanced railway network. In order to do so, the players appoint their workers to various important tasks. The development of simple tracks will quickly bring the players to important places, while the modernization of their railway network will improve the efficiency of their machinery. Newer locomotives cover greater distances and factories churn out improved technology. Engineers, when used effectively, can be the extra boost that an empire needs to race past the competition.

There are many paths to victory: Who will ride into the future full steam ahead and who will be run off the rails? Whose empire will overcome the challenges ahead and emerge victorious?

Russian Railroads – A game of planning, strategy and optimization for 2-4 Emperors.

Caverna: The Cave Farmers, which has a playing time of roughly 30 minutes per player, is a complete redesign of Agricola that substitutes the card decks from the former game with a set of buildings while adding the ability to purchase weapons and send your farmers on quests to gain further resources. Designer Uwe Rosenberg says that the game includes parts of Agricola, but also has new ideas, especially the cave part of your game board, where you can build mines and search for rubies. The game also includes two new animals: dogs and donkeys.

The latest volume in Volko Ruhnke’s COIN Series takes 1 to 4 players into the Afghan conflict of today’s headlines, this time in a unique collaboration between two top designers of boardgames on modern irregular warfare. A Distant Plain teams Volko Ruhnke, the award-winning designer of Labyrinth: The War on Terror, with Brian Train, a designer with 20 years’ experience creating influential simulations such as Algeria, Somalia Interventions, Shining Path: The Struggle for Peru, and many others.

A Distant Plain features the same accessible game system as GMT’s recent Andean Abyss and upcoming Cuba Libre but with new factions, capabilities, events, and objectives. For the first time in the Series, two counterinsurgent (COIN) factions must reconcile competing visions for Afghanistan in order to coordinate a campaign against a dangerous twin insurgency.

A Distant Plain adapts familiar Andean Abyss mechanics to the conditions of Afghanistan without adding rules complexity. A snap for GMT COIN Series players to learn, A Distant Plain will transport them to a different place and time. New features include:

Coalition-Government joint operations.
Volatile Pakistani posture toward the conflict.
Evolution of both COIN and insurgent tactics and technology.
Government graft and desertion.
Coalition casualties.
Returning Afghan refugees.
Pashtun ethnic terrain.
Multiple scenarios.
A deck of 72 fresh events.

… and more.

As with each COIN Series volume, players of A Distant Plain will face difficult strategic decisions with each card. The innovative game system smoothly integrates political, cultural, and economic affairs with military and other violent and non-violent operations and capabilities. Flow charts are at hand to run the three Afghan factions, so that any number of players—from solitaire to 4—can experience the internecine brawl that is today’s Afghanistan.

In Warrior Knights, each player takes on the role of a Baron vying for control of the Kingdom. Each Baron commands four faithful Nobles who lead his armies into battle. Each Baron seeks to capture cities in order to gain Influence (victory points), which is used to measure his claim to the throne. Barons may also seek to gain advantage by increasing their income, gathering Votes to use at the Assembly, or by amassing Faith, which can be used to gain a measure of control over chance events. Only through cunning strategy and careful diplomacy can a Baron hope to attain victory.

“Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle.” – John F. Kennedy

In 1945, unlikely allies toppled Hitler’s war machine, while humanity’s most devastating weapons forced the Japanese Empire to its knees in a storm of fire. Where once there stood many great powers, there now stood only two – the United States and the Soviet Union. The world had scant months to collectively sigh in relief before a new conflict threatened. Unlike the titanic struggles of the preceding decades, this conflict would be waged not primarily by soldiers and tanks, but by spies and politicians, scientists and intellectuals, artists and traitors. Twilight Struggle is a two-player game simulating the 45 year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the USSR and the USA. The entire world is the stage on which these two titans fight. The game begins amidst the ruins of Europe as the two new superpowers scramble over the wreckage of WWII and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.

Twilight Struggle inherits its fundamental systems from the card-driven classics We the People and Hannibal. It is a quick-playing, low-complexity game in that same tradition. The game map is a world map of the period, whereon players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower.

Twilight Struggle’s Event cards add detail and flavor to the game. They cover a vast array of historical happenings: the Arab-Israeli conflicts, Vietnam, the peace movement, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and other such incidents that brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Subsystems capture the prestige-laden Space Race as well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending nuclear war. Can you, as the U.S. President or Soviet Premier, lead your nation to victory? Play Twilight Struggle and find out.

Here I Stand: Wars of the Reformation 1517-1555 is the first game in over 25 years to cover the political and religious conflicts of early 16th Century Europe. Few realize that the greatest feats of Martin Luther, John Calvin, Ignatius Loyola, Henry VIII, Charles V, Francis I, Suleiman the Magnificent, Ferdinand Magellan, Hernando Cortes, and Nicolaus Copernicus all fall within this narrow 40-year period of history. This game covers all the action of the period using a unique card-driven game system that models both the political and religious conflicts of the period on a single point-to-point map.

There are six main powers in the game, each with a unique path to victory :

The Ottomans
The Habsburgs
The English
The Valois Dynasty of France
The Papacy
The Protestants

Here I Stand is the first card-driven game to prominently feature secret deal-making. A true six-sided diplomatic struggle, the game places a heavy emphasis on successful alliance-building through negotiations that occur away from the table during the pre-turn Diplomacy Phase. Set during the period in which Niccolò Machiavelli published his masterpiece “The Prince,” backstabbing is always possible, especially because the card deck is loaded with event and response cards that can be played by any power to disrupt the plans of the powers in the lead.

Here I Stand integrates religion, politics, economics and diplomacy in a card-driven design. Games vary in length from 3-4 hours for a tournament scenario up to full campaign games that run about twice the time. Rules to play games with 3, 4, or 5 players are also included. The 3-player game is just as well balanced as the standard 6-player configuration, taking advantage of the natural alliances of the period.

Panamax

Space Cadets: Resistance is Mostly Futile

Doomtown: Reloaded

Fire in the Lake

Russian Railroads

Caverna: The Cave Farmers

A Distant Plain

Warrior Knights

Twilight Struggle

Here I Stand

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