Dominion

Dominion

In Dominion, each player starts with an identical, very small deck of cards. In the center of the table is a selection of other cards the players can “buy“ as they can afford them. Through their selection of cards to buy and how they play their hands as they draw them, the players construct their deck on the fly, striving for the most efficient path to the precious victory points by game end.

Dominion is not a collectible card game (CCG), but the play of the game issimilar to the construction and play of a CCG deck. The game comes with 500 cards. You select 10 of the 26 Kingdom card types to include in any given play—leading to immense variety.

Read More

Nightfall

Nightfall

Nightfall – a new fast, furious and fun deck-building game from Alderac Entertainment Group. Featuring direct head-to-head combat, amazing art, a new AEG world, and unique mechanics by designer David Gregg, Nightfall will be the deck-building game to own.

Before the game begins, there is a draft to determine which cards are available for purchase, and by whom. During this draft players select two cards from the set for their personal archives, and they also select cards to put into the common area. The cards drafted into personal archives may only be purchased by the player who drafted them.

After the table has been set with the private and common cards, players begin play.

Each card has a main color and two linking colors. If you can match the main color of a card to one of the linking colors of the previous card, you can chain those cards together. Once a chain is started, players all get an opportunity to link additional cards onto the chain during that turn.

Cards in the chain resolve in reverse order: first in, last out. Instant effects fire off as cards come off the chain, doing damage to your opponents or bringing characters into play to defend you and attack your opponents.

The object of Nightfall is to put wounds into your opponents’ decks and end the game with the least amount of wounds in your deck. But beware: the more wounds a person has, the more enraged they become and the faster their deck works, meaning more cards and bigger chains will come your way!

Read More

The Resistance

Resistance

The Resistance> is a party game of social deduction. It is designed for five to ten players, lasts about 30 minutes, and has no player elimination. The Resistance is inspired by Mafia/Werewolf, yet it is unique in its core mechanics, which increase the resources for informed decisions, intensify player interaction, and eliminate player elimination.

Players are either Resistance Operatives or Imperial Spies. For three to five rounds, they must depend on each other to carry out missions against the Empire. At the same time, they must try to deduce the other players’ identities and gain their trust. Each round begins with discussion. When ready, the Leader entrusts sets of Plans to a certain number of players (possibly including himself/herself). Everyone votes on whether or not to approve the assignment. Once an assignment passes, the chosen players secretly decide to Support or Sabotage the mission. Based on the results, the mission succeeds (Resistance win) or fails (Empire win). When a team wins three missions, they have won the game.

Read More

Mundus Novus

Mundus Novus

Spain, 16th century. You are a powerful ship owner in search of wealth from the recently discovered Mundus Novus (New World). Your goal: Charter fleets of caravels to collect valuable goods (including the legendary Inca relics) and trade to form the best sets to expand your business empire and make your fortune.

The game is played using two decks of cards: a deck of resource cards, which contains cards representing ten different resources, and a deck of development cards, which give special benefits to their owners. The game is played in rounds, with each round consisting of four phases:

Each round starts with the Event phase, in which a random event may occur that affects all players.

The next phase is the Supply phase. Each player receives five random resource cards, plus one resource card for each caravel (a type of development card) that he owns, chosen from a common pool.

Then, during the Trade phase, the players trade some of their cards. One of the players, the Trade Master, determines how many resource cards (2, 3 or 4) each player must offer for trade. The player that offers the resources with the highest value becomes the new Trade Master. He chooses one of the resources offered by one of the other players, and adds it to his hand, or exchanges it with a card from the market (three face-up cards that are available for such exchanges). Then, the player that he has taken a card from gets to take a card, and so on, until all the cards have been taken.

Finally, during the Progression phase, the players exchange their resources for doubloons and developments. A player may exchange one set of three or more of the same resource for a development. Bigger combinations and rarer resources will allow more choice of which development can be selected from the five that are on offer. In addition, players can exchange sets of three or more different goods for doubloons, with bigger combinations earning more doubloons.

If a player can make a combination of ten different cards (i.e., one of each type of resource), he wins the game. Alternatively, if a player has accumulated 75 doubloons, he wins the game. If no player has achieved victory by the time the development deck runs out, the player who has accumulated the most doubloons wins.

Read More