Fungi

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The woods are old-growth, dappled with sunlight. Delicious mushrooms beckon from every grove and hollow. Morels may be the most sought-after in these woods, but there are many tasty and valuable varieties awaiting the savvy collector. Bring a basket if you think it’s your lucky day. Forage at night and you will be all alone when you stumble upon a bonanza. If you’re hungry, put a pan on the fire and bask in the aroma of chanterelles as you sauté them in butter. Feeling mercantile? Sell porcini to local aficionados for information that will help you find what you seek deep in the forest.

Morels, a strategic card game for two players, uses two decks: a Day Deck (84 cards) that includes ten different types of mushrooms as well as baskets, cider, butter, pans, and moons, and a smaller Night Deck (8 cards) of mushrooms to be foraged by moonlight. Each mushroom card has two values: one for selling and one for cooking. Selling two or more like mushrooms grants foraging sticks that expand your options in the forest (that is, the running tableau of eight face-up cards on the table), enabling offensive or defensive plays that change with every game played. Cooking sets of three or more like mushrooms – sizzling in butter or cider if the set is large enough – earns points toward winning the game. With poisonous mushrooms wielding their wrath and a hand-size limit to manage, card selection is a tricky proposition at every turn.

Following each turn, one card from the forest moves into a decay pile that is available for only a short time. The Day Deck then refills the forest from the back, creating the effect of a walk in the woods in which some strategic morsels are collected, some are passed by, and others lay ahead.

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Star Realms

Star Realms

Star Realms is a spaceship combat deck-building game by Magic Hall of Famers Darwin Kastle (The Battle for Hill 218) and Rob Dougherty (Ascension Co-designer).

Star Realms is a fast paced deck-building card game of outer space combat. It combines the fun of a deck-building game with the interactivity of Trading Card Game style combat. As you play, you make use of Trade to acquire new Ships and Bases from the cards being turned face up in the Trade Row from the Trade Deck. You use the Ships and Bases you acquire to either generate more Trade or to generate Combat to attack your opponent and their bases. When you reduce your opponent’s score (called Authority) to zero, you win!

Multiple decks of Star Realms and/or Star Realms: Colony Wars, one for every two people, allows up to six players to play a variety of scenarios.

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1960: The Making of the President

1960: The Making of the President

In 1960: The Making of the President, you take on the role of Kennedy or Nixon, protagonists vying for the right to lead their country into the heart of the Cold War. However, it is not just foreign policy that poses a challenge to American leadership; this is also an era of great social turmoil. As the United States continues to build upon the promise of its founding, candidates must contend with the question of civil rights and balance their positions on social justice against the need for valuable Southern electoral votes. Of course, the ever-present issue of the economy also rears its ugly head, and both Nixon and Kennedy will compete to be the candidate with the voters’ pocket books in mind.

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Le Fantôme de l’Opéra

Le Fantôme de l’Opéra

Le Fantôme de l’Opéra is a two-player game based on the Mr. Jack game system – that is, the game is an asymmetric affair in which one player wants to reveal which suspect token on the game board represents the opponent, with both players taking turns moving all of the suspects to alternately reveal and hide information. That said, the game differs in a number of ways from Mr. Jack. In more detail…

In Le Fantôme de l’Opéra, eight suspect tokens stand in the ten rooms of the Opéra Garnier. Each suspect has a reason to drive the opera singer La Carlotta away from the production, and at the start of the game one of the suspects is randomly determined to be the true identity of the Phantom player. The other player is the Investigator, and he wants to discover the Phantom’s identity; if he does so before La Carlotta flees the Opéra Garnier, then he wins. Otherwise, he loses. (To balance play between newcomers and experience players La Carlotta’s starting position can changed.)

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Twilight Struggle

Twilight Struggle

“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.

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Cube Quest

Cube Quest

Mobilize your fingers for the ultimate six-sided skirmish! Field an army of cubes and then place them strategically on the board. Each cube has special powers: Strikers and Skulks are strong on the attack, while Grunts are better for defense. Once your cubes are in position, sound the trumpets and let the flicking begin! Try to knock your opponent’s king off the board, aiming carefully not to get caught behind enemy lines. Triumph in your quest and crown yourself the Cube King!

We love finding games that are easy to teach, different every time you play and challenging to master. Brothers Oliver and Gary Sibthorpe created just that type of mix with Cube Quest – a game that perfectly meshes strategy with skill. You can tell that they put many hours into perfecting this balance evidence by the unique group of cubes included within. Be sure to experiment with different mixes of cubes as well as formations. Send us pictures of your favorite formations, along with stories of thrilling moves and victories!

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Android: Netrunner – Creation and Control

Android: Netrunner - Creation and Control

Who will write the future? Creation and Control pits a new wave of enigmatic Shapers against the latest and greatest of Haas-Bioroid’s developments in artificial intelligence, efficiency, and security. The first deluxe expansion for Android: Netrunner The Card Game, Creation and Control introduces 165 new cards (three copies each of fifty-five individual cards), that will instigate dramatic new strategies and high-stakes battles for the control of valuable files and the futures outlined within them.

Creation and Control focuses on the struggles between the executives at Haas-Bioroid and those Shapers who are driven to tinker with their programs and hardware by an almost-religious compulsion, but fans of every Android: Netrunner faction will find plenty of great uses for their influence, as well as twenty-seven neutral cards (three copies each of nine individual cards) that can sharpen the focus of any deck.

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Star Wars: The Card Game

Star Wars: The Card Game

“This station is now the ultimate power in the universe.” –Admiral Motti, Star Wars: A New Hope.

The Imperial fleet sifts through the galaxy for signs of the Rebel Alliance’s hidden base, hoping to obliterate it with one powerful blast from their newly constructed Death Star. As the Empire’s imposing Star Destroyers draw near, the Rebels realize there is no time to spare, so they mobilize for a desperate attack. Squadrons of starfighters launch into space. Their pilots know that many of them may soon make the ultimate sacrifice for galactic freedom…

The characters, starships, and situations of the original Star Wars trilogy come to life in Star Wars: The Card Game™. A game by award-winning designer Eric M. Lang, Star Wars: The Card Game is a head-to-head Living Card Game® of tactical combat, and strategic planning that allows two players to wage cinematic battles between the light and dark sides of the Force.

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Android: Netrunner

Android: Netrunner

Welcome to New Angeles, home of the Beanstalk. From our branch offices in this monument of human achievement, NBN proudly broadcasts all your favorite media programming. We offer fully comprehensive streaming in music and threedee, news and sitcoms, classic movies and sensies. We cover it all. Ours is a brave new age, and as humanity hurtles into space and the future with an astonishing series of new advances every day, NBN and our affiliates are keeping pace, bringing you all the vid that’s fit to view.

Android: Netrunner is an asymmetrical Living Card Game for two players. Set in the cyberpunk future of Android and Infiltration, the game pits a megacorporation and its massive resources against the subversive talents of lone runners.

Corporations seek to score agendas by advancing them. Doing so takes time and credits. To buy the time and earn the credits they need, they must secure their servers and data forts with “ice”. These security programs come in different varieties, from simple barriers, to code gates and aggressive sentries. They serve as the corporation’s virtual eyes, ears, and machine guns on the sprawling information superhighways of the network.

In turn, runners need to spend their time and credits acquiring a sufficient wealth of resources, purchasing the necessary hardware, and developing suitably powerful ice-breaker programs to hack past corporate security measures. Their jobs are always a little desperate, driven by tight timelines, and shrouded in mystery. When a runner jacks-in and starts a run at a corporate server, he risks having his best programs trashed or being caught by a trace program and left vulnerable to corporate countermeasures. It’s not uncommon for an unprepared runner to fail to bypass a nasty sentry and suffer massive brain damage as a result. Even if a runner gets through a data fort’s defenses, there’s no telling what it holds. Sometimes, the runner finds something of value. Sometimes, the best he can do is work to trash whatever the corporation was developing.

The first player to seven points wins the game, but not likely before he suffers some brain damage or bad publicity.

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Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game

Star Wars: X-Wing Miniatures Game

X-Wing is a tactical ship-to-ship combat game in which players take control of powerful Rebel X-wings and nimble Imperial TIE fighters, facing them against each other in fast-paced space combat. Featuring stunningly detailed and painted miniatures, X-Wing recreates exciting Star Wars space combat throughout its several included scenarios. Select your crew, plan your maneuvers, and complete your mission!

The X-Wing starter set includes everything you need to begin your battles, such as scenarios, cards, and fully assembled and painted ships. What’s more, X-Wing’s quick-to-learn ruleset establishes the foundation for a system that can be expanded with your favorite ships and characters from the Star Wars universe.

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