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878: Vikings – Invasions of England

The year is 878. For the past 75 years, Viking raiding parties from Norway and Denmark have been terrorizing the coasts of England with ‘hit and run’ attacks. The treasures and stories gained from these attacks have allowed the Norsemen to raise huge hosts of eager men seeking glory and riches. These armies now stand poised to thunder across England where they will settle and farm the fertile land they conquer. The divided English kingdoms are unprepared for this impending onslaught. The Vikings are coming!

In 878: Vikings – Invasions of England, players control the invading Vikings or the English nobles who are trying to withstand the invasion. Viking players either play as Norsemen Viking freeman or as the fearless Viking shock troops known as Berserkers. The English play as the Housecarl, the Kings’ household troops, or as the Thegns who were regional noble Leaders. The English players will also be able to call up the peasant levies, called the Fyrd, to defend their cities.

Players for each side strategize together in order to coordinate their strategies. Each side attempts to control Cities on the map to win. The English start the game controlling all of England but a Viking Leader will invade from the sea each Turn. The English players raise reinforcements from cities they control, while the Vikings must wait for a new invasion for reinforcements. The game ends when the Treaty of Wedmore is called and the side controlling the most cities wins the game.

Crokinole is big, it’s bold, it’s 150 years old, and a good board will cost you $300. Those are some very frightening numbers. Could this ever be a reasonable consumer purchase? Click play, and find out.

It’s the turn of the 20th century, the golden age of museums. As interest in and accessibility of museums grew exponentially, many institutions underwent an intense period of expansion on both an intellectual and physical level, searching to grow their collections for profit and science.

You play as a curator of one such museum and it’s your job to build the biggest, most coherent collection that you can in this game of collection and bartering featuring over 300 individual illustrations by Vincent Dutrait and authentic architectural facts. But it’s no simple task!

In Batman: Gotham City Chronicles, one villain faces off against a team of heroes in one of multiple scenarios. Each hero has their own character, and they control this character by spending energy to perform actions (such as Melee and Ranged attacks, defusing bombs…) recovering more or less energy at the beginning of their turn depending on their stance. If the hero gets damaged, energy moves to a wound area, and if they lose all of their energy, then they’re out of action for a while to recover their strength. Each hero has differing strengths for their abilities, and these strengths are represented by colored dice with different values; the more energy a hero spends on an ability, the more dice of that color they can roll.

The villain controls a team of henchmen and iconic villains of the Batman universe, and these characters are represented by tiles on their command board, with the characters costing 1, 2, 3, etc. energy to activate as you move left to right down the line. Once a character is activated, they move to the end of the line, boosting their cost to the maximum value should you want to use them again immediately, and decreasing the cost of the other tiles.

The game-play in Batman: Gotham City Chronicles is based on that of Conan, with revisions to character abilities, the addition of two different types of dice (w/ five types total), and a modified two-player set-up, the Versus Mode, in which each player has a command board and their own team of tiles that they can draft, with heroes facing off against villains.

In a high tower, an Alchemist prepares potions, using vials filled with otherworldly fluids. In a sacred grove, a Druid grinds herbs for a mystical ritual. In the catacombs, a Necromancer summons a bone dragon… Welcome to the world of Res Arcana!

In it, Life, Death, Elan, Calm, and Gold are the essences that fuel the art of magic. Choose your mage, gather essences, craft unique artifacts, and use them to summon dragons, conquer places of power, and achieve victory!

Welcome to Fireball Island! You may have heard stories. You may have visited when you were younger. Perhaps you even saw a fireball engulf a fellow traveler in a hellscape of horror that makes you afraid to close your eyes at night. Whatever the case, welcome back! Turns out that Vul-Kar didn’t like having his … Read more

Alone is a sci-fi survival horror / dungeon crawler game that will pit a single, stranded hero against 1-3 evil masterminds who will do their best to stop the hero from completing a quest to discover the truth and save his companions. The Evil players always have the full map of the scenario in front … Read more

Under a blazing sun in 4th century BCE, traders come from all corners of the Mediterranean Sea to Corinth to sell their goods; Persian carpets, Cretan olive oil, Roman grapes, and Egyptian spices are highly prized by traders. Players have a few weeks to secure their place in Corinthian lore as its most savvy trader!

Wage war against opponents on a hexagonal board. Prepare your armies to face off on the battlefield and surprise your enemy with your choice of special abilities!

Monolith Arena is a fantasy battleground board game built around the base engine of Neuroshima Hex, which is also from designer Michał Oracz. The game includes four factions, with unique abilities and units! Each player has a monolith that serves as their headquarters, and each player seeds their monolith with three tokens that provide special abilities. When an opponent damages your monolith, you remove the top layer to expose the first token, gaining its special ability, so being attacked can actually make you stronger — albeit while still moving you toward defeat…

Altiplano, a bag-building game along the lines of Orléans set in the South American highlands of the Andes — the Altiplano — is not a simple game, presenting players with new challenges time and again. There are various ways to reach the goal, so the game remains appealing to try out new options and strategies, but success or failure also depends on whether your opponents let you do as you like or thwart the strategy you are pursuing. The competition for the individual types of goods is considerable — as is the fun in snatching a coveted extension card from under another player’s nose!

At the start of the game, players have access only to certain resources and goods, due to the different role tiles that each player receives that provide them. At the market, however, a player can acquire additional production sites that give new options. The numerous goods — such as fish, alpaca, cacao, silver, or corn — all have their own characteristics and places where they can be used. Whereas silver makes you rich, fish can be exchanged for other goods, and alpaca give you wool that you can then make into cloth.

Aside from building up an effective production, you must deliver the right goods at the right time, develop the road in good time, and store your goods cleverly enough to fill the most valuable rows with them. Often, a good warehouseperson is more relevant in the end than the best producer.

878: Vikings – Invasions of England

Crokinole

Museum

Batman: Gotham City Chronicles

Res Arcana

Fireball Island: The Curse of Vul-Kar

Alone

Corinth

Monolith Arena

Altiplano

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