[In the co-operative trick-taking game The Crew: The Quest for Planet Nine, the players set out as astronauts on an uncertain space adventure. What about the rumors about the unknown planet about? The eventful journey through space extends over 50 exciting missions. But this game can only be defeated by meeting common individual tasks of … Read more
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by – Price: – – – – Playing with sticky tongues has never been more fun than what you’ll find in Sticky Chameleons! Each player has a long sticky “tongue”, and the table is covered with six types of insect tiles in six colors, along with a few fly tokens. To start a round, someone … Read more
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by – Price: – – – – Every spring, millions of monarch butterflies leave Mexico to spread out across eastern North America. Every fall, millions fly back to Mexico. However, no single butterfly ever makes the round trip. Mariposas is a game of movement and set collection that lets players be part of this amazing … Read more
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Join this expedition, and you will have the unforgettable opportunity to explore Sumatra, from the top of its majestic volcanoes to the depths of its tropical rainforest. Find the most exotic animals and the most exuberant flowers, and discover the endless variety of cultures that coexist on the largest island in Indonesia. Your expedition sets … Read more
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“Mottainai” (pronounced mot/tai/nai or like the English words mote-tie-nigh) means “Don’t waste”, or “Every little thing has a soul”. In the game Mottainai, a successor in the Glory to Rome line, you use your cards for many purposes. Each player is an acolyte in a temple who performs tasks, collects materials, and sells or completes works for visitors. Every card can be each of these three things.
You choose tasks to allow you to perform actions, keeping in mind that other players will get to follow up on your task on their next turn. Clever planning and combining of your works’ special abilities is key, as is managing which materials you sell.
Mottainai is a quick, but deep, game experience.
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From prolific designer Reiner Knizia comes a game of strategy, patience, and cool plastic camels. The desert is still treacherous, mysterious, and without mercy but, for those willing to risk the dangers of the shifting, sun-baked sands, it holds riches beyond compare.
In Through the Desert, two to five players each control a tribe of nomads vying for control of the desert. By establishing caravans and taking over oases, the players gain points as their tribes increase in power.
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Not far into the future, a stone was found in a star — then more stones were found, and it turns out that if you combine three of these stones in the right way, you create a very valuable jewel. What’s more, you can combine them in a different way to create fuel.
In Troika, you are an adventurer who has dreamed of making a fortune, so you’ve traveled to this star along with other wanderers. Unfortunately, your spacecraft has no more fuel, so while you’d like to create jewels, if you don’t also create fuel, you’ll die as the richest person at the end of the universe!
In the game, you place all the heptagonal tiles face down on the table, and on a turn you either draw a face-down tile or take a face-up tile that someone returned to the table. You have a hand limit of seven tiles, and within that limit you’re trying to collect both three tiles of the same number (to serve as fuel) and three tiles in numerical order (to transform into a gem). If you have no fuel, you can’t win the game; of those who do have fuel, the player with the most valuable jewel wins.
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In Nine Tiles Panic (ナインタイル パニック), each player has a set of nine double-sided town tiles.
At the start of a round, three scoring cards are revealed, such as most aliens on a single road, most dogs visible, or longest road. All player then race to assemble their town in whatever pattern seems best, trying to score points for one, two, or three of the scoring cards as they wish. As soon as the first player decides that they’re done, they flip the sand timer and everyone else has 90 seconds to complete their town, then players determine who scores for which cards, with ties being broken in favor of whoever finished first. Players score points based on the number of players in the game, and players track their score on a chart over multiple rounds.
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n 64 A.D., a great fire originating from the slums of Rome quickly spreads to destroy much of the city, including the imperial palace. Upon hearing news of the fire, Emperor Nero Caesar races back to Rome from his private estate in Antium and sets up shelters for the displaced population. Reporting directly to Nero, you are responsible for rebuilding the structures lost in the fire and restoring Glory to Rome.
Glory to Rome is a card-based city building and resource management game with a novel mechanism. Each card may act as a building, a client, a raw material, or a valuable resource, frequently forcing players into difficult decisions regarding how each card should be used. In addition, much of the game is played from the discard pool, giving players some control over what cards are accessible to opponents. Actions are triggered by a form of card-driven role selection — the active player leads a role, and other players may follow if they discard a matching card from hand (to the pool). Players who don’t follow may ‘think’ to draw more cards. There are thus strong interactions between the different uses of cards. Scoring is a combination of completing buildings and storing resources, with end-of-game bonuses for storing a diverse assortment. Game length is player-controlled, and is triggered in a few different ways.
The lighthearted artwork of the original editions was replaced by minimalist art in the ‘black box’ edition, and both have been the source of great controversy. Many of the non-English editions use more conventional artwork.
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