It’s that most wonderful time of the year! The holiday when families come together and induldge in colourful capitalism. That’s right, I’m talking about Economic Hex-Based Tile Laying Game Fest: 2013.
In this year’s hex fest we review the moreish Suburbia, the quaint Keyflower, remember the daring Archipelago, and in doing so unearth our Game of the Year.
Pour yourself a glass of hexnog, dear viewer. Tis’ the season!
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Your borough has decided that it’s time to incorporate. What does that mean for you, as its city planner? Well, lots more paperwork, that’s for sure – but it also gives you great new possibilities for your little town. In Suburbia Inc, an expansion for the award-winning Suburbia strategy game, you get to develop your … Read more
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Plan, build, and develop a small town into a major metropolis. Use hex-shaped building tiles to add residential, commercial, civic, and industrial areas, as well as special points of interest that provide benefits and take advantage of the resources of nearby towns. Your goal is to have your borough thrive and end up with a greater population than any of your opponents.
Suburbia is a tile-laying game in which each player tries to build up an economic engine and infrastructure that will be initially self-sufficient, and eventually become both profitable and encourage population growth. As your town grows, you’ll modify both your income and your reputation. As your income increases, you’ll have more cash on hand to purchase better and more valuable buildings, such as an international airport or a high rise office building. As your reputation increases, you’ll gain more and more population (and the winner at the end of the game is the player with the largest population).
During each game, players compete for several unique goals that offer an additional population boost – and the buildings available in each game vary, so you’ll never play the same game twice!
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The object of Power Grid is to supply the most cities with power from your ever-improving collection of power plants. As each player buys power plants, new and better plants come onto the market, forcing you to upgrade as you and your opponents try to spread your power networks across more and more of the country.
Power Grid is one part territory control, one part plant expansion and one part economic management, as players compete to buy the raw materials they need to fuel their ever more demanding power plants.
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In Carcassonne, players build the area surrounding this impressive city, one tile at a time. They then place a follower on fields, cities, roads or monasteries in order to score as many points as possible. These followers will become knights, monks, farmers and thieves, depending on where they are placed. No matter their followers’ function, the player who places their followers most intelligently, and who builds the playing area most deviously, will win the game.
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An adventure game in which the players all possess different parts of treasure maps, Tobago has everyone hunting for buried riches. Gradually, more and more information about the locations of the treasures are revealed and their possible locations narrowed down. When a player identifies the location of one of the treasures, they try to reach it as fast as possible to secure whatever might be buried there.
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K2 is a board game in which each player controls a team of two mountaineers. Their objective, to reach to the summit of K2 and return before anyone else… and without the mountain killing them. Every player uses an identical deck of cards to move their climbers or to acclimatize them to the cold. It’s a deadly mountain and staying alive is not going to be easy.
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This is a true classic, and now brought back by Stronghold Games with completely upgraded components, and now in a 30th Anniversary Edition!
In “Survive”, you try to lead your Explorers from the sinking central island of Atlantis to the safety of one of four islands nearby. Your Explorers can get there quickly by boat (if they find one) or more slowly by swimming. But it will be a perilous journey as they must avoid Sea Serpents, Whales, and Sharks! When the volcano on Atlantis explodes, the game is over. The player with the most Explorer points wins!
As compared to its previous versions from other publishers, all of the components for “Survive” have been upgraded to the highest-quality levels, including slotted wood boats to carry the Explorer tokens, as well as Land Tiles of 3 different thicknesses to give Atlantis a 3-D look.
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This card game recreates an old-fashioned spaghetti western shoot-out, with each player randomly receiving a character card to determine their special abilities, and a secret Role card to determine their goal. The Sheriff has to clean out the town, with the aid of their hidden deputy, while the Outlaws must take down the law. The Renegade? Well, they’re all on their own…
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In Jungle Speed, you must rely on your keen sense of observation and quick reflexes. It requires a steady hand — which can be hard to maintain during the many fits of maniacal laughter! The wooden Totem sits in the middle of the table, waiting for the player with the fastest reflexes to snatch it up and win the game.
Each player is dealt a hand of cards. In order to win you must be the first player to get rid of all of your cards. Each turn, all of the players reveal one of their cards. If two cards are identical, those players must make a grab for the Totem. The faster player then gives their cards to their unfortunate adversary.
To add to the difficulty, certain cards are almost identical, which can trick a hapless player into grabbing the Totem by mistake — a grave error. Other cards force all players to make a grab at once, change the method of play, or otherwise add to the difficulty.
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