Another great selection of crowd-funded board games heading your way across the various platforms! This week's round-up includes a few well known I.Ps such as Sagrada: Artisans and Dune: War for Arrakis; both of which have definitely peaked my interest.
Please remember to back projects with your head and not your heart, know your budget and your limits.
There hangs the twin moon among the skies When plenty pours her elements Night-time splendour it is!
Elementis, a land blessed with mystical elements and ancient magic, is guarded by The Great Sorcerer with his astonishing power throughout the years. In every duo Luna year, the Great Sorcerers’ Tournament is held at the Enchanted Forest where the winner will be awarded the secret to magic mastery as a successor in title. The competition is dangerous and courage is no guarantee for survival – Attack or defence, spells will be casted and battles are inevitable ! Dazzling blast of magic between the GU towers will not cease until the last man stands and wins the seat as The Great Sorcerer !
There are 3 phases in each round: 1. Twilight A sip of potion stimulates sorcerers’ sense of elements, giving them different powers for the rest of the night. Choose your potion wisely!
2. Night During Night phase, sorcerers can perform 1 of the 4 actions: a. Grow GU to gain element(s) and level up your sorcery and power. Flame elements give your flame servants which destroy everything as their masters commanded. Stone elements give your stone servants which protects your territory. Water elements create drops, an essential substance for GUs’ growth, bringing the forest prosperity and abundance. Thunder elements form mana, providing energy for sorcerers to cast spells. Moon elements, the source of ancient magic. Sorcerers gain ancient knowledge by studying moon elements. Once a sorcerer controls a sufficient amount of moon GUs and moon elements, one becomes the most powerful sorcerer and wins the game. b. Ancient and powerful spell scrolls are scattered around the forest. Pick up and cast them wisely to create a chain of combo to destroy your opponents. c. Waging war against other sorcerers is another way to gain influence. Let your opponent know who is the great sorcerer! d. Summoning element to gain immediate assistance and resources.
3. Daybreak Sun rises, sorcerers get rest in the day, recharging their magic, powers and prepare the works for the coming night.
Only the sorcerer with the most influence or moon elements win the game!
Play as the crew of the Spark, the spaceship equipped with the most advanced AI in the universe. Your mission is to deliver precious cargo to the four corners of the galaxy to ensure the survival of humanity. Beware, alien pirates and hostile environments await you, so only the best will arrive in one piece.
Spark Riders 3000 is a hybrid single player/co-operative tower defense and survival game for 1 to 4 players in which players must coordinate their actions to ensure the success of their mission. Each scenario is different and you will have to adapt quickly to avoid seeing your ship destroyed and its cargo intercepted by alien pirates. The goal is simple: reach your delivery point without having one of the ship's vital rooms destroyed.
Behold, the Necromolds! Banned by feudal wizards and banished from mortal hands, these evil spell books and the monsters they hold have once again returned to wreak havoc on humankind!
In Necromolds: Monster Battles, players build and battle golem armies using their Necromold spell books and containers of spell clay. The stronger the monster, the more clay it demands - so build your army wisely! Roll and assign your command dice each round to determine when monsters move and fight. Roll your combat dice to resolve monster battles, leaving the defeated monster smashed on the battle map!
Are YOU powerful enough to collect and command the Necromolds?
Age of Inventors will travel back to the second half of the 19th Century where a series of inventions is about to change where and how people live, work, travel, and communicate. Your role is to lead humanity’s charge into a bright new future.
Every player selects one of the four types of laboratories. You may play as a Government Lab, a Corporation Lab, a University Lab, or an Innovator Lab. Each one offers asymmetrical powers to use to your advantage.
While running the Lab, you will have the chance to purchase different Equipment made available every round. Your choice of equipment will be influenced by each piece’s ability and its cost in funds. Your equipment will also indirectly affect your order of play during every round.
Most importantly, you will be able to use your funds to hire legendary inventors like Tesla, Marie Curie, or Einstein himself! Every inventor has their own unique abilities that might just give you the edge against your opponents.
Then you need to conceive of the right invention from the inventions offer by spending your most valuable resource, “Ideas.”
To complete each invention, you will need to spend the necessary scientific resources (physics, chemistry, or engineering) required by the particular invention. Use your lab assistants as workers and place them on the locations available to research and gather these resources. These locations can either be on your lab or with the inventors you and your opponents have placed on the board. Then, all you need to do is to find an available inventor to invent your invention. Unsurprisingly, you will need an engineer for an engineering invention and so on.
By completing inventions, you not only gain their unique instant ability, but you also advance humanity’s progress in different tracks: Industrial, Economic, and Academic. The player whose laboratory contributes the most to society will be crowned the winner at the end of the game.
However, there is much more than meets the eye. You may gain secret victory points by cleverly placing inventions on the board and gaining Breakthrough Tokens, or gather experiments to fulfil. There is also the Ingenuity rank that affects most parts of the game where you may advance, but at a cost.
Experience a strongly repayable game with a different pattern of inventors and inventions created every time. Breaking News cards spice up the game by altering the rules of each round just a bit to make it more interesting.
Age of Inventors combines Worker Placement and Action Selection mechanics with an interesting blend of asymmetrical power use from your Lab and Inventors, and eventually tile placement of Inventors and Inventions. It is a fast and intense, highly repayable game that is equally enjoyable as a family game or as a competitive euro game for the most demanding gamer.
Sagrada: Artisans is a legacy game take on the stained glass window game Sagrada. Players will compete as rival families of stained glass artisans, who work on the Sagrada Familia's windows over the course of generations. Players will gain powerful new abilities over the course of the campaign along with brand new tools. Other gameplay details about the new game are relatively sparse, but the game involves a spiral notebook and coloured pencils instead traditional game boards.
Welcome to Valroc, the famous city of wizards. You are one of them competing in a great tournament to acquire the Archmage title. With the help of your assistant, earn skill points in each of the 4 elements (Fire, Water, Earth and Air) and enter the arena to tame and chase the most dangerous creatures from the land. Will you take risks in fighting mythical creatures, use black magic or rely on your own knowledge to achieve this actions? Train yourself, attend magical lessons and make offerings to the gods… As many possible strategies as imaginable but only yours will lead you to victory!
In Valroc, you play wizards in competition to acquire the Archmage title. For that, you will have to defeat terrible creatures (or tame them). The first player who has defeated or tamed six creatures ends the game. The winner is the player with the most Prestige Points.
The game is split into two different phases : • The first one is a draft phase in which the players must select the creatures they will have to fight. Thereby they will prepare their tournament as well as possible. • The second phase is the tournament in which the players will fight against each other by a worker placement mechanism.
Pueblo - the ultimate building challenge! Work with the other players to create a mighty home for the Chieftain, stone by stone. You are a craftsman, but you cannot let the Chieftain see your trademark stones, or you will be penalized. The longer you play, the more difficult this task becomes! Take on your opponents and become the Chieftain's Master Builder.
The theme setting is the Native American Pueblos of the Southwest tribes of the Zuni and Hopi. The board is a fairly small square. Each player gets a number of building blocks in their own colour, and also some neutral coloured blocks (1 fewer than the coloured). Starting with the odd coloured block, the player places it on the board, and then gets to move the "Chieftain" around the outer track surrounding the board. If the Chieftain can look straight across and see any coloured blocks, those players gain points -- but points are bad. And when the Chieftain lands on the corners of the track, he looks down on the Pueblo from above, and all visible player's blocks gain them more points. Now, on each subsequent pair of turns, you have a choice of a coloured block and a neutral block. Once all players' blocks are played, the Chieftain makes one last trip around the board, players gaining points all along the way. The player who has gained the fewest number of points is the Master Builder and the winner of the game.
There are also some extra components for making the game more challenging by adding an element of bidding for turn order, and from 1 to 4 sacred sites that cannot be built upon.
Original description from box.
You are a sculptor who must prove to be the best.
After his recent victory in the war against the Pandyas, their arch rival, the Chola King decides to build a temple tower as a mark of his victory. The King, whose dynasty built thousands of temples in South India, invites sculptors from across his empire to help build the temple tower. Each sculptor is expected to bring stones from their region to build the temple together with other sculptors. The sculptors are expected to use all stones available to build. The King also sets the reward objectives for every stone and sculpture placed on the temple tower.
The sculptor can gain rewards incrementally when placing stones of other sculptors on the temple structure. When placing their own stones, the sculptor does get any reward points. But the sculptor does get points for pattern(s) created on the temple structure using their stone. Hence the objective for the sculptors would be to focus on building the temple structure with as many stones possible and creating patterns using their stone. It is important for the sculptor to ensure patterns are not created with stones of other sculptors.
The game ends when the temple tower is completely built with stones and sculptures or when a sculptor is unable to perform any of the possible actions. The sculptor with most reward points is declared as the winner or the best.
Arrakis is a desert world seemingly dead and barren, yet here lies the most important resource in the galaxy: Spice. Without Spice, space travel is impossible, and humans become little clusters on isolated planets. The noble House that controls Arrakis and the production of Spice wields great power. The Emperor gave Arrakis to House Atreides, but then he conspired to replace them with their old rivals, House Harkonnen. Baron Harkonnen crushed the Atreides in a treasonous attack, and now rules the planet with an iron fist. But Paul and Jessica, heirs to House Atreides, are alive, and are mounting a rebellion with the aid of the formidable Fremen, the mysterious inhabitants of the barren expanses of Arrakis.
Only one House will emerge victorious from the coming struggle, while the other will be lost in the desert sands. It's into this grim reality that players will be thrust in Dune: War for Arrakis.
In this asymmetrical strategy game, players fight for control of the planet, maneuvering troops like the Fremen, the Fedaykin, and the fearsome Sardaukar, while sending Spice harvesters into the deep desert, daring to challenge the great Sandworms. The game features an action dice system with numerous event cards that will enable players to retell the Dune saga differently with each playthrough.
Project EOS Rise is a one- to four-player cooperative space adventure game that mashes up Worker Placement, Push Your Luck, and Dice Placement game mechanics. You and your crew will travel the universe, hunting down Fast Radio Bursts (FRBs) that will advance your progress towards finding the Paradise Planet. Once the Paradise Planet is located, the crew will put everything on the line in a desperate attempt to reach it and win the game.
Project EOS Rise features a “Roll For Location” game system that ensures each playthrough generates a unique universe with unique challenges. As well, a light RPG system allows the crew to explore and discover multiple paths to victory.
Whatever path you take, the four characters - Pilot, Combat Specialist, Engineer & Medical Director - can advance their skills strategically to best benefit your mission. Do you spend credits to expand the EOS and open new actions like mining, scanning, or crafting? Do you become a smuggler and deliver interesting cargo to distant galaxies to gain intel and advance your progress? Do you attack Alien ships using the combined strength and skills of the crew?
Whatever path you choose "Time is of the essence" because each year exploring brings the star marker on the Extinction track one step close to game over. Also keeping the Starship EOS in working condition is paramount because, if the Command room is destroyed, your mission is aborted. In either case, the game is lost.
Step into the command chair and pilot humanity's first intergalactic starship!