Christmas is growing ever closer and as such, the campaigns are slowing down to give everyone more money to spend. This week we have 3 new projects starting and 5 late starters from the previous week. All of these projects are colourful and look gorgeous, Dungeons & Co and the new expansion for Night Parade have my attention. Happy gaming everyone.
Welcome to Dungeons & Co. a tile placing board game for 2-4 players.
Players have been hired by evil empress Hornspike to create the best dungeon in all of the land. As a Dungeon Contractor, players will take turns drafting tiles and placing them in their dungeon. They'll keep in mind damage, weapon range and overall synergy to create the best dungeon possible.
After tiles have been placed, players will take turns fending off adventurers wandering in to steal your gems. Players will gain/lose gems based on if they can defeat their adventurers.
The player at the end of 12 turns with the most Gems wins.
Arabella is a 18XX roll-and-write for 1-4 players, set in Estonia. The goal is to collect most victory points but similar to other 18XX games trains, shares and dividends play here an important part.
During their turn players choose dice from the common dice pool - the amount of dice chosen and also the value of these dice are important - to perform one action. As an action you can buy shares and trains, build tracks and also run trains for income and dividends. Game ends when one of the players has either reached the end of one of their income tracks or the last 6-train is bought. After that victory points are collected - most of them from fulfilled objective cards but also from shares and unlocked dice/modifiers.
The game has the following features:
Box entry: to change the kind of tyres and repair car damage.
Climatology: get the best tyre according the weather.
4 types of tyres (soft, hard, intermediate, hard rain)
Auction for overtake.
Asymmetry of drivers and teams.
Collisions, breakdowns
Campaign mode: world championship
6 different circuits
Each race lasts 8 or 12 laps. In each race you have to choose which kind of tyres you use. Your strategy during the race is crucial:
When to overtake: Overtake it's not an easy question, you have to decide the right moment.
When and how use your break points, engine points and driver points during the race.
When to enter box: this is a crucial decision in the game you have to enter your box depending on the weather and the car damage.
It has been 200 years since the king disappearance. After King Enma vanished, the yokai clans stormed the streets parading in the night for souls. Many tried to rule over us, but their reign never lasted more than a couple decades. You see, the throne is cursed and it feasts on the ruler's power. and the weaker they get, the more our magic fades away. Soon the gates to the spirit realm will be forever closed, and our legend forgotten... Are you ready to lead our rebellion?
The Cursed Throne Expansion brings: a new type of action - Reign: that changes effect based on which clan sits on the Cursed Throne; Spirit as wooden tokens, the Champions, the Challenge board, and more yokai to join your parades!
The Sun is dying
In recent years, the Sun has become increasingly unstable, to the point where experts claim it could go supernova at any moment. The various inhabitants of the planets in this solar system are launching one last effort to save themselves, which involves building a final Ark to propel a small selection of their people into deep space. This requires a great deal of energy, and in a final ironic twist, the only source of such great energy is the dying star itself. In the process of extracting and transmitting the energy required to save themselves, they will be compounding the instability of the Sun and hastening the end of their worlds.
Sol: Last Days of a Star is a board game for one to five players where each player represents a different planetary effort to transmit as much energy from the Sun back to their Ark so they can to escape the solar system before the Sun explodes!
The board represents the solar environment: two layers of orbit around the Sun (Upper and Lower Orbit), and three layers within the Sun itself (the Convective, Radiative, and Core). The deeper you take actions, the higher your rewards, but the faster the instability of the Sun is increased. Your Mothership rotates slowly in orbit around the Sun, and this is the only place your ships can launch from to perform useful tasks in the solar environment. You can either convert ships into stations or use the ships to activate yours and other players' stations. If you activate your own stations you get the full reward, while activating other player's stations you split the reward with the owner. You gain energy by activating Energy Nodes, and you use this energy to either activate Ship Foundries to build new ships (which you need since you are constantly losing ships by converting them into new stations) or activate Transmit Towers to transmit the energy back to your Ark to turn into Momentum (which is ultimately how your Ark will escape). But you cannot enter the Sun without converting ships into Solar Gates which span the high energy membranes separating one layer of the sun from the next.
You must carefully manage your time and resources in order to transmit the most energy back to your Ark before the Sun is lost forever. With any luck, some small collection of your last planetary residents will escape the solar system before it is engulfed by the oncoming supernova!
A multi-expansion for Lords of Vegas, featuring all new boards and components representing the other gambling meccas of the United States. Contains gameplay for playing in Atlantic City, Reno, and 1881 Tombstone. Requires the Lords of Vegas base set (any edition) to play.
Components include:
Boards for Reno, Tombstone, Atlantic City, and New Orleans
Deck of poker cards
Tombstone character tiles
Reno arch tile
New Orleans riverboat tiles
Rulebook
In the board game Gin Crafters, you want to prove that you are a better gin crafter than other craftsmen by procuring dozens of uniquely flavoured botanicals for gin, coming up with recipes and branding ideas, and skilfully combining various actions.
You lead a grand civilization at the height of its influence, but can you save it from collapse? In Empire's End, 2-4 players compete to keep calamity at bay. Empire's End marries the intuitive and elegant mechanism of reverse-bidding with engine-building, long-term planning, and strategic depth. The result is a game with a quick tempo, abundant tension, and multiple challenging paths to victory.
Players begin with a civilization at the height of its power. Play proceeds through a series of phases, varying as you progress through the game. During the Disaster phase, players face a common threat such as famine, a flood, or barbarians. The player who ends the bidding must take the disaster, which devastates one of their territories.
With each disaster that befalls an empire, its people grow in wisdom and resilience. In the style of the modern classic game No Thanks, resources bid by all players will end up in the hands of the player who ultimately takes the disaster card. That player also gains a new ability, an innovation that reflects their empire's ability to adapt in the face of challenging times.
Each turn, players move along a progress track that dictates whether they will face a disaster or another type of phase. Players can gain new resources during Production phases, rebuild lost territories during Industry phases, and challenge one another during Military phases. At the end of the progress track, the game is concluded and the winner is the civilization with the greatest number of victory points. Intact territories contribute points, but innovations and military successes can provide alternative ways to win.
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