In Monster Baby Rescue!, players take care of their sad, lost and ill "Baby monsters" who got lost to us from fantastic world. Every player chooses their own "Monstie" — Dragon, Mandrigora, Ork, Basilisk, or Kerberos — and with the help of tiles displayed on the table takes care of it. There are tiles to groom particular parts of bodies, tiles with playgrounds, cosy places, diamonds to play or decorate with, and magicians (vets). These tiles have different "price" which is paid by different number of steps of your Monstie on the time track. The next player is the one who is the most behind (takes the cheapest tiles from the table).

Players gain points for bonuses on tiles and also for the levels, they groom, improve, and take care of their Monsties.

—description from the publisher

Yahtzee is a classic dice game played with 5 dice. Each player's turn consists of rolling the dice up to 3 times in hope of making 1 of 13 categories. Examples of categories are 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, straight, full house, etc. Each player tries to fill in a score for each category, but this is not always possible. When all players have entered a score or a zero for all 13 categories, the game ends and total scores are compared.

The traditional (public domain) game Yacht predates the trademarked game, and has slightly different scoring.

There are four basic scoring difference between the tradition game Yacht and Yahtzee. They are: 1) Yacht has no Three of a Kind category, 2) there are no bonuses in Yacht, 3) there are no Joker rules in Yacht, and 4) the Full House category is scored as the sum of the dice. The other scoring rules are identical between the two games.

Travel versions of the game use a device that keeps the dice captured within compartments of a plastic box and allows players to "lock" a particular die between rolls.

In King of Tokyo, you play mutant monsters, gigantic robots, and strange aliens—all of whom are destroying Tokyo and whacking each other in order to become the one and only King of Tokyo.

At the start of each turn, you roll six dice, which show the following six symbols: 1, 2, or 3 Victory Points, Energy, Heal, and Attack. Over three successive throws, choose whether to keep or discard each die in order to win victory points, gain energy, restore health, or attack other players into understanding that Tokyo is YOUR territory.

The fiercest player will occupy Tokyo, and earn extra victory points, but that player can't heal and must face all the other monsters alone!

Top this off with special cards purchased with energy that have a permanent or temporary effect, such as the growing of a second head which grants you an additional die, body armor, nova death ray, and more.... and it's one of the most explosive games of the year!

In order to win the game, one must either destroy Tokyo by accumulating 20 victory points, or be the only surviving monster once the fighting has ended.

First Game in the King of Tokyo series

In LLAMA, you want to dump cards from your hand as quickly as you can, but you might not be able to play what you want, so do you quit and freeze your hand or draw and hope to keep playing?

Each player starts a round with six cards in hand; the deck consists of llama cards and cards numbered 1-6, with eight copies of each. On a turn, the active player can play a card, draw a card, or quit. To play a card, you must play the same number as the top card of the discard pile or one number higher. If a 6 is on the discard pile, you can play a 6 or a llama, and if a llama is on top, you can play another llama or a 1. If you quit, you place your remaining cards face down and take no further actions in the round. If all players have quit but one, that player can continue to play, but cannot draw more cards.

The round ends when one player empties their hand or all players have quit. In either case, players collect tokens based on the cards in their hand. Each different number card in hand gets you white tokens (each worth 1 point) equal to the value of the card while one or more llamas gets you a black token (worth 10 points). (You can exchange ten white tokens for one black token at any time.) If you played all your cards, you can return one token (white or black) that you previously collected to the supply. You then shuffle all the cards and begin a new round, in which the first player to play will be the one who emptied their hand or was the last one to quit in the previous round.

The game ends at the end of the round where at least one player has forty or more total points. Whoever has the fewest points wins!

The original title of this game is a German acronym and stands for Lege alle Minuspunkte ab, that is, "discard all minus points", with "Lama" also being the German spelling of "llama".

The Polish game Lato z Komarami features gameplay nearly identical to LLAMA except that the game has one less "llama" card, and the penalty for llama cards in hand is 10 points per card, instead of being 10 points for one or more llama cards.

Prepare Your Place of Power!

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!

A game typically lasts 4-6 rounds. In each round, players do these steps:


Collect essences: performs any Collect abilities, and may take essences from components.
Do actions, 1 per turn, clockwise from the First Player: place an artifact, claim a monument or Place of Power, discard a card for 1 Gold or any 2 other essences, use a power on a straightened component, or pass: exchange magic items and draw 1 card. Play continues until all players have passed.
Pass procedure: If you are first to pass, take the First Player token, swap your magic item for a different magic item, draw 1 card.
Check victory points (10+ VPs). If no one has won: straighten all turned components, and begin the next round.

Hardback is a deck-building word game, a prequel to Paperback. As an aspiring 19th-century novelist, you work to pen your next masterpiece, earning prestige along the way. Specialize your deck in certain genres to exploit card combinations, and press your luck to draw extra cards — but make sure you can still string a word together!

Players build a deck of letters with various powers and race to 60 fame points to win. Some of the features:


No wilds in your deck - any card can be wild.
Push your luck for more cards with the Ink system.
Match genre colors to gain bonus abilities on your cards.
New "Timeless Classic" letter cards stay in play until an opponent uses them.


In addition to the competitive race mode for 2-5 players, the base game includes several variant rules, including Literary Awards, Adverts, Player Powers, and Events; and a co-op mode for 1-4 players, in which players join forces against one of four simulated opponents, each of which is proficient in a different deck genre.

"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.

Splendor is a game of chip-collecting and card development. Players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, means of transportation, shops—all in order to acquire the most prestige points. If you're wealthy enough, you might even receive a visit from a noble at some point, which of course will further increase your prestige.

On your turn, you may (1) collect chips (gems), or (2) buy and build a card, or (3) reserve one card. If you collect chips, you take either three different kinds of chips or two chips of the same kind. If you buy a card, you pay its price in chips and add it to your playing area. To reserve a card—in order to make sure you get it, or, why not, your opponents don't get it—you place it in front of you face down for later building; this costs you a round, but you also get gold in the form of a joker chip, which you can use as any gem.

All of the cards you buy increase your wealth as they give you a permanent gem bonus for later buys; some of the cards also give you prestige points. In order to win the game, you must reach 15 prestige points before your opponents do.

In Carson City: The Card Game, each player is in charge of developing a city. You and your opponents try to choose the most lucrative parcels of land and buildings, then place these parcels and buildings wisely so as to make your city as prosperous as possible. You can also win the support and gain the help of the most influential people in the city. Do not ignore your opponents as they will try to make the best moves in your stead, with a blind bidding mechanism determining who goes first in each round.

Arabana-Opodopo premiered at Essen 2002 as the up to 4 player version of Arabana-Ikibiti (also published as Kahuna). Players play bamboo sticks which allow them to build bridges between islands. Whenever a player gains a majority of bridges on an island the other players will lose all their bridges on that island. During a scoring round, players gain points for islands that they control.

Re-released by Tilsit as the 2nd game in their Tilsit Collection series at Essen 2003 with the confusing title of Kanaloa, which is the title of a different but similarly-themed game by Bambus (further adding to the confusion, as Bambus originally published Arabana-Opodopo).

Re-implements:

Arabana-Ikibiti
Kahuna


Online Play


Yucata.de

The Speicherstadt is an auction card game. Players compete for victory points, which come mainly from contracts (sets of resources) and special cards (like a collected set of 1-4 identical "counting offices", the port rewarding collected ship cards etc.). The game is built on two core concepts:

1. Players bid for cards by building "towers" with their meeples over them. Each meeple in a tower increases the cost of a card - but only for players "below" it. This is the main mechanic of the game - players must consider WHEN to bid (place their meeple) over a certain card and when to use their meeples to make others pay more. This is important, because a player can make only three bids during a round.

2. Players are punished by negative points for not collecting firemen cards. Thus, ignoring security may cost a player a victory. By many players, the "punishing" mechanic is considered a trademark of the author - Stefan Feld.

The deck is divided into four seasons - winter, spring, summer and autumn. In later seasons, more powerful cards appear, so players need to think ahead in managing their resources.

---- Promotional blurb from the publisher ----

Hamburg around 1900 - the gate to the world. Within the harbour there stretches a unique complex of storehouses: Speicherstadt. The network of canals and bridges houses a terminal for spices, coffee, tea and carpets from all over the world.

As one of Hamburg´s wholesaler at the heyday of the Speicherstadt you acquire shiploads for the storehouses, not too expensive, of course, as you like to make a profit selling them. Who makes the best deals within a year and supplies his clients with the right goods will be the winner of the game. But beware! Sudden fires cause heavy losses. You might be advised to invest in fire protection early.

Playing Speicherstadt you will be thrilled by the simple and original mechanism of acquiring desired action cards.

Charles IV has been crowned King of Bohemia and ruler of the Holy Roman Empire. From his castle in Prague, he oversees construction of new fortifications: a bridge across the Vltava River, a university, and a cathedral rising within the walls of the castle itself. Prague is already among the largest cities in Europe. King Charles will make it the capital of an empire!

In Praga Caput Regni, players take the role of wealthy citizens who are organizing various building projects in medieval Prague. By expanding their wealth and joining in the construction, they gain favor with the king. Players choose from six actions on the game board — the "action crane" — that are always available, but which are weighted with a constantly shifting array of costs and benefits. By using these actions, you can increase your resources, improve the strength of your chosen actions, and build "New Prague City", the Charles Bridge, or city walls. You can possibly gain additional actions or even participate in the construction of St. Vitus Cathedral.

Clever players will discover synergies between carefully timed actions and the rewards from constructing civic projects as all of the mechanisms mesh together. At the end of the game, the player who most impressed King Charles wins.

In Space Mission, players explore eight planets (randomly selected from twelve in the game) by flying from planet to neighboring planet or passing through a "jump gate" that allows them to travel anywhere. Each planet has a different combination of values for jumping to it, scanning it and landing on it.

Each player has a hand of five cards, with each card having three color-coded values on it: blue for jumping, green for scanning, and orange for landing. On a turn, you take two actions from six possibilities, with the same action being possible:

—Top up: Discard any number of cards (including zero), then refill your hand to five cards.

—Jump: Move your spaceship from the jump gate (where players start the game) or a planet to any other planet by discarding a card that shows the landing value of the target planet. Place one of your tokens on the jump gate.

—Fly: Move your spaceship to either neighboring planet; this move is free.

—Scan: Discard a card with the scanning value of the planet where your spaceship is currently located; look through the face-down planet tiles, place one aside face-down with your marker on it, then return the tiles to that planet. This action is possible only on undeveloped planets.

—Develop: Develop the planet where your spaceship is located by discarding two cards that match the two landing values shown on that planet. Mark this planet with your space station token, hand out all scanned and claimed planet tiles to the appropriate players, claim one remaining planet tile for yourself, then place the remaining tiles face-down again. A planet can be developed only once.

—Discover: Take a planet tile of your choice from the developed planet where your spaceship is currently located.

If at any point, all of the planet tiles on a planet show only empty space, the player holding the tiles lays them face-up next to that planet. When 6-12 space tiles have been revealed, an amount based on the number of players, the game ends and players tally their points.

Each type of planet tile scores in a different way. With Minerals, for example, you multiply the number of mineral tiles you hold with the largest number of mineral tiles in a single color. Medals are worth three points each. A green-blue pair of Matter tiles is worth seven points, while a single Matter tile is worth only two. Each space station you've built is worth three points, and the players score 9, 6, 3 and 1 for having the most, secondmost, etc. tokens on the jump gate. The player with the most points wins.

Reimplements:

Jump Gate


Online Play


Yucata (turn-based)

You are the founder of a new village during the middle ages, in the years after a great plague. The loss of so many people has created big problems for the survivors. Many of the people the villagers used to depend on for essential things like food, shelter and clothes are gone. Craftsmen find themselves without suppliers of raw materials, traders have lost their customers and many have lost their farms and workshops as they escaped the plague.

The roads are full of refugees seeking a new beginning. They come to you, hoping to settle down on your land and make a living. Your grain farm is the ideal starting point for a village, reliably providing food for many people. You must choose wisely who you allow to settle with you, as your food and resources are limited.

The people on the road have valuable and unique skills, but they all in turn rely on other people with very specific crafts to be able to work. Raw materials, tools and services must be provided by other people from the road.

If you manage to find people that can work together to make a profit, while increasing your food surplus and capacity for building new houses, your village will be prosperous.

The game comes with a solo mode where a lone village strives to prosper in spite of the dreaded Countess and her evil machinations.

—description from the publisher

Murano the game is set in Murano, a small group of seven islands near Venice that's well-known by tourists for its glassmaking. As in Venice, the islands of Murano are separated by canals, so gondolas and transportation are at the heart of this game.

The game board depicts the islands of Murano, with the islands being divided up into building sites and walkways. Surrounding the islands is a series of action spaces, with gondolas being present in some number of them at the start of play. On a turn, you move one of the gondolas in the direction of play to an empty space, then take the action shown there. You can't pass another gondola while moving or land in an occupied space, but for a coin you can move a gondola that's in front of the gondola you want to move, and you can pay to move multiple gondolas, if needed.

Some actions place shops on the islands, with shops coming in different types. You mark a shop to show ownership, and when tourists show up later, they will shop at various stores depending on their proximity and the goods they offer. You also need to take actions to move your personal gondolas to islands so that you can take actions there.

Why are you doing all of this activity? To score victory point cards in hand, and actions on the board will let you gain additional VP cards to give you direction to your actions or let you profit from what you've already done.

You can also use some of the buildings to create glassworks, and those glassworks come into play on the VP cards, through tourist sales, and via an action space shown at the bottom of the game board image that lets you sell different types of glass for money.

The Complete Edition from 2020 contains Murano: Promo Cards and Murano: The Christmas Tree packaged inside the box and may be found here: Murano: Complete Edition.

Each player represents the leadership of a 17th century Scottish clan looking to expand its territory and its wealth. The success of your clan depends on your ability to make the correct decision at the opportune time, be it by establishing a new pasture for your livestock, growing grain for the production of whisky, selling your goods on the various markets, or investing in the cultivation of special places such as lochs and castles.

Glen More offers a unique turn mechanism. Players take territory tiles from a rondel. Picking a tile has not only influence on the actions you get by the surrounding tiles in your territory, it also determines when you'll have your next turn (and how many turns you will have in the game). But having a lot of turns is not always the best strategy for a successful chieftain.

Glen More is 6 in the Alea medium box series, and is rated a 4 on the alea complexity level.

Beyond the Sun is a space civilization game in which players collectively decide the technological progress of humankind at the dawn of the Spacefaring Era, while competing against each other to be the leading faction in economic development, science, and galactic influence.

The game is played over a variable number of rounds until a number of game-end achievements are collectively claimed by the players. The winner is the faction with the most victory points, which are obtained by researching technologies, improving their economy, controlling and colonizing systems, and completing various achievements and events throughout the game.

On a turn, a player moves their action pawn to an empty action space, then takes that action. They then conduct their production phase, either producing ore, growing their population, or trading one of those resources for another. Finally, they can claim up to one achievement, if possible.

As players take actions, they research new technologies that come in four levels. Each technology is one of four types (scientific, economic, military, commercial), and higher-level technologies must match one of the types of tech that lead into it. Thus, players create their own technology tree in each game, using these actions to increase their military strength, to jump to different habitable exoplanetary systems, to colonize those systems, to boost their resource production, to develop android tech that allows growth without population, and more.

WELCOME TO THE ROBOT ACTION! Today we witness the most incredible steel gladiators of this year's Robot Fighting League season in all their glory and magnificence. The battle robots are gathered in the arena, and the crowd is screaming for some laser-blasting action in this title match. The operators are starting up their control hardware, and we expect nothing but a whole new level of cybernetic devastation. In the end, there will be only one operator to rule the arena... LET THE BATTLE BEGIN!

In VOLT, each player takes the role of an operator controlling one robot to challenge other players. By "programming" three steps ahead, players try to anticipate the moves of other robots, aim to destroy them, or try to control spaces in the arena that get them victory points. VOLT includes an easy-to-begin training guide but still leaves experienced players with plenty of different modules to make their robot battles even more exciting and merciless.

Plan your next steps ahead by quickly grabbing a starting number in order for your robot to run or shoot at just the right moment later on. Push the other robots into pits or shoot them away with your lasers to gain victory points. Sounds simple – it is simple, well, at least the rules. But destroying the others without taking damage yourself is quite the hefty challenge. Fortunately, destroyed robots don't have to wait long for their next foray into the ring. They reboot in the next round.

VOLT is a completely revised and extended edition of Emerson Matsuuchi's game VOLT: Robot Battle Arena that also includes AI rules for a game with 2-3 players and a Championship mode.

Game description from the publisher:

Don't expect to lie around the sun, lazily sipping cocktails and passively watching hula dancers, because the tactical game Hawaii is not a paradise for idlers, but rather for bold, active strategists. Restlessly, they'll move their pieces on the game board, facing constant challenges in terms of making their beautiful villages on this beautiful island as profitable as possible. Only those who will be able to use their dwindling resources to meet the increasing demands over five rounds will find a spot for themselves on the beach.

In Hawaii, players must make use of their limited resources to score points by growing their villages and exploring the surrounding islands. Your chieftains move around the board to purchase new tiles for their villages, hopefully grabbing the best deals before their opponents. Three different currencies are used to pay for these trips, so make sure you don't run out of any of them too quickly. Players are also rewarded for providing for their people (measured essentially by how much they bought on a given turn), but your meager income shrinks as the game goes on. Players will have to balance a number of ways to score points to secure their victory.

In Viticulture, the players find themselves in the roles of people in rustic, pre-modern Tuscany who have inherited meager vineyards. They have a few plots of land, an old crushpad, a tiny cellar, and three workers. They each have a dream of being the first to call their winery a true success.

The players are in the position of determining how they want to allocate their workers throughout the year. Every season is different on a vineyard, so the workers have different tasks they can take care of in the summer and winter. There's competition over those tasks, and often the first worker to get to the job has an advantage over subsequent workers.

Fortunately for the players, people love to visit wineries, and it just so happens that many of those visitors are willing to help out around the vineyard when they visit as long as you assign a worker to take care of them. Their visits (in the form of cards) are brief but can be very helpful.

Using those workers and visitors, players can expand their vineyards by building structures, planting vines (vine cards), and filling wine orders (wine order cards). Players work towards the goal of running the most successful winery in Tuscany.