Haggis is a climbing game in the same family as Zheng Fen and Big Two. It borrows and recombines elements from its parent games - card combinations, bombs, scoring for cards in hand, scoring for cards collected in tricks - and it mixes in equally distributed wild cards and betting that you'll be the first to empty your hand of cards.

Europe, 1347. A disaster is about to strike. The Black Death reaches Europe, and during the next 4-5 years, the population of Europe will be halved.
The players settle in the various regions of Europe, while the plague spreads throughout all of the continent. The players gain help from the various classes of the middle ages: the Peasants provide population growth, the wise Monks keep the rats away, the rich Merchants flee when the plague approaches, the warfare conducted by the Knights spreads the plague to new areas, the Witches control the spread through magic and witchcraft, whereas the Kings avoid the plague by staying in their fortified palaces. But the plague does not make any distinction: when the rats arrive, no one can feel safe.
When the plague withdraws and the game ends, the player with the highest surviving population wins.

Rattus is a medium-strategy game that takes place in the Dark Ages during the black plague. The players try to hold off the disease.
To do this they get help from farmers, magicians, knights, nobles, ... But nothing helps as long as the rats keep coming.

In Rajas of the Ganges: The Dice Charmers, players use eight symbol dice to develop their province, gather goods, and sell them at the market; win over influential personalities in the palace; and sail up and down the Ganges River.

As in the original game, you win this race for wealth and fame if you are the first to have your fame marker and your money marker intersect on the two tracks running in opposite directions.

—description from the publisher

Arkadia is a game about building the city and castle of Arkadia.

Players use builders, cards, workers, and neutral workers to build houses in Arkadia. Houses are built with the seal of one of 4 families; this family gave the building order and will get the building player its seal.

These seals can be changed for victory points. But seals are subject to changing values. The growing castle (every time a house is built, players also build on the castle) has the 4 seals on it as well, which decides the value of each seal. The castle is also the game's timer: once the second layer is built, the last round starts. The player with the most gold wins.

Released: Essen 2006.

Online Play

Yucata (turn-based)

In Masons, players represent architects, who together establish cities on the landscape of the game board. When a city is completed, all players score points for "guild cards" they play, with the right timing in playing the right card making all the difference.

Each turn, a player first establishes a new wall somewhere on the board. Each wall will be enclosed by two towers, and will have one house placed on each side of it. It's possible for a wall to need only one, or zero, new towers by putting it next to existing towers. It's possible for only one house to be placed, if the wall is placed along the outside of the game board.
After placing the wall, the player rolls three dice to determine the color of one of the towers (the color of a possible second tower may be freely chosen), and that of the two houses (if only one house is placed, then the player may choose which of the dice to pick for the color of the house).
Finally, if the newly placed wall causes a piece of land to be fully enclosed, a new city has been established. If the new city borders one or more existing cities, it may be combined with one of those cities. Two houses of the same color inside the city are upgraded to a palace. A scoring round is now triggered, during which all players get to play one or two "guild cards", and then draw one new card. Each guild card will score a feature of either the just completed city, or outside it. Possible features are the number of houses & palaces or towers of a specified color, the number of fields of the city, the number of houses inside a "district" on the board, the number of palaces inside a city, the different number of colors inside a city, or the total number of completed cities. At the end of a scoring round, whichever player is in last place may discard as many guild cards as desired, and draw new ones to replace them.

The game ends when all pieces of a certain type have been played, and the winner is whoever has the most points.

The players are builders in Ancient Egypt, competing to get the most fame building different monuments requested by the Pharaoh (the Sphinx, the Obelisk, the Temple, and the Pyramid).

The game lasts 5 turns. In each turn, the players place their pawns on the board, along the banks of the Nile, getting the advantages shown on each square. On the right bank there are fixed squares where the players may get workers, improve their mercantile capabilities, influence the floods (and thus the fertility of the fields) and reserve the right to build the monuments (that are built only after all the placements are done). On the left bank the players may take cards that are deployed randomly on the 10 squares at the start of each turn; some of these cards are kept until the end of the game (cultivable fields, stone quarries, deities granting special advantages), while others are discarded after the use and offer multiple immediate advantages.

In Egizia, the twist on the worker placement mechanic is that the players must place their pawns following the course of the Nile, moving northwards (from the top to the bottom of the board, that is seen from the Mediterranean Sea). In this way, each placement not only blocks the opponents from choosing the same square (except monuments, where multiple players are always allowed), but also forces the player to place his remaining pawns only on the squares below the one he just occupied (note that "pawns" are placed, since "workers" are one of the resources of the game, like grain and stones).

When the placement phase is over, the workers of the players must be fed with the grain produced in the fields. The production of each field is based on the floods of the Nile, so some fields may not give grain each turn. If a player has not enough grain for all his workers, he has to buy it with Victory Points (the ratio is better for players with improved mercantile capabilities, recorded on a specific track on the board).

After that, stones are received from the owned quarries and used to build the monuments (if the right to do was reserved earlier) along with the workers.

When the game ends, the points scored during the game (mainly building the monuments) are added to the bonuses obtained fulfilling certain conditions on the Sphinx cards. Whoever has the highest total is the winner.

Online Play


Yucata (turn-based)

As an architect in Welcome To..., you want to build the best new town in the United States of the 1950s by adding resources to a pool, hiring employees, and more.

Welcome To... plays like a roll-and-write dice game in which you mark results on a score-sheet...but without dice. Instead you flip cards from three piles to make three different action sets with both a house number and a corresponding action from which everyone chooses one. You use the number to fill in a house on your street in numerical order. Then you take the action to increase the point value of estates you build or score points at the end for building parks and pools. Players also have the option of taking actions to alter or duplicate their house numbers. And everyone is racing to be the first to complete public goals. There's lots to do and many paths to becoming the best suburban architect in Welcome To...!

Because of the communal actions, game play is simultaneous and thus supports large groups of players. With many varying strategies and completely randomized action sets, no two games will feel the same!

"Illustori" (イラストリー) is a word chain game where players lay down artwork cards in turn and give names to them, such that the start of a card's name overlaps the end of the previous card's name. (In Japanese, they overlap by syllable; in English and other languages, by letter.)

The artwork name that the turn player chooses can be a sentence, a quote, an onomatopeia, or anything. All it needs for chaining is the agreement from the other players.

Every player starts with 5 cards. The rest of the cards are the stack. Gameplay follows a clockwise direction.
The first player draws a card from the stack, place it where everyone can see, and call the first "word". Then the turn moves to the next player.
At every player's turn, they can choose either of the following actions;
1. Place one of their cards and call any chaining "word". The "word" has to be chained to the last letter of the previous "word".
2. Discard one or more cards and draw the same number of cards from the stack.

If the turn player put and call the "word", the rest of the players discuss whether the "words" matches the artwork or not.
When more than half of the players agree, the chaining is succeeded. Otherwise, the card placed in this turn is discarded and the failed player must draw one card from the stack.
Then the turn moves on to the next player.

Once a player has no cards remaining, that will be the last round. If multiple players are able to place all of their cards during the last round, all of them are winners.

-description from designer

Schweinebande (literally "Gang of Pigs") was published in February 2010 by Hans im Glück.

The board depicts a cattle market, on which pigs, goats, donkeys, chickens, and other animals are offered for sale. Each player tries to position his farmers strategically in order to obtain the most favorable prices, or to block his competitors. Once animals are acquired, they must be fed every round. As soon as a player possesses 4 of the same animals, he can sell his herd to gain victory points. Naturally, a set of 4 donkeys is worth more than 4 chickens.

The storyline in Friedemann Friese's Fearsome Floors (aka, Finstere Flure) continues the FFF-saga from Friese's earlier game, with players trying to escape from Fürst Fieso. Story aside, what we have is a wonderful race game in which the players must move through a dungeon as quickly as possible – or at least within 14 turns – before it crumbles over their heads.

Players could reach the exit in only seven turns if everything were peaceful and quiet, but unfortunately the dungeon is also the home of a very hungry monster! Each round, players take turns moving one disk at a time, flipping over the disk after moving it to reveal the movement points available for the next round. They can try to lead the monster, who is always after fresh prey, to opponents' pieces, but they may find themselves eaten instead! Pieces can slide along blood slicks or might be crushed between a boulder and a wall. You can even try to get the monster to teleport to another part of the board, where it will fall upon its next victim!

Taken from Boardgame News:

Oregon is a family/strategy game with a colonization-theme and a card-driven placement mechanism. The aim of the game is to position farmers and point-giving buildings in the best possible locations on the board.

The year is 1846. Gunslingers, lawmen, pioneers, and whole families left their homes in the east and midwest to try their luck in the West. They loaded their covered wagons with all they could and headed west across steppes, deserts, and mountains. Many chose to settle in Oregon, where the farming and hunting were plentiful, and they could stake out a bit of land for themselves. The players have already reached Oregon and gaze upon the rich farmland below and the potential gold and coal reserves of the mountains. They build ports on the lakes and rivers, churches, warehouses, post offices, and train stations on the plains. And, of course, they must farm the rich land to grow the food necessary for the area to grow and thrive. To win, a player must choose the right times to farm and the right times to build, for planning is necessary, even here in the untamed wilderness of Oregon! Oregon - the way the west was won...

In Haiclue, players combine random word tiles to make clues.

Each round, every player uses 15 random word tiles to make a clue for one of the four words in the center of the table. When everyone has finished, the group reads the clues out loud, and everyone guesses which of the four words belongs to each player. If a player guesses correctly, they score a point for themselves and a point for the author of the clue.

3-12 players (competitive)
2 players (co-op)
30 minute playtime.

-description from publisher

With a name like Lemminge, you know you're going to be racing little rodents across a finish line of some sort, and this design lives up to that promise. Each player controls two lemmings that must make their way across a game board of hexagonal spaces; most spaces contain grassland and can be entered no matter which card a player lays down, but some spaces contain special terrain (water, hills, etc.) that can be entered only when the appropriate card is played.

Each player starts with 2-6 cards in hand, with the number dependent on the player count. On a turn, a player either:


Discards any number of cards from hand, then refills her hand to six cards, or
Plays a card, then moves one of her lemmings.


Each card is one of five landscape types and numbered 0-4. If the card played is equal to or lower than the value of the top landscape card of the same type, then the player adds the values of all landscape cards of this type, then moves her lemming up to this many spaces, crossing grassland and the depicted landscape type freely. If the card is higher than the top card of the depicted landscape type, then discard all cards of this type and start a new pile. Before moving her lemming, though, she places a bonus landscape hex of this type on the game board — ideally stifling the future movement of her opponents while scooting her own lemming further toward the goal.

If one or more lemmings are in your intended path of movement, you can push them aside before moving into the space, spending one point of movement for each lemming so moved. You can push your own lemming, if you set them up right — even across the finish line.

The first player to move both of her lemmings across the finish line wins.

A curse has been placed on the Valley of Life. Hearing the spirits of nature cry out for aid, clans of druids have arrived, determined to use their blessings to heal the land and rescue the spirits. It will require courage and also caution, as the curse can overwhelm the careless who wield too much power.

In Mystic Vale, 2 to 4 players take on the role of druidic clans trying to cleanse the curse upon the land. Each turn, you play cards into your field to gain powerful advancements and useful vale cards. Use your power wisely, or decay will end your turn prematurely. Score the most victory points to win the game!

Mystic Vale uses the innovative "Card Crafting System", which lets you not only build your deck, but build the individual cards in your deck, customizing each card's abilities to exactly the strategy you want to follow.

Drivers, start your engines! Will you cross the finish line first? Now is your chance to find out!

Automobiles is a deck‑building game in which the fun is cubed — because instead of using cards to build a deck, you build with your collection of cubes. These cubes not only allow you to race your car around the track, but they also allow you to improve your handling, optimize your pit crew, and boost your speed, all of which are your keys to victory!

The goal of the game is to cross the finish line first! You accomplish this by customizing your race car and surrounding yourself with the best crew. Your race car and crew are represented by a collection of cubes garnered from various options available to you. Starting with the same small set of cubes, each player builds their collection as they play the game. Use these cubes to enhance your performance, train your pit crew, and ensure your race car runs as effectively as possible. Be the first to cross the finish line and watch that checkered flag wave!

Designed by David Short, Automobiles is the third title in AEG's Destination Fun series! Continue your travels in the acclaimed Trains and Planes board games.

Online Play

Yucata (turn-based)
BoardGameArena (real-time & turn-based)

Your mission, Martians, is to swoop down on the pathetic denizens of the primitive planet Earth and scoop up as many of the inhabitants as you can manage. We are interested in samples of the Chicken, Cow, and Human populations so that we can determine which of them is actually in charge. The Earthlings might manage to put up a feeble defense, but surely nothing that a small taste of your Death Rays can't handle. Make Mars proud – be the first Martian to fill your abduction quota!

In Martian Dice you will roll 13 custom dice in an effort to set aside ("abduct") Humans, Chickens, and Cows. With each roll you must first set aside any Tanks, representing the human military coming to fend off your alien invasion. Then you may choose one type of die to set aside as well - one of the earthlings to abduct, or Death Rays to combat the military. At the end of your turn, if you have at least as many Death Rays as Tanks, then you may abduct the earthlings you've been setting aside. You can't pick any type of Earthling twice in one turn, but if you manage to abduct at least one of each you'll score a bonus!

With each roll you will ask yourself, do you feel lucky?

Rediscover the joy of Welcome To… with a new theme and new mechanisms in Welcome To New Las Vegas!

The game plays with a set of two different sheets — one dedicated to the map, the other used to keep track of the score and objectives — where you have to build and open casinos in the streets, hotels in avenues, create golf courses, give performances to the tourists, and move limousines for VIPs in order to build the greatest and most entertaining city and win the game!

Welcome To New Las Vegas keeps the same roll-and-write with dice-without-dice mechanism from Welcome to... Your Perfect Home: you flip cards from three piles to make three different sets with both a casino number and a corresponding action from which everyone chooses one. You use the number to fill in a casino on your street in numerical order. And everyone is racing to be the first to complete public goals. There's lots to do and many paths to becoming the best resort architect in Welcome To New Las Vegas!

Because of the communal actions, game play is simultaneous and thus supports large groups of players. With many varying strategies and completely randomized action sets, no two games will feel the same!

In the northwest corner of Nunavut, Canada, a formerly inaccessible bay off of the Arctic Ocean has become reachable through a secret inlet. Untouched by the hands of time and fed by both the ocean and warm fresh water springs, Ridback Bay is teeming with sea life. A remote, timeless bayside village is now being inundated by entrepreneurs awaiting the influx of the world's greatest fisherman to harvest this plentiful bounty. The docks and warehouses are being revitalized, and now it is time to begin the real adventure. Go build your Fleet and become master of the high seas!

Fleet is an exciting, strategic card game with in-depth decisions and thrilling game play that new and experienced gamers can enjoy! In Fleet, you'll acquire licenses, launch boats, and fish the great briny blue. The player who best manages his resources and acquires the most VP via fish, licenses, and boats will build the strongest fleet and lead his crew to victory!

On the hunt for priceless treasures, groups of adventurers explore the legendary temple at Luxor. Their ultimate goal is the tomb of the pharaoh, but many treasures can be collected as they search. As they explore, the challenge unfolds: The player who manages to quickly get their team of adventurers to the tomb, while salvaging as many treasures as possible, will be the winner.

Luxor offers variable game play as the path that leads to the tomb is different for every game — and will even change during play!

—description from the publisher

In Luxor, players move their adventurers through the temple with the goal of reaching the tomb in the middle of the game board. At the start of the game each player gets dealt 5 cards, which he is not allowed to change the order of.

In each round players take turns that consist of 3 actions:

1. Choose either the left or right most card to play to the discard pile.

According to the played card move, one adventurer that many tiles forward towards the tomb. An adventurer only moves from tile to tile, jumping over empty spaces and not counting them.

2. When the adventurer has completed his movement, he performs the action of that tile, if possible. Depending on the tile this can have various effects:

Treasure tile - If enough of a players adventurers player are placed on a tile, the player can collect that tile and earn points for it. Additionally he keeps the tile, trying to collect treasure sets consisting of the three different treasure kinds, vase, statue and necklace.

Horus tile - The player can either gain a key or a Horus Card. He will need the key to enter the tomb and the special Horus card offers unique and strong ways to move his adventurers once he plays that card.

Osiris tile - The tile acts as an catapult instantly moving the adventurer a certain amount of tiles forward.

Temple tile - On these tiles players get special bonuses, like scarabs that are worth victory points or joker tiles, which complete treasure sets. The most unique tile is the tunnel. If an adventurer lands on a tunnel he instantly gets teleported to the next tunnel in play, creating a shortcut through the temple.

3. After performing the action of the tile, players draw one card from the draw pile to refill their hand to five cards. The drawn card is placed in the middle of the hand.

At the start of the game, players can chose to move one of 2 adventurers. Every time an adventurer crosses over an Anubis statue for the first time he gains a new adventurer which is placed at the start.

The game ends once two adventurers reach the tomb. But in order to get in the tomb and collect the valuable sarcophagi, players need to have a key, which they collect from landing on Horus tiles. One key is needed for each adventurer wanting to enter the tomb.

The round is finished and then the game ends with a final scoring.

The player who now has the most points is the winner!

Niagara is set in the not particularly safe world of rushing waterfalls. In the late 18th Century, the Shawnee and Iroquois Indians pointed white Desperadoes, Mercenaries and Adventurers in the direction of hidden caches of valuable jewels, in the hopes of turning them against one another and away from their territorial expansion ambitions. Players play as some of those Adventurers.

The first player to be able to claim ownership of five jewels is the winner. But the chase after the riches has some snags. The speed of the river is always changing, since the speed depends on the decisions of the players and the changeable weather. And once a canoe goes over the falls, it's a hefty investment to replace it. And there are also the Desperadoes to contend with, who aren't above trying to plunder the riches from Adventurers returning home. Niagara is distinguished by an innovative movement mechanic as well as a beautiful three-dimensional rendering of the waterfall setting.

Expanded by:


Niagara: Diamond Joe
Niagara: The Spirits of Niagara