In the village of Tiefenthal lies "The Tavern of the Deep Valley". There, all citizens from the area gather, but it's important to attract new, wealthy guests for only then is there enough money to expand the tavern, which will then lure nobles into the tavern as well. But which tavern expansion is best? Should you focus on money? Or rather ensure that the beer will keep flowing?

In The Taverns of Tiefenthal, the challenge is to skillfully choose the dice and develop your personal deck of cards as profitably as possible. The game is structured with five modules so that your group can add extra levels of complexity as you become more familiar with the game.

AWARDS
2019 SXSW Tabletop Game of the Year nominee
2019 The American Tabletop Awards COMPLEX GAMES winner

In the game Reef, players take on the role of a coral reef, carefully selecting colors and patterns in which to grow and expand. On each turn, players can choose to pick up a new card from a choice of four, or play a card that is already in hand. Each card provides two reef pieces and a pattern that scores points if the existing reef has it (after placing the two new pieces). Whoever has the most points when the reef pieces (or card deck) run out wins!

Reef is an abstract strategy game suited for players aged 8 and up. While it could take thousands of years for a coral reef to grow, a game of Reef should take only 30-45 minutes.

Piratz is a press-your-luck card game in which you're collecting treasure to outdo everyone else.

The deck consists of fifty treasure cards, with each card showing one or more items on it; these items can be any of the six types of treasure or a rat. Each player receives a shovel card, and you place scoring cubes (worth 1-4 points) on a score card, with one cube next to each of the six types of treasure in a two-player game and two cubes each in a game with three or four players.

On a turn, either you reveal the top card from the deck and place it face up on the table or you pass on revealing a card. If you reveal a card that has a rat on it while another rat is already visible, you must take one of these rat cards and add it to your collection. If you pass on revealing a card, you must choose a type of treasure and collect all cards that have this treasure on it; you may also name a treasure type after revealing a card if the rats didn't catch you.

After taking one or more cards, place your shovel card on a face-up treasure card, then sit out until all players have placed their shovels, with the last player taking as many turns as desired as long as the rats stay away. You then each reclaim your shovel, while removing the covered cards from play. Continue taking turns until the deck is exhausted; if not all players have placed their shovels at this point, shuffle the removed cards and continue play until all shovels have been placed.

For each treasure type (rings, coins, etc.), players count how many of these items they have on their cards, with the player who has the most (and secondmost in a game with more than two players) claiming a scoring cube for this treasure type. Once all the cubes have been claimed, sum the value of your cubes to see who wins.

The heron flies over the Himeji sky while the Daimyo, from the top of the castle, watches his servants move. Gardeners tend the pond, where the koi carp live, warriors stand guard on the walls, and courtiers crowd the gates, pining for an audience that brings them closer to the innermost circles of the court. When night falls, the lanterns are lit and the workers return to their clan.

In The White Castle, players will control one of these clans in order to score more victory points than the rest. To do so, they must amass influence in the court, manage resources boldly, and place their workers in the right place at the right time. The authors are Sheila Santos and Israel Cendrero, the duo known as Llama Dice who also designed the successful The Red Cathedral with Devir. In this case, we leave the Moscow of Ivan the Terrible behind to explore the most imposing fortress in modern Japan, Himeji Castle, where the banner of the Sakai clan flies under the orders of Daimyo Sakai Tadakiyo.

The White Castle is a Euro type game with mechanics of resource management, worker placement and dice placement to carry out actions. During the game, over three rounds, players will send members of their clan to tend the gardens, defend the castle or progress up the social ladder of the nobility. At the end of the match, these will award players victory points in a variety of ways.

The central panel shows Himeji Castle in all its splendor, divided into several zones. The largest is inside the castle, with the Room of the Thousand Carpets, where the courtiers must ascend socially until they reach the circle closest to the Daimyo to enjoy his favor. There is also the pond and the gardens, patiently tended by the gardeners where everyone can relax and contemplate its beauty without restriction. Another important area is the wall and the outside of the castle, where the warriors patrol and stand guard. Finally, we find the area of the three bridges, where the three types of dice that can be used to carry out actions are accumulated, and the personal domain of each player, where they will keep track of their resources and where they will have the reserve of workers.

With accessible rules and a very careful setting, The White Castle is a very versatile title that will fit in with different gaming groups. As is tradition with Llama Dice titles, its sleek and simple design belies a great deal of strategic depth within the grasp of players.

—description from the publisher

Created by Michael Kiesling, Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra challenges players to carefully select glass panes to complete their windows while being careful not to damage or waste supplies in the process. The window panels are double-sided, providing players with a dynamic player board that affords nearly infinite variability!

Players can expect to discover new unique art and components in Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra, including translucent window pane pieces, a tower to hold discarded glass panes, and double-sided player boards and window pane panels, in addition to many other beautiful components!

—description from the publisher

Numbers aren't worth anything in NMBR 9 unless they're off the ground floor and looking down from above.

The game includes twenty cards numbered 0-9 twice and eighty tiles numbered 0-9; each number tile is composed of squares in some arrangement. After shuffling the deck of cards, draw and reveal the first card. Each player takes a number tile matching the card and places it on the table. With each new card drawn after that, each player takes the appropriate number tile, then adds it to the tiles that they already have in play, with each player building their own arrangement of tiles.

The new tile must touch at least one other tile on the same level along one side of a square. A tile can also be placed on top of two or more other tiles as long as no part of the new tile overhangs the tiles below it; new tiles placed on this same level must touch at least one other tile, while also covering parts of at least two tiles and not overhanging.

Once all the cards have been drawn and the tiles placed, players take turns calculating their score. A tile on the bottom level — the 0th level, if you will — scores 0 points; a tile on the 1st level above this is worth as many points as the number on the tile; a tile on the 2nd level is worth twice the number on the tile; etc. Whoever scores the most points wins!

New Lost Legacy, includes 32 and an additional 4 bonus cards. (Contained are The Starship and Flying Garden, along with alternate bonus cards that can be combined with either set.)



Rules SummaryLost Legacy is a game of risk, deduction, and luck for 2–4 players. You start the game with one card in hand from a deck of sixteen cards. On a turn, you do the following:


Draw: Draw the top card from the deck and add it to your hand.
Play: Choose one of the two cards in hand to play and place it face up in front of you.
Effect: Carry out the played card's effect, after which the card is considered as discarded.
End: If there is at least one card left in the deck, the turn goes to the next player; if not, the investigation phase starts. Using the investigation speed indicated on the card each player has in hand, players take turns guessing which player (whether yourself or someone else) holds the "Lost Legacy" card; this card might also be in the "Ruins", a location that holds one card at the start of the game and possibly acquires more cards during play. The player who guesses correctly wins; if no one finds the Lost Legacy, then everybody loses.

In the year 2097, the entire Earth was enveloped in a cataclysmic shift in climate, plunging the globe into another ice age. Nearly 90% of the world’s population was eliminated, driving the survivors to band together into loose communities and tribes.

In Arctic Scavengers, you are the leader of a small tribe of survivors. Resources, tools, medicine, and mercenaries are all in scarce supply. You and your tribe are pitted against up to four other tribes in a fight for survival. Build up your tribe, skirmish against other players head-to-head, or even bluff your way to victory.

The player with the largest tribe at the end of the game is declared the winner!

Ice Flow is a strategic family game, interesting enough for gamers, as there are many tactical decisions to make.

Inspired by Karl Bushby's 1998 Goliath Expedition, players race their explorers across the Bering Strait from Alaska to Siberia - riding ice floes, dodging polar bears, and collecting useful items on the way. Thus, at its heart, Ice Flow is a resource management game coupled with a traveling salesman type problem where the ground (or ice) is constantly moving.

Each player has three explorers and rucksack card (to store a limited amount of rope and fish in). The board consists of an array of hexagonal spaces with ice floes (hexagonal plastic tiles) that are introduced at the top and can be moved down the board by players with rates dependent on where they are on the board. On their turn players must first move, rotate or introduce a new ice floe, then they can move one of their explorer as far as they can (or want) before collecting an item from the tile they finished on. When moving, explorers are limited by the obstacles they must overcome and the tools they have available. For example, the ice floes have smooth sides and rough side: the rough sides depict "pack ice" which is hard to cross, and costs a rope. Similarly, explorers can swim up to one space, but that costs a fish as swimming through arctic waters is energy sapping. Polar bears are also a hazard that must be avoided or lured away with fish; beware they can be lured away from one player straight into the path of another!

The winner is the first player to negotiate all the hazards and arrive in Siberia with his three explorers intact.

Not to be confused with: IceFloe

Description from the publisher:

After being stripped of all their possessions, a mage, a warrior, an elf, and a dwarf are forced to go rob the local Magic Maze shopping mall for all the equipment necessary for their next adventure. They agree to map out the labyrinth in its entirety first, then find each individual’s favorite store, and then locate the exit. In order to evade the surveillance of the guards who eyed their arrival suspiciously, all four will pull off their heists simultaneously, then dash to the exit. That's the plan anyway…but can they pull it off?

Magic Maze is a real-time, cooperative game. Each player can control any hero in order to make that hero perform a very specific action, to which the other players do not have access: Move north, explore a new area, ride an escalator… All this requires rigorous cooperation between the players in order to succeed at moving the heroes prudently. However, you are allowed to communicate only for short periods during the game; the rest of the time, you must play without giving any visual or audio cues to each other. If all of the heroes succeed in leaving the shopping mall in the limited time allotted for the game, each having stolen a very specific item, then everyone wins together.

At the start of the game, you have only three minutes in which to take actions. Hourglass spaces you encounter along the way give you more time. If the sand timer ever completely runs out, all players lose the game: Your loitering has aroused suspicion, and the mall security guards nab you!

In Steam you build railroads and deliver goods along an ever changing network of tracks and stations. You build the tracks, upgrade towns, improve your train, and grab the right goods to make the longest, most profitable deliveries. Score your deliveries and add to your income or victory points, balancing your need to invest against your quest to win the game.

Steam contains a beautiful, double-sided game board. The map on each side depicts terrain, towns, and cities at the start of the railway age. The map of the northeastern USA and neighboring Canada is ideal for 3 or 4 players. Use the map of Europe's lower Rhine and Ruhr region when playing a 4 or 5 player game. You can play Steam on any number of current and future variant and expansion maps, so we include pieces for 6 players.

The game plays very similarly to Age of Steam but with modifications to some of its mechanics and artwork. Tracks for income, train level, etc. are all printed on the board around the map such that alternate maps can be overlaid on the board and the necessary tracks will still be able to be used.

Similar to:

Railways of the World

UNO gets a brand new twist in the new UNO Flip! card game. It essentially plays like regular UNO but with the addition of Flip cards. This UNO card deck is double-sided with a "light" side and a "dark" side. You start off playing with the light side, but if someone plays a Flip card, you have to switch to playing the dark side. And on the dark side, there are different action cards with stiffer penalties. Instead of a Draw One card, the dark side has a Draw Five card. Instead of a Skip Card, the dark side has a Skip Everyone card. You have to continue playing with the dark side until another Flip card is played.

If you don't know how to play UNO, each player takes a turn matching a card from their hand to the card on the top of the discard pile, either by number, color, or symbol. If you don't have a match, you must draw a card from the draw pile.

The symbols represent the action cards, such as Wild, Skip, Wild Draw 2, Draw One, and Reverse. This version also includes a Flip card that turns the cards to the dark side, which has the following actions: Draw Five, Reverse, Skip Everyone, Wild, Wild Draw Color, and Flip.

When you play your next-to-last card, you must yell "UNO!" to indicate you only have one card left. If you don't yell "UNO" and someone catches you, you must draw two cards. Once a player runs out of cards, the round is over, and that player receives points for all of the cards left in their opponents' hands. Play until one player reaches 500 points.

The 1920s: Small City was founded just a few years ago and is still a fledgling town at this stage. Nonetheless, the Town Center is prosperous, and the managers of the weird CliniC have been duly incarcerated for years by this point. Now it is time to reach a new step: Building a new map transit.

In Tramways, you take the role of one of the managers of the local CliniC who were fired last month when it was discovered that you had acquired wealth on the backs of patients and their poor health. You are now at the head of a team of engineers, ready to build the best and most effective network possible for Small City. Your aim is to find the best places between buildings and citizens so that they can use your networks (and not those of your opponents, who are always ready to buy the most interesting development areas). Be assured that a happy citizen who is able to move where and when he wants will thank the best transport companies. There is nothing that satisfies a chief manager more than seeing citizens happy...

The game is divided into six rounds, each of which is divided into two halves:


During the first half of a round, players compete to acquire the best development cards to create their most efficient deck. An original auction phase also determines turn order — and being the first player increases your stress level.



During the second half, they play a train game, using their deck to try to build a great network between the different buildings of Small City. They try to move passengers without stressing them during the transit, in the end obtaining happiness points, which is the aim of the game.


The more that players use the symbols on their cards, the more actions they can do, but they also increase their stress level at the same time, which leads to negative victory points...

Bumúntú is a lightweight strategy game based on the culture and folklore of the Bakongo tribes. Descendants of the Kingdom of Kongo, the Bakongo people are the largest group of tribespeople in central Africa.

A common theme in African folklore is that animals are wise creatures who teach humans to do good and moral things. As a tribal leader, you will follow the guidance of the animals, journeying through the jungle in hopes of winning their favor.

Players start on a board full of African animals, each with their own movement abilities. Each player can either move as normal or follow the wisdom of the animals, earning that animal's favor in the process and collecting its chip. Some animals will make movement easier, while others can affect how opponents move, giving a lot of depth to this deceivingly simple strategy game. As the game progresses, fewer and fewer animals remain, making choices that much more important.

Once all the Advancement chips have been collected, each animal will offer a different amount of favor based on how far up they are on the Favor Leaderboard, something that players can affect throughout the game. Bonus points will be given for collecting Nkisi (small statues) and Yowa (spiritual symbols). At the end of the game, the leader who has accumulated the most favor wins!

As with the board game Camel Up, Camel Up: The Card Game has players betting on camels as they make their way down a racetrack. Each player has some knowledge about which camels can move — and how far they can go when they do finally decide to move — but they can't be sure of when each one will move, so they'll just have to guess which ones will end in front of the others, hoping to earn a bit of money while doing so.

Camel Up: The Card Game was first released as Camel Up Cards. The second edition of the game features revised artwork and a crazy camel similar to those in Camel Up (Second Edition) that race backward on the track.

UNO All Wild plays just like traditional UNO except every card is wild. That means instead of having to matching color and number, you can play any card you want. The goal is the same: be the first player to get rid of all your cards. But it gets complicated thanks to the addition of new action cards that let players strategize and make sure no one goes out too soon.

—description from the designer

The card distribution of "Uno All Wild!" is as follows:

Normal Wild Card: 54
Reverse Wild Card: 14
Skip Wild Card: 14
Skip 2 (Double Skip) Wild Card: 6
Draw 2 Wild Card: 10
Targeted Draw 2 Wild Card: 4
Draw 4 Wild Card: 6
Forced Swap Wild Card: 4

In terms of its gameplay, Qwirkle Cards plays somewhat like Rummikub, with players laying down cards/tiles from their hand onto the table and possibly moving things around to create new sets.

In more detail, players start with a hand of nine cards from the 108-card deck; each card shows a colored symbol, with each of the six symbols appearing three times in each of the six colors. Whoever has the most cards in hand of one symbol or one color (but without duplicates) starts the game by laying these cards face up on the table as a set. Players then take turns in clockwise order.

On a turn, a player must add at least one card to the table; if she can't, she draws nine new cards, shuffles her old hand into the deck, then plays. When she plays, she can play as many cards as she likes as long as they share a color or symbol. She can create a new set if she plays at least three cards or she can add her cards to existing sets (as long as she doesn't duplicate a color or symbol) or she can do both. On her turn, she can move cards from one set to another, possibly using these cards with cards that she plays in order to create a new set.

The point of this gameplay is to create qwirkles, that is, a set of six cards that contains either each symbol in a single color or each color in a single symbol. When a player creates a qwirkle, she claims this set from the table. After a player's turn, she refills her hand to nine cards.

The game continues until the deck runs out of cards. Each player then takes one final turn, including the one who took the final card, then whoever has claimed the most qwirkles wins!

Patchwork Express features the same basic gameplay as Patchwork, but with a smaller playing area and with larger and less complex pieces.

In the game, each player tries to build the most aesthetic (and high-scoring) patchwork quilt on a personal 7x7 game board. To start play, lay out all of the light-colored patches at random in a circle and place a starting marker in a particular location. Each player takes some buttons — the currency/points in the game — and someone is chosen as the start player.

On a turn, a player either purchases one of the three patches standing clockwise of the starting marker or passes. To purchase a patch, you pay the cost in buttons shown on the patch, move the starting marker to that patch's location in the circle, add the patch to your game board, then advance your time token on the time track a number of spaces equal to the time shown on the patch. You're free to place the patch anywhere on your board that doesn't overlap other patches, but you probably want to fit things together as tightly as possible. If your time token is behind or on top of the other player's time token, then you take another turn; otherwise the opponent now goes. Instead of purchasing a patch, you can choose to pass; to do this, you move your time token to the space immediately in front of the opponent's time token, then take one button from the bank for each space you moved.

In addition to a button cost and time cost, each patch also features 0-3 buttons, and when you move your time token past a button on the time track, you earn "button income": sum the number of buttons depicted on your personal game board, then take this many buttons from the bank.

What's more, the time track depicts six 1x1 patches on it, and during set-up you place six actual 1x1 patches on these spaces. Whoever first passes a patch on the time track claims this patch and immediately places it on their game board.

At some point during the game, dark-colored patches are added to what's available for players to take, and these pieces are smaller than the light-colored ones, making it more likely that they'll fill in holes on a player's board.

In Dungeon Lords, you are an evil dungeonlord who is trying to build the best dungeon out there. You hire monsters, build rooms, buy traps and defeat the do-gooders who wish to bring you down.

From the publisher's webpage:

Have you ever ventured with party of heroes to conquer dungeons, gain pride, experiences and of course rich treasure? And has it ever occurred to you how hard it actually is to build and manage such underground complex filled with corridors and creatures? No? Well now you can try. Put yourself in role of the master of underground, summon your servants, dig complex of tunnels and rooms, set traps, hire creatures and try to stop filthy heroes from conquering and plundering your precious creation. We can guarantee you will look on dark corners, lairs and their inhabitant from completely different perspective!

Each turn, players use a hand of cards to choose where to place their worker. Actions vary from mining gold, hiring monsters, buying traps etc. Each action has three spots available - with each spot having different effects (e.g. mining gold lets you mine more gold in each spot).
When using the cards, two cards will become locked and will not be able to be used next turn.

There are 4 turns to place actions for each game "year" and two game years in a whole game.
Each turn is identified as a "season". Each season, players will get to see the heroes and events to come in the following season. Thus allowing them to prepare.

At the end of each season (after the first), heroes will be allocated to each player according to their level of evil. Heroes range from mighty heroes to sneaky thieves. Each hero has their own power for which the player needs to prepare for.
Finally, at the end of each year, the heroes will travel down into the dungeon to fight.

Scoring in the game is based upon what you have built, the monsters you have hired and the heroes you have captured.

Draft dice and use the tools-of-the-trade in Sagrada to carefully construct your stained glass window masterpiece.

In more detail, each player builds a stained glass window by building up a grid of dice on their player board. Each board has some restrictions on which color or shade (value) of die can be placed there. Dice of the same shade or color may never be placed next to each other. Dice are drafted in player order, with the start player rotating each round, snaking back around after the last player drafts two dice. Scoring is variable per game based on achieving various patterns and varieties of placement...as well as bonus points for dark shades of a particular hidden goal color.

Special tools can be used to help you break the rules by spending skill tokens; once a tool is used, it then requires more skill tokens for the other players to use them.

The highest scoring window artisan wins!