Abstract

Levy. Maneuver. Conquer.

The Duke is a dynamic, tile-based strategy game with an old-world, feudal theme, high-quality wooden playing pieces, and an innovative game mechanism in its double-sided tiles. Each side represents a different posture – often considered to be defensive or offensive – and demonstrates exactly what the piece can do within the turn. At the end of a move (or after the use of a special ability), the tile is flipped to its other side, displaying a new offensive or defensive posture.

Each posture conveys different options for maneuver and attack. The full circle is a standard Move, the hollow circle the Jump, the arrow provides for the Slide, the star a special Strike ability and so on. Each turn a player may select any tile to maneuver, attempting to defend his own troops while positioning himself to capture his opponent's tiles. If you end your movement in a square occupied by an opponent's tile, you capture that tile. Capture your opponent's Duke to win!

Players start the game by placing their Duke in one of the two middle squares on their side of the game board. Two Footman are then placed next to the Duke. Each turn a player may choose to either move a single tile or randomly draw a new tile from the bag. With twelve different Troop Tiles, all double-sided, and sixteen total pieces for each player, the variety of game play is limitless.

Beyond the endless variety of the basic game, Terrain Tiles introduce a variety of game play options, altering the game board. These rules also include several alternate objectives, such as the challenging Dark Rider game which pits five Pikeman against a lone Knight.

Kamisado is a game of pure skill and strategy with no dice, cards or other chance element — it's just you against your opponent!

The aim in each round is to be the first to get an octagonal "dragon tower" to the opposite side of the board; towers move in straight lines, either forwards or diagonally forwards. The twist is that you must move the tower of the color matching the space on which the opponent moved on her previous turn. As the game progresses, you'll find that the routes you want to use are blocked by enemy towers — and sometimes your own! If you can't move, your opponent moves again immediately, moving the tower matching the color of the space occupied by the stymied tower.

As the game unfolds, your towers will be promoted to "Sumos" and have the ability to push your opponent's pieces backwards, earning you extra turns. The situations continue to become more complex and challenging, until one player accumulates the required winning total and can be declared a "Kamisado Grand Master" — until the next game!

In Cathedral, each player has a set of pieces of a different color. The pieces are in the shapes of buildings, covering from one to five square units. The first player takes the single neutral Cathedral piece and places it onto the board. Players then alternate placing one of their buildings onto the board until neither player can place another building. Players capture territory by surrounding areas that are occupied by at most one opponent or neutral building. A captured piece is removed and captured territory becomes off-limits to the opponent. The player with the fewest 'square units' of buildings that can't be placed wins.

A fast-paced word game for two players. The game consists of wooden letter tiles, each with four letters (the Discovery Edition contains 28 tiles and the Wooden Box edition has 32 tiles). The board starts with 16 tiles and more are added during the game. On a turn, players find words (at least three letters long) on the board. Words can be situated vertically, horizontally, or diagonally. When a player finds a word, they use transparent tokens to highlight the letters in the word.

Over the course of the game, the board expands beyond the inital 4 x 4 layout, as players earn new letter tiles and add them to the wordsearch field. The first player to use up all of their tokens wins.

Each player has 12 rings (in four sizes)and 3 bases of the same color. These are placed one at a time, in turn, on one of 25 territories laid out in a five X five pattern. You may place a ring:

i) onto or next to a territory that already has a ring in your color, or

ii) next to a base of your color.

You also may place a base next to a territory that already has a ring in your color. Each territory can accommodate up to four rings as long as all the rings are different sizes. The winner of the territory is the player who has placed the most rings on it when the game ends, which occurs when no one can place any more rings on the board. The bases do not count in the scoring but can be placed on a territory to prevent any other player from placing a ring on it.