Area Control / Area Influence

You are a tiny kingdom with big ambition. You want to expand your population throughout the realms, learn powerful magic, build grand towers, and have your neighbors quiver at the mention of your name. The conflict? All of the other kingdoms want the same thing and there's not enough room for everyone to succeed...

In Tiny Epic Kingdoms, a 4x fantasy game in a pocket-size package, each player starts with a unique faction (which has a unique technology tree) and a small territory. Throughout the game, players collect resources, explore other territories, battle each other, research magic, and work to build a great tower to protect their realm.

From the author:

"Sometimes the history of a nation can be defined by the relationship between two individuals. The Election of 1960 is the story of two men, John F. Kennedy and Richard M. Nixon. One is the scion of a wealthy, politically powerful family from New England. The other is the son of a Quaker grocer in Whittier, California. While they belong to opposing political parties, they start out as friends. The complex development of that friendship, however, would shape a pivotal presidential election and cast a long shadow over American history for the remainder of the 20th century.

"In 1960: The Making of the President, you take on the role of one of these great protagonists vying for the right to lead his country into the heart of the Cold War. However, it is not just foreign policy that poses a challenge to American leadership; this is also an era of great social turmoil and progress. As the United States continues to build upon the promise of its founding, candidates must contend with the question of civil rights and balance their positions on social justice against the need for valuable Southern electoral votes. Of course, the ever-present issue of the economy also rears its ugly head, and both Nixon and Kennedy will compete to be the candidate with the voters' pocket books in mind.

"The contest is fought out on an electoral map of the United States as it stood in 1960—a map where Louisiana and Florida share the same number of electoral votes, as do California and Pennsylvania. Using a card-driven game system, all the major events which shaped the campaign are represented: Nixon’s lazy shave, President Eisenhower’s late endorsement, and the 'Catholic question' are all included as specific event cards. The famous televised debates and final election day push are each handled with their own subsystems. Candidates vie to capture each state’s electoral votes using campaign points in the four different regions of the country. At the same time, they must build momentum by dominating the issues of the day and attempt to gain control of the airwaves.

"As with any election campaign, the challenge is to adapt your game plan as the ground shifts out from under you. There are never enough resources or time to do everything, but you need to make the tough calls to propel yourself into the White House. This fast-playing strategy game for two players challenges you to run for the most powerful elective office in the world, at one of its most unique crossroads. Will you recreate history, or rewrite it? 1960: The Making of the President provides you the opportunity to do both."

Enter the magical world of adventure of Corto Maltese, the hero from the fertile imagination of Hugo Pratt. Choose your adventures, then live through them as the game unfolds. Aided by Corto and resisting Rasputin's attempts to thwart your plans, recruit your own bands of adventurers and get your hands on gold at the end of the story!

Corto is a card-based adventure game that mixes tactics and luck. To set up the game, choose four of the six quests, then place the appropriate quest boards next to one another on the table; each quest (attack the train of Russian gold, research the four aces of whale bones, meet the leopard-men, etc.) has its own deck of character and object cards that's shuffled and placed on the left side of the board. Reveal the top character from each deck, take turns placing one of your tokens on any character, then draw four cards from any combination of decks for your starting hand.

On a turn, you can either discard any number of cards and fill your hand to four cards or you can play 1-4 cards. If you play a character card, place it on an empty space on the quest board of the same color, making sure that it's adjacent to at least one other character. Place a token on the card, then either add a token to or remove an opponent's token from an adjacent character depending on the character's border color (denoting a friend of Corto or associate of Rasputin). You can also play objects on the character to affect adjacent cards. Some characters and objects have long range effects that hit any character in the same column or row. Hit a character that has no tokens, and you remove it from the board, counting it as 1 gold at the end of the game. If you played cards, end your turn by drawing two cards.

Players can also move Corto and Rasputin directly, using them to block spaces on the quest board, claim gold immediately, or eliminate characters.

In addition to having its own mix of characters, objects and advantages, each quest has a different treasure waiting for players to nab. For "The Wreck of the Fortune Royale", you need to be the first to claim the aces in order to claim all the treasure for yourself; for "Admiral Kolchak's Bullion Train", if you attack the train — which moves across the quest boards as players lay down cards — you claim one of the train car tokens, which might have gold on it; for "On the Track of the Leopard Men", whoever has a majority of tokens on certain characters at the end of the game gains control of markers that might enhance their network of characters.

When two quests are fully occupied or the players run out of cards, the game ends. In addition to scoring for the gold and treasures they've collected during the game, each player scores 2 gold per character in the largest group of characters he controls and 1 gold per character for smaller groups. Whoever ends up with the most gold wins!

Game description from the publisher:

Pharaoh is worried! His tomb at Giza is behind schedule, and he fears it will not be done in time for his funeral. He is offering great rewards to the faction that contributes the most work on his pyramid in the next ten years. If your people work the hardest and work the smartest you shall earn Pharaoh's favor!

In Giza: the Great Pyramid you are the leader of one of four factions vying for Pharaoh's favor. You have ten years to outperform the other factions and contribute the most to his great pyramid, earning eternal gratitude and glory. You shall need to balance your labor! Farm and fish to feed your people. Sweat and struggle with the back-breaking labor of moving the giant stone blocks into place. Task your folk with the creation of exquisite artworks to beautify Pharaoh's eternal rest.

Are you smart enough, organized enough and diligent enough to lead your people and earn Pharaoh's favor?

Your casino empire is expanding, but new players want a piece of your action. There's only one direction to go to stay ahead of your competition — up! Lords of Vegas: UP! allows for up to six players to compete in Lords of Vegas.

What's more, you'll now be able to increase the size of your casinos not just by building out, but also by building up. These new, taller hotels are more prestigious, and as a result earn you more victory points.