Bluffing

From the rules overview: "In the Queen’s service, the Musketeers are trying to acquire three valuable gems. However, the Cardinal and his dreaded Guards are out to sabotage the Musketeers’ mission. Many skirmishes between the Musketeers and the Guards ensue. The most successful Musketeers will be awarded gems. Those who fail will be sent to prison and will remain empty handed."

Setup: remove some specific cards depending on the number of players. Shuffle and place all Guard cards in the center, along with the Gem and Prison cards. Shuffle the Musketeer cards and deal 12 each.

Play: players select 3 cards to place face down; these are their potential rewards (Pay cards) this fight. Reveal the top Guard. Players simultaneously select a card, then reveal. If the sum is lower than the Guard strength, the player playing the lowest card places a Prison card on one of his Pay cards. Otherwise, the player with the highest card either places a Gem card on one of his Pay cards, or returns one of his Prison cards to the center. If center area doesn't have a card you need, take it from another player. If all you have 3 Prison cards, your played card doesn't add to the other players' cards.

The round ends after 9 fights. Players earn silver for their Pay cards, doubled if a Gem is on top and reduced to 0 if a Prison is on top. The player with the most coins wins. Alternatively, keep playing rounds till someone gets 100 or more points, and the player with the most points wins.

Yomi is a card game that simulates a fighting game. It tests your ability to predict how your opponents will act and your ability to judge the relative value of cards from one situation to the next. Also, it lets you do fun combos and be a panda. There are 10 characters to choose from, each with their own deck, abilities, and style. Each deck also doubles as a regular deck of playing cards with beautiful artwork (the complete game features a whopping 120 different character illustrations).

Yomi is the Japanese word for “reading”, in this case as in reading the mind of your opponent. Yomi: Fighting Card Game is a simple competitive card game that simulates a fight between two characters. Each deck in Yomi represents one character, with 10 decks in the first release.

Champion fighting game tournament player and tournament organizer David Sirlin designed the game to test the skills of Valuation and Yomi. Valuation refers to your ability to judge the relative value of moves (or cards) as they change over the course of the game. Yomi, the game's title, refers to your ability to guess which moves your opponent will make. There is more to it than guessing, though: some players have the uncanny ability to “guess” right almost every time, no matter the game.

The core mechanic is a paper-rock-scissors guessing game between attack, throw, and block/dodge (sometimes modified by special ability cards). Attacks and throws usually let you follow up with combo cards from your hand, while blocks let you draw a card. While it first seems "just random," you soon discover that the unequal and uncertain payoffs in this guessing game allow you really read what the opponent will do. Yomi captures the kind of mind games that occur during the high level in fighting game tournaments.

In a foreboding castle somewhere in central Europe, a strange fear has descended upon the inhabitants. One morning the body of a young girl was found, as pale as a sheet of paper, dry and totally drained of blood. Vampires are on the prowl! Who is the monster who murders innocent during the night? Before the truth will be discovered, more than one person may face unjust accusations thrown out by the devious servants of darkness. Will the vampires be successfully caught before they endanger the entire society, or will the castle and city fall forever into darkness?

Three characters in the castle are vampires. A human investigator is trying to determine which three of nine characters he encounters are, in fact, monsters hiding in human form so that he can eliminate them. The head vampire, on the other hand, must bluff cleverly, present confusing clues, and trick the humans into attacking innocent citizens. By doing this, the vampire can kill the most important characters in the city or conquer the castle.

Vampire Empire is a two-player card game with a lot of bluffing and player interaction. In this very thematic setting, each player possess a unique deck of cards granting different powers, and each player had different goals to win the game!

"Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle..."
– John F. Kennedy

In 1945, unlikely allies toppled Hitler's war machine, while humanity's most devastating weapons forced the Japanese Empire to its knees in a storm of fire. Where once there stood many great powers, there then stood only two. The world had scant months to sigh its collective relief before a new conflict threatened. Unlike the titanic struggles of the preceding decades, this conflict would be waged not primarily by soldiers and tanks, but by spies and politicians, scientists and intellectuals, artists and traitors. Twilight Struggle is a two-player game simulating the forty-five year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States. The entire world is the stage on which these two titans fight to make the world safe for their own ideologies and ways of life. The game begins amidst the ruins of Europe as the two new "superpowers" scramble over the wreckage of the Second World War, and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.

Twilight Struggle inherits its fundamental systems from the card-driven classics We the People and Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage. It is a quick-playing, low-complexity game in that tradition. The game map is a world map of the period, whereon players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower. As with GMT's other card-driven games, decision-making is a challenge; how to best use one's cards and units given consistently limited resources?

Twilight Struggle's Event cards add detail and flavor to the game. They cover a vast array of historical happenings, from the Arab-Israeli conflicts of 1948 and 1967, to Vietnam and the U.S. peace movement, to the Cuban Missile Crisis and other such incidents that brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Subsystems capture the prestige-laden Space Race as well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending nuclear war.

A deluxe edition, published in 2009 includes the following changes from the basic game:

Mounted map with revised graphics
Two double-thick counter sheets with 260 counters
Deck of 110 event cards (increased from 103)
Revised rules and player aid cards
Revised at start setup and text change for card #98 Aldrich Ames

Upgrade kit for the owners of the previous version includes the following:

Mounted Map with revised graphics
New card decks
Updated Rules & Charts

There are also the deluxe mounted map and deluxe euro-style countersheet upgrades.

Components:

228 full colour counters (260 in the 2009 Deluxe edition)
22"x34" full colour cardboard map (mounted map with revised graphics in the 2009 Deluxe edition)
103 event cards (110 in the 2009 Deluxe edition)
2 six-sided dice
1 24-page rulebook
2 full colour player aid cards

TIME SCALE: approx. 3-5 years per turn
MAP SCALE: Point-to-point system
UNIT SCALE: Influence markers
NUMBER OF PLAYERS: 1 - 2

DESIGNER: Ananda Gupta & Jason Matthews
MAP, CARD, & COUNTER ART: Mark Simonitch

Are you the best Merchant of Venice?
Sailing along the courses of ancient Venetians in Oltre Mare, the unknown lands of Barbaria. Looking for the most precious wares and the richest stocks; exchanging wares with other merchants, loading your ship and selling at the market; but at the same time trying to escape the ever-present pirates.... Oltre Mare - Merchants of Venice is an engaging voyage through the Mediterranean Sea, in the golden Age of Sail.

How to play:
On his or her turn, the player can trade Goods (corn, wine, spices, silk, etc.) for other Goods or for money (which also double as points) with fellow players. He or she then plays cards from his/her hand to perform certain actions that allow you to earn money, to draw cards, or to move your ship on the map (where you can obtain special powers). But there is also a dreadful Pirate action that you have to look out for! The cards played also represent the Goods that are loaded as cargo on your ship. The more cards of the same Good type shipped, the more money (and score) you will gain at the end of the game. The cards played will also influence the next turn, so choose your strategy well.

In order to win, you have to trade wisely, choose the right cards to perform the best actions, and maximize the profit from your ship's cargo!

The original version from Mind the Move is a small blue box. Rio Grande and Amigo released a bigger box version with a larger board in 2005.