Dice Rolling

Boomtown is a game with auctions, dice, and some fun and nasty action cards to play on your fellow gold diggers.

There's gold in them thar hills!

In Boomtown, you start as a gold digger and try to end as a tycoon.

To do this, you must first buy the best mining concessions, hoping to find gold veins. You can also try to become the Mayor of Whiskey River or San Narciso, in order to get a small cut on concessions sales, or build a saloon where lucky prospectors will spend their nuggets in moonshine whiskey. If business is really bad, you can still rely on bank or stagecoach hold-ups to reestablish you. A well placed stick of dynamite can also solve some minor problems.

From GMT's web site:

The Fast Action Battle (FAB) games, designed by Rick Young (Europe Engulfed, Asia Engulfed, and FAB: The Bulge), takes you to the Allied invasion of Sicily for volume II of the series.

As the Allied player, you will choose your invasion beaches after seeing where the Axis player has deployed his units. Do you choose Montgomery’s historical ‘Husky’ plan, Patton’s alternate plan, or a hybrid plan of your own?

In this game you will find a few new unit and asset types, and also new challenges for both sides. For the attacker, the challenge is the tough Sicilian terrain; and for the defenders, it’s the worsening Italian morale.

Each victory area and functioning port that the Allies secure adds a ‘Fading Italian Morale’ Event Chit into the selection cup, and as each of those are drawn, worsening effects on Italian units are felt along the entire front.

If one side has not secured an automatic victory by the end of turn 9, the Axis player receives bonuses, both for German units that have exited off the island through Messina and also for areas on Sicily that are still Axis-controlled, so there is pressure on both sides to fight for every area.

Event Chits include:

Replacements
Fading Italian Morale,
the Patton Soldier Slap, and
flanking battalion-sized invasions.

Players place track and cities, create routes, and deliver goods. Bonuses are awarded to players who deliver multiple types of goods. This game requires careful management of steam to move your train as well as hand management to thwart other players as well as enable your own route.

500 copies manufactured for Essen 2008.

Days of Steam is #5 in the Valley Games Modern Line

You have just finished your evil doctorate. Now it's time for you to return to a castle on the outskirts of the town where you grew up, to begin your tyranny in the name of revenge. Every bully that gave you a wedgie in school and every cutie who laughed at your advances will feel the wrath of the monster you are about to create...

Your goal in Good Help is to create the best monster that you can, then unleash it on the public – but don't take too long as the first player to have his monster destroy five buildings in town wins. Alternatively, you can set your monster on those of the other players, and if you have the last monster standing, you win.

To assist you in your goal – and to preserve your reputation in town – you'll hire assistants, then send them out to collect body parts, buy supplies and earn money. Your assistants can confront those of other doctors to try to steal away the gold, supplies or limbs they carry. Each assistant has at least one vice, however, and when moving about town they might be lured away by the prospect of beer, jewelry, dresses or sausage, selling or dropping everything they have to get their fix. Good help is indeed hard to find!

In this game the players are ancient gods that are trying to make their chosen tribes prosper and conquer the land. The twist is that the gods/players don't know all their chosen tribes at the beginning of the game, these are given to them only every other round.

There are 24 different tribes which start on predefined spaces on the board. These tribes are divided into four different levels and have as many counters on the board at the beginning of the game as their level indicates (1, 2, 3 or 4 tokens).

The biggest part of the game are the battles between the tribes. The funny part is that the players are not restricted to use their tribes in the fighting, they can make other tribes fight among themselves.

If you read French, check out the link to the official web site in the links section.