Dice Rolling

In Colosseum each player is a Roman impresario - producing great spectacles in his or her arena in the hopes of attracting the most spectators. Players earn wealth and glory for each event run, using it to create ever more ambitious events. They will need to improve their arena, find the best performers, lure the Emperor and his nobles, and manage assets for long-term success to be granted the title of Grand Impresario, with tales of your extraordinary spectacles acclaimed throughout the empire.

As commanded by the Emperor, the greatest celebration in Roman history has continued unabated for 99 days. All of Rome has borne witness to the grandest spectacles the empire has ever seen— all to commemorate the opening of the Amphitheatrum Flavium, the Colosseum.

Tens of thousands have flocked to the city to experience the sight of a hundred gladiators in battle...rare and exotic animals prowling the arena floor...and to hear and see the greatest musicians and entertainers from throughout the empire. But these events have only been a prelude to today — the closing finale! As a master impresario you have prepared for this moment your entire life. Titus himself has taken his seat in the Emperor’s Loge. At the drop of his hand, the final spectacle will begin. Your moment in the sun has come...

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

Each player will build 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 2 dice.

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

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.

The highest scoring window artisan is the winner!

HeroQuest is Milton Bradley's approach to a Dungeons & Dragons-style adventure game. One player acts as game master, revealing the maze-like dungeon piecemeal as the players wander. Up to four other players take on a character (wizard, elf, dwarf, or barbarian) and venture forth into dungeons on fantasy quests. Plastic miniatures and 3-D furniture make this game very approachable. Expansions were also released for this system.

The HeroQuest series consists of the main game and a number of expansions.

This game was made in cooperation with Games Workshop who designed the miniatures and helped in many of the production details including background world and art in the rule book and scenario book.

Additional material which is generally missed since it is not technically an expansion was published in the HeroQuest: Adventure Design Kit which did feature one more Heroquest adventure: A Plague of Zombies.

Order of the Gilded Compass is a dice assignment game for 2-5 players. In this game, each player takes on the role of a treasure hunter seeking invitation to join the most prestigious of archaeological secret societies. Players scour the globe to unearth fantastic and valuable artifacts. By assigning their archaeologist dice to the right locations at the right time, players acquire treasure maps and specialists to follow them, dive for sunken treasure, acquire rare finds at the auction house, and even enlist the help of the Illuminati. The player who has the most treasure at the end of the game earns an invitation to The Order of the Gilded Compass and wins.

Order of the Gilded Compass uses a variable set-up in order to create fresh and interesting game play experiences. Each game has five locations in play to which players may assign their dice for various kinds of treasures and bonuses, and the game includes nine different buildings to allow for many unique combinations.

Princes of the Renaissance is set in Renaissance Italy. Each player takes on the role of one of the minor Condottiere princes, such as the Gonzagas or d'Estes. Then there are the big five major cities: Venice, Milan, Florence, Rome, and Naples. These are not controlled by individual players, but players will gain 'interests' in them as the game progresses. Each city has six tiles, most of which represent a famous character such as Lucrezia Borgia or Lorenzo Medici. Each tile has its own special properties that are linked to the character on the tile. Thus Cesare Borgia will help you to become more treacherous, while a Venetian merchant will increase your income. These tiles are also worth victory points, depending on the status of the city at the end of the game.

A city's status will change as a result of war. When two cities fight, they will each need a Condottiere to fight for them. Players bid, using influence points, to decide who will represent each city. The outcome of the war will depend on a little luck and the size of each player's army. Each player also gets paid for fighting, no matter what the outcome of the war is. Thus players can turn influence into gold, which in turn can be used to buy more City tiles.

No game on the Italian Renaissance would be complete without an element of treachery. Players can be openly treacherous by buying Treachery tiles, which will allow them to do nasty things like steal influence, bribe troops, or knock players out of an auction. However, the game allows players to be devious in other ways, that still remain legal. Making sure that a war goes the way you want it to is an important part of the game, and it is not always the player with the best army who ends up fighting. Want a city to lose, well become Condottiere for them and make sure you have a really bad army, or use Treachery tiles to bribe your own troops not to fight. At some point some player will become the Pope, which means he can form a Holy League (i.e. join one side in a battle). Want to make sure the Pope is on the 'right' side, well why not bribe him? What players negotiate over is up to them. The game does not force negotiation and works perfectly well without it, but it remains an avenue for players to explore.