Dice Rolling

House of Borgia

DESCRIPTION: Players take on hidden roles competing for influence in this ingenious tip of the hat to Liar's Dice.

GENERAL INFO: A bluffing game with dice for 2-6 players that plays in less than 30 minutes.

THEME: It is 1492, the church is without a pope. With the shadows to thank, the Borgia family is at the peak of their power. In a week the Cardinals will gather for the Conclave. With your reputation you could never win the seat, but you may be able to control who does!

HOOK: It's like Coup meets Liar's Dice! A quick and glorious game of lies and deceit! Richly thematic and completely immersive.

WINNING CONDITION: Having secretly controlled the Cardinal who has the most influence at the end of the game.

MECHANICS: Players are randomly given an identity at the beginning of the game. It is imperative that they keep their identity secret from the other players. These identities represent the Cardinal who they want to gain the most influence.

6 cards representing Cardinals, are randomly placed in an ascending ladder-like line up. A Cardinals position on this ladder determines how much, if any, influence they will gain at the end of the turn.

Using dice and bluffing in a similar fashion to Liar's Dice, players will be able to manipulate a Cardinal's position on the ladder; or manipulate how much influence they have; or even accuse another player of the Cardinal they are controlling.

At the end of the game, if another player has accurately paired you with a Rumor Card, one that matches your secret identity, you lose; regardless of how much influence you may have acquired for your Cardinal.

Oracle of Delphi

Description from the publisher:

"For once, Zeus, Greek god of thunder and sky, is in high spirits. Hence, he decides to offer a generous gift to a worthy mortal and invite him, or her, to his realm, to Olympus. To determine a sufficient candidate, Zeus hosts a competition for his entertainment. Twelve legendary tasks are imposed upon the fearless participants: to erect graceful statues, to raise awe-inspiring sanctuaries, to offer capacious offerings, and to slay the most fearsome monsters. The first participant to master all the posed assignments wins the favor of the father of the gods himself.

Indubitably, you will not pass up this golden opportunity, so you clear your ship and rally your crew to follow on the trails of legendary Odysseus through the dangerous waters of the Aegean. But how could you find the righteous path onward? There is but one who can help you. Visit the mysterious oracle of Delphi and let her answers guide your ways.

In Stefan Feld's new game The Oracle of Delphi, the player's ships travel across a large variable game board of hexagonal tiles showing islands and the surrounding waters. Each player aims to reach certain islands to perform the twelve tasks given by Zeus: e.g., to collect offerings of different colors and to deliver them to corresponding temples, or to slay monsters of a specific type (and color), all of which can be discovered on the islands.

In order to execute these color-dependent actions, you are given three colored dice each turn, the so-called "oracle dice". Rolling the dice (at the start of the turn) is equivalent to consulting the oracle, whereas the results represent her answers. The answers determine which actions you will be able to take, but you will always have three actions per turn. However, a slight divergence from your fate is often possible.

In addition to the oracle, you can request support from the gods and you can acquire favor tokens, companions, and other special abilities that will help you win the race against other competitors.

Differently equipped ships and the variable set-up of the game board will offer new challenging and interesting strategic and tactical decisions with every new game of The Oracle of Delphi that you play.

Colony

In Colony, each player constructs and upgrades buildings, while managing resources to grow their fledgling colony. In a clever twist, dice are used as resources, with each side/number representing a different resource. Some resources are stable, allowing them to be stored between turns, while others must be used right away. Buildings provide new capabilities, such as increased production, resource manipulation, and additional victory points. Using dice-as-resources facilitates a dynamic, ever-changing resources management mini-game while players work to earn victory points by adding building to their tableau on their way to victory.

Colony includes 28 different building card types, of which only seven are used each game in addition to the fixed buildings that are used each time that you play.

A Feast for Odin

Using the central board in A Feast for Odin, players have to hunt, gather basic materials, refine those materials, develop their production-buildings, build/buy ships, and raid settlements.

The resulting earnings are placed on the players' board in the best possible pattern to produce income and (later) victory points.

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island is a game created by Ignacy Trzewiczek, the author of Stronghold. This time Trzewiczek takes the players to a deserted island, where they'll play the parts of shipwreck survivors confronted by an extraordinary adventure. They'll be faced with the challenges of building a shelter, finding food, fighting wild beasts, and protecting themselves from weather changes. Building walls around their homes, animal domestication, constructing weapons and tools from what they find and much more awaits them on the island. The players decide in which direction the game will unfold and – after several in-game weeks of hard work – how their settlement will look. Will they manage to discover the secret of the island in the meantime? Will they find a pirate treasure, or an abandoned village? Will they discover an underground city or a cursed temple at the bottom of a volcano? Answers to these questions lie in hundreds of event cards and hundreds of object and structure cards that can be used during the game...

Robinson Crusoe: Adventures on the Cursed Island is an epic game from Portal. You will build a shelter, palisade, weapons, you will create tools like axes, knives, sacks, you will do everything you can to… to survive. You will have to find food, fight wild beasts, protect yourself from weather changes…

Take the role of one of four characters from the ship crew (cook, carpenter, explorer or soldier) and face the adventure. Use your determination skills to help your team mates, discuss with them your plan and put it into practice. Debate, discuss, and work on the best plan you all can make.

Search for treasures. Discover mysteries. Follow goals of six different, engaging scenarios. Start by building a big pile of wood and setting it on fire to call for help, and then start new adventures. Become an exorcist on cursed Island. Become a treasure hunter on Volcano Island. Become a rescue team for a young lady who’s stuck on rock island…

Let the adventure live!