Dice Rolling

Warriors is a card and dice-rolling game with a fantasy military theme. Each player begins with a randomly dealt army of 11 units. Most will be creatures of one of the game's 6 types (Barbarians, Goblins, Elves, Trolls, Dwarves, Undead). A lucky player may also get Wizards (which protect creatures of one type from attack) or Catapults (one-use weapons that have a 50/50 chance of destroying a target card). Creatures come in three varieties (infantry, archers, cavalry).

Armies are placed face-up in front of the players, and three rounds of warfare ensue. At the start of each round, players receive additional cards, including the vital Attack Cards, without which an army can only stand on the defensive. Attack cards are of two types. One ("Battle") allows all of a player's creatures of one type to attack creatures of either the same type or the type that the attacker most dislikes. Elves, for instance, may attack an opponent's Elves or his Trolls (the Elves' "natural enemy".) The other type of Attack Card ("Mercenary Army") allows creatures of different types to combine in an attack against creatures of any one type, but limits the number of attackers. Attack Cards also provide various bonuses to the attacker.

The resolution of attacks is modeled on Risk. The attacker rolls up to three dice, the defender up to two (the number depending on how many infantry each side has in the battle). The side with more archers, if either, adds one to its high die roll. The highest and second highest rolls for each side are compared, and the low roller in each loses a card (with the defender winning ties). The attack continues until one side is wiped out or the attacker voluntarily breaks off. Attackers with surviving cavalry can then make further attacks.

Players gain victory points for enemy units destroyed and for having the most creatures of a particular type at the end of the third round of play.

In this expansion for the Ticket to Ride series, players still attempt to complete their Destination Tickets and claim routes and block each other on the map. But rather than draw and collect Train cards, they roll five custom Train dice each turn.

Depending on the outcome they can re-roll some or all, then use the dice to claim routes on the board; grab Route Tokens for future use; or draw more Destination Tickets.

For board maps that feature Tunnel routes, such as Ticket to Ride: Europe, 3 Tunnel dice are also included.

This expansion requires trains, Destination Tickets and a board map from any of the Ticket to Ride series.

Expands:

Ticket to Ride
Ticket to Ride: Europe
Ticket to Ride: Märklin
Ticket to Ride: Switzerland
Ticket to Ride: Nordic Countries

Yggdrasil is a co-operative game in which players are different gods of the Norse mythology: Odin, Thor, Tyr, Frey, Heimdall and Frejya. Monsters, the wolf Fenrir, the huge serpent Jormungand, the Fire Giant Surt, the Goddess of the Dead Hel, the traitor Loki and the cosmic dragon Nidhogg are moving forward in Asgard inescapably and announce the impending coming of chaos and destruction on the world tree Yggdrasil. Together the players have to resist to the impending coming of the Evil forces in Asgard, the gods' world.

Game flow
During his turn, the active player first draws an Enemy card, corresponding to one of the six Evil creatures. The corresponding counter is moved one space forward in Asgard and the associated effect applies. Then the active player performs three different actions among the nine at his disposal in order to resist to the advance:

Ask for the Elves' help
Get a Weapon from the Dwarves
Send the Valkyries looking for Vikings' souls on the mankind world Midgard
Fight the Giants and try to gather the parts of a magic rune
Negotiate with the Vanir
Get rid of the Fire Giants who invade Midgard
Get the Vikings back from Hel's world
Exchange forces with another god
Fight against the Enemies in Asgard

Each player, depending on the god he plays, has a specific power that allows him to perform some actions better. All of these actions have to be used in the right moment or the victory will be unreachable. The players will need cleverness, calm and team spirit to challenge 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

The basic game play of Tsuro of the Seas resembles that of Tom McMurchie's Tsuro: Players each have a ship that they want to sail — that is, keep on the game board — as long as possible. Whoever stays on the board the longest wins the game.

Each turn players add "wake" tiles to the 7×7 game board; each tile has two "wake connections" on each edge, and as the tiles are placed on the board, they create a connected network of paths. If a wake is placed in front of a ship, that ship then sails to the end of the wake. If the ship goes off the board, that player is out of the game.

What's new in Tsuro of the Seas are daikaiju tiles, representing sea monsters and other creatures of the deep. Notably, daikaiju can move: each tile has five arrows, four for moving in each of the cardinal directions and another one for rotation. On the active player's turn, he rolls two six-sided dice; on a sum of 6, 7, or 8, the daikaiju will move, while on any other sum they'll stay in place. To determine which direction the daikaiju tiles move, the player then makes a second roll, this time with a single die. On 1-5 in the second roll, each daikaiju moves according to its matching arrow. On a 6 in the second roll, a new daikaiju tile is added to the board.

If a daikaiju tile hits a wake tile, a ship, or another daikaiju tile, the object hit is removed from the game. Another way to be ousted! The more daikaiju tiles on the game board, the faster players will find themselves trying to breathe water...