Family Games

The "Stone Age" times were hard indeed. In their roles as hunters, collectors, farmers, and tool makers, our ancestors worked with their legs and backs straining against wooden plows in the stony earth. Of course, progress did not stop with the wooden plow. People always searched for better tools and more productive plants to make their work more effective.

In Stone Age, the players live in this time, just as our ancestors did. They collect wood, break stone and wash their gold from the river. They trade freely, expand their village and so achieve new levels of civilization. With a balance of luck and planning, the players compete for food in this pre-historic time.

Players use up to ten tribe members each in three phases. In the first phase, players place their men in regions of the board that they think will benefit them, including the hunt, the trading center, or the quarry. In the second phase, the starting player activates each of his staffed areas in whatever sequence he chooses, followed in turn by the other players. In the third phase, players must have enough food available to feed their populations, or they face losing resources or points.

Mystery of the Abbey is a whodunit game with a twist. A monk has been murdered in a medieval French Abbey. Players maneuver their way through the Abbey examining clues and questioning each other to find out who is the culprit. A masterful game of deduction!

The Pilgrims' Chronicles is a 12 card-expansion for Mystery of the Abbey published for the Essen 2005 Fair.

The 2007 Days of Wonder reprint of Mystery of the Abbey included the Pilgrims' Chronicles expansion.

From the publisher:

A beautiful and beautifully simple game of laying a tile before your own token to continue its path on each turn. The goal is to keep your token on the board longer than anyone else's, but as the board fills up this becomes harder because there are fewer empty spaces left... and another player's tile may also extend your own path in a direction you'd rather not go. Easy to introduce to new players, Tsuro lasts a mere 15 minutes and actually does work for any number from 2 to 8.

Theme:

Tsuro has an Asian spiritual theme - the lines representing the "many roads that lead to divine wisdom", and the game as a whole representing "the classic quest for enlightenment".

This theme is very light and the game essentially plays as an abstract.

Gameplay:

The game consists of tiles with twisting lines on them, a 6x6 grid on which to lay these tiles and a token for each player. Each player has a hand of tiles. On your turn you do two things: place a tile from your hand onto the board next to your token and move your token as far as it can go along the line it is currently on, until it is stopped by an empty space with no tile in (yet), the edge of the board or colliding with another player's token. If your token reaches the edge of the board or collides with another player's token, you are out of the game. The aim of the game is to be the last player left with a token on the board. Strategy therefore consists of trying to drive your opponents either into each other or off the board whilst extending your own route in directions that will make it difficult for your opponents to do the same.

Other notes:

Tsuro was originally patented by McMurchie in 1979 under the name Squiggle Game, but was apparently not published at that time. Somewhat similar to Metro and Spaghetti Junction.

Splendor is a fast-paced and addictive game of chip-collecting and card development. Players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, means of transportation, shops — all in order to acquire the most prestige points. If you're wealthy enough, you might even receive a visit from a noble at some point, which of course will further increase your prestige.

On your turn, you may (1) collect chips (gems), or (2) buy and build a card, or (3) reserve one card. If you collect chips, you take either three different kinds of chips or two chips of the same kind. If you buy a card, you pay its price in chips and add it to your playing area. To reserve a card — in order to make sure you get it, or, why not, your opponents don't get it — you place it in front of you face down for later building; this costs you a round, but you also get gold in the form of a joker chip, which you can use as any gem.

All of the cards you buy increase your wealth as they give you a permanent gem bonus for later buys; some of the cards also give you prestige points. In order to win the game, you must reach 15 prestige points before your opponents do.

In Pandemic, several virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously all over the world! The players are disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.

The game board depicts several major population centers on Earth. On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. A deck of cards provides the players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout this deck are Epidemic! cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases' activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the "normal" spread of the infections.

Taking a unique role within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists' strengths in order to conquer the diseases. For example, the Operations Expert can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases and which allow for greater mobility between cities; the Scientist needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five—but the diseases are spreading quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!

The 2013 edition of Pandemic includes two new characters—the Contingency Planner and the Quarantine Specialist—not available in earlier editions of the game.