Family Games

Elfenland is a redesign of the original White Wind game Elfenroads. The game is set in the mythical world of the elves. A group of fledgling elves (the players) are charged with visiting as many of the twenty Elfencities as they can over the course of 4 rounds. To accomplish the task they will use various forms of transportation such as Giant Pigs, Elfcarts, Unicorns, Rafts, Magic Clouds, Trollwagons, and Dragons.

Gameplay: Players begin in the Elf capitol, draw one face down movement tile, and are dealt eight transport cards and a secret 'home' city card that they must reach at the end of the 4th round or lose points for each city space away from 'home' they are at the end of the game. Markers of each player's color are placed in each city on the board and are collected when the player visits that city (each counts as 1 point).

The round proceeds in 2 stages. The first part of the round consists of the drawing of Tiles showing the differing types of transport (except rafts) from a combination of face up and face down tiles (if a player doesn't like the 5 tiles that are face up; they can always draw blind from the face down tiles and hope to get one they need). These transport tiles need to match the Transportation cards in your hand to use them most effectively. After each player has a total of 4 tiles they take turns placing a tile on any one of the roads that run between the elf cities. Only one transport tile may be placed on each road; so players may use other players tiles to travel if they have the matching cards in their hand. This frequently causes a readjustment of planned travel routes as other players tiles can allow you to move farther or shorter than you had first thought. Players can play their tiles to help themselves or hinder others by playing a slow mode of transport on another players (perceived) path.

Each mode of transport has certain terrain it can travel through quickly or slowly, and those that it cannot. These are listed on the top of each transportation card by the number terrain symbols. The number of terrain symbols equals how many matching cards you must play to move across a given tile in a given terrain. For example, a Magic Cloud tile placed in a mountain would take one Magic cloud card to travel across (1 mountain symbol on card means Magic clouds are fast in mountains). If the same tile was placed on a road in forest terrain it would require 2 Magic Cloud cards to travel that route (2 Forest symbols on card means Magic Clouds are slow in Forest). Magic Clouds cannot travel in desert terrain at all (no desert symbols on card). All modes of transport are different and Rafts can be used on rivers or lakes without needing tiles. Rafts go slow upstream (2 raft cards needed) and fast downstream (1 card needed). The small lake requires 1 raft card to travel across and the larger lake requires 2 cards to travel across. Players may keep one unused transport counter and up to 4 Transportation cards from one round to the next.

The second part of the round begins after all players have finished placing their transportation tiles for the round. Each player plays his cards and moves his elf-boot around the board collecting his tokens from the cities visited. If there is a Transport tile on a route and a player has no matching Transportation card he may 'Caravan' across it by playing any 3 Transportation cards from his hand.

As a bit of 'take that' each player has a trouble tile which can be placed next to any transportation tile during the first part of the round. This counter means that in order to travel that path an additional card of the transport type must be played or 4 cards to 'Caravan'.

Victory: if at the end of round 3 a player has visited all 20 cities he is the winner. If not the game ends after round 4 when 'Home' cities are revealed and each player subtracts points for each city he is away from his 'home' subtracting that from his collected city tokens. The person with the highest score wins.

From the publisher, Avalon Hill:

Ahoy, Mateys!

That scurvy villain, the Pirate King, has stolen the Sea Hammer - only the pride of Her Majesty’s Royal Navy - and taken to the seas like the dog he is! It’s up to you to commission a brave officer of the Royal Navy to pursue that black-hearted cur, catch him, and turn him into shark bait. But he’s a rascal, that Pirate King, so you’ll need to recruit one of the dregs of the Queen’s dungeons because sometimes it takes a pirate to catch a pirate. Iffn’ you discover where that swab is hiding, you’ll need to beat the Pirate King in a duel or acquire enough gold to buy back the ship. Act with haste because you’re not alone in this hunt. Whoever saves the Sea Hammer first wins the Queen’s undying gratitude - and the game!

Here's a description of the game from Timothy Rose, who saw a presentation on the game at GenCon:

The "S&S" pirate game is a "track" based game (think "Talisman" more than "Monopoly" ). Each player controls two characters, a "hero" and a "scoundrel" type, and the goal is to retrieve the Queen's flagship from the Pirate King. Of course, each character has different ways to do that, either by derring-do and combat or by more underhanded methods (if you have enough gold, you could even BRIBE the Pirate King to get the ship back!). They showed the box design, pretty standard pirate/cutlass stuff, but nice art.

In the middle of the 1930s, an expedition of treasure hunters crashes its zeppelin in the middle of an unknown and mysterious island where legends tell that several old and powerful civilizations have left many sumptuous treasures.

Each player is one of these brave explorers who joined the expedition with old maps giving clues on where some of these treasures can be found. However, it is clear that the land is barely known and dangerous, so, all explorers decide to travel together, in one solid group by hiring beasts of burden and exotic items in the native villages while trying to avoid the many dangers of the inhospitable land of Isla Dorada...

Which one of these brave explorers will find the most valuable treasures, avoid the numerous curses and accomplish it's rewarding destiny?

In Isla Dorada, players will have to move an unique pawn portraying the expedition of explorers. Each player will collect cards of different kinds (movements, actions, destinations, curses, destinies, bonus or malus cards) and will have to build the best hands turn after turn (time is limited to a certain number of game turns) to be able to chose the expedition destinations in a succession of bids and negotiations. Doing so, the players will try to put their hands on treasures while avoiding their cursed destinations and trying to block other player's objectives.

The very easy rules can be learned in a few minutes whilst the rich and elegant game play assure an always renewed experience.

Second expansion for Thurn and Taxis - actually, 2 expansions in one.

"All roads lead to Rome"

1st expansion, "Audience": The players (clerics) try to arrive at the right time to be received in audience by the pope.

2nd expansion, "Offices of Honor": The postal staff still helps you - but now you can draw additional city cards, get victory points or even set a new house.

Expands:

Thurn and Taxis

Contents:

1 game board with various roads to Rome
5 carriages in the colors of the countries (beige – Baiern; orange – Böhmen/Salzburg; etc.)
26 office tiles
20 audience tiles with 5 different clerymen in the four player colors
4 summary tiles
12 victory point chips

From http://riograndegames.com/games.html?id=189

The postal carriages continue to roll. Now that players have learned to master the postal routes in the south, they naturally turn their eyes toward the north, looking for more routes to establish to add to their ever-growing postal networks. The new routes run between Holland and Sachsen - between Preußen and the free cities. The players build new postal stations in order to provide fast service for important letters to the many new customers in the north.
Hard-working postal carriers add horses to their carriages to enable them to travel farther and more safely, which will help the separated Preußen provinces to achieve power and glory.

With this expansion, we offer new ways for players to enjoy Thurn and Taxis. The new board opens up new areas for postal routes. To support the new board, we include new bonus tiles and new city cards (with horses on their backs to support the new rules). We hope players will enjoy these changes and the strategic opportunities they offer.

Expands:

Thurn and Taxis

Contents:

1 game board
4 carriage cards
69 city cards (3 each of 23 cities) the backs of the city cards have 1, 2, or 3 horses. The number is also shown on both sides of the cards as horseshoes.
39 Bonus tiles (5 x 8 distance, 4 x 7 distance, 3 x 6 distance, 2 x 5 distance, 4 x all provinces, 4 x free cities, 4 x Preussen, 3 x Mecklenburg/Hannover, 3 x Holland/Belgien, 3 x Thüringen/Sachsen, 3x Hessen/Baiern, 1 x game end)
1 rider figure
1 game rules