Hand Management

Supply Chain: the card game

A combination of Tetris, rummy, Sim City, and dominos. Buy properties and build your business empire. But make sure all your suppliers are linked, or it can all fall apart.

You can play a solo game, or competing against others, or play co-op. There are over 200 cards with over 150 of those being unique.

Each player starts with a main office and a family business. Players buy, sell, and trade properties to grow a sprawling cityscape. All cards have links so you may connect a producer with its suppliers. Watch out for run-down derelict properties that your competitors might stick on you.

When all the properties are gone, the game is over. Players add up their victory points to determine the winner. Different properties vary in point values. An iron mine might have only 1 VP while the coveted Department Store has 10 VP.

—description from the designer

Sea Salt & Paper

During their turn, you assemble your hand, maybe place cards for their effect, and decide if you want to end the round. But do you think you are the one with the most points in hand?
You will have to choose: stop the round immediately or give the others an extra turn to try to extend the gap? Is it worth taking the risk?
The game ends when you reach 30/35/40 points (4/3/2 players).

The excitement of ending the round to catch your opponents off guard

The pleasure of playing your effect cards and making combos

Origami created especially for the game!

Cosmoctopus

Welcome, devotees! The celestial gaze of the Great Inky One falls upon you; do you have what it takes to be the most dedicated follower?

Cosmoctopus is an engine-building, tentacle-gathering board game for 1 to 4 devotees. Guide Cosmoctopus through the Inky Realm, a flexible configuration of tiles, to gather resources and obtain powerful cards that represent relics, scripture, hallucinations and constellations. Harness the power of these bizarre objects and experiences, craft potent card combinations and be the first to gain 8 tentacles to win!

Your turns are simple; the game’s excitement and depth lie in working out how best to use an ever-powerful hand of cards. Unlike some other engine-builders, you’ll be straight into the fun, upgrading your engine from turn one. With variable setup, easy ways to alter difficulty and optional solo and co-operative modes, Cosmoctopus offers a versatile tabletop experience, whatever your gaming tastes.

—description from the publisher

Silencio

In Silencio, all players form a team together, a team that cannot speak to one another.

You each start with a hand of cards from four suits, and your goal as a team is to discard as many cards as possible — but each card played must have a higher value than the previously played card of the same suit. If a newly played card is the direct successor of the card last played of that color, then you orient the card to show its dark side and suffer the penalty from that card, with the green penalty, for example, forcing the next card played to be green while the blue penalty requires you to give another player one of the face-up cards available from the Oracle.

If a newly played card is not the direct successor of the card last played of that color, then you place the card with the light side face up, taking the bonus depicted on that half of the card if you desire, such as ignoring the next penalty or placing a card from your hand face up in front of you so that anyone could play it.

Five shrines are play — one multicolor shrine and one of each color — and before or after your card play for the turn, you can choose to flip a shrine face down to use the bonus of that color.

If you can't play or have no cards in hand, you must pass, and if all players pass in turn, then the game ends. Your score is based on the number of cards in all players' hands, with 0 being the best score possible. If you find the game difficult, you can include the tavern card that a few times each game allows a player to give limited information about their hand; if the game is too easy, you can remove some or all of the shrines to eliminate those "extra" bonuses.

Trajan

Set in ancient Rome, Trajan is a development game in which players try to increase their influence and power in various areas of Roman life such as political influence, trading, military dominion and other important parts of Roman culture.

The central mechanism of the game uses a system similar to that in Mancala or pit-and-pebbles games. In Trajan, a player has six possible actions: building, trading, taking tiles from the forum, using the military, influencing the Senate, and placing Trajan tiles on his tableau.

At the start of the game, each player has two differently colored pieces in each of the six sections (bowls) of his tableau. On a turn, the player picks up all the pieces in one bowl and distributes them one-by-one in bowls in a clockwise order. Wherever the final piece is placed, the player takes the action associated with that bowl; in addition, if the colored pieces in that bowl match the colors shown on a Trajan tile next to the bowl (with tiles being placed at the start of the game and through later actions), then the player takes the additional action shown on that tile.

What are you trying to do with these actions? Acquire victory points (VPs) in whatever ways are available to you – and since this is a Feld design, you try to avoid being punished, too. At the Forum you try to anticipate the demands of the public so that you can supply them what they want and not suffer a penalty. In the Senate you acquire influence which translates into votes on VP-related laws, ideally snagging a law that fits your long-term plans. With the military, you take control of regions in Europe, earning more points for those regions far from Rome.

All game components are language neutral, and the playing time is 30 minutes per player.