Hand Management

Every year, thousands of salmon are compelled to leave the ocean and return to the river of their birth. This perilous journey can span hundreds of miles and is fraught with danger. Strong rapids, waterfalls, hungry bears, and eagles all await the salmon on their quest to spawn. Only the most fit will complete the salmon run!

Salmon Run is a fast-paced racing game in which you'll maneuver your salmon upriver, avoiding obstacles and jumping over waterfalls. Behold the immense power of the river's currents! Avoid ferocious bears! Beware of stealthy eagles, waiting to snatch victory from your hand! Most of all, pace yourself to avoid debilitating fatigue. Salmon Run features:

Deck-building: The path you choose upriver will determine which cards you may add to your swimming deck. Enhance your swimming ability by gaining powerful swim cards!
Player Interaction: Acquire cards to unleash hungry bears and eagles on your opponent's salmon! Unlock the power of the river's raging rapids and strong currents!
Fatigue: Overexertion leads to the build-up of fatigue which will slow you down!
Modular boards: Experience a new river each game! The river's difficulty and length can be customized to your liking!

Liberté covers the French Revolution from 1789 and the meeting of the Estates General to the Directory and Bonaparte’s coup d’état in 1799.
The game is played in four turns. In each turn there will be a variable number of rounds, followed by an election to see which faction becomes the government. There are three factions, the Radicals (red), the Moderates (blue), and the Royalists (white). The most common action is for a player to place faction blocks on the board. He shows he controls these blocks by placing one of his tokens on top of the stack.

The cards are divided into two sets, set 'A' and 'B'. The 'A' deck is used first and tends to favor the moderates and Royalists. Once this deck has been exhausted the 'B' deck comes into play, which tends to favor the radicals.

The election is triggered when all of one type of faction block has been exhausted. The faction blocks will determine which faction forms the next government. Players are attempting to score victory points by having the most influence in the government and opposition. Points can also be picked up in later turns for being the general in charge at a victorious battle, and for winning elections in specific provinces.

Normally the player with the most victory points will win. However, there are two sudden death game end conditions that may alter the outcome. The first is a radical electoral landslide, triggered by the red faction gaining 17 or more votes. The second is successful Royalist counter-revolution, precipitated by Royalist control of seven counter-revolutionary provinces. In both cases, victory is determined by a different set of criteria, in which accrued victory points do not count. The player who is ahead on points must be aware that one mistake could lead to defeat at the hands of the Jacobins or Royalists!

It is likely that you will never have played a game quite like this one and you may find yourself wondering what strategies to employ. Do not despair! Once you have completed your first game you will realize that amongst the apparent chaos of the game of the game there are many opportunities for long-term planning.

Liberté is #6 in the Valley Games Classic Line

Excerpted from publisher's blurb:

In Cave Troll, each player controls a party of explorers raiding the cave troll’s lair. Using knights, dwarves, thieves, and other adventurers, the players search the lair for gold and magical artifacts. The players must be careful, however, because they aren’t only competing against each other, but against savage orcs, terrifying wraiths, and the fearsome cave troll itself!

Cave Troll is a fast-paced dungeon-crawling board game of strategy, looting, and monster-bashing from Tom Jolly, the creator of Drakon. Cave Troll is playable in 20-60 minutes for two to four players, Ages 10 and up.

Blokus Trigon is an abstract strategy game from the makers of Blokus. The board pieces have changed from square to triangular. Game play is similar to Blokus, as players try to get rid of all their pieces. The only caveat to placing a piece is that it may not lie adjacent to your other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one of your pieces already on the board at a corner.

There is a solitaire version where one player tries to get rid of all the pieces in a single sitting.

Components:
Hexagonal playing board with 486 triangles on the board
4 sets of 22 pieces in red, blue, green and yellow
1 piece made up of one triangle.
1 piece made up of two triangles.
1 piece made up of three triangles.
3 pieces made up of four triangles.
4 pieces made up of five triangles.
12 pieces made up of six triangles.

Set up:
Layout your hexagonal silver board and give each player a set of 22 squares.

Game Play:
Each player begins at one of the marked spaces on the board. The order of play is blue, yellow, red, green colors.
As the play progresses, each new piece is placed on the board. The new piece placed must touch another piece of the same colour and it can only touch at the corners. The constraint is never touch along the sides.

When a player is blocked and cannot place any more pieces on the board, they must drop out of the game. The other players continue until they are blocked or no one is able to place any more pieces on the board.

Scoring:
When all the players are blocked, each player must count the number of triangles that they were unable to place on the trigon board and calculates their score as follows:

Any triangle that is not placed on the board counts towards a negative point.
15 points are awarded as a bonus, if the player has all 22 pieces placed on the board.
This bonus increases to a 20 points if the 22 pieces were placed on the board with the single triangle being placed last.

The winner is the person with the maximum points!

Note: This game is available by request only and requires having a membership to play.
See game associate for details.

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.