Hand Management

Thurn and Taxis

In Thurn & Taxis, players build post office routes across Bavaria and the regions around, collecting bonus points in various ways. The board shows a map of all the cities, with roads leading from each one to some of its neighbors. There are various colored regions around the board, most with two or three cities, and a large region with all the Bavarian cities in the center.

Players build postal routes from city to city to city so that each city is adjacent to the next city on the route and there is a road connecting these two cities. Each route must consist of at least three cities. Players may only build one route at a time. Routes are represented by melded city cards arranged in the order of the route.

Players start with a supply of 20 post offices in their color, a carriage house card and a player aid card. The board is populated with bonus tiles, carriage cards and city cards. On a turn a player will draw a card from a display of six, face up, city cards (or the top of the face down deck) and meld one card, either starting a new route or adding to the current one. If after adding to the route, the length of the route is at least three cities, the player may declare it finished and score it. The player may, depending on the length of the route and which cities are in the route, place post offices in the cities, collect bonus tiles, and acquire a higher value carriage. Optionally, the player may receive support from one postal official in the form of: drawing a second card, melding a second card, refreshing the six city card display, or acquiring a higher value carriage than the route length when finishing a route. Once a route is scored the city cards of that route are discarded, and the player begins a new route on his next turn.

When a player exhausts his supply of post offices or acquires a value 7 carriage the end of the game is triggered. Play continues until the player who is last in turn order finishes his turn, and the game ends. Players score points for their highest valued carriage and bonus tiles, and lose points for unplaced post offices. The player with the most points wins.

The fact that you *must* add at least one city to your route each turn or lose the whole route gives the game an enjoyable planning element.

Krysis

This game of tactics, strategy and confrontation is set in a fantasy world after the Great Depression. Each player runs a company of special agents, and their agents become teams in threes. The aim of the game is transporting the crystals and leftover artifacts (guns and transporting means!) from the mine to your own campsite and from the campsite to your home. The transport will succeed only if the team is strong and fast enough, and if you can use the transporting capacity of your men optimally. However, nobody is left alone with their problems. The competition and the robbers ensure interaction and surprises…

The basic game consists of 5 rounds. Players try gaining crystals and artifacts from the central mining project (bidding for the best bunch of crystals), then in the tactically most important phase they choose their 3-card "teams" to take actions in order of their speed. On your turn you can go to the mine to take crystals to your camp; you can attack others' camps for crystals and you can transport your crystals home or to the bank from your camp. You can also collect or use the artifacts found: they can help in increasing your transporting capacity or battle power, but if you don't use them they can mean lots of points in the end of the game. At the end of the game, whoever has the most points (from crystals and artifacts at home and points from the bank) wins.

Krysis website and rules

El Grande Decennial Edition

Players take on the roles of Grandes in medieval Spain. The king's power is flagging, and these powerful lords are vying for control of the various regions. To that end, you draft caballeros (knights in the form of colored cubes) into your court and subsequently move them onto the board to help seize control of regions. After every third round, the regions are scored, and after the ninth round, the player with the most points is the winner.

In each of the nine rounds, you select one of your 13 power cards to determine turn order as well as the number of caballeros you get to move from the provinces (general supply) into your court (personal supply).

A turn then consists of selecting one of five action cards which allow variations to the rules and additional scoring opportunities in addition to determining how many caballeros to move from your court to one or more of the regions on the board (or into the castillo - a secretive tower). Normally, you may only place your caballeros into regions adjacent to the one containing the king pawn. The one hard and fast rule in El Grande is that nothing may move into or out of the king's region. One of the five action cards that is always available each round allows you to move the king to a new region. The other four action cards varying from round to round.

The goal is to have a caballero majority in as many regions (and the castillo) as possible during a scoring round. Following the scoring of the castillo, you place any cubes you had stashed there into the region you had secretly indicated on your region dial. Each region is then scored individually according to a table printed in that region. Two-point bonuses are awarded for having sole majority in the region containing your Grande (large cube) and in the region containing the king.

Contains these expansions:

El Grande: Grandissimo
El Grande: Grossinquisitor und Kolonien
El Grande: König & Intrigant
El Grande: König & Intrigant – Unverkäufliche Sonderkarten
El Grande: König & Intrigant – Player's Edition (partialy, 3 of 11 cards)

Allows to play expansions:

Grandissimo
Intrigue & the King
Grand Inquisitor & the Colonies
The King & the Colonies (mixed Intrigue & the King and Grand Inquisitor & the Colonies)

BioShock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia

In the tabletop game BioShock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia, players will play as either the Founders or the Vox Populi and will build up an army to fight for control of Columbia by taking ground and completing important objectives. At the same time, they'll be using their influence to sway various events that arise. They'll also find themselves having to deal with Booker and Elizabeth who are running around Columbia creating havoc.

Bioshock Infinite: The Siege of Columbia has players combating one another, stealing objectives from one another, assassinating leaders, destroying strongholds, bidding against each other for control of unfolding events and more. The first player/team to 10 victory points wins.

The board game, based in the universe of the Irrational Games-developed video game BioShock Infinite, comes with 52 miniatures, cards, dice and a colorful game board. One of those miniatures – the Handyman – comes with the Premium and Ultimate Songbird editions of the video game, however this item was a promotional element to get news of the game out there and no rules have been implemented for this figure.

For additional assistance with the rules you can see the FAQ located here http://boardgamegeek.com/thread/1030558/bioshock-infinite-faq or contact Colby on the Plaid Hat Games website.

Street Illegal

8 track cards (from a total of 48 cards) are used to build a track.
Each player gets 5 tempo cards.
All players play tempo cards simultaneously and try to get in front of the field.
6 cars are NON-player cars - these are called "Alte Hasen" (old pros) and are controlled by a rule mechanism - the same rules are used when playing this race alone - there are always seven cars in the race (one old pro for example when 6 players are playing)
The chips are earned for good maneuvering and may be used in bluffing when attacking other cars.