Hand Management

Progress! That's what these Dark Ages need, someone with a little get-up-and-go. You've been a serf in this one-pig town long enough, and it's time to shake things up. You've opened a guildhall for like-minded professionals from all over Europe to work together, build their trades, and get some economic stability.

Now if only everybody else didn't have the same idea...

Well, you'll just have to do it faster than those other guys! Gather professionals into chapters, and use their combined might to reach for victory. Collect complete color sets of professions (all five colors of Trader, for instance), which you use to buy victory points (VP). The first player to gain 20 VP on her turn wins.

In Guildhall, each profession grants you special abilities, and these abilities grow stronger the more of the set that you complete. When you cash in the set for victory points, however, you lose the ability until you can build it up again. Which professions are worth risking VP to keep?

Integrates with:

Guildhall: Job Faire

It is a momentous time for the Post-Human Assembly. Having fully populated the Milky Way Galaxy, the Great Houses turn their eyes towards a neighboring galaxy – endeavoring to venture across the inter-galactic void to stake claim among uncharted stars. Each Great House seeks to dominate this new galaxy, for in the race to achieve hegemony, only one can be victorious.

Hegemonic is a fast-paced game of galactic expansion, empire-building, conflict, and intrigue. As the leader of a Great House, you must expand your control over the sectors of the galaxy, build up your industrial, political, and martial capability, develop awe-inspiring technologies, and carefully time your actions to outmaneuver the other empires.

Deep Strategy
The players are in control, shaping the unexplored galaxy to support their strategic plans instead of having choices dictated by chance.

Rich Tactics
Card-driven conflict mechanics and technology development focus on tough, tactical choices and timing, minimizing luck-based gameplay.

Multilateral Conflict
A player’s industrial, political, and martial systems can all be used offensively and to control regions of the galaxy.

The stars await: can you lead your Great House to victory?

This game should not be confused with Reiner Knizia's children's game (Lord of the Rings) with the same title, or with his very different two-player Lord of the Rings: The Confrontation.

Lord of the Rings is a co-operative game where the object is to destroy the Ring while surviving the corrupting influence of Sauron. Each player plays one of the Hobbits in the fellowship, each of which has a unique power. The game is played on a number of boards: the Master board indicates both the physical progress of the fellowship across Middle Earth and the corrupting influence of Sauron on the hobbits, and a number of scenario boards which detail the events and adventures of particular locations. Progression across the boards is determined by playing cards (many of which represent the characters and items of Middle Earth), and the effects of corruption are represented by a special die. The game is lost if the ring-bearer is overcome by Sauron, or won if the ring is destroyed by throwing it into the volcanic fires of Mount Doom.

Lord of the Rings - Limited Edition

A special edition limited to 500 copies in the English language and 250 in German published by Sophisticated Games and Kosmos in November 2001. The Limited Edition has a silver 22 carat gold plated ring, pewter Hobbit playing pieces, and a signed and numbered John Howe print. Box signed by Reiner Knizia.

Mythic Battles: Expansion 1 includes new and powerful warriors for the armies of both Hades (Minos and The Damned of Tartarus) and Athena (The Matriarchs, Arachne and Arachne's Babies) so that players can reinforce their armies while facing off against one another in six new epic scenarios.

Mythic Battles: Expansion 1 also introduces a new type of cards: Heroes, exceptional beings with otherworldly powers that are not units, but rather cards to add to your deck to get bonuses.

This description's a bit tricky, so let's take it in stages...

Countermay: The Tapestry of Worlds, the crossroads of civilizations beyond imagining. After a thousand years of war, Countermay is dying. Battles, curses, extraterrestrial parasites, demonic influence, and other hazards have ruined much of the planet. The food is running out, and the threat of starvation looms. The only way to save Countermay is to seize undisputed control. Until then, armies march, fed with the ever-dwindling food as they churn farmland into mud with their boots. Can you save Countermay from its invitable doom?

Romance of the Nine Empires is a fictitious interactive collectible card game (CCG) set in the fantasy world of Countermay. In the game, players assume command of one of nine vastly different warring factions — including steampunk aliens, a dark god-king's crusade of conversion, displaced WWII-era American GIs, and a risen empire of the undead — to expand, glorify, or defend their empires. Through its fictitious fifteen-year history, players have shaped the world of Countermay through their individual and collective achievements, and the results are reflected in the story and the current state of the empires.

Romance of the Nine Empires is based on the Legend of the Five Rings CCG and was created for use in the movie The Gamers: Hands of Fate, mimicking the way that L5R tournament results affect the actual story in future expansions of that CCG but allowing the movie creators more freedom to design the game to match the characters in the movie. L5R publisher AEG agreed to be the in-movie publisher of the fictional Romance of the Nine Empires, but as a result of Kickstarter funding for The Gamers: Hands of Fate, it decided to create a real-life version of R9E.

This game represents the 15th Anniversary World Championship Edition of Romance of the Nine Empires, and (to slip into the movie storyline for a second) it holds the decks used by the top-placing players for each faction that made it to the quarterfinals at the 2012 World Championships at Gen Con Indy.