Hand Management

Summer nights, the woods, and the campfires where it is good to roast marshmallows — it doesn't get better than this!

Well - that is about to change! Suddenly, out of the bushes, hordes of zombie animals are rushing towards you. Do they want to steal your marshmallows? Not at all! It's your brains they want to cube and roast over the campfire. Your goal in Oh My Brain is to rid yourself of these assailants — that is, the cards in your hand — as quickly as possible to avoid gradually losing your mind because losing your brain entirely means being transformed into a zombie...and losing the game!

The card deck consists of cards numbered 0-19, and to start a round of play each player takes three cards from the deck and places one in their "cemetery" (a card holder) and the other two in their hand. They then do this twice more to have a hand of six cards and a cemetery of three cards. Each player starts with a number of brain tokens.

On a turn, you must play to the central pile (campfire), playing a number higher than the current highest number. You can play multiple copies of the same number, and if you do, you place all copies of that number after the first one into the cemetery of one or more opponents. You can always play a 0, which restarts the pile. If you play an 8, the next player must play lower than an 8, then the pile ascends again. If you play an 11, you take another turn. If you play certain high or low cards, you must roll the special die, which may have you play again, steal a brain from another player, swap campfires with an opponent, or take some other action.

If you cannot play, you lose a brain token, clear the pile, draw two cards, place one of those cards in your cemetery, then start the pile again by playing from your hand. If you have fewer than three cards in hand at the end of a turn, refill your hand to three from the cards in your campfire. If you have played all of your cards, success! You have fended off the zombie animals, and all opponents lose a brain token for each card in their hand and cemetery. If any player has no brains remaining, the player with the most brain tokens wins; otherwise, shuffle the cards and play another round, starting with the player who has the fewest brains.

Each year, the graduating classes of the Ravenrealm Magic School compete to demonstrate their mastery of magic. For the final exam, all the wizards of each class must assemble at the legendary Ravenskeep… but every last one of them has procrastinated, distracted by learning new spells. They’ve also used all their potions—they can’t show up unprepared, with empty potion bottles!

Help your wizards get to Ravenskeep as quickly as possible. Using their magic they could even move the very towers atop which they stand to get there more easily! But how can they refill their potion bottles along the way? Well, here’s a little secret: Trapping wizards allows you to capture some of their magical essence in a bottle…

Guide your team in Archeos Society as you explore legendary sites! You must decide whether to form small expeditions for quick progression, or larger expeditions that are more efficient but slower to assemble.

On each of your turns, you either recruit a new explorer or launch an expedition by playing your cards using a group of matching colors or roles. Choose your expedition leader wisely as they determine which region you explore and provide a special ability for that expedition. Note that whenever you launch an expedition, unplayed cards in your hand are made available for your opponents to recruit!

To achieve victory, you must carefully manage your efforts in recruiting and accumulating discoveries, all while monitoring the progress of your competitors.

Terraforming Mars: Ares Expedition is an engine-building game in which players control interplanetary corporations with the goal of making Mars habitable (and profitable). You will do this by investing mega credits (MC) into project cards that will directly or indirectly contribute to the terraforming process. In order to win, you will want to accumulate a high terraform rating (TR) and as many victory points (VP) as you can. Players raise their TR by increasing global parameters: oceans, oxygen, and temperature. TR also determines each corporation's basic income, and, at the end of the game TR counts as VP. Additional VP and production capabilities are awarded for building project cards and other actions taken during the game.

The game is played in rounds, and each round the players will choose one of five phases, which determines which activities will take place during that round. This means every round is different, but can consist of building new project cards, taking general and project-specific actions, producing income and resources (plants and heat), or researching to draw more project cards. Every player will take all the phases selected for the round, and will receive a special bonus during the phase that they selected. To speed up the game, within each phase, players can act simultaneously without waiting for each other!

The game board has tracks for oxygen, temperature, and terraform rating, as well as a place for all of the ocean tiles that will be flipped over the course of the game. The game ends when there is enough oxygen to breath (14%), oceans enough to allow Earth-like weather (9), and the temperature is well above freezing (+8°C). It will then be possible, if not comfortable, to live on the surface of Mars!

The winner is the player with the most VP at the end of the game.

The king is throwing an unprecedented year-long event to commemorate the 100th year since Everdell's founding. Come one, come all, to the Bellfaire!

Bellfaire is a new expansion for Everdell that offers several different gameplay modules, including:

Components and rules for 5-6 players
Player powers and resource boards
A Bellfaire board with a new Market location
Garland Awards, which are shared endgame goals
New Special Event cards

—description from the publisher