Hand Management

12 Rivers

You are the leader of a tribe whose people explore the fabled twelve rivers flowing from a mystical lake high in the mountains. Your goal? To find the magical coloured pearls that roll down the rivers in the current. Perhaps a helpful fairy may help you on your quest! Where the rivers converge there is a village where many people and animals live in harmony. There you can make life-long friends and deliver the pearls you have collected, to be used to heal, grow, and ensure another prosperous year for all.

In each of 5 rounds of play, take turns paying camp cards (resources) to place your 3 tribe tokens into various slots along the rivers, to get the magic pearls you need. Pay more camp card resources to place higher up the rivers to pick pearls earlier. However, with clever placement and use of camp card powers, you can still get valuable pearls efficiently downstream. Use your Tribe tokens to block then collect magic pearls that flow down the 12 rivers. Collect pearls needed by villagers to ensure prosperity for the village at the bottom of the 12 Rivers.

Once all tribe tokens are placed, release the magic pearls to roll down the rivers. Then collect a pearl at each tribe token you placed, and store it on your Alpaca for now. Remaining pearls roll downstream to be blocked and picked at other tribe tokens, or end in the lake.

Along the way you will pick up helpful fairy tokens, and try to match Alpaca goals that reward you with points for collecting sets of particular pearl colours first.

To score the pearls you collect, transfer them to villagers you recruit from the village, and strive to score their bonus goals too. After 5 rounds the player with the most points wins.

—description from the publisher

Agent Avenue

Agent Avenue is a competitive card game that combines bluffing, strategic set collection, and a race to uncover your opponent's identity. Set in a colorful anthropomorphic world, players assume the roles of retired spies in a suburban neighborhood, outsmarting each other with cards that can score points or trigger special effects. The game's art brings to life a quirky neighborhood of animal spies.

Use a unique "I split, you choose" mechanic to play one card face-up and one face-down each turn. Your opponent chooses one, influencing both your strategies. Cards feature different agents and tools that impact scoring and game progress on a track, advancing the "catch me" race to uncover the opposing spy.

Outwit your opponents by strategically collecting agent sets and effectively using spy tools. The game ends when a player successfully uncovers their opponent, combining both strategic depth and bluffing elements.

Perfect for those who love a mix of strategy and lighthearted competition, "Agent Avenue" challenges you to think like a spy and act like a friendly neighbor.

—description from the publisher

Naishi

In Naishi, you will seek to improve your Japanese state as efficiently as possible. However, you will not be free to change the positioning of your cards at will. You must replace the cards in your hand and in your tableau with cards from the central river while respecting their positioning. You will also have the possibility to send your emissaries to reorganise states, create new opportunities or force your opponent into a trade

Lost Lumina

A certain something filled the air. While energizing the magic crystal in his wand, Orly suddenly felt a change he couldn’t name. Usually this ritual took only seconds before the crystal power kicked in. Not today … it took him minutes to obtain the desired power required to load his wand for the adventurous travel ahead of him. While waiting for the blessing of the crystal power he noticed something dark. Something was lurking in the mist absorbing the essential and much needed crystal power from the crystal fragments orbiting around their world, Amanaar. In light of the immense threat to their habitat, Orly decided to set off on a journey, visiting some of the remarkable creatures of Amanaar in order to seek out the dark power that threatens their very lives. Never in his humble existence would he have imagined that some of his friends would turn against him in a battle for the Lost Lights of Amanaar.

In Lost Lights, two players battle with their party of diverse animalistic characters for control over the Regions of Amanaar. In the beginning each player drafts 10 out of 27 beautifully and individually illustrated cards. On your turn you play a card from your hand and take a number of actions equal to the action point value on the card.

Actions allow you to reinforce your party with new followers or to move your followers between the Areas on the map. In Areas where both parties meet, you’ll battle each other. To resolve battles both of you secretly choose one character card from your hand as a leader in this battle, using their special ability. After the special abilities are resolved, your combined battle strength is added up. If you lose the battle, remove your party from the contested area. If you win you are now the dominant force in that area.

The game ends immediately if one of you has no party members left on the map or if both of you run out of cards. When the game ends you add up your scores for each Area. Whoever achieved the higher score wins.

—description from the publisher

Sunrise Lane

In Sunrise Lane, players take on the role of construction companies attempting to build up a residential neighborhood, and to do this, they need to pick prestigious plots of land on which to build houses and town structures.

In more detail, the game board depicts a grid of spaces that each show 1-5 dots in a single color, and each player has a set of colored House pieces, with the colors having no connection to the space on the board. On a turn, you either draw 2 colored cards from the deck and add them to your hand (with a limit of 5 cards in hand) or discard cards to place a building, then draw a card.

When you build, you must build adjacent to a pre-existing structure (or the central space at the start of the game), and you must discard 1 or more cards of the same color as the dots in the space on which you want to build. You can discard 1-5 cards, after which you place 1-5 of your House pieces on this space, then score points equal to the number of dots on the space multiplied by the number of House pieces you placed. You can build multiple buildings on a turn as long as you build your next one adjacent to the last one you built.

When a player has 2 or less House pieces in their supply, the game ends, then players score endgame points, with two of the districts awarding points for the highest buildings and the other two for the most buildings. Additionally, points go to the player with the longest group of adjacent buildings.