Hand Management

The great Sapa Inca Pachacuti turned to his offspring and ordered them to worship Inti, the Sun God, and to expand the Inca Empire as far as the llamas roam. With Chinchaysuyu, Antisuyu, Qullasuyu, and Kuntisuyu — the four regions of the new empire — now ripe for conquest, the time has come for Pachacuti's true successor to arise.

Gather your people from the villages below and use their unique abilities to strategically place them where they can perform the greatest tasks for you. Climb the steps of the Sun Temple, reaping the rewards of your piety. Build structures that both nourish your people and provide you with benefits no other has at their disposal. Muster an army and conquer villages in the four realms of Tawantinsuyu. Prove yourself a worthy successor to Pachacuti and lead the Inca to glory!

During Tawantinsuyu: The Inca Empire, players place workers onto various locations on the game board, performing actions, collecting resources (potatoes, corn, stone, and gold), constructing buildings and stairs, sculpt statues, expanding their military strength, and collecting weavings.

The game board features a hill located within the old Inca capital of Cusco, the sides of which are terraced and divided into five sections. Atop the hill sits the Coricancha, The Golden Temple, the most important temple of the Inca Empire. Within the Coricancha, each player has a High Priest. On the terraced sections below exist a variety of worker placement locations, interconnected by paths and individually marked by symbols. On your turn, you must either place a worker onto a location outside the Coricancha OR choose two of the following:

Recruit one worker.
Take two god cards.
Draw two army cards and keep one of them.
Move your High Priest one or two steps clockwise within the Coricancha.

When placing a worker, you must first discard a god card with a matching symbol or pay one gold. Once placed, the worker remains on the game board for the rest of the game! Each worker placement location is connected to exactly three action spaces. You must always perform at least one of these actions. However, for each adjacent worker (i.e., connected to your worker's location via direct path through one of the action spaces) that matches the type of worker just placed, you receive one additional action!

While some locations will result in you being able to perform multiple actions, other actions and placements may be more desirable, especially since each of the five types of workers has a unique ability:

Warrior: Remove one of the adjacent workers, placing it in your player area.
Craftsman: Gain +1 action if placed onto a craftsman space.
Architect: Gain +1 action if placed onto an architect space.
Courier: Decreased placement cost; +1 action if it's the first worker placed within a given area.
Priest: Take one god card; you may pay one potato to gain +1 action.

All god cards feature one of the different symbols found on the worker placement locations. Before placing a worker, you must either discard a god card with a matching symbol or pay valuable gold resources. God cards also depict special abilities that can be activated only if you have previously built a matching statue!

Army cards allow you to send one or more units to conquer villages in nearby regions. You must compete against the other players for control of each region as well as for valuable rewards that can be gained as a result of military conquest.

The position of your High Priest within the Coricancha has a significant impact on your overall strategy, affecting your access to powerful actions and determining any potential resource costs when placing your workers. More specifically, when placing a worker, you must pay additional resources the farther your worker is from your High Priest, from nothing all the way up to eight potatoes or corn!

Additionally, when moving your High Priest, you can activate powerful actions available only within the Coricancha:

Produce: Gain all rewards from your production buildings.
Worship: Sacrifice previously sculpted statues to gain permanent temple advancements.
Offering: Pay resources to gain temple advancements.
Conquer: Engage in military conquest of nearby villages.
Rejuvenate: Refresh previously activated buildings and military units.

Throughout the game, you score victory points whenever you construct stairs or sculpt statues. Gain bonus victory points whenever another player makes use of the stairs you have constructed. Score victory points from temple advancements and control of the four regions.

The game ends when the worker pool has become exhausted, symbolizing the full incorporation of nearby regions and villages into the newly risen Inca Empire. You then score bonus victory points from reaching the top of the temple, from your woven tapestries, and from various buildings and resources you have accumulated.

—description from publisher

In the late 1840s, thousands of pioneers headed out West to seek wealth and opportunity. Many of these brave souls traveled by wagon over the Sierra Nevada mountain range, into what would soon become the Golden State of California. In the game Sierra West, you are an expedition leader who must guide a party of rough-and-ready pioneers—employing a clever mix of strategy and tactics with each step.

Sierra West comes with four sets of special cards and parts, each of which can be combined with the game's basic components to create a unique mode of play. During setup, the players choose a mode, then build a mountain of overlapping cards with the corresponding deck. Each mode adds new thematic content, alternate paths to victory, and interesting twists on the core mechanics.

The four included modules are:

Apple Hill
Gold Rush
Boats & Banjos
Outlaws & Outposts

Overview of Play
At the start of each turn, you will overlap and arrange three cards into your player board—exposing and concealing a selection of the action icons available on them. This will create two unique paths for your pioneers to follow. Next, you will move your pioneers across their paths from left to right, performing a series of small actions. Common actions include: claiming cards from the mountain, building cabins, gaining resources, and advancing your wagon. Additional actions are brought into the game by the chosen mode—such as: harvesting apples, mining for gold, fishing, and fighting outlaws. As your pioneers complete their paths, they will gain access to the action spaces on the upper portions of your cards. On these, you will be able to exchange resources for to advance on the wagon trail and homestead tracks, or activate other special abilities unique to the mode.

As the game continues—and more cards are removed from the mountain—new and exciting things are discovered! Each piece of the mountain is either a card that can be gained to improve your deck, or a special card that is added to a face-up row at the mountain’s base. As this row extends, more of the mode’s opportunities and challenges come into play. For example, in Boats & Banjos mode, the row is a river that offers more fishing and gold panning options as time goes on.

Sierra West can be set up and played in under an hour, often leaving people with the desire to play it again right away—especially to explore the other modes! It is a highly thematic Eurogame that offers a truly novel and satisfying spin on action-programming, worker-placement, and deck-building.

Includes solo mode by Dávid Turczi.

—Description from the publisher

Note: Contained inside the box are 2 promos for other games:
Teotihuacan: City of Gods – Sierra West Promo
Dice Settlers: Sierra West Promo

Moonrakers is a game of shipbuilding, temporary alliances, and shrewd negotiation set in a space-faring future. The players form a loose band of mercenaries, but while they are united in name, actual alliances are shaky as players are pitted against each other in the quest to become the new leader of the Moonrakers.

Moonrakers is a deck-building game in which players choose Contracts to attempt alone or with Allies in order to gain Prestige and Credits. After negotiating terms with Allies, players use their decks of Action cards to play Thrusters, Shields, Weapons, Reactors, and Crew to fulfill the requirements on each Contract. Each type of Action card has additional effects such as extra Actions, drawing additional cards, and protecting players from Hazards encountered while attempting Contracts.

Players create powerful decks and gain special abilities by upgrading their ships and hiring Crew Members. This helps them accomplish more difficult and rewarding contracts alone, letting them keep more Prestige and Credits for themselves.

Allies negotiate who will receive the Prestige, Credits, and risk of Hazard from Contracts, but if you don't make your offers enticing enough players may be tempted to betray you! The first player to 10 Prestige wins, but be careful as hazards encountered on Contracts reduce your Prestige!

-description from designer

Brass: Birmingham is an economic strategy game sequel to Martin Wallace' 2007 masterpiece, Brass. Birmingham tells the story of competing entrepreneurs in Birmingham during the industrial revolution, between the years of 1770-1870.

As in its predecessor, you must develop, build, and establish your industries and network, in an effort to exploit low or high market demands.

Each round, players take turns according to the turn order track, receiving two actions to perform any of the following actions (found in the original game):

1) Build - Pay required resources and place an industry tile.
2) Network - Add a rail / canal link, expanding your network.
3) Develop - Increase the VP value of an industry.
4) Sell - Sell your cotton, manufactured goods and pottery.
5) Loan - Take a £30 loan and reduce your income.

Brass: Birmingham also features a new sixth action:

6) Scout - Discard three cards and take a wild location and wild industry card. (This action replaces Double Action Build in original Brass.)

The game is played over two halves: the canal era (years 1770-1830) and the rail era (years 1830-1870). To win the game, score the most VPs. VPs are counted at the end of each half for the canals, rails and established (flipped) industry tiles.

Birmingham features dynamic scoring canals/rails. Instead of each flipped industry tile giving a static 1 VP to all connected canals and rails, many industries give 0 or even 2 VPs. This provides players with the opportunity to score much higher value canals in the first era, and creates interesting strategy with industry placement.

Iron, coal, and cotton are three industries which appear in both the original Brass as well as in Brass: Birmingham.

New "Sell" system

Brewing has become a fundamental part of the culture in Birmingham. You must now sell your product through traders located around the edges of the board. Each of these traders is looking for a specific type of good each game. To sell cotton, pottery, or manufactured goods to these traders, you must also "grease the wheels of industry" by consuming beer. For example, a level 1 cotton mill requires one beer to flip. As an incentive to sell early, the first player to sell to a trader receives free beer.

Birmingham features three all-new industry types:

Brewery - Produces precious beer barrels required to sell goods.

Manufactured goods - Function like cotton, but features eight levels. Each level of manufactured goods provides unique rewards, rather than just escalating in VPs, making it a more versatile (yet potentially more difficult) path vs cotton.

Pottery - These behemoths of Birmingham offer huge VPs, but at a huge cost and need to plan.

Increased Coal and Iron Market size - The price of coal and iron can now go up to £8 per cube, and it's not uncommon.

Brass: Birmingham is a sequel to Brass. It offers a very different story arc and experience from its predecessor.

Edited description from Bruno Faidutti's write-up of the game in his Ideal Game Library:

Skull & Roses is the quintessence of bluffing, a game in which everything is played in the players' heads. Each player plays a face-down card, then each player in turn adds one more card – until someone feels safe enough to state that he can turn a number of cards face up and get only roses. Other players can then overbid him, saying they can turn even more cards face up. The highest bidder must then turn that number of cards face up, starting with his own. If he shows only roses, he wins; if he reveals a skull, he loses, placing one of his cards out of play. Two successful challenges wins the game. Skull & Roses is not a game of luck; it's a game of poker face and meeting eyes.

Skull & Roses Red features the same gameplay as Skull & Roses, with the only change being alternate rules that allow each player to control two biker gangs. Both Skull & Roses Red and Skull are playable on their own, with each game containing six different biker gangs. Each Skull or Skull & Roses set can be combined with another to allow for games with more than six players.