Hand Management

Elfenroads combines the previously released Elfenland and Elfengold, along with the new Elfensea.

In Elfenland, young elves have to pass a very special test before they are accepted as grownups. All elf girls and elf boys receive a map of Elfenland, and they have to visit as many famous towns in Elfenland as possible, using the common types of transportation: dragons, unicorns, giant pigs, elfcycles, troll wagons, magic clouds, ferries and rafts. These types of transportation, however, are available in limited numbers and can be used only in specific regions. Thus, an exciting race starts among the elves to find out who will make the best use of the available transportation. The one who visits the most towns wins.

Elfengold, an expansion for Elfenland, adds gold coins to the game that players use to bid for the Travel Counters and other new items. It also adds Gold Value Tokens to the towns that indicate how much gold players earn for visiting a town. Two magic spells and a new obstacle — a Sea Monster — are included as well as two round cards to allow for longer games up to six rounds.

In Elfensea, as in Elfenland, young elves have to pass a special test before they are accepted as grownups. The same rules apply in Elfensea as in Elfenland, except as described in the rules. The game board map is different, and the common types of transportation — dragons, unicorns, giant pigs, magic clouds, whales and rafts — differ somewhat as well. As in Elfenland, these types of transportation are available in limited numbers and can be used only in specific regions. Thus, an exciting race starts among the elves to find out who will make the best use of the available transportation. The player with the most points wins.

From the creators of Cyanide & Happiness comes a card game where players compete to finish an awful comic strip.

The creators said:

"Someone on the Internet once told us that making stick figure comics is easy as hell, and that we were ugly and stupid.

They were right on all counts. So, after crying for a few hours, we created the Random Comic Generator which since its inception in 2014 has entertained millions with its computer-generated comedy.

After a few weeks of playing with the Random Comic Generator, we started to wonder if its hundreds of random panels might lend themselves to a card game, where you compete against your friends to finish a comic with a funny punchline. So we printed out all of the RCG panels and started playing with them."

Draw 7 cards. The deck plays the first card, select a Judge to play the second, then everyone selects a third card to create a three panel comic strip. The Judge picks a winner.

The game includes a deck of 250 unique panel cards - that’s 15.4 million combinations of comics!

Matter swirls around a new born star, coalescing on the planetoids that orbit it. Planets evolve, grow and migrate in their orbits, forming a unique solar system by the end of every game. Planetarium is a game of creation, chaos and terraforming on the grandest scale.

Players are competing to crash combinations of elements onto planets that then allow them to play cards to evolve the planets in a variety of ways, with each player looking to evolve planets in the system to suit their own secret endgame goals.

On a turn a player will firstly move a matter or planet token in a clockwise direction around the star. The board is mapped with a series of lines, tracing orbits around the star, and it is along these lines that the tokens are moved. If a matter token moves onto a space occupied by planet token then the matter token is placed on the player's mat (on the respective planet). In the same way, planets can also be moved onto matter tokens, placing the matter tokens on the player's mat.

In the second part of a turn a player can play Evolution cards from their hand at the cost of the matter tokens they have collected on their player mat (some cards have other special requirements to play). If a player plays a card, they score the cards points and check to see if their card has changed the state of the planet from hostile to habitable by checking the total habitable and hostile points played to the planet (some end game goals require planets to be hostile or habitable). The player may then draw a card from one of three decks, Low Evolution (cards that score less points but require less matter to play), High Evolution (cards that score more and are harder to play), and Final Evolution (cards that can only be played on a player's final turn).

The thematics of the game have been developed with an eye on the science, led by a scientist working on NASA's search for life on Mars. Evolution cards thematically include all kinds of planetary phenomenon, from asteroid impacts, atmospheric effects, to geological events. Final Evolution cards mark the relatively stable state a planet is in at the end of the solar system's development and include classifications for the final planets such as Hot Jupiter or an uninhabitable frozen dwarf planet.

The game consists of a beautiful game board with handfuls of matter tokens, approximately 36 Evolution cards and 16 Final Evolution cards (all with unique space art and flavor), player mats, and player and score markers.

Description from the publisher:

In The Colonists, a.k.a. Die Kolonisten, each player is a mayor of a village and must develop their environment to gain room for new farmers, craftsmen, and citizens. The main goal of the game is full employment, so players must create new jobs, educate the people, and build new houses to increase their population. But resources are limited, and their storage leads to problems that players must deal with, while also not forgetting to upgrade their buildings. Players select actions by moving their mayor on a central board.

The Colonists is designed in different levels and scenarios, and even includes something akin to a tutorial, with the playing time varying between 30 minutes (for beginners) and 180 minutes (experts).

Hero Realms is a fantasy-themed deck-building game that is an adaptation of the award-winning Star Realms game. The game includes basic rules for two-player games, along with rules for multiplayer formats such as Free-For-All, Hunter, and Hydra.

Each player starts the game with a ten-card personal deck containing gold (for buying) and weapons (for combat). You start each turn with a new hand of five cards from your personal deck. When your deck runs out of cards, you shuffle your discard pile into your new deck. An 80-card Market deck is shared by all players, with five cards being revealed from that deck to create the Market Row. As you play, you use gold to buy champion cards and action cards from the Market. These champions and actions can generate large amounts of gold, combat, or other powerful effects. You use combat to attack your opponent and their champions. When you reduce your opponent's score (called health) to zero, you win!

Multiple expansions are available for Hero Realms that allow players to start as a particular character (Cleric, Wizard, Fighter, etc.), fight cooperatively against a Boss, fight Boss decks against one another, or compete in a campaign mode that has you gain experience to work through different levels of missions.