Hand Management

The castle at the center of the Oniverse is under attack. The dream denizens of the oniverse rush to build their castle defense against three monster attacks. Towers allow you to see what is coming. Keeps can help minimize damage. Ranks can reduce the effects of the traitors found inside your walls. Of course, the denizens have special powers of their own to aid in the defense. Will you be able to survive these attacks?

Castellion is a tile-laying game in which you form parts of the castle for defense against monsters. Each turn you flip over a tile and either use its special ability or place it as part of your castle. The more towers and keeps you form, the better your defense against attacks. Ranks prevent traitorous tiles from affecting you fully. When all three monsters have attacked and you still have a base of six tiles, you win.

Howdy, ya'll.
C'mon in and sit a spell. Let me tell ya about Jack Colty and his gang, and get ya up to gallop on all the interestin' events. Those filthy drovers and gunslingers are dangerous and desperate, each one generally havin' killed a man, and be content to live on a diet of Navy plug and whiskey.
I ain't never seen no queen in her damned undies, so the feller says. But I'll tell you what - after hearin' this here stupefyin' story I'm about to unfold, well, I guess you folks can make up yer own minds why I retired early.

The year is 1892.
The bank at Repentance Springs has been robbed.
Many good citizens, including Sheriff Anton Dreyfus and school-marm Sue Daggett, were brutally slain as Colty's gang shot its way, whooping and hollering, out of town.
Colonel Ned McReady and his men are tasked with bringing Jack Colty - a man so mean he'd steal a fly from a blind spider, or a coin off a dead man's eyes - and his gang to justice.

Revolver is a non-collectable card game set in the Old West.

Consisting of two balanced 62 card decks, the game pits two players against each other in a life or death struggle. One player takes the role of Colonel Ned McReady and his lawmen, and his opponent assumes control of the notorious and deadly Colty gang.

At their disposal, the Colty gang - the meanest bunch of low down dirty dogs in the West - have a roster of weaponry to bring down the lawmen on their tail: .38 Specials, .45 Long Colts, 1866 double barrel Derringers, and even a Gatling gun! Some example cards from the gang's deck: Cherokee Scout, "Adios, Amigoes!", "Thanks for yer coffee and eggs, ma'am", and "Chew on this, Gringo!"

The Colonel player's objective is to eliminate all the gang members before they can escape across the Mexican border. He can utilise such cards as Buffalo Stampede, Rattlesnake Bite, "I can smell those yellow bellies on the wind", "He shot my hat clean off!" Apache Scout, and Rickety Bridge.

The game has an asymmetrical design, with both decks featuring different cards and abilities. Revolver is played using a 5-column system, representing consecutive gunfights in the following battlegrounds: The Bank at Repentance Springs, Whiskey Canyon, Buzzard Point, Rattlesnake Creek, and the 3:15 Express from Rattlesnake Station. Gameplay is quick and bloodthirsty with bandits gunned down frequently, and law-men peppered with lead by the well-placed use of "Fire at will, boys."

Numerous tricky decisions must be made throughout. For instance, the Colty player could choose to deploy the Jackson Clan during the Whiskey Canyon battle, but the resources that this would require might make it a very risky, but rewarding, play. Similarly, the Colonel McReady player can deploy the Colonel at any time during the conflict - he's free to play aboard the 3:15 Express Train, but hugely expensive if used at Buzzard Point, for instance. Also, during the final confrontation, Jack Colty can force the train to crash - as a last ditch effort, probably killing some of his own crew in the process - he's as crazy as popcorn on a hot stove!

Primarily a combat-driven card game, each player must manage his deck of cards effectively to win. In addition to simple, unique abilities, each card also has two values: power and cost. Some simple icons are used to display such things as 'coming-into-play' effects, and if a gringo has 'True Grit'.

Revolver can trace its parentage back to San Juan, Magic: The Gathering, Battle Line, and is a new implementation of Aliens: This Time It's War.

Victory Conditions:

The Colty Gang player wins if he manages to "Escape across the Mexican border."
The Colty Gang player wins if he reaches and survives the battle on the 3:15 Express train.
The Colonel McReady player wins if Jack Colty and all the gang members are either hanged or killed.
The Colonel McReady player wins if Cortez is killed before boarding the 3:15 Express train.

Each bandit character card has a Survival Rating, indicating the likelihood of them surviving to the end of the game. For example, Lenny and Micky Mason have a low chance of survival, whereas Cortez has a high Survival Rating. Also, certain character's deaths have hugely detrimental effects on the game, such as having to discard a card, or in "Kittens" Mackenzie's case: the gang having to fight an extra two turns on the Rattlesnake Creek battlefield.

In 6 nimmt!, a.k.a. Category 5 and many other names, you want to score as few points as possible.

To play the game, you shuffle the 104 number cards, lay out four cards face-up to start the four rows, then deal ten cards to each player. Each turn, players simultaneously choose and reveal a card from their hand, then add the cards to the rows, with cards being placed in ascending order based on their number; specifically, each card is placed in the row that ends with the highest number that's below the card's number. When the sixth card is placed in a row, the owner of that card claims the other five cards and the sixth card becomes the first card in a new row.

In addition to a number from 1 to 104, each card has a point value. After finishing ten rounds, players tally their score and see whether the game ends. (Category 5 ends when a player has a score greater than 74, for example, while 6 nimmt! ends when someone tops 66.) When this happens, the player with the fewest points wins!

6 nimmt! works with 2-10 players, and the dynamics of gameplay change the more players that you have. One variant for the game has you use 34 cards, 44 cards, 54 cards, etc. (instead of all 104 cards) when you have three, four, five, etc. number of players. This change allows you to know which cards are in play, thereby allowing you to track which cards have been played and (theoretically) make better choices as to which card to play when.

Ticket to Ride Map Collection: Volume 5 – United Kingdom & Pennsylvania contains a double-sided game board with new rules for use with Ticket to Ride or Ticket to Ride: Europe with players now creating train lines in the British Isles and in Pennsylvania.

The Pennsylvania half of this map collection adds a share mechanism to the basic TtR game. Each time that a player completes a route, they claim a share of one of the companies depicted next to that route. At the end of the game, whoever holds more shares of a company than all other players receives points as a reward.

The United Kingdom half of this map collection introduces the concept of technology to TtR. At the start of the game, players can build only one- and two-train routes and only in England. By spending wild cards, players gain the ability to build routes three trains long or longer, in addition to being able to build ferries across water and build train routes in Scotland, Wales and Ireland. Players can also buy bonus cards that allow them to score extra points for taking certain actions during play. Despite the name, the map covers both the UK and the Republic of Ireland, that is, the islands of Great Britain and Ireland.

Take notice: If you find some of the Advanced Technologies feeling unbalanced, please take in consideration that Designer Alan R. Moon has himself mentioned that "The Advanced Technology Cards were not fully playtested".

Arboretum is a strategy card game for 2-4 players, aged 10 and up, that combines set collection, tile-laying and hand management while playing in about 25 minutes. Players try to have the most points at the end of the game by creating beautiful garden paths for their visitors.

The deck has 80 cards in ten different colors, with each color featuring a different species of tree; each color has cards numbered 1 through 8, and the number of colors used depends on the number of players. Players start with a hand of seven cards. On each turn, a player draws two cards (from the deck or one or more of the discard piles), lays a card on the table as part of her arboretum, then discards a card to her personal discard pile.

When the deck is exhausted, players compare the cards that remain in their hands to determine who can score each color. For each color, the player with the highest value of cards in hand of that color scores for a path of trees in her arboretum that begins and ends with that color; a path is a orthogonally adjacent chain of cards with increasing values. For each card in a path that scores, the player earns one point; if the path consists solely of trees of the color being scored, the player scores two points per card. If a player doesn't have the most value for a color, she score zero points for a path that begins and ends with that color. Whoever has the most points wins.