Hidden Victory Points

Puerto Rico 1897 takes place the year after Puerto Rico achieved political autonomy and separated itself from the colonial Spanish government. In the game, you take on the role of an independent Puerto Rican farmer in this new era and compete against others to hire workers to grow, sell, and trade valuable crops. You will also be in charge of resurrecting parts of the country as you attempt to build vital city infrastructure. Your goal throughout the game is to acquire more wealth and prestige than your opponents and become the most prosperous farmer across the country.

Each player has their own small board with spaces for city buildings, plantations, and resources. Shared between the players are three ships, a trading house, and a supply of resources and doubloons.

The resource cycle of the game is that players grow crops that they exchange for points or doubloons. Doubloons can then be used to buy buildings, which allow players to produce more crops or give them other abilities. Buildings and plantations do not function unless they are staffed by workers.

During each round, players take turns selecting a role card from those on the table (such as "Trader" or "Builder"). When a role is chosen, every player gets to take the action associated with that role. The player who selected the role also receives a small privilege for doing so; for example, choosing the "Builder" role allows all players to construct a building, but the player who chose the role may do so at a discount on that turn. Unused roles gain a doubloon bonus at the end of each turn, and the next player who chooses that role gets to keep any doubloon bonus associated with it. This encourages players to make use of all the roles throughout a typical course of a game.

Puerto Rico 1897 uses a variable phase order mechanism in which a token is passed clockwise to the next player at the conclusion of a turn. The player with the token begins the round by choosing a role and taking the first action.

Players earn victory points for owning buildings, for shipping goods, and for occupied "large buildings". Each player's accumulated shipping chips are kept face down and come in denominations of one or five. This prevents other players from being able to determine the exact score of another player. Goods and doubloons are placed in clear view of other players, and the totals of each can always be requested by a player. As the game enters its later stages, the unknown quantity of shipping tokens and its denominations require players to consider their options before choosing a role that can end the game.

"The Traveler brought much change to our small frontier town in the last five years. He showed us marvels beyond imagination and taught us how to use his strange machines. Now that the Traveler has vanished, a storm is coming. Who will control the destiny of the American Frontier?"

In 3000 Scoundrels, players assume the roles of rival leaders attempting to steal precious technology left behind by the Traveler. By overlaying clear cards, you create unique scoundrels and use them to outsmart your foes. In short, hire scoundrels to build powerful combos, steal technology, and outsmart your foes.

Each turn, you play a poker card from your hand face down in front of your player board, then use all abilities matching your claimed number. You don't need to tell the truth when claiming a number, but if an opponent catches you bluffing, it will damage your reputation and decrease your odds of winning the game.

Each leader has a unique perspective and motivation in the conflict of Graystone Gulch. Are you driven by money, fame, or the deep-seated desire to improve the world? Advanced rules add unique strategies to each leader that reflect their unique strengths and cunning tricks.

—description from the publisher

A War of Whispers is a competitive board game for 2 to 4 players. Five mighty empires are at war for the world, but you are no mighty ruler. Instead, you play a secret society that is betting on the results of this war while pulling strings to rig the results and ensure their bets pay off. A War of Whispers is a game of deep strategy, hidden agendas, and shifting loyalties.

You start the game with five loyalty tokens, each corresponding to one of the five different empires, bet randomly on a loyalty value. Your primary goal is to ensure that when the game ends, the empires you are most loyal to control the most cities across the globe. Gameplay consists of turns broken down into four phases:

Deploy agents phase: In player order (starting with the first player and proceeding clockwise), each player removes, then deploys agents to empire councils, the positions on the board marked Sheriff, Steward, Marshall, and Chancellor.
Empire turns phase: Each council position on each empire council will take an action. If a player has acquired cards, they may play them during this phase.
Cleanup phase: Add the turn marker to the next space on the turn tracker, then each player discards down to the hand limit of five cards.
Swap phase: In player order, each player may swap two of their unrevealed loyalty tokens. If you choose to do so, you must reveal both of the swapped loyalty tokens. They remain revealed for the rest of the game.

Gameplay repeats itself in this order four times. When the last space on the turn track is filled, the game ends immediately and scoring commences. The player with the most points based off their empire loyalties and the cities they control wins.

In The Guild of Merchant Explorers, each player starts with one city on their personal map board.

Shuffle the deck of terrain cards, then reveal most of these cards one by one. Based on the terrain revealed, each player places on their board cubes that are connected to their starting city or other cubes. You want to complete areas on your board, cross the seas to new land, and establish new cities on the board. You can explore capsized ships for treasure — which gives you special placement capabilities — and create linked connections between locations to score bonus points. Common objectives can be completed by all players, with those who complete it first scoring more points.

At the end of a round, all cubes are removed from each board, leaving only the cities behind, so if you don't establish new cities, you'll be stuck in the same places.

The Guild of Merchant Explorers contains multiple copies of four different maps, and the game is designed so that you can play remotely with one or more copies.

Gotham City’s most heinous Super-Villains have descended upon the city, all determined to rule the metropolis once and for all. Most of them are in it to corrupt the city and gain points, while The Joker sends Gotham City further and further into anarchy with each passing round, slightly altering the way the game is played.

You are secretly one of these Super-Villains, filling character wallets with Corruption Cards worth positive or negative corruption points. Throughout the game, players can eliminate wallets from the game, sending the caught Super-Villain to Arkham Asylum. Each round, The Joker will cause anarchy and change the rules for the next round! At the end of the 7 round game, everyone will score bonuses for any players they eliminated, and, if not eliminated themselves, will reveal their Super-Villain identity and add any corruption points contained in their Super-Villain’s wallet.

—description from the publisher