mythology

In Vineta, 2 to 6 players take on the roles of angry Norse Gods, seeking to sink the city of Vineta beneath a succession of pounding waves.

However, each player is secretly assigned one of nine city districts to protect. Likewise, each player secretly protects one color of houses.

By use of cards, players send waves against districts, joining together to sink them and moving houses in and out of threatened districts. At the end of each round, the district that has the most waves played against it -- along with any houses in that district -- are removed.

After eight rounds of play, only one district (and any houses it contains) will remain. Players score for houses claimed during the game, and bonuses are given to whoever was secretly protecting the remaining district and its remaining houses -- if any.

Awards

Won the 2004 Concours International de Créateurs de Jeux de Société (as Waka-Waka Island)

Mythic Greece. As an upstart demigod, you want to earn the favor of the Olympians and become a figure of legend yourself. Gather heroes and powerful artifacts, please the gods and bear their power to write your own epic tale.

Let your allies achieve their destiny and enter the Elysium, home of the glorious and the brave. Once the stories are written, only one demigod will be chosen to stand at the side of Zeus.
Elysium is a game of set collecting and combinations in which players recruit cards representing heroes, items, powers and gods. These cards have many different powers and you can create powerful combination to earn gold (the help of the gods) and victory points (the favor of the gods). Each card belongs to one of the eight Olympians gods (a family), and shows a level (1 to 3).

During the five turns of the game, players will try to transfer their cards to the Elysium and write their own Legends, which are series of cards from the same family or from different families of the same level. The more epic the Legends, the more favor from the gods they’ll earn. But as they go to Elysium, most cards lose their power and players will therefore have to renounce some of their combinations !

A game of balance and opportunity with simple action, but constant dilemmas and complex strategies.

In the Beginning

In the beginning God created the heaven and the earth. It took him six days to complete his work, assisted by a host of heavenly angels doing his divine bidding. On the seventh day God rested and examined the result. Seeing that it was good, he praised the angel who had contributed the most.

Genesis - In the Beginning gives you the chance to become that angel. By gathering the essence of creation - chaos, matter and life - and turning it into seas and mountains, birds and beasts, you hope to win Gods approval - and the game! But the way to victory is wrought with hard decisions. You must gather essence when it's most advantageous, move at the right time and do your days’ work where they count the most. And beware of the dark angel who's trying to outshine you all.

Now - let there be light!

Contents

1 game board
1 God
1 dark angel
6 player angels
42 day work markers
1 starting player marker
72 essence cubes
1 rules booklet

Gameplay

Before the creation, the players’ angels are gathered in the void with God. When God starts the creation with the words "let there be light", the angels start their monumental task. There’s a lot do to and only seven days to get it done in, so every action counts. Throughout the game, God moves over each of the seven days on the game board, stopping morning, midday and evening, allowing the players 21 rounds to act. During their turn, players can choose to collect the essence of creation (chaos, matter and life), to do a day work on the current day using the different kinds of essence they have collected, or to follow in God’s path to another day.

When players move from day to day, they’re positioned along the essence track. The essence track determines both the order of play and the type of essence a player can gather. The first player to move to a certain day gets the first position, the second player the second position, and so on. As different positions yield different kinds of essence, the players must plan their movement to get the right kind and the right amount of essence. If they’re not happy with their position, they can spend essence to swap positions with a neighboring angel, thereby also thwarting other players’ plans.

When God creates a new day with new tasks for the angels, players can move to that day. The first player to do a day work on a certain day is awarded the highest points, the second player the second highest, and so on. As the week progresses, the points earned for doing a day work increase, which affects players’ long-term strategy.

As the seventh day is a day of rest, God looks favorably on angels that retire from their hard work. The first player to retire their angel on the seventh day earns the highest points, the second player the second highest, and so on. When God reaches the evening of the seventh day, the game is over. All points will be tallied and the player with the highest score is declared the winner.

To make things even more challenging, a dark angel is mixed in with the players’ angels, doing his best to snatch as many points as possible. The dark angel follows a pre-determined pattern of actions that the players can predict and delay but never stop. If the players aren’t careful, or if they’re too caught up in their own plans, the dark angel will surely outshine them, making all of them lose the game.

The mechanics of the game are quite simple: the sooner you do a day work on a day, the higher the points you score, making it a good idea to keep close in God’s wake. Unfortunately, simply following God throughout the creation might not give you the exact essence you need to do your day work. Eventually you must stop to collect essence, preferably in the right position, making you lose momentum. In the end it’s always about choices: when and what to collect, when to move and when to do a day work. The winner, God willing, is the player who makes the right choices at the right time, a task easier said than done.

In this board game, you play as a tribal chief, leading your Viking fleet while engaging in well-planned attacks.

But your opponents are also trying to conquer as much land as possible. Naturally, wild battles can’t be avoided. Only the bravest warriors may move in to Valhalla. Therefore, you’ll need to use tactical savvy when using your men to plunder and steal. Only through successful besieging of villages and reaching other countries will you gain the most victory points and win the game.

In Deus, players work to develop their own civilizations in a shared environment. Each player starts the game with five building cards, and on a turn a player either uses one of these cards to construct a building or discard one or more cards to make an offering to a god. Cards come in six colors: red for military, green for resource production, blue for trade, brown for scoring, purple for temples, and yellow for a variety of effects.

When you construct a building, you build it in the appropriate location on the modular game board — which is sized based on the number of players with the hexagonal tiles composed of seven landscape "circles" — then you place the card in your personal tableau in the appropriate stack of colored cards and activate the power of all of those cards already in your tableau, starting with the card at the bottom of the stack.

When you make an offering, you discard cards, then receive the help of a god associated with one of the cards that you discarded, with the number of cards determining the strength of the associated action. You then refill your hand to five cards.

The game ends either when all the barbarian villages on the game board have been surrounded and attacked or when all the temples have been constructed. Whoever has the most points wins.