Negotiation

Resistance

The Empire must fall. Our mission must succeed. By destroying their key bases, we will shatter Imperial strength and liberate our people. Yet spies have infiltrated our ranks, ready for sabotage. We must unmask them. In five nights we reshape destiny or die trying. We are the Resistance!

The Resistance is a party game of social deduction. It is designed for five to ten players, lasts about 30 minutes, and has no player elimination. The Resistance is inspired by Mafia/Werewolf, yet it is unique in its core mechanics, which increase the resources for informed decisions, intensify player interaction, and eliminate player elimination.

Players are either Resistance Operatives or Imperial Spies. For three to five rounds, they must depend on each other to carry out missions against the Empire. At the same time, they must try to deduce the other players’ identities and gain their trust. Each round begins with discussion. When ready, the Leader entrusts sets of Plans to a certain number of players (possibly including himself/herself). Everyone votes on whether or not to approve the assignment. Once an assignment passes, the chosen players secretly decide to Support or Sabotage the mission. Based on the results, the mission succeeds (Resistance win) or fails (Empire win). When a team wins three missions, they have won the game.

Rule Correction:

For first printing (2010 purchases), the expansion rules should read: "Games of 5-6 players use 7 plot cards, games with 7+ players use all 15 Plot Cards." and "...each Round, the leader draws Plot cards (1 for 5-6 players, 2 for 7-8 players, and 3 for 9-10 players)" - This has been corrected in the subsequent printings.

Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame

This entry covers the 2002 release of Sid Meier´s Civilization: The Boardgame by Eagle Games. This game is unrelated to the similarly named 2010 FFG game Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game.

A boardgame version of the award-winning PC strategy game. Create a civilization to stand the test of time! The game begins in 4000 BC where the players found a pair of villages of a fledgling people.

Each player’s civilization :

Explores the world around them, discovering resources and the native people that defend them.
Expands by sending settlers out to create new cities.
Researches new technologies to gain advantages over the other players.
Builds unique “Wonders of the World”.
Increases the size of their cities (4 sizes from village to metropolis) to increase production.
Builds military units to defend what’s theirs, and to conquer what’s not.

Features:

2 sets of rules (standard, and advanced) allow anyone to play the game.
784 plastic pieces featuring 22 different, professionally sculpted playing pieces that represent cities, settlers, armies, navies, artillery, and air units from 4 different eras.
Over 100 full color Technology and Wonder cards.
A giant 46” x 36” gameboard featuring the artwork of Paul Niemeyer.

This game has been reimplemented in 2007 as Civilization CHR ("open source" project)

Catan: Star Trek

Star Trek: Catan takes two well-known media properties and merges them into, well, into something that is 95% The Settlers of Catan glossed with Trek tropes and spiced with a Trek-themed version of a mini-expansion previously only available in German.

In Star Trek: Catan, players start the game with two small Outposts at the intersection of three planets, with each planet supplying resources based on the result of a dice roll. Players collect and trade these resources – dilithium, tritanium, food, oxygen and water – in order to build Starships that connect regions in the galaxy, establish more Outposts and Starbases (upgraded Outposts) at new intersection points in order to increase resource acquisition, and acquire Development Cards that provide Victory Points (VPs) or special abilities.

On a dice roll of 7, a Klingon ship swoops in to prevent resource production on one planet while taxing spacegoers who hold too many resources.

Star Trek: Catan differs from the basic Settlers in one aspect: a set of Support Cards formerly available only in German as Catan Scenarios: Helpers of Catan. Each Support Card features a special ability and one of Kirk, Spock, McCoy, Sulu, Scott, Uhura, Chekov, Chapel, Rand, or Sarek. Some special abilities make basic actions better, such as reducing the costs of Starbase upgrades or allowing the player to trade a resource of their choice at 2:1 for a turn, while others break rules, such as protecting the player from discarding on a 7 or producing a resource when the player rolls a number that wouldn't otherwise produce for them. Players get a specific Support Card during setup based on turn order, with later players getting generally more useful abilities to compensate for early player advantage. When a player uses a Support Card ability for the first time, they may trade it in for a Support Card of their choice or keep it for a second use, but they may only trade immediately after use.

Chicken Caesar

In Chicken Caesar, players represent aristocratic ancient Roman chicken families trying to create a legacy for their family name. Each family has several eligible roosters eager to jump into the world of politics, getting rich and creating a legacy by any means necessary.

Roosters gain renown for their families by occupying various political offices. Low-ranking officers don't yield much fame, but they hold both the purse strings and the power of the sword. A few roosters in the lower offices of Aedile and Praetor, together with the votes of a few well-paid (and temporary) allies, can clear a path to the luxury and recognition that come with the titles of Censor, Consul, and even Caesar.

Being Caesar isn't easy, though: fail to bribe and bargain to ensure the welfare of the whole coop and today's Caesar is tomorrow's Coq au Vin. Dead roosters don't earn any more points, but they do offer opportunities for their surviving relatives to exaggerate their accomplishments. All that matters, in the end, is history's judgment, and history can be rewritten.

Mechanically, players gain and maintain areas of influence through negotiation and voting. The game features a Suffragium marker that players pass after voting to either promote a Rooster to a higher office, or throw him to the fox. Players can also strategically demand bribes for their votes or even refuse to vote (pass) to gain a later advantage.

Murder, betrayal, votes for cash, fragile alliances, and bloody vendettas will separate the legendary families from the forgotten ones in the struggle to become – and remain – Chicken Caesar!

Catan: Cities & Knights

Adds several new aspects to Settlers of Catan but the two major ones are creating knights to protect the land from invading barbarians and building city improvements that confer benefits upon that city's owner. Adds tactical complexity to the game and game length.

Belongs to the Catan Series.

The game changes the base game in three main ways:

First, there are 3 new commodities in the game, distinct from resources - paper, cloth, and coins, which can be acquired from Forest, Meadow, and Mountain spaces, respectively. Cities that would normally produce two of one of those resources instead produce 1 resource and 1 of the corresponding commodity. (To make commodities easier to obtain, each player starts the game with 1 city and 1 settlement on the board.) These commodities allow players to build city improvements that confer various advantages and eventually points.

Second, the deck of development cards is replaced by three different decks, each corresponding to one of the commodities. Building city improvements gives players a chance to draw these cards with every roll of the dice. Building more improvements will increase these chances, but cards cannot be bought directly in any way. These cards are similar to the development cards in the base game, but with a wider range of effects. (Some cards are balanced better as well - the new Resource Monopoly card, for example, can take no more than 2 of the named resource from any one player.)

Finally, players can also build knights on the island along their network of roads. These knights can be used to claim certain intersections and move the Robber (taking the place of Soldier cards), but are also used to defend the island from periodic barbarian attacks. If the island is successfully defended, the player(s) with the most knights are rewarded. If not, the player(s) with the fewest knights each have a city downgraded to a settlement.