Open Drafting

Push your luck with Fairy Lights to collect as many points as possible!

To play, shuffle the deck and place it face down. Cards in the deck show 1 or 2 bulbs in one of five colors, and each card is worth 0-2 points. At the start of your turn, see how many cards are in the "shop", the central area of play:

If the shop has 5 cards, you can only take cards on your turn.
If the shop has 1-4 cards, you may draw from the deck.
If the shop has 0 cards, you must draw.

When you draw, place the revealed card at the end of the shop line. If it's the same color as the last card in the shop, your turn ends immediately. Otherwise, if the shop doesn't contain five cards, you can choose to draw again, or you can end your turn and take cards. If five cards are now in the shop, you must take cards.

When you take cards, if 1-4 cards are in the shop, take all cards of a single color from the shop and add them to your collection; if five cards are in the shop, take all cards of two colors from the shop instead. If the number of bulbs in a color in your collection is now a multiple of three (3, 6, 9, 12), score those cards, placing them face down in a corner of your playing area. If you have 1-2 bulbs of a color, leave those cards where they are. If you have four or more bulbs of a color and didn't score them, discard all bulbs of that color. The next player then takes their turn.

When the final card is revealed from the deck, the active player finishes their turn, then the game ends. Add the points on your scored cards, then subtract the points showing on all cards that remain in your playing area. Whoever ends up with the most points wins!

Every player builds their own block of stones in Monolyth, using 3D polyominoes to create patches of particular colors, complete levels, and a structure that matches a pattern.

To set up, choose a structure card at random, then place it on the main board, along with the appropriate structure tokens, level tokens, and prophecy tokens based on the number of players. Place the crystal marker next to the main board, then draw twelve random polyominoes from the box and place them in a circle around the main board. The polyominoes come in five colors, and all 1x1 blocks in those colors are placed to the side.

On a turn, move the crystal 1-4 spaces clockwise, then take the polyomino in that space and add it to your 4x4 player board, with nothing placed outside that grid and no part of the polyomino hanging over an empty space; alternatively, you can remove this polyomino from the game and take a 1x1 block of the same color, then add that to your player board. In either case, draw a random polyomino from the box and place it where the crystal started this turn.

Instead of moving the crystal, you can choose a prophecy token from the main board and add it to a side of your player board. Each player board has four different colors around the four edges, e.g., blue, orange, black, and teal.

When you fill all the spaces of a level on your player board, take the largest level token from the main board. If your construction fits the guidelines of the structure card, then you claim the highest available structure token.

Keep taking turns until someone has completed their 3D monolith, which is 4x4x3 in a 3-4 player game and 4x4x4 in a 1-2 player game, after which you finish the round. If a prophecy has been fulfilled, e.g., if you placed a 12 on the orange side of your player board and you have at least 12 orange blocks on that edge of your player board, then you score points equal to that prophecy token.

Sum the points of your structure token, level tokens, and valid prophecy tokens to see who has the highest score and wins.

In Evergreen, your goal is to build a lush ecosystem by planting seeds, growing trees, and placing other natural elements on your planet, trying to make it the greenest and most fertile of all.

You choose biome cards from a common pool to determine which area of your planet you'll develop in a round. The cards not chosen make those regions more fertile, and thus more valuable. To create a huge forest, you want to grow trees, plant bushes, and place lakes, while using the power of nature to gain extra actions. Ideally you can concentrate your trees in the most fertile areas, but without them overshadowing one another as you also want them to collect as much light as possible.

We designed Trekking through History for gamers and non-gamers to play together. The goal was to make a game inviting for non-gamers, but with a little subtlety under the hood for gamers.

In the game, you go on a three-day tour of human history, traveling thousands of years in a time machine to experience great moments from our past.

The game takes place over three rounds, each representing one day of your trip. Each day, you visit a series of historical events, spending a different number of hours at each.

On each turn, you choose to visit one historical event, and spend a certain number of hours doing it. Doing so will yield benefits, like checking off items on your itinerary for points, and earning Time Crystals so you can bend the space-time continuum on future turns.

Along the way, you’ll also score points for visiting historical events in chronological order.

The player with the most points after three rounds wins.

—description from the publisher

In the game Azul, players take turns drafting colored tiles from suppliers to their player board. Later in the round, players score points based on how they've placed their tiles to decorate the palace. Extra points are scored for specific patterns and completing sets; wasted supplies harm the player's score. The player with the most points at the end of the game wins.

Azul: Master Chocolatier includes double-sided factory boards, with these tiles being placed on these boards at the start of each round. One side of the factories is blank, and when using this side the game plays exactly like Azul. The other side of each factory tile has a special effect on it that modifies play in one way or another, putting a twist on the normal game. Additionally, the tiles are modeled to look like chocolates and other treats, despite remaining as inedible as the tiles in the original game.