Open Drafting

Every stick is a sword. Every bike is a steed. Every memory is a possibility.

In Vivid Memories, you’ll take turns collecting fragments of childhood memories, weaving a tapestry of colored threads in your mind. Throughout your journey, you’ll store important moments in your memory bank -- gaining new abilities to help you score.

Cleverly create connections and earn rewards for completing core memories, matching the imagination behind each moment, and working toward your lifelong aspirations for victory.

During the game, players take turns collecting fragments of memories from moment tiles, placing them in their "brain" board to weave a tapestry of colored threads. Using abilities at the end of each round to cleverly create connections, players are rewarded for how they store memory fragments while working toward completing “core memories”, which give repeated benefits each round. Through their journey, players store important moments in their memory bank -- gaining new abilities and new opportunities to score -- all while working to collect fragments and moments that match what they aspire to be.

—description from the designer

Moles have traveled from all over to compete in the annual Mountain Maker tournament. In this light strategy game, competitors show their skill based on how high they can pile their Molehills, and by how many Mountains they control. The Mole that can build and control the most Mountains out of Molehills over 6 rounds will be declared the "Top Tunneler" and win the game. Features a two-level game board and full-color acrylic standees for each Mole!

Mountains Out Of Molehills is played over six rounds, and each round has four phases. In Phase 1 players take turns drafting action cards from a face up market to form a hand of 4 cards each. These actions will move Moles underground while adding Molehill pieces to the bottom of the Mountains above them.

In Phase 2, each player simultaneously determines the order they plan to resolve their action cards, they place these cards face down in a stack from first action, to last. Once the order is set it cannot be changed! Carefully planning will help ensure you take control of the most valuable Molehills, but be careful as your opponents may block your path, throw a Rock in your way, or even cause your best Mountains to Topple over, spilling the pieces onto other Mountains!

In Phase 3 players take turns revealing the top card from their stack and resolving its action. In Phase 4 players score the round. Each player controls the Mountains that have their color Molehill on the bottom, and they earn 1 point for each piece in the Mountains they control.

After scoring, players draft the turn order for the next round, starting with the player who has the most pieces on TOP of each Mountain. The player who goes first gets first choice when drafting cards, but the player who acts last gets the final movement of the round.

After six rounds players total up all their points from the 6 rounds and the player with the most points is dubbed the Top Tunneler and wins the game!

They came to this planet, and they chose you. They uplifted your people and promised great prosperity. They provided the wisdom and the resources to build your cities sky high. They taught you the ways of culture, science, and warfare. They promised knowledge for any willing to learn. Come, Archon, guide your citizens to victory, under the watchful eyes of the Builders, our benefactors from beyond the skies above.

In Origins: First Builders, you are an archon, guiding a population of freemen, influencing the construction of buildings and monuments, climbing the three mighty zodiac temples, and taking part in an arms race — all in an effort to leave the greatest mark on mankind's ancient history.

You start the game with a city consisting of just two building tiles: the Agora tile and the Palace tile. As the game develops, your city will grow in both size and strength as you add new building tiles, each of which has a special ability that triggers when it is first added to a city and when closing a district. Your placement on the military track indicates the rewards you receive when you attack and your chances of becoming first player.

Origins: First Builders is played over a number of rounds, with a round ending only after each player has passed. If a game end condition has not yet been triggered, the game continues with a new round. On your turn, you perform one of the following actions:

• Visit an encounter site with your workers to gain resources and additional citizen or speaker dice, advance on the zodiac temple tracks (and potentially gain zodiac cards), and advance and attack on the military track.

• Close a district, gaining victory points (VPs) and possibly gold for matching a district card's building pattern, additional bonuses based on the buildings you activate, and additional VPs at the end of the game based on the value of the citizen die you use to close the district.

• Build a tower level to increase your endgame scoring based on the tower heights and the matching color dice you use to close your districts.

• Grow your population.

• Pass.

The game finishes at the end of the round when one or more of the following conditions has been met:

At most three colors of tower disks are still in stock.
No gold remains above any district card.
No citizen die of the proper color can be added to the citizen offer.
A player has moved all three of their zodiac disks to the top space of each temple track.

The temple area is divided into three tracks: the sea temple, the forest temple, and the mountain temple. You score points only for your two least-valued temples, and once all the points have been summed, whoever has the most VPs wins.

Furnace is an engine-building Eurogame in which players take on the roles of 19th-century capitalists building their industrial corporations and aspiring to make as much money as they can by purchasing companies, extracting resources, and processing them in the best combinations possible.

Each player starts the game with a random start-up card, the resources depicted at the top of that card, and four colored discs valued 1-4.

The game is played over four rounds, and each round consists of two phases: Auction and Production. During the auction, 6-8 company cards are laid out with their basic sides face up. Players take turns placing one of their discs on one of these cards, but you cannot place a disc on a card if a disc of the same value or color is already present. Thus, you'll place discs on four cards.

Once all the discs are placed, the cards are resolved from left to right. Whoever placed the highest-valued disc will claim this card, but first anyone with a lower-valued disc on this card will gain compensation, either the resources depicted multiplied by the value of their disc or a processing ability (exchange X for Y) up to as many times as the value of their disc.

Once all the cards have been claimed or discarded, players enter the production phase, using their cards in the order of their choice. Each company card has one action — either production or processing — on its basic side and two actions on its upgraded side. During the production phase, you can use each of your cards once to gain resources, process those resources into other resources or money, and upgrade your cards.

At the end of four rounds, whoever has the most money wins.

Furnace also includes capitalist cards that contain unique effects, and if you want, you can choose to deal one out to each player at the start of the game. For an additional challenge, you can require players to create a "production chain", with each newly acquired company card being placed somewhere in that chain and locked in position for the remainder of the game.

Set in ancient Mesopotamia, a cradle of civilization, at a time when the location of Ur was a coastal region, players work to build the Great City of Ur, expand its districts, and establish themselves as powerful builders.

Tabannusi: Builders of Ur features a stunning board showing the city of Ur divided into 5 regions, each tied to a specific color die. There are 3 building districts, 1 temple district, and 1 port district.

Each turn, your worker will activate one of these districts. When activating a district, you must first take a die from the district. This die matches the color of the district and serves two functions:

1) The die itself becomes a resource of its color.
2) The value of the die determines which district your worker will activate on the following turn.

Through various actions you will be able to expand your influence in the various districts, expanding construction sites and turning them into buildings to score valuable victory points. But you will also exert your influence in the temple district in order to earn the king's favor. In the port district you can obtain ships with important abilities and for scoring victory points.

You must spend your actions wisely and always make sure that you keep an eye on the general timing of the game. The moment a district is emptied of dice, a scoring will occur.

—description from publisher