Paper-and-Pencil

How many spaces can you fill on your scoresheet in Ripple Rush, a quick and simple flip-and-write game?

In the game, you have your own player sheet, which shows four columns of symbols (square, circle, triangle, hexagon), with eight symbols in each column. To set up the game, adjust the deck so that it contains twenty cards per player, with the cards being chosen at random. The full deck contains one hundred cards, with 25 cards for each symbol numbered 1-25.

On a turn, each player draws a card from the deck, then (if possible) you write the number on that card in the column matching the depicted symbol. Numbers must be placed in columns in ascending order so that within each column each number is higher than whatever is below it and lower than whatever is above it, but you can skip spaces in the columns when entering a number.

If you can't place your card's number on your player sheet in the proper column — e.g., you draw a blue 14 and you have no open spaces between a blue 11 and a blue 15 — announce this to everyone before they write down the number on their own card and place your card in the center of the table. After they write their own number, they can also write your number on their score sheet, if possible.

If you complete a row of symbols, then you immediately get the bonus shown on the left edge of the player sheet, either a number (5, 10, 15, 20) that you can write in any valid column or a symbol that you can fill with any valid number.

At game's end, for each column you score points equal to your longest connected sequence of filled-in spaces. In the advanced variant, you draw two of the eight bonus cards, each of which shows one of the rows on the player sheet; for each of these two rows that you fill in completely, you score bonus points.

Queen Gimnax has ordered the reclamation of the northern lands. As a cartographer in her service, you are sent to map this territory, claiming it for the Kingdom of Nalos. Through official edicts, the queen announces which lands she prizes most, and you will increase your reputation by meeting her demands. But you are not alone in this wilderness. The Dragul contest your claims with their outposts, so you must draw your lines carefully to reduce their influence. Reclaim the greatest share of the queen’s desired lands and you will be declared the greatest cartographer in the kingdom.

In Cartographers, players compete to earn the most reputation stars by the time four seasons have passed. Each season, players draw on their map sheets and earn reputation by carrying out the queen's edicts before the season is over. The player with the most reputation stars at the end of winter wins!

—description from the publisher

Under a blazing sun in 4th century BCE, traders come from all corners of the Mediterranean Sea to Corinth to sell their goods; Persian carpets, Cretan olive oil, Roman grapes, and Egyptian spices are highly prized by traders. Players have a few weeks to secure their place in Corinthian lore as its most savvy trader!

Corinth is a roll-and-write game akin to a dice-only version of the board game Yspahan. At the start of a turn, the active player rolls nine dice, then places all the dice with the highest value on the gold space at the top of the chart, then starts placing dice from the bottom of the chart up, with each value of dice being on a separate level.

The active player takes all the dice on one level, then the action associated with that level. The top level gives the player as many gold as the number of dice they took; the bottom level gives goats instead of gold; and the middle levels allow a player to deliver goods to a number of market stalls on their personal player sheet equal to the dice claimed. (You have four colors of market stalls, and once you start marking off, say, rugs in one of the blue areas, you have to finish marking off all the rugs in that area before you can start marking off another blue area.)

The active player can spend gold to roll up to three extra yellow dice and thereby increase the odds of getting to take a desired level; if the active player doesn't take any of these yellow dice, they are removed from play, preventing others from benefitting at that player's expense.

Instead of marking off gold, goats, or goods, you can use the value of the die or dice claimed (1-6) to move the steward on your personal score sheet. The steward starts in the middle of a 5x5 grid on your sheet, and you must move it as many spaces as the number of pips on the die value claimed, not crossing over any line you've drawn previously. You can pay 1 gold to move the steward one more or one fewer space, and you can pay as much gold as you want to do this. You can receive gold, goats, or goods from where the steward stops, but beyond that, you can earn points. When the steward stops on a corner space of this grid, you count the number of spaces circled to this point, with some spaces counting twice, then you write down that number, scoring that many points at game's end. If you stop in another corner later, you do the same thing again, which compounds the value of all your previous movement.

You can spend gold or goats to construct buildings that give you bonus powers, such as collecting two additional gold whenever you collect any gold or moving the steward up to two spaces more or less without paying.

After 16 turns (with four players) or 18 turns (with two or three players), the game ends and you tally points for goods delivered, spaces visited by the steward, buildings constructed, and goats and gold still on hand.

In Subtext, players try to communicate with one another by drawing hints about the word on their card. Drawing well is not required — just being clever in selecting your hints.

Each round, one person is the dealer. This player looks at their word, then shuffles the card into the cards for the other players and distributes them randomly. By doing this, one player will have the same word as the dealer, but nobody — not even the dealer — knows who it is. The dealer then draws a picture, and you want to hint at your word so that ideally only the person who has the same word will understand what you're depicting. In the subsequent guessing phase, all players (including the dealer) guess which player got the same word as the dealer. Points are awarded based on the number of incorrect guesses, but the dealer and their partner have to guess correctly to even get points. How vague do you want to be in your drawing efforts to still get your message across without anyone else knowing it?

In the multiplayer puzzle game Railroad Ink, your goal is to connect as many exits on your board as possible. Each round, a set of dice are rolled in the middle of the table, determining which kind of road and railway routes are available to all players. You have to draw these routes on your erasable boards to create transport lines and connect your exits, trying to optimize the available symbols better than your opponents.

The more exits you connect, the more points you score at the end of the game, but you lose points for each incomplete route, so plan carefully! Will you press your luck and try to stretch your transportation network to the next exit, or will you play it safe and start a new, simpler to manage route?

Railroad Ink comes in two versions, each one including two expansions with additional dice sets that add special rules to your games. The Blazing Red Edition includes the Lava and Meteor expansions. Try to confine the lava coming from the erupting volcano before it destroys your routes, or deal with the havoc brought by the meteor strikes and mine the craters for precious ore. These special rules can spice up things and make each game play and feel different.

Each box allows you to play from 1 to 6 players, and if you combine more boxes, you can play with up to 12 players (or more). The only limit to the number of players is the number of boards you have!