pattern building

In Tuned, you want to get your animal band in order so that they'll be ready to play — and although you're competing for space in the practice room with another band, you can incorporate all the musicians in your quest for the right arrangement.

To set up, each player takes two donkeys, two dogs, two cats, and one rooster. Place the rooster on the "move a figure" action space on your side of the 3x3 game board, leaving your two "add a figure" actions exposed.

On a turn, move your rooster to an open action space on your side of the board. If you choose "add", then place one of your figures on the board by following the placement rules:

Place a donkey only on an empty space.
Place a dog on an empty space or on an unencumbered donkey.
Place a cat on an empty space or on an unencumbered dog.

For a "move" action, choose an animal on the game board and move it to a new location while following the placement rules. You can move a portion of a stack; you cannot reverse the opponent's previous move.

As soon as a player creates an orthogonal or diagonal row with three of the same animals on top, that player wins. If a player is forced to add an animal (because their rooster occupies the lone "move" action) but cannot, they lose.

Earth, the soil that supports and sustains our beautiful planet, Earth. Over thousands of years of evolution and adaptation the flora and fauna of this unique planet have grown and developed into amazing life forms, creating symbiotic ecosystems and habitats.

It’s time to jump into these rich environments and create some amazing natural synergies that replicate and extrapolate on Earth’s amazing versatility and plethora of natural resources. Create a self-supporting engine of growth, expansion and supply where even your unused plants become compost for future growth.

Earth is an open world engine builder for 1 to 5 players with simple rules but tons of strategic possibilities. With its encyclopedic nature and the enormous number of unique cards and combinations, every single game will allow you to discover new synergies and connections, just as our vast and fascinating world allows us to do!

—description from the publisher

You are the leader of a prehistoric tribe, deciding which members of your tribe go hunting and what prey they want to catch. To guide you, the Elders have created challenges that you can complete by painting on the wall of your cave.

Each round in Prehistories, you and your fellow tribe leaders bid simultaneously (and secretly) to decide who hunts where. The more hunters you have, the bigger the game you can catch, but the slower you are. The fastest player — that is, the one with the smallest sum of hunters — goes first, but they have few hunters with which to hunt. To hunt, you assign your hunters to one or more locations to catch the prey waiting there. Prey is represented by polyomino tiles, and the larger the tile, the higher the sum required. If you have just enough hunters to catch your prey, they might be wounded in the process, which means you'll draw fewer hunter cards at the end of the round to refill your hand. (They distrust your leadership when you get them injured!)

In the second phase of a round, you paint your cave with the animal tiles collected during the hunting phase. Your cave is represented by a 7x7 grid that starts with a few tiles already in place. The first tile you place goes in the left-hand column, and all subsequent tiles must touch tiles already placed, with all tiles being oriented so that the animals are viewed with their legs (or fins) down. (Cavemen have simple tastes and want everything to be representational.)

When you fulfill the wishes of the Elders by painting your cave in certain ways — such as completing a horizontal line or connecting opposing corners or surrounding a legendary animal on all sides — you place one or more totem tokens on that challenge. Whoever first discards their eight totem tokens wins.

In Reiner Knizia's Mille Fiori (millefiori is a glasswork technique for decorative patterns, the name means Thousand Flowers), you take the role of glass manufacturers and traders who want to profit as much as they can from their role in the production of fine glass art.

The game board features different aspects of the glass production cycle: workshops where the glass is created, houses where it's installed, people who support your work, trade shops where it's sold, and the harbor where ships take the glass to faraway locations. You want to be present in all of these areas, preferably at just the right time to maximize your earnings. The gameboard features 109 spaces, with one card in the deck for each of those spaces.

At the start of a round, each player receives a hand of five cards. Each player chooses a card from hand, then passes the remaining cards to the next player, then each player plays their card in turn, beginning with the round's start player and typically placing a diamond-shaped token of their color in the location depicted on that card:

In the Workshops, you score 1 point for each of your tokens in a connected group with the newly placed token, doubling that score if you played on a pigment field.
In the Residences, you score the listed number of points, and if your token is preceded in the line by one or more tokens of your color, you score those previously played tokens again.
In the Townspeople area, you score 1, 3 or 6 points based on the height of your token in the pyramids, but you can only place at higher levels if the lower spaces are filled. Double your points if the card symbol matches the space your filled. Supporting tokens score again as higher tokens are placed.
In the Trade shops, four types of goods are present, and when you place a token, each token on that goods type scores for its owner points equal to the number of goods of that type now covered.
In the Harbor, you move your ship equal to the number on the played card, scoring points based on the space where you land, then place a token in one of the five rows. When that row is filled with three ships, each token in that row scores for its owner 1/3/6/10 points depending on the number of trade goods in that row.

Alternatively, you can play a card for ship movement points and not place a token on the game board.

Each player plays four cards in a round (in a 3 or 4 player game), then adds the last card in hand to those displayed beside the game board, then the start player marker rotates and you begin a new round.

For each of the five areas, you can meet a certain condition that allows you to play a bonus card from those beside the game board, e.g., in the Workshops when you place the third card that surrounds a bonus card symbol, or in the Trade shops when you score a goods type that gives someone else more points than you. When you play a bonus card, you might trigger another bonus card... and then another!

Additionally, there are five different ways to score substantial bonus points for the areas, e.g., in the Residences you need to place tokens on houses of four different values, and in the Townspeople area you need to place tokens on all three types in a pyramid. You can only score each area's bonus once, and importantly each time a bonus is claimed then the value available for later players is reduced.

When someone has placed their final diamond token or when you can't deal a new hand of five cards to each player, then the game ends and the player with the most successful glass dynasty (most points) is declared the winner.

In the dark corners of Kulbak Prison, away from the prying eyes of the construct guards, inmates play a game of Goblin Vaults in secret...

Goblin Vaults is a strategy card game for 1-5 players featuring bidding, card placement, and scoring patterns. In the game, you wager cards to win loot from the central cell block, then stash that loot wisely in your vault, earning gears based on the position of cards within that vault. You can also gain gears from scoring objectives that change each game.

With cunning and clever scheming, make your bid to be feared amongst your peers! You'll need wits and luck to play your cards right as you fill your vault and influence the warden in your favor. After nine rounds, whoever has the most gears wins!

—description from the publisher