Renaissance

It's that special time of year when the entire kingdom gathers at court for the Munificent Theatrical Festival. Acting troupes from all over the land will come together to perform plays of light-hearted comedy or soul-wrenching tragedy. Will their performance win the favour of the king or will his fickle mood spell a flop?

In Histrio, you travel the land recruiting actors to join your troupe. Assemble the right team and you might earn enough money to pay for an entire year of shows. It'll take careful planning and a little luck to out-perform your competitors. The play is the thing in Histrio, and the world is your stage!

Your task in the tile-laying game Sanssouci is to create a flower garden for the world-famous Sanssouci Palace. Competing against up to three other landscape architects, you'll have your own garden layout game board on which you'll build rose gardens and vineyard terraces, labyrinths and fountains – but not just anywhere, mind you. No, the landscapers must meet certain building requirements, and unfortunately you won't always have at hand everything that you might need.

In game terms, each player has a personal garden that's divided into rows and columns; each row shows a color, while each column shows one of nine garden elements, such as the wells or a pavilion. Players start with one noble at the top of each column. A shared tile supply board has five rows – with colored spaces matching the colors on each player board – and two columns, which are unlabeled. At the start of the game, ten tiles are placed on this supply board; each tile depicts one of the nine garden elements.

Each turn, a player plays one of his two cards in hand, which determines the tile he can take from the supply, e.g. take a pavilion tile, take a tile from the red or gray spaces, etc. The player has only a single card that lets him take any tile – but if he plays a card showing a garden element that isn't present, then he can instead take any tile! The player must place this tile on his player board in the column that matches the image on the tile and the row that matches the color from which the tile was taken. If this space is already filled, he flips the tile to show the gardener on the other side, then places this tile on any free space in the same row or the same column. After placing the tile, he may move one of his nobles along a path of placed tiles as long as the noble ends up in the same column in which it started, but on a lower row. The player scores points equal to the row reached.

The player then refills the supply and draws a new card. The game ends after 18 rounds. Each player then receives bonus points for each completed row and column. Furthermore, each player has received two order cards at the start of the game, each of which shows one of the nine columns; each player receives bonus points for the row reached by the noble in that column. The player with the most points wins.

Return to a bustling Plymouth Harbor in 1572 as an aspiring Elizabethan captain making preparations for three exciting voyages to the Spanish Main in search of fame and fortune! As captains, players will have to plan their missions and provision their ships accordingly.

Francis Drake is a race to see who can set sail and reach the Spanish Main first. The riches of the Aztec and Inca Empires await these swashbuckling captains. Many tough decisions must be made before each voyage:

How many crew members, guns, and trade goods will be needed?
What supplies will be needed to reach deep into the Caribbean?
Will a stronger galleon be needed to attack the treasure fleets?
Can special charts from the Spanish Admiral and Governor help?
Will the Queen or rich investors back the voyage?
What information can the informer give?
Will Drake himself be available to guide the voyage?
Who will get the use of the Golden Hind?

Each new voyage has its own challenges to overcome, but the captured gold, silver, and jewels should greatly please the Queen. Get ready for the voyage of a lifetime!

The theaters of London are abuzz. In one week, her majesty the Queen will attend their new shows and will grant her support to one of the troupes. It's the chance of a lifetime for the young authors who are inflaming the populace with ever more audacious and motley plays. But how do you create a masterpiece in such a short time? Whoever has the answer to this thorny question will probably enter the rolls of history!

In Shakespeare, players are theater managers who must recruit actors, craftsmen, jewelers and others in order to assemble everything needed for the play's performance at week's end.

In more detail, the game lasts six days and on each day players recruit one new character — starting with five at the beginning of the game: four identical ones on their individual player board and one that they've drafted — and take 1-5 actions with the characters they have. Characters and their actions are:

Actors: Rehearse one or more acts in the three-act play; the more you rehearse, the more benefits you receive during the dress rehearsals on days four and six.
Costume mistress: Take costume elements to enhance your actors; if they lack a complete costume, they can't participate in the dress rehearsals.
Set dresser: Build the set. The more elaborate the set you build, the more rewards you receive — but the set must be symmetrical!
Handyman: Set them to work on whatever you need. These joes can assemble both costumes and sets, but they're not very good at it.
Assistant: Increase the power of your craftsmen, i.e., the three roles described above.
Jeweler: Take a gold costume element or set piece to dazzle the crowd.
Queen: Earn money by giving her an early peek, or gain an objective to win her favor on the final day.

After players take actions, they check the individual ambience level in their theater, gaining or losing points or rehearsal time depending on the atmosphere. Dress rehearsal on the fourth and sixth days provide another chance for fully-dressed actors to perform, and those who are well-rehearsed earn points or money.

On all but the final days, players must allow characters who performed to rest, with only one of those characters being able to work the next day. Thus, the more you put them to work today, the less you'll be able to do tomorrow — but those who don't plan to do as much act before other players, so that might be a good thing.

In the end, players must pay their actors, with each unpaid actor blemishing your reputation and costing you points. Whoever finishes with the most prestige points wins.

Bring Out Yer Dead is a morbid game of grave family plots.

As the head of your family, you must get the "dying" members of your family into the best plots in the city's newest cemetery. Each day the Grave Keeper brings the cart around the city and you must vie to get your family members in the cart before other families do. But be careful! The Grave Keeper is a lazy guy and any coffins he can't fit in the cart are tossed aside in the river; he'll never bother to bury them at all!

Get your recently departed family members buried in the best plots in the cemetery to gain influence in the city. You may even have to resort to some early morning grave swapping — or you could just rob the graves of all the jewelry you can dig up...it isn't like they're going to need it anyway! Influence is everything! The player with the most influence at the end of the game wins.