Science Fiction

Stratego: Star Wars

This is what it sounds like: Stratego set in the Star Wars universe. Each player has 40 pieces; teams are divided into the Dark Side and the Force. Characters used come from Star Wars Episodes I, II, IV, V and VI. Some of the characters have special powers, placing this game between original Stratego and Stratego Legends on the complexity scale.

Gen7: A Crossroads Game

An international colony ship has left an exhausted Earth, headed for a distant planet in the Epsilon Eridani system. Thirteen generations will be born on this vessel before it reaches its destination, each generation a steward of the hopes and ideals of the human species. For six generations, everything has gone as planned....

Now, just as a new command team takes control of the ship, a terrible mystery emerges that will threaten the entire mission. The commanders of Gen7 are about to discover that everything is not as it seems, and the fate of the human species will hang on the choices they make.

In the tradition of the award-winning Dead of Winter, Gen7: A Crossroads Game is a grand narrative game with multiple possibilities. The choices players make as they play will alter the direction of the story. Gen7 will constantly challenge its players with a variety of unique situations that force them to make difficult moral decisions. Will you compromise your integrity to ensure the safety of your crew? Will you value their lives over the safety of the mission?

—description from the publisher

Reworld

In Reworld, players attempt to terraform a newly discovered planet, and to do that they need to use terrabots to establish new cities and shuttles to deliver materials that will populate those locations.

In game terms, over five rounds players fill the five levels of their spaceship with tiles featuring terrabots, shuttles, material vessels, and satellites. Each round twenty of these tiles are placed at random around the perimeter of a large ship, and each player receives a hand of cards. On a turn, a player can play one or more cards to claim a tile following these rules:

If neither tile adjacent to the desired tile has been claimed, the player can lay down any card next to this tile, claim it, then place it in the leftmost space of the level of their spaceship that matches the number of the card played. If you play a 4, for example, then you must place that tile in the leftmost position of your fourth level.

If one tile adjacent to the desired tile has been claimed, then you must lay down a card of the same number used to claim that previous tile or any two cards of your choice (with those two cards thus serving as a joker). Whatever number is topmost indicates the level of your spaceship on which you must place this tile.

If both tiles adjacent to the desired tile have been claimed and the cards used to claim them show the same number, then you do the same as described above. If the cards have different numbers, however — e.g., 1 and 3 — then you must lay down the same two numbers (1 and 3), one matching number and any other two cards, or any four cards. You place this tile on your spaceship in the same manner previously desired.

Once everyone has no cards in hand or cannot play further, the round ends. Any remaining tiles are thrown away, then you reset the board and deal out a new hand of cards. After five rounds, players now deploy these tiles onto the new planet, each turn playing 1-3 of the leftmost tiles from the row of their choice to create their personal terraformed world. If you deploy a terrabot, which are labeled A-E, you start a new city with this letter or extend an existing city of yours. Material vessels, which come in five colors, can be delivered to the planet's surface only if attached to shuttles, and each city can have vessels of only a single color. Satellites provide bonus scoring when added to a city. Shuttles and satellites can also be used for shields to protect your newborn planet.

Players earn points during the first half of the game for picking up terrabots and having cards left in hand. During the second half, players score for deploying satellites and for meeting targets set at the start of the game, e.g. having a city with eight tiles in it, having a city of each letter, emptying a level on your spaceship, having a certain number of shields, etc.

Once all the spaceships are empty, players score their final points for how well they've developed each city and their shields in comparison with their fellow terraformers. Whoever scores the most points wins.

Anachrony

It is the late 26th century. Earth is recovering from a catastrophic explosion that exterminated the majority of the population centuries ago and made most of the surface uninhabitable due to unearthly weather conditions. The surviving humans organized along four radically different ideologies, called Paths, to rebuild the world as they see fit: Harmony, Dominance, Progress, and Salvation. Followers of the four Paths live in a fragile peace, but in almost complete isolation next to each other. Their only meeting point is the last major city on Earth, now just known as the Capital.

By powering up the mysterious Time Rifts that opened in the wake of the cataclysm, each Path is able to reach back to specific moments in their past. Doing so can greatly speed up their progress, but too much meddling may endanger the time-space continuum. But progress is more important than ever before: if the mysterious message arriving through the Time Rift is to be believed, an even more terrible cataclysm is looming on the horizon: an asteroid bearing the mysterious substance called Neutronium is heading towards Earth. Even stranger, the scientists show that the energy signature of the asteroid matches the explosion centuries ago...

Anachrony features a unique two-tiered worker placement system. To travel to the Capital or venture out to the devastated areas for resources, players need not only various specialists (Engineers, Scientists, Administrators, and Geniuses) but also Exosuits to protect and enhance them — and both are in short supply.

The game is played in 4-7 turns, depending on the time when the looming cataclysm occurs — unless, of course, it is averted! The elapsed turns are measured on a dynamic timeline. By powering up the Time Rifts, players can reach back to earlier turns to supply their past "self" with resources. Each Path has a vastly different objective that rewards it with a massive amount of victory points when achieved. The Paths' settlements will survive the impact, but the Capital will not. Whichever Path manages to collect most points will be the new seat for the Capital, thus the most important force left on the planet...