Science Fiction

You are a flagship commander of one of the great galactic superpowers, navigating the fringe of the known galaxy in an effort to claim and colonize the many bountiful star systems in the region. Expansion can be achieved through rapid peaceful occupation, but you must also use the military resources at your disposal to seize enemy outposts and to protect your own. Although this is new territory for you and your competitors, a variety of alien species are native to the newly-charted sectors... earning their loyalty will go a long way towards deciding who will be the master of the Galaxy's Edge!

Your overall objective in the game is to score the most points at the game's end. Points are mainly earned for building colonies in the many star systems of varying value. Bonus points can be won by earning the loyalty of various alien species while satisfying their specific requirements.

Throughout the game you will need to support your colonization efforts with military strategy, which in turn will allow you to conquer valuable opposing colonies and thus score more points. Obtaining—and keeping—alien loyalties will be an important factor in determining a winner, and the diverse Event cards can be used to further your goals in a number of ways.

Firefly: Out to the Black is a quick card game that plays from three to five players. It’s unusual in that the players do not compete against each other, but compete against the game. This is a fairly new style of game called a co-op game or cooperative game. Players take on roles of the crew of Serenity and play through a series of Events. Using their Fightin’, Flyin’, and Thinkin’ skills they attempt to successfully complete these Events to earn Credits and Honor. If the players run out of Credits or Honor before the end of the game, they all lose and the game wins! If the players manage to complete the predetermined amount of Events without running out of Credits or Honor, they win the game, and live to fly another day!

Components:

Double sized Character Cards – Contains the Character’s Skill numbers and special abilities

Event Cards – These are the Events the players must overcome to win the game.

Serenity Cards – These are dual use cards. The main use is to help the players overcome Events. It’s secondary use is to determine random numbers.

Alliance Cards – These are penalty cards that are drawn if the players do not do well at certain Events. Draw too many of these and the players lose the game even if they still have Credits and Honor.

Gorramit Cards – These cards modify the Events, generally making them harder.
A Set of Rules – The rules to the game.
Honor Tokens – These are used to track the player’s Honor.
Credit Tokens – These are used to track the player’s Credits.

The Character Cards each represent one of the main Characters in Firefly. In addition to having their skills values listed, Each Character has special abilities, which cost a variable amount of Credits or Honor. On a players turn he can choose to spend Credits or Honor on one of these abilities, but it brings them closer to losing, so they need to think about whether they really need to or not.

A typical turn of the game consists of the active player turning over the top Event card. Each Event card has three challenges, one Fightin’, one Flyin’, and one Thinkin’. Each of these has a number, which the players must equal or exceed to be successful in the challenge. Characters gain skill two different ways, they may play Serenity cards to gain skill, and, after playing their Serenity cards, they add a random number to determine their final skill. This is added to the Character’s base skill number listed on their Character cards. Depending on how many challenges they successfully complete they either gain or lose Credits and/or Honor. The more successful the more they gain.

Once the event is resolved, the next player starts a new turn, and turns over the next Event card. The game is over once all the Event cards have been drawn and resolved.

The Firefly TV show is about surviving with honor. Mal and his crew are continually trying to scrounge up enough credits to keep flying, while maintaining their own personal sense of honor. The game reflects this grand theme with the victory conditions, survive the Event deck without running out of Honor or Credits. Each Event in the deck is tied to an episode in the show, and is easily recognizable by fans of the show. The Skills needed for each Event are tied to action of the episode featured on the card. A sub theme of the show is escaping notice of the Alliance, and again, with the inclusion of the Alliance deck, Firefly: Out to the Black delivers. The Alliance deck is an ever-present threat looming over the players as they desperately seek to finish the Events in the game.

Legacy: Gears of Time is a strategic card game, mechanically rooted in its time travel theme. Players each play cards from their own hand, draw from a central draw pile, move and play technologies on a single timeline, while placing their influence cubes on existing technologies.

Legacy is played on a timeline that grows at the end of each of 4 rounds. Players take turns during a round consisting of 3 actions each. During each turn, you may travel back in time, play a technology card from your hand, influence an existing technology, or draw two cards (keeping only one).

As you travel back in time, Technologies are played from your hand by paying their discard cost. Any technologies you play generate influence for you automatically.

Having more influence than your opponents is the key to claiming rewards for a technology! At the end of each round, rewards are given for each technology and its dependencies. One Influence cube from each technology will come off at the end of each round, forming your influence pool to be used in future rounds to influence existing technologies. Keep in mind, a technology is only considered successful if all of its dependencies exist previously on the timeline.

Since there are several copies of each technology, you may be able to preempt and eliminate an existing copy by playing yours earlier in the timeline! Be sure there is room for your new technology, though; each time-frame has a capacity equal to it's distance from the present.

There are also a few rare but powerful Fate cards, each allowing you to break the rules in interesting ways. Fate cards have no discard cost and don't require an action to be played.

By strategically influencing existing technologies, adapting to your opponents actions, and carefully choosing when to go further back in time, you will find yourself victorious over your rivals! History remains intact until the Ancient Machine demands you return to the past to rebuild history, and your Legacy, once more.

Summary:

4 Rounds
4 Turns per Round
3 Actions per Turn (any mix of the following):
Travel back in Time
Play a Technology card
Influence an existing Technology
Draw two cards (keep one)

In Monkeys on the Moon, players advance monkey civilizations while also freeing monkeys from lunar isolation by launching spaceships. Players must carefully balance which tribes they advance, however, as there are monkey politics at play! Influencing one tribe will likely harm another tribe's opinion of you. The player who launches the most powerful primates home to Earth by game end will claim victory.

Every move that a player makes will impress one the six monkey tribes yet anger another. Knowing when to play favorites, and when to risk incurring the scorn of a tribe, is key to success.

The game's monkey cards also feature six original drawings by cartoonist Scott Starkey.

Welcome, dear Imperialists. It's the year 2415. The interplanetary federation (IPF) has done a great job in the last centuries. All necessary precautions have been taken to conquer this planet named "Steam". The core of the planet consists of a 6,500º Celsius hot source containing different resources, including water. It has taken over one hundred years to complete the first block of 42 shafts from the surface to the core.

But now the time has come. From every shaft surges the hot steam that is the basis of the production of raw materials. To be able to use and process this steam, platforms have to be placed over the shafts. Later, we can use the platforms to connect the water purification tanks. By using several tank extractors, we can harvest other resources like energy, ore, and quartz from the steam. These resources are important. You will need them to grow your steam empires. You will need to increase the capacity of your landing craft to transport your harvested materials off planet. Buy and sell the resources at the Trading terminal for profit, as currency is – like on earth – always in short supply on Steam. To help you in your endeavours, the IPF has placed several specialists at your command – but getting the specialist that you require may not be easy.

Planet Steam is a board game in which two to five players take the roles of entrepreneurs in a steampunk boomtown, racing to assemble equipment, claim plots of land, extract resources, and accumulate riches. After harvesting resources using tanks and converters, players must buy and sell those resources in a volatile and ever-shifting market. The one who earns the most income will, in the end, be victorious. However, only through shrewd resource management and clever manipulation of supply and demand can a player reign supreme!