Simultaneous Action Selection

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!

Grimoire is the French word for "spellbook", and smart use of your spellbook – more specifically, the spells within said book – will determine whether you succeed in this game.

Each turn in Grimoire starts by revealing several cards on the game board; each card has either a victory point (VP) value or is a character with a particular way to earn VPs at the end of the game. Once these cards are revealed, each player secretly chooses which spell to cast in his spellbook by placing a bookmark on the appropriate page. Everyone then reveals which spell they chose, with the spells going off in order from weakest (those with the lowest numbers) to strongest. Some weak spells nerf stronger ones, and the order in which players choose cards from the display can be flipped topsy-turvy depending on who plays which spells.

In the One Draw and Z-Man versions, the game ends as soon as one player has collected either ten character cards or ten treasure cards; in the Schmidt Spiele version, the game ends after a fixed number of rounds. All players then tally their points, and the player with the highest score wins.

Differences between the versions:

As noted above, the game ending conditions differ in the 2012 Schmidt Spiele version.
The Z-Man Games and Schmidt Spiele versions of Grimoire accommodate five players, while the original One Draw release allows only 2-4 players.
The Schmidt Spiele version contains four new character cards and two new treasure cards, includes hardcover books instead of softcover, changes two spells, and uses a more elaborate game board that depicts the spells and allows players to mark the spells chosen with small figures to track who has played what.

This is a tile-laying race game with players starting with boards that are identical, and one player drawing tiles that they all will use. They race to get their explorers to temples first and earn points. Along the way they can collect additional points by collecting items off the paths they create.

Description from the English Ruleset:

Many moons have come and gone since your boats departed on the journey to Karuba. Once you arrive on the island, each player will lead an expedition team of four adventurers. Now you just have to navigate your way through the dense jungle to make it to the temples. „Just“ may be something of an understatement; the ancient jungle trails have to be found and uncovered first! Hurry up and be the first to reach the temples to collect the most valuable treasures. Many paths have dead ends and you need to be patient to find the right/best way (through the jungle). Look! A gold nugget! You can pick it up and collect it, same applies to the shiny crystals along the paths.

In Mombasa, players acquire shares of chartered companies based in Mombasa, Cape Town, Saint-Louis, and Cairo and propagate trading posts of these companies throughout the African continent in order to earn the most money.

Mombasa features a unique, rotating-display hand-mechanism that drives game play. Each round players choose action cards from their hand, then reveal them simultaneously and carry out the actions. These cards are then placed in a discard pile, and the previously played cards recovered for the subsequent round.

Each company has a double-sided company track, so games will vary quite a lot based on which tracks are revealed and at which companies they are placed.

In 6 nimmt!, a.k.a. Category 5 and many other names, you want to score as few points as possible.

To play the game, you shuffle the 104 number cards, lay out four cards face-up to start the four rows, then deal ten cards to each player. Each turn, players simultaneously choose and reveal a card from their hand, then add the cards to the rows, with cards being placed in ascending order based on their number; specifically, each card is placed in the row that ends with the highest number that's below the card's number. When the sixth card is placed in a row, the owner of that card claims the other five cards and the sixth card becomes the first card in a new row.

In addition to a number from 1 to 104, each card has a point value. After finishing ten rounds, players tally their score and see whether the game ends. (Category 5 ends when a player has a score greater than 74, for example, while 6 nimmt! ends when someone tops 66.) When this happens, the player with the fewest points wins!

6 nimmt! works with 2-10 players, and the dynamics of gameplay change the more players that you have. One variant for the game has you use 34 cards, 44 cards, 54 cards, etc. (instead of all 104 cards) when you have three, four, five, etc. number of players. This change allows you to know which cards are in play, thereby allowing you to track which cards have been played and (theoretically) make better choices as to which card to play when.