Simultaneous Action Selection

From the publisher, Rio Grande Games:

Seehausen am See. For many years, more and more people visit this idyllic village during the annual summer fest. In these three weeks, the breweries and beer gardens in the village make more money than during the rest of the year. So, you and your opponents become hardened businessmen, who rush to Seehausen am See to invest in the businesses there with an eye toward the large profits that come during the festival. During these three weeks each will invest in the businesses and try to get his people in management positions in the breweries and beer gardens where he owns stock. The players also work to increase the size of their favorite beer gardens so that they can earn more money. In the end, it is not the size of the beer gardens or who is in charge, but the amount of money in the players’ pockets...

Description from BoardgameNews.com:

While Cyrano de Bergerac was a real person, Cyrano is based on the play Cyrano de Bergerac, written more than two hundred years after Cyrano’s death. In both the play and the game, Cyrano writes poetry to woo a woman for another man. The game Cyrano lasts a number of rounds, and each round starts with a player revealing a theme card and two rhyme cards ("-aid", "-ed" and so on with homonyms being acceptable). Each player then composes a quatrain (a poem of four lines) with two of the lines ending with one of the rhymes and the other two ending with the other rhyme. Players read their poems and score points Boggle-style, with each unique ending word being worth one point; these points are recorded by blacking out squares on a ladder, which represents the lover’s climb toward his object of affection.

Everyone then secretly votes on which poem he or she most appreciated, whether for its beauty, adherence to theme, or some other artistic qualification. Players reveal their votes simultaneously, and for each player who voted the same way you did, you receive one point, with these points being recorded by the maiden’s descent from the tower. Whichever player first brings the loves onto the same floor of the tower wins, with ties being broken by a rhyming duel.

You are the leader of one of the 7 great cities of the Ancient World. Gather resources, develop commercial routes and affirm your military supremacy. Build your city and erect an architectural wonder which will transcend future times.

7 Wonders lasts three ages. In each age, players receive seven cards from a particular deck, choose one of those cards, then pass the remainder to an adjacent player. Players reveal their cards simultaneously, paying resources if needed or collecting resources or interacting with other players in various ways. (Players have individual boards with special powers on which to organize their cards, and the boards are double-sided). Each player then chooses another card from the deck they were passed, and the process repeats until players have six cards in play from that age. After three ages, the game ends.

In essence 7 Wonders is a card development game. Some cards have immediate effects, while others provide bonuses or upgrades later in the game. Some cards provide discounts on future purchases. Some provide military strength to overpower your neighbors and others give nothing but victory points. Each card is played immediately after being drafted, so you'll know which cards your neighbor is receiving and how his choices might affect what you've already built up. Cards are passed left-right-left over the three ages, so you need to keep an eye on the neighbors in both directions.

Though the box of earlier editions is listed as being for 3-7 players, there is an official 2-player variant included in the instructions.

In Edo, players represent daimyo in mid-second millennium Japan who are trying to serve their shogun by using their samurai to construct castles, markets and houses in Tokyo and surrounding areas.

At the start of Edo – which won "best evening-length game" in the 2010 Hippodice Game Design competition under the name Altiplano – each player has five samurai tokens, seven houses, one market and three square action cards, each of which has four possible actions on it. One card, for example, allows a player to:

Collect rice (up to four bundles depending on the number of samurai applied to the action),
Collect $5 (per samurai),
Collect wood (up to four, with one samurai on the action and one in the forest for each wood you want), or
Build (up to two buildings, with two samurai on the card and one in the desired city, along with the required resources)

Each turn, the players simultaneously choose which actions they want to take with their three cards and in which order, programming those actions on their player cards, similar to the planning phase in Dirk Henn's Wallenstein and Shogun. Players then take actions in turn order, moving samurai on the board as needed (paying $1 per space moved) in order to complete actions (to the forest for wood, the rice fields for rice, cities to build, and so on). Before a player can move samurai, however, he must use an action to place them on the game board; some actions allow free movement, and others allow a player to recruit additional samurai beyond the initial five.

One other action allows you to recruit additional action cards from an array on the side of the game board, thereby giving you four (or more) cards from which to choose for the rest of the game.

Building in cities costs resources and gives you points as well as money; as more players build in a city, the funds are split among all present, with those first in the city receiving a larger share. Players can also receive points or buy stone by dealing with a traveling merchant.

Once at least one player has twelve points, the game finishes at the end of the round, with players scoring endgame bonuses for money in hand and other things. The player with the most points wins.

Edo includes separate game boards for 2-3 players and for 4 players.

The king has died with no clear successor! The players—potential heirs all—are scrambling to put together their power bases by dispatching trusted agents and allies to garner support across the breadth of the kingdom. Nobody wants open warfare, but some conflict is sure to break out.

Fealty is a game of positioning and territory control. Each turn, all players add one piece to the game board, with increasing constraints on placement as time goes on. Some pieces have an effect when brought into play. At the end of the game, all pieces place influence in order of speed, claiming territory and blocking slower opposing pieces. The player who has maneuvered his or her pieces to place the most influence onto the board wins.