Tags

Crafting the Cosmos

In Crafting the Cosmos, you are interstellar architects, competing to build the galaxy – one star at a time. Manipulate the laws of the universe to your advantage, shifting gravity or the flow of time to activate useful power cards, and even spawn advanced life that can earn you extra victory points at the end of the game. Use your resources wisely as you craft your cosmic creation.

Each round consists of each player taking a turn, which then is followed by shared end phase. A player's turn consists of two phases: energy and craft. Players takes their turns moving energy on the main board and gaining resources. They then spend their resources to craft their galaxy.

During the energy phase, you move energy tokens around the controls on the main board to gain resources for crafting your cosmos. Then during the collect resources phase, you gain the resources from the one active control space with your energy token, then from all four of the passive control spaces.

Once a player has collected all of their resources, they spend them during the craft phase in any order to craft their galaxy. You may take placement actions, scoring actions, energy card actions, and slider actions in any order. You may place the four standard kinds of stars: hydrogen (H), helium (He), carbon (C), and oxygen (O), place proto life, or even nebulae.

Players can spend energy cards to gain power cards to help them craft their cosmos more effectively, and they compete to complete universal goals.

Echoes of Time

In a fantastic and untouched land, four factions govern different aspects of this world: the ocean depths with their dark abysses, the gentle hills with windy meadows and protected forests, the vast and endless expanses of the night skies, and the mysterious and unexplored underground tunnels.

An ancient and powerful energy flows through these places, concentrating in hidden, inexhaustible sources. Controlling this power allows one to bend to their will life's most important aspect: time, and the rhythms it imprints on the environment and every being.

Echoes of Time is a strategic game for 2-4 players in which you attempt to create the best-equipped fellowship of characters from different factions to conquer the sources of power. Try to control and modify the flow of time to outshine your opponents. The game includes more than one hundred cards with unique effects that you will use to build a new deck each game, and a "sliding tile" system guides you in managing the time needed for your cards to become usable, while simultaneously controlling the activation rhythm of their effects.

Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor

Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor is a stand-alone game within the Forest Shuffle family and introduces a brand new habitat and features new species with new abilities and bonuses to explore. As in the earlier original Forest Shuffle, in Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor players compete to build the most valuable environment by placing trees and shrubs, then attracting species to these locations to create an ecologically balanced habitat for flora and fauna.

What's new in Dartmoor is the introduction of TERRAIN cards that are played horizontally and serve as a home or feeding ground for different species than trees or shrubs. Due to the nature of the terrain, species can only be placed above and below a terrain card. Deer and other species stay clear from bogs or peat areas in the moorland. They need their drink, but won't feel safe at dwells or next to rivulets. So players have to be watch out, where to place their species.

Like its predecessor, Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor comes with a unique back side: Each of the 180 cards of the deck can be placed face down, creating a bog, if the action allows it. The caves in Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor now will be drafted at the beginning of the game and offer asymmetrical starting conditions. On top, the number of tree symbols has been reduced from eight to six to enable bonuses more easily.

The game mechanism stays untouched: To start, each player has six cards in hand, with cards depicting either a particular type of tree, shrub or terrain or two moor dwellers (animal, plants), with these latter cards being divided in half, whether vertically or horizontally, with one dweller in each card half. On a turn, either draw two cards — whether face down from the deck or face up from the clearing — and add them to your hand, or play a card from your hand by discarding other cards to pay the cost, then putting that first card into play. In the end, the player with the highest score wins.

Wondrous Creatures

Welcome to the world full of fantastic creatures! You are an admirer, a creature enthusiast who will join the journey of forming the world’s leading creature reserve.

Unique Worker Placement: Wondrous Creatures’s worker placement mechanism provides an intriguing Hex Puzzle experience. Your deployed worker interacts with surrounding icons to bring in resources or cards, and works to activate special effects!

Transforming Terrains: As the game progresses, powerful special effects are newly placed on the map. Get creative and use these special effects to unleash your very own powerful combos!

100+ Different Creature Cards: Collect and combine various different creature cards. Every creature holds its own distinctive ability and provides a deep strategic tableau building experience. Each card beautifully illustrated by Sophia Kang, will immerse you into a wonderful world of Wondrous Creatures.

Evolving Worker Abilities: Your workers hold their own unique abilities. As you progress through the game, unlock their abilities and strengthen your workers!

—description from the designer

Planet Unknown

Our planet has run out of resources, and we are forced to move. We have discovered a series of planets and sent our rovers to test their environment with the hope of colonization. Our rovers have confirmed 1-6 viable colonization options.

Planet Unknown is a competitive game for 1-6 players in which players attempt to develop the best planet. Each round, each player places one polyomino-shaped, dual-resource tile on their planet. Each resource represents the infrastructure needed to support life on the planet. Every tile placement is important to cover your planet efficiently and also to build up your planet's engine. After placing the tile, players do two actions associated with the two infrastructure types on the tile. Some tile placements trigger "meteors" that make all planets harder to develop and prevent them from scoring points in the meteor's row and column.

Planet Unknown innovates on the popular polyomino trend by allowing simultaneous, yet strategic turn-based play via the Lazy S.U.S.A.N. space station in the center of the table.

—description from the publisher