Territory Building

After establishing themselves in Honshu, the Lords and Ladies head north to Hokkaido. Beholding Hokkaido’s mountainous landscape, they see that expansion on this land will prove to be a greater challenge than before.

Hokkaido is the second map-building card game in the Nippon series, bringing new ideas and mechanisms to the first design Honshu. A game of Hokkaido consists of twelve rounds, each divided into two separate phases. Each player must expand their personal map to maximize their scoring possibilities.

—description from publisher

During the second half of the nineteenth century in what was then Ceylon, today known to all as the nation of Sri Lanka, a deadly fungus killed off all the coffee plantations on the island thus causing a serious economic crisis. The Scot James Taylor, and later many other entrepreneurs, set about substituting coffee plantations for tea plantations and hence creating what many connoisseurs today consider to be the best tea in the world.

In Ceylon, players take on the role of the pioneers who developed the Ceylon tea industry. As such, they build plantations in different districts and at different altitudes. They produce tea and try to sell it to the most important export companies. To favor this task, they must win the favor of the counselors of each district and develop the necessary technology that allows them to get ahead of their competitors.

At the end of the game, players score points for having plantations in each district, for meeting demands that have been set, for the level of technological development reached, and for the amount of money collected. In the end, the player who has the most points wins.

—description from the publisher

Emperor Trajan plans to have a monument built for eternity: the Forum Trajanum. It is supposed to become the biggest and most glorious Emperor's forum that the Roman world has ever seen — not only in order to demonstrate his success as Princeps Optimus in an imposing manner, but also to foster the well-being and the fame of the honorable citizens of Rome.

In Forum Trajanum, each player governs a Colonia, founded by Trajan himself, and thus is the head of one of the highest-ranking cities in the entire Roman Empire. While the players try to optimally develop their own Colonia, they should not fail in supporting the Emperor's building project to the best of their abilities at the same time. The player who is most successful in doing so will — after expiry of their term of office — be admitted to the small circle of illustrious and mighty personalities surrounding the Emperor.

Gaïa is a 2-5 player game in which you create a world, instill life in it, build cities, try to satisfy their needs, and use godly powers to shape the world to your benefit.

In game terms, Gaïa involves tile placement, area control and influence with a twist of power cards. Each player has five wooden figures, and if you're the first to place all five of your figures on the board, you win!

Gaïa includes two levels of rules, with the basic rules allowing for play with those as young as eight thanks to the game's simple mechanisms and non-attacking nature. The advanced rules give you the opportunity to use godly powers — lightning, volcanoes, rain, sun, earthquakes, etc. — to shape the world after it has been created. You can even steal an opponent's cities, making it a more aggressive game with a higher level of strategy.

Halfway through the 19th century, the first permanent settlements appeared in Montana. After this, many fortune seekers traveled to this region with their caravans in search of work in order to build a better future for themselves — and there is an abundance of work as in the mountains precious metals are to be found and on the fields a lot of manpower is required. Meanwhile, the number of settlements is growing and the demand for goods is rising. Recruit the right workers, deliver goods on time, and choose your settlements tactically. Only then you will have the biggest chance of winning Montana.

In more detail, on each turn players choose one of these three actions:

Recruit: Use the spinner to get new workers.
Work: Send your workers to one of the different locations to get resources or money.
Build: Spend your resources to build new settlements.

The first player to build all of their settlements wins!