Widely accepted as the first mainstream wargame. Players are given tons of little army units to place onto the map of the world. When it's your turn, you use your units to attack other players' positions, hopefully with superior numbers. Combat is a simple dice rolling affair that stresses attrition, and reinforcements are given to players who collect sets of cards.
In Shangri-La, the mysterious and isolated utopia nestled high in the mountains, a strange struggle for dominance has begun. Once peaceful and neighborly, the Masters of the competing mountain-folk train their students and send them out across bridges to control neighboring villages. To take control of a village, the students must come together in uncomfortable alliances, regardless of their tribal origin. Eventually students become Masters themselves, train new students and expand to other villages.
There is one thing each student must keep in mind as they travel from village to village -- the mystical powers of Shangri-La mysteriously cause the bridges to collapse, separating villages forever. One crucial question will decide the winner: who will control the most Masters of Shangri-La?
Players take on the roles of leaders of a specific tribe. There is a battle raging over the empty villages of the land and players must quickly fill those villages with their tribal leaders. As players migrate tribal leaders from one village to the next, they must not become too weak or they risk losing leaders to opposing tribes. The ultimate object of the game is to have the most leaders on the board at the end of the game.
It is an abstract game with many options and tense until the end.
2004 Mensa Select
Thematically, players are adding masters and students, and trying to have the students migrate to nearby villages to become masters. Functionally, this is essentially a military game. Players either spend their turn reinforcing a village (adding more tokens there) or invading a neighboring village (expanding influence if you have more total tokens than the victim). The unique twist is that, after each invasion, the connecting bridge is removed. So over the course of the game, attack options become more and more limited, until the game naturally comes to a conclusion.
This game is a remake of the 1984 classic that was part of Milton Bradley's Gamemaster Series. In this game you are one of many Roman generals vying for power in Imperial Rome, employing legions, cavalry, and catapults to reach your objectives.
This version of the game has two sets of rules, one set similar to the original version (except that it has fixed the broken catapult rules) and a new set of rules based on Martin Wallace's Struggle of Empires.
Re-implements:
Milton Bradley's Conquest of the Empire (1984)
Publisher blurb
Including a total of 180 plastic figures and dozens of unit types, Starcraft: The Board Game features an innovative modular board of varying sizes, which guarantees a new experience each and every game. An exciting card driven combat system allows players to modify and upgrade their faction with a wealth of powerful technologies. Players can unleash a Zergling rush, use powerful Protoss shields to halt an enemy invasion, or even send cloaked Ghosts out to guide nuclear missiles to their target.
Description
In StarCraft: The Board Game, players battle for galactic domination on a dynamic board of interconnected planets. Planetary setup is already part of the game - every player gets two planets to place, and will place their starting base on one of them. Planets are connected with direct and "Z-Axis" connections that are placed during setup, but can sometimes later be modified during the game, and movement is only possible within planets and through those connections (by means of purpose-built transports).
Each player controls a faction out of six, that belongs to one race out of three - Humans, Zerg, and Protoss. Each faction has a unique special victory condition, but all factions can also win through victory points that are gained by controlling special areas on some of the planets. Players build units and base upgrades with the resources they gather from the planetary areas that they control, and gain access to additional unit types through those upgrades.
Each turn is subdivided into first a planning phase, then an execution phase, and finally a regrouping phase (used for cleanup). In the planning phase, players take turns playing a number of order tokens into stacks on each planet, with orders placed later obstructing the ones that were placed before them. This allows players to set up combos of their own, but also to obstruct plans of other players. In the execution phase then, players take turns again, and when a player's turn comes up he can choose one of his order tokens on top of any stack and execute that one - if all of their orders are obstructed, they skip their action and draw an event card instead. The execution phase isn't over until all players executed all of their orders. Possible orders are Build (used for building both units and buildings), Mobilize (used for moving units and attacking enemies) and Research (see below), and orders can always be Standard Orders or Special Orders, with the special orders having prerequisites but stronger effects.
Players can also research new technologies and thus improve their combat deck in a precursor to more recent deck building mechanisms. Each player is given a combat deck unique for their race at the start of the game, and when they research new technologies then matching cards are added to that deck. This allows the players to customize what cards they will draw; when the last card of the deck is drawn, the deck is reshuffled. Most cards remain in the combat deck once researched, though some researched technologies add effects that are always in play, while some particularly strong combat cards are discarded after one use.
Note: This game is available by request only and requires having a membership to play.
See game associate for details.
A rich new world has opened up. Resources are plentiful, the economy is booming, and the capital city of this new world is expanding like never before! Even though many corporations scramble to stake a claim in the exploding prosperity, only one can claim ownership! Who will take over the Infinite City?
Will you place the capital next to the port, claiming both as your own? Will you use the transit station to move another player’s military base out of the way, or place your embassy to steal his temple? Will you try for a greater area under your control, or move to capture key buildings?
Infinite City is a standalone tile game in which players become the leaders of corporations building an ever-sprawling city, maneuvering to control the largest districts while holding on to the most valuable buildings.
Infinite City uses tiles to represent buildings, and colored pegs to represent control by players. The tiles are mixed, five tiles are dealt to each player, and five tiles are placed face down in the shape of a cross at the center of the play area. On their turns, players play a tile face up adjacent to one of the five starting tiles or a previously played tile, play one of their colored pegs on the tile, and follow the instructions on the tile. These instructions may lead to playing additional tiles, drawing tiles, moving tiles previously played, turning face down tiles face up, taking tiles from opponents, preventing actions or even exchanging hands of tiles with other players. When players finish their turns, if they have less than five tiles in their hands, they draw additional tiles so that they end their turn with at least five tiles.
The game ends when one player places the last of his colored pegs, or the fifth Power Station tile is played. Each player is awarded points for contiguous groups of at least three tiles controlled by him at a rate of one point per tile. Some tiles have a point value number in the corner; players receive the number of points indicated for such tiles that they control. Also, some tiles have silver rings; the player controlling the most of these receives one point per such tile.
The player with the most points wins.