Tile Placement

Your task in the tile-laying game Sanssouci is to create a flower garden for the world-famous Sanssouci Palace. Competing against up to three other landscape architects, you'll have your own garden layout game board on which you'll build rose gardens and vineyard terraces, labyrinths and fountains – but not just anywhere, mind you. No, the landscapers must meet certain building requirements, and unfortunately you won't always have at hand everything that you might need.

In game terms, each player has a personal garden that's divided into rows and columns; each row shows a color, while each column shows one of nine garden elements, such as the wells or a pavilion. Players start with one noble at the top of each column. A shared tile supply board has five rows – with colored spaces matching the colors on each player board – and two columns, which are unlabeled. At the start of the game, ten tiles are placed on this supply board; each tile depicts one of the nine garden elements.

Each turn, a player plays one of his two cards in hand, which determines the tile he can take from the supply, e.g. take a pavilion tile, take a tile from the red or gray spaces, etc. The player has only a single card that lets him take any tile – but if he plays a card showing a garden element that isn't present, then he can instead take any tile! The player must place this tile on his player board in the column that matches the image on the tile and the row that matches the color from which the tile was taken. If this space is already filled, he flips the tile to show the gardener on the other side, then places this tile on any free space in the same row or the same column. After placing the tile, he may move one of his nobles along a path of placed tiles as long as the noble ends up in the same column in which it started, but on a lower row. The player scores points equal to the row reached.

The player then refills the supply and draws a new card. The game ends after 18 rounds. Each player then receives bonus points for each completed row and column. Furthermore, each player has received two order cards at the start of the game, each of which shows one of the nine columns; each player receives bonus points for the row reached by the noble in that column. The player with the most points wins.

Ancient Balinese legend describes a host of powerful spirits who help poor rice farmers achieve success. These farmers have long used a sophisticated irrigation system to organize rice cultivation by integrating religious devotion and social responsibility with traditional farming methods. Even modern farmers seek to placate the spirit world in their quest to produce an abundant harvest.

In Spirits of the Rice Paddy, players must compete with fellow rice farmers to construct and tend rice paddies. Oxen can build walls and remove large rocks. Ducks can be employed to eat harmful pests and fertilize the fledgling crops. Weeds must be kept at bay. Most importantly, water must be conserved and released with the greatest of care. With a little luck, all that back-breaking labor will pay off in the end. The good news is that the spirits are eager to assist, granting many special abilities, blessings, and magic. The farmer who produces the most rice over seven rounds wins the game.

Game description from the publisher:

You know there is money in chocolate, but it doesn't just grow on trees. You need to control the links in the production chain to get your cut of the cash, to make sure the cocao flows through your businesses instead of your competitors'.

Sometimes you need to help your customers and suppliers to help yourself. If you are wily, you can figure out a way for your competitors to do the work for you. Create monopolies, cut off the supply chain, disrupt other players' finely honed plans — do whatever it takes to become King Chocolate.

The fruit of the cacao tree goes through six steps to become chocolate. You can control only a few of these steps, so you must work with your fellow chocolate makers to keep the chocolate flowing through the production chain. It sounds cooperative and friendly — but did we mention that the chocolate maker with the most money wins? Things always get complicated when money is involved.

To ensure your portion of the production process is used the most so that it earns you cash, occasionally you'll help your customers and suppliers. At the same time, you will attempt to crush your competitors, force others to help you, and manipulate the supply chain.

You'll do whatever it takes to become the king of chocolate.

The time has come for the tribe to leave its shelter and head for new lands. As the chief of your clan, it's up to you to guide your prehistoric people through the valley: Take advantage of the environment, pick and hunt for food, discover big and safe caverns for the upcoming winter, gather your tribe and discover the valley!

Sapiens is a short and easy-to-learn tile-placement game that can prove much deeper than it seems for gamers. Each player has a personal game board that represents the valley on which they will play tiles to determine the journey of their tribe through several prehistoric life scenes. Their aim is to gather food points on the plains and in the forests of the valley and to get shelter points for reaching caves in the mountains. A player's turn consists of two steps:

Connect one new tile from the four in his personal pool to the tiles already in play on his board, with connected scenes needing to match. These placements earn food points when a connection is made, earns shelter points when a cave is reached, and sometimes provides a special ability based on the connected scenes.
Choose a new tile from the five available in a common pool to re-fill his personal pool to four tiles.

Sapiens relies on instinctive domino-like mechanisms that are improved by interesting twists:

Laying tiles on personal (modular) game boards brings a bit of a puzzle feel to the game.
Having two separate scores — food and shelter — and knowing that only their lower one matters when determining who wins confronts players with interesting needs and dilemmas.
Including special powers linked to the eight different scenes represented on the tiles brings a lot of interaction and choices.

In Bedpans & Broomsticks, all but one of the players are the Elders of the Shady Pines Village retirement home. You are all trying to get to one of the 3 exits from the building. Another player controls the Staff of doctors, nurses, and orderlies who are trying to stop you and return you to your bed.

Each round you move your pieces on a layout consisting of room-tiles that represent the layout of the Village. You start on a single tile, but you can't remember the rest of the layout. So you place a new tile each time you look through an open, exterior corridor onto a room tile that you have not seen before. Along the way you can pick up and use Stuff-markers that you find.

This movement and exploration continues until enough of the Elders are captured or neutralized by the Staff, or until one or more of the Elders reaches an exit and escapes.