Tile Placement

In New Haven, set in colonial New England, players must develop the riches of the land and build a thriving settlement. Players place tiles strategically to a shared game board to cut timber, quarry stone, plant fields of wheat, and fill pastures with fat sheep. Players then use these resources to erect buildings on their own village boards, attempting to complete rows and columns for population points. Whoever can build the biggest and most prosperous town will end up with the biggest population and win the game!

New Haven is a tile-laying game with a drafting component. The center board is the land between the player villages from which resources will be gathered. Players select from their two hidden tiles and play on this board to generate available value in some of the four resources. Once per game, each player can get a shipment which delivers a large value of one specific resource type.

This value is then used by the player to play building tokens on his personal village board. However, he can play only building tokens already owned behind his player screen, with restrictions on how buildings must be arranged. He can elect to play a token face down for more flexibility, but this means a lower score if he successfully completes that row or column of buildings.

Once a player is done building, any value he hasn't used is available for his opponents to use to build! Thus, the goal when placing resource tiles is to generate just enough for what is needed, not the most that can possibly be created. Finally, the player drafts new building tokens for use on future turns; plan your creation and consumption of resources to perfectly match your needs, and you'll be rewarded with additional tokens.

The base game lasts ten turns, and the player who attracts the most colonists to his village by completing roads and avenues of buildings wins the game.

New Haven plays well with 2, 3, or 4 players, lasting about 15 minutes per player, with a bit more time needed for learning games. The game includes a side B game board with some twists, as well as rule variants that can make the gameplay either more forgiving or more strategic.

In the 2400s, mankind begins to terraform the planet Mars. Giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment is habitable. In Terraforming Mars, you play one of those corporations and work together in the terraforming process, but compete for getting victory points that are awarded not only for your contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other commendable things.

The players acquire unique project cards (from over two hundred different ones) by buying them to their hand. The projects (cards) can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere. The cards can give you immediate bonuses, as well as increasing your production of different resources. Many cards also have requirements and they become playable when the temperature, oxygen, or ocean coverage increases enough. Buying cards is costly, so there is a balance between buying cards (3 megacredits per card) and actually playing them (which can cost anything between 0 to 41 megacredits, depending on the project). Standard Projects are always available to complement your cards.

Your basic income, as well as your basic score, is based on your Terraform Rating (starting at 20), which increases every time you raise one of the three global parameters. However, your income is complemented with your production, and you also get VPs from many other sources.

Each player keeps track of their production and resources on their player boards, and the game uses six types of resources: MegaCredits, Steel, Titanium, Plants, Energy, and Heat. On the game board, you compete for the best places for your city tiles, ocean tiles, and greenery tiles. You also compete for different Milestones and Awards worth many VPs. Each round is called a generation (guess why) and consists of the following phases:

1) Player order shifts clockwise.
2) Research phase: All players buy cards from four privately drawn.
3) Action phase: Players take turns doing 1-2 actions from these options: Playing a card, claiming a Milestone, funding an Award, using a Standard project, converting plant into greenery tiles (and raising oxygen), converting heat into a temperature raise, and using the action of a card in play. The turn continues around the table until all players pass.
4) Production phase: Players get resources according to their terraform rating and production parameters.

When the three global parameters (temperature, oxygen, ocean) have all reached their goal, the terraforming is complete, and the game ends after that generation. Count your Terraform Rating and other VPs to determine the winning corporation!

Bananagrams is a Scrabble-like game without the board that's much like Pick Two!, but without the letter values.

In the basic game, using a selection of 144 plastic letter tiles, each player works independently to create their own "crossword". When a player has incorporated all of their letters in their crossword, all players take a new tile from the pool. When all the tiles are gone, the first player to use up all the tiles in their hand wins.

Bananagrams Party adds fourteen "party power" tiles to the letter mix, with each of these tiles — The Re-Gifter, The Thief, Switcheroo, Pouch Head, etc. — giving its holder a unique power in the game.

Kids will be challenged by the fast pace of Crossword Math whether they are accomplished math whizzes or are building confidence with basic math skills. Includes 150 math tiles, game board, score pad, and guide.
Everyone takes three tiles and starts building math equations.
The first person to run out of tiles says “Take three more!”
The crossword-style puzzle can be rearranged at any time.
Use the last tile and win!
For 2-8 players.

In this classic word game, players use their seven drawn letter-tiles to form words on the gameboard. Each word laid out earns points based on the commonality of the letters used, with certain board spaces giving bonuses. But a word can only be played if it uses at least one already-played tile or adds to an already-played word. This leads to slightly tactical play, as potential words are rejected because they would give an opponent too much access to the better bonus spaces.

Skip-a-cross was licensed by Selchow & Righter and manufactured by Cadaco. Both games have identical rules but Skip-a-cross has tiles and racks made of cardboard instead of wood. The game was also published because not enough Scrabble games were manufactured to meet the demand.