Tile Placement

Mermaid Rain is a Japanese game from the makers of Train Raider.

Over five rounds, players try to collect five different types of goods by moving around the sea. The game uses two phases: first is the "surf predicting" phase where players play melds of cards in a Taj Mahal-type mechanic. The melds determine player order, selection of "wave tile", and give other benefits. In the second phase, "surf riding", players place their wave tiles on the board and then use cards to move through the sea on the waves to collect goods.

The game is playable with English rules as the components are either language-independent or easily decipherable.

Game Summary
Setup: specific locations for subset of tiles, some face down; rest are to side, also face down. Deal out 7 cards (3 suits).

Each round, players simultaneously select a card to play (max 5 cards total) -- choose the pass card to pass for rest of round. The resulting poker-style combinations give bonuses (VP, or special powers); the ranking gives you player order for the round.

In order, select a face up sea tile (4 shapes, 2-3 hexes each, with one of 3 suits or wild). Then, in order, place the tile on the board and use some/all cards left in hand to move your mermaid around the board (playing card allows you to move mermaid to matching tile/space). Whenever on an island with token(s), look at face down tokens then add one of the tokens to your collection.

At end of round, sea tiles with the darker color are removed from the board. Any mermaids on them are displaced to one of the unoccupied starting locations (player's choice). Then, deal 7 cards per player (max hand size 9) and repeat.

Game ends after 5 rounds. Each player must discard 5 tokens (1 per symbol), or lose 5 VP per missing symbol. Then rank players' collections of sets of each type, awarding VP accordingly (rarer tiles, larger sets earn more VP). Most VP wins.

Carcassonne: the Castle takes place in the city of Carcassone itself. The theme is development of the city within the "castle walls", which might be more appropriately called the city walls, but Carcassonne: The City was apparently already in development.

It is not an expansion, but a stand-alone tile-placement game with the Carcassonne mechanics adapted specially for two players. The goal is to lead the race around the castle wall, which is also the scoring track for the game. There are bonus items on the wall for the first player to reach that point.

Play is very similar to Carcassonne but all the tiles must be played within the walls, which often constrains the choices. The followers used for scoring are heralds (on paths), knights (on towers), squires (on houses) and merchants (on courtyards which are more valuable if they have a market). And, the player with the largest "keep" (largest house completed during the game) scores points for the largest contiguous undeveloped area (unplayed tile spaces) at the end of the game. The bonus tiles collected from the walls add twists to the scoring, such as doubling one of a particular scoring structure or scoring one uncompleted structure.

From the publisher:

The knights set off from their castles to conquer the surrounding land. For the wealth of the big towns and the villages belonging to them is just too tempting.

Of course, once in possession, no knight wants to lose his newly acquired properties, so this means: caution. For the other players´knights are awake to any opportunity and the newly gained land may be lost again just as quickly to a new lord.

Bring your landscape tiles and above all your knights skilfully into play, secure your properties on all sides and watch out for enemy knights at all time.

Game Summary
Each player has an identical set of tiles, arranged with B's on top and E's on bottom. Of the 4 A tiles, choose a castle and another tile for your hand; the others (from all players) form a random starting play area.

On your turn, you place 1, 2 or 3 tiles, immediately drawing a replacement after each placement. These are played one at a time, and must be orthogonally adjacent to what's already on the board. They may not extend beyond the play area (7x7, 9x9, or 10x10 for 2er, 3er, or 4er). If a placed tile has a castle, you bring 0-5 knights (discs) into play onto that castle. Then, you may move those knights in a straight line, placing a number of knights on each tile entered (including the castle) based on terrain: plains=1, forest=2, mountains=3 (lakes impassable). Max total of 4 knights/tile at end of movement; if you can't enter a hex (e.g., forest with 3 knights present), you may not move beyond it. May not skip any tiles. If other player knights are present, place yours in a stack on top.

The game ends when everyone has played all their tiles. Earn VP based on tiles controlled (knight on top of stack controls tile): castle=1VP, village=2VP, town=3VP. Most VP wins! Tie-breaker = most unused knights.

Basilica, a game for 2 players, presents the duel of two medieval master masons who are ordered to build a medieval cathedral together. Players are planning cathedral layout and overseeing work at the construction site in tandem, in the same time trying to gain advantage over the opposite player.

The temple is built by laying square tiles adjacent to the board or already built tiles. Tiles form the plan of the cathedral. These tiles, distinguished by four colors, represent different elements of the cathedral. The pool of tiles available to players is random. Later, the players place pawns on the tiles – these pawns are the teams of builders: foremen, masons and carpenters, who will make the design a reality.

The players strive to achieve two goals: to lay their cathedral tiles so as to create the largest possible areas representing a single color, and to have more pawns in these areas than their opponent.

Every tile bears also one special action that could be played instead of adding a tile to the cathedral. Using these actions player may move pawns from tile to tile, promote them (increasing their value) or manipulate the tiles. Execution of specific order excludes the tile from being used as part of cathedral, so choice between expanding the edifice and making some action is strategic. Planning and optimal use of available resources is important, as both participants share the same selection of tiles. Thus, tiles and actions shown on them not used by the player in her or his turn become immediately available to his opponent.

Some tiles trigger movement of a special King pawn, which moves along the scoring track. Every few moves, the King pawn comes to a space indicating a royal visit to the cathedral. During each royal visit, the progress of work is assessed and Victory Points are assigned to the players. The number of VPs each player is awarded depends on the size and number of the areas controlled by their pawns at the moment of scoring. The more areas the player controls, and the bigger these are, the greater the reward for the player. At the end of the game, the winner is the player who has claimed more Victory Points.

The game is based on the traditional middle-eastern game of Okey. First created in the 1930s and sold in hand-produced versions until the late 1970s.

Similar to the Rummy that you play with cards - you try to get rid of all your tiles by forming numbers into runs of 3 tiles or more, or 3 to 4 of a kind. The colors of the numbers on the tiles are like card suits. This game may start rather uneventfully, but when the players start putting more and more tiles in play, the options for your upcoming turns can become more complex, challenging, and exciting (from areyougame.com).