Tile Placement

Following along the same lines as its predecessor (Agricola), Caverna: The Cave Farmers is a worker-placement game at heart, with a focus on farming. In the game, you are the bearded leader of a small dwarf family that lives in a little cave in the mountains. You begin the game with a farmer and his spouse, and each member of the farming family represents an action that the player can take each turn. Together, you cultivate the forest in front of your cave and dig deeper into the mountain. You furnish the caves as dwellings for your offspring as well as working spaces for small enterprises.

It's up to you how much ore you want to mine. You will need it to forge weapons that allow you to go on expeditions to gain bonus items and actions. While digging through the mountain, you may come across water sources and find ore and ruby mines that help you increase your wealth. Right in front of your cave, you can increase your wealth even further with agriculture: You can cut down the forest to sow fields and fence in pastures to hold your animals. You can also expand your family while running your ever-growing farm. In the end, the player with the most efficiently developed home board wins.

You can also play the solo variant of this game to familiarize yourself with the 48 different furnishing tiles for your cave.

Caverna: The Cave Farmers, which has a playing time of roughly 30 minutes per player, is a complete redesign of Agricola that substitutes the card decks from the former game with a set of buildings while adding the ability to purchase weapons and send your farmers on quests to gain further resources. Designer Uwe Rosenberg says that the game includes parts of Agricola, but also has new ideas, especially the cave part of your game board, where you can build mines and search for rubies. The game also includes two new animals: dogs and donkeys.

In Helios, players are high priests in a distant world of the sun god AHAU, and the power of the sun drives everything in the game as players try to build temples, expand cities, and make their civilization flourish.

Development can succeed, though, only if you've secured a supply of the limited raw materials available, and the more that you've built of your temple, the more expensive the remaining parts will be. Glass manastones are the game's currency, and with them you can acquire people, increase the number of points you'll score, and more.

The floodwaters are rising and the animals need to board the ark!

In this deceptively simple game, players move their boats around a steadily deteriorating landscape, matching pairs in order to rescue stranded animals.

Animals that are rare at the end of the game are worth more points than those that are common.

Two by Two is #6 in the Valley Games Modern Line.

Awards

Games 100 - Runner-up for Best Family Game (2012)

Online Play

Yucata (turn-based)

Blokus Trigon is an abstract strategy game from the makers of Blokus. The board pieces have changed from square to triangular. Game play is similar to Blokus, as players try to get rid of all their pieces. The only caveat to placing a piece is that it may not lie adjacent to your other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one of your pieces already on the board at a corner.

There is a solitaire version where one player tries to get rid of all the pieces in a single sitting.

Components:
Hexagonal playing board with 486 triangles on the board
4 sets of 22 pieces in red, blue, green and yellow
1 piece made up of one triangle.
1 piece made up of two triangles.
1 piece made up of three triangles.
3 pieces made up of four triangles.
4 pieces made up of five triangles.
12 pieces made up of six triangles.

Set up:
Layout your hexagonal silver board and give each player a set of 22 squares.

Game Play:
Each player begins at one of the marked spaces on the board. The order of play is blue, yellow, red, green colors.
As the play progresses, each new piece is placed on the board. The new piece placed must touch another piece of the same colour and it can only touch at the corners. The constraint is never touch along the sides.

When a player is blocked and cannot place any more pieces on the board, they must drop out of the game. The other players continue until they are blocked or no one is able to place any more pieces on the board.

Scoring:
When all the players are blocked, each player must count the number of triangles that they were unable to place on the trigon board and calculates their score as follows:

Any triangle that is not placed on the board counts towards a negative point.
15 points are awarded as a bonus, if the player has all 22 pieces placed on the board.
This bonus increases to a 20 points if the 22 pieces were placed on the board with the single triangle being placed last.

The winner is the person with the maximum points!

Note: This game is available by request only and requires having a membership to play.
See game associate for details.

The dream of creating a new civilization in ancient Mesopotamia is within reach. Are you ready to lead your population ?

In the age of its maximum splendor, this vast and fertile geographical area was a scene of destiny for some populations, who resolved to settle in the richest and most strategically advantageous territories. Over the course of centuries these populations succeeded in developing all aspects of their civilization wisely. This was the main factor enabling them to found marvelous cities like Ur and to construct gigantic buildings like Ziggurats.
Just like Mesopotamia’s ancient Kings, each player will have to achieve the highest prestige by precisely dosing the development of Agriculture, Trade, Politics, Culture and finally War, so that thanks to these efforts the long desired construction of five Ziggurats is completed.

But, beware…
If the King becomes guilty of Greed in building them, or pursues improperly the conquest of Lands, this could ultimately lead him to defeat. The intrinsic speed of the game, the simplicity of rules, the very alluring artwork, together with the subtlety of the innumerable strategies which can be pursued, render Ur a gaming experience which you will play and play and keep playing again for a very, very long time!

Online Play

http://www.mabiweb.com/ (turn-based)