Tile Placement

Steam-belching iron horses roar across the wild plains! Age of Steam relives the era when pioneering U.S. railroads built the tracks that transformed America's economy. The cut-throat action is centered on the industrial powerhouses of the growing nation: Pittsburgh, Cincinnati, Chicago, and beyond.

Challenges that await you:

Can you finance both the most extensive track network and the most powerful locomotives?
Which routes will give the best returns on their costs?
Can you beat the opposition to the most lucrative shipments?
Will you make enough money to pay your aggressive creditors?

Competition is brutal, with the game usually going to the player who plans most carefully.

Each self-contained phase in the game keeps players constantly involved in making vital decisions and interacting with other players. Age of Steam also allows towns to be developed into cities, ensuring that no two games are exactly the same.

The Discovery is a new stand-alone Carcassonne game.

The inhabitants of Carcassonne have discovered a new region far away from their homeland - one that consists of meadows, mountains and seas. The followers, of which each player only has four (with a fifth for the scoring track) get placed as robbers (in the mountains), seafarers (on the seas) or explorers (on the meadows). On a player's turn, he must place a tile and may then place a follower on it.

As in the original game, tiles may only be placed so that identical landscape types match up. A follower may only be placed when no other follower has been placed there yet. When the follower is removed, however, then the size of the region in which the follower is located brings points - regardless of whether the region has been closed off or not, although closed off regions score considerably more points. There's also an additional rule that lets mountainous regions increase in value, even if they've already been completed.

This is a distinctly simpler version of Carcassonne than the original. This was the goal during the development of the game. It should have simpler rules, but offer greater strategic depth. What is interesting about the game is that regions aren't scored automatically any more (when they are closed off), this is a decision left to the player (the removing of the follower). Since the regions can only get more valuable, this ensures many agonizing decisions.

(From Gamewire and Spielbox)

This game is part of the Carcassonne series.

In the game Rumis, the players construct an Inca building with their stones. All players receive three-dimensional pieces made of wood, which they will try to position adjacent to their already placed pieces of their own color. All of their own pieces are of different shapes, which is a challenge to the three-dimensional imagination.

Cubic, wedge-shaped, or pyramidal volumes are different building limitations, which are imposed by the various building scenarios. Playing RUMIS, you will find that no game is similar to any previous one. Once your mind has mastered the puzzling shapes of the RUMIS pieces, you will explore the depth of tactical and strategic possibilities offered.

The rebrand by Educational Insights is labelled 1 to 4 players on the box, adding solitaire puzzles such as building a 3x3 cube with one color and building the various shapes using all the colors, following the rules of the multiplayer games while leaving no gaps in the structure.

Expanded by:

Rumis+

Anyone who knows a little about Reiner Knizia’s games will know that the good Doctor loves games that deal with trying to get points in various different categories and then only score that category in which the player has the fewest.

The game is played on a hex board. 120 equally sized pieces, each consisting of two joined hexes, come with the game. There are symbols on each hex that make up the piece – some pieces have two identical symbols, some have two different symbols (not unlike dominoes). The goal of the game is, through clever placement, to obtain points in the different symbol colors. Points are claimed by placing a piece such that the symbols on it lie next to already-placed pieces with the same symbol.

The game ends when no more tiles can be placed onto the board or when a player reaches the maximum number in every color. Now each player looks to see how many points they scored in the colour they 'scored the least'. Whoever has the most points in their least-scored colour is the winner. Simple.

The author of the game has also come up with solitaire and team play, in which two teams of two play with each player not being able to see his partner’s tiles.

[From a preview by Spielbox]

Other Versions:

Ingenious: Travel Edition