Voting

Patchistory is a strategy board game with cards that symbolize historical heroes and wonders, with the whole game being divided into three eras. During the game, you acquire these cards through auctions and expand your territory by placing cards so that they overlap one another in a 5×5 space in the first era, a 6×6 space in the second era, and a 7×7 space in the third era. When your land—that is, the layout of your cards—is well built, the card functions are activated. You can earn victory points with diplomatic actions, domestic politics, war movement, the actions of production, etc., and at the end of the game, the person with the highest score after the third era wins.

Because you can make combos with lots of features on historical cards and you can score in various ways, Patchistory will give you another new exciting play every time it hits the table.

In Werewords, players guess a secret word by asking "yes" or "no" questions. Figure out the magic word before time is up, and you win! However, one of the players is secretly a werewolf who is not only working against you, but also knows the word. If you don't guess the word in time, you can still win by identifying the werewolf!

To help you out, one player is the Seer, who knows the word but must not to be too obvious when helping you figure it out; if the word is guessed, the werewolf can pull out a win by identifying the Seer!

A free iOS/Android app provides thousands of words in hundreds of categories at various difficulty levels, so everyone can play.

The year is 1667 and you are a pirate sailing the waters of the Caribbean. A Spanish Galleon floats nearby, and you’ve talked your crewmates into working together to steal all of its treasure. What you haven’t told your fellow pirates is that you have no intentions on sharing the treasure once you have it. Your crewmates have told you that they share your loyalty and that they’ll help you maroon the greedy pirates on your ship to the rocky island of Tortuga. But you’ve seen your friends’ loaded pistols and heard their whisperings of a mutiny. You know that nobody can be trusted.

Tortuga is all about the interactions you have with the other players. In some cases, such as when you and your shipmates are attacking the Spanish Galleon, you need to rely on your enemies in order to succeed. In the very next turn, however, your shipmates might stab you in the back with a mutiny in order to keep all the treasure for themselves.

Since nobody holds a "hand" of cards, this game is also about knowledge and communication regarding the community Event cards. Unless you are in desperation mode, it is not wise to reveal Event cards at random. Almost half of the Event cards can hurt your team drastically. It's often in your best interest to use an action to view the cards first, or to rely on the knowledge of a trusted ally. Knowing where harmful Event cards are located allows you to force an enemy to reveal those cards and suffer the consequences. The most successful players are the ones who are able to discern who is on their team and then share vital information with them at opportune moments.

Vote cards also play a key role in the game. Each Vote card has three sections - one each for Attacks, Mutinies, and Brawls. Players must put themselves in the best position to use their Vote cards, since their hand of Vote cards may not always be ideal based on their pawn location. For example, sometimes it may be worth putting in Water, causing an attack to fail, in order to save a Crossbones card for when you want to Mutiny against your captain.

For 2-9 Players. 20-40 minutes. Ages 12+.

Roots is a game of inventing words. Players combine Prefix and Suffix cards to create new words, competing for the best connection to a Subject card. Whoever delivers the best explanation for their word captures that Subject card, gaining a potential piece of their secret Win condition. But stay sharp: players can manipulate each other's progress with various Power cards, undermining opponents while advancing themselves. The result is narrative warfare in which the most creative, best spoken, and craftiest thrive.

A brief description from BGN's own Andrea "Liga" Ligabue (Boardgame News):

This game is the sequel to Lupus in Tabula; the Tabula inhabitants have moved into the city, but there is a little problem—the werewolves have moved there, too! This game keeps the theme and part of the mechanism of the famous party-game precursor, but this time it's for 3-8 players. Note that Lupusburg isn't an expansion, although it is possible to combine parts of the two games.