City Building

Celt — Latin Celta, plural Celtae — were an early Indo-European people who from the second millennium BCE to the first century BCE spread over much of Europe. Their tribes and groups eventually ranged from the British Isles and Portugal to as far east as Transylvania, the Black Sea coasts, and Galatia in Anatolia, and they were in part absorbed into the Roman Empire as Britons, Gauls, Boii, Galatians, Celtiberians, and Lusitans.

Celtae is a "worker swapping" game powered by a rondel in which players choose actions to perform during their turn. On their turn, players swap one of their three active workers with one of the three workers on the action space they wish to perform, then they perform the action — which will be boosted if they have in their worker pool specific types of workers: farmers, builders, soldiers, and nobles.

The farming action allows players to draw cards, and it's boosted by farmers. Cards have three types of uses in the game: building, preparing for battle, and engaging with the druid order.
The build action allows players to build and expand citadels on the board by placing their discs on them, and it's boosted by builders. At game's end, only completed citadels will score, and players have to work together to complete them and score their presence on them. Each time players build in a citadel, they gain a bonus that was randomly assigned during set-up. The combination of these bonuses with a timely performed action often results in powerful combos.
The battle action, which is boosted by soldiers, allows players to defeat increasingly stronger Roman armies and to garrison the outskirts of the citadels on the map.
The recruit action, boosted by nobles, allows players to recruit workers to their tribe, increasing the number of available workers to boost future actions. However, if you manage to send certain types of workers from your tribe into the druid order, you'll get their favor and a druid worker who functions like a joker and boosts almost every type of action.

Every player has a leader card assigned to their tribe at the beginning of the game. At a certain point on the game, players will have to choose if their leaders stay on its regular side and like that gain a small number of points at game's end or forfeit those meager points and flip it to its heroic side, which has much harder requirements for much larger endgame points.

Each time the action marker on the rondel completes a full turn, the player who currently holds the favor of Teutates places a progress marker on one of the progress cards next to the game board. At game's end, only progress cards with progress markers will score, so as the game advances, players determine what will score...and what will not.

—description from the publisher

In Nova Era, players guide their civilization from humble tribal beginnings to vast scientific empires, navigating the twists and turns through eras of history. Harness the power of technology, expand territories, and enlist famous (and sometimes infamous) personalities from across history. Civilizations face constant threats from rival nations, natural disasters, social unrest, and the ever-looming possibility of a dark age.

The objective of Nova Era is to build the greatest civilization. This is done by strategically choosing the most beneficial technologies, territories, and personalities from the tableau, evolving them as the players go through the annals of time. Players score by having a variety and/or majority of different technology types, as well as fulfilling various card objectives.

Gameplay revolves around drafting and spending dice, with different dice types providing different resources, bonuses, and penalties for players. Overextending your own dice leads to civil unrest, and dice unused by players fill up the progress bars of natural disasters and the Dark Age, affecting all players across the table. Once all dice actions are taken, an era ends and a new one begins. At the end of three eras, the game ends and the most prosperous civilization wins!

—description from the publisher

In Sankoré: The Pride of Mansa Musa, a dynamic, interactive, mid-weight Eurogame, 1-4 players manage the prestigious University of Sankoré in 14th-century Timbuktu, tasked by the emperor Mansa Musa with spreading knowledge throughout West Africa, even as the great university is raised around them.

By enrolling and graduating your pupils, teaching classes, adding to your curriculum, and filling the great library with books, you will advance knowledge in four main disciplines: theology, law, mathematics, and astronomy. Once construction of the university is complete, the value that the empire places on each discipline will dramatically affect how you score the knowledge you have passed on.

In a dedicated solo mode, you compete against the "Distinguished Scholar", a passionate and ambitious academic controlled by an elegant automated system. They may not be as nimble as you, but they are focused and driven and will strive to produce the best possible students.

Can you navigate the corridors of academic competition and bring renown to Mansa Musa's prized university?

—description from the publisher

Congratulations! Your architectural firm has been selected to renovate the city's downtown...but you're not the only ones. To pip your opponents at the post, you need to manage your resources and carefully plan your constructions. Be careful not to leave too many opportunities to your competitors!

Each turn in Tower Up, you either:

Pick a card and take the corresponding resources, or
Use your resources to construct a new building: choose an empty spot, pay the cost to adjacent buildings, place a roof, and earn the corresponding points.

In Black Forest, you start out with a small domain in need of new buildings and livestock. You’ll travel from village to village to enlist the aid of the best specialists. Exploiting the abilities of these specialists lets you collect resources, lay out new landscape tiles (e.g., ponds and fields), and build a variety of buildings, which come in four types. Choose the right buildings, place landscapes, fire up your glass production, and expand your domain.

Uwe Rosenberg’s resource wheels are making once again making their presence, made famous in Glass Road (2013). Two resource wheels on your tableau help you keep track of your resources and production. Black Forest continues the story - as the name suggests — in the Black Forest. Among others, the main difference between the two games is the use of worker placement in BLack Forest instead of simultaneous action selection.

A wide selection of buildings and their different effects offer many different paths to victory.

—description from publisher