Action / Movement Programming

Imagine that you're a supercomputer. Now imagine that you're bored. So you dream up a little contest for you and a couple of your supercomputing buddies. Your task is to move one of the stupid little robots out on the factory floor through a series of checkpoints scattered throughout the factory. The wrinkle, however, is that the factory floor is filled with all kinds of inconvenient (if not down-right deadly) obstacles located in various locations: conveyor belts, crushers, flame-throwers, pushers, teleporters, oil slicks, pits, et cetera. But the real fun comes when the robots cross each other's path, and suddenly your perfect route is something less than that...

In RoboRally players each control a different robot in a race through a dangerous factory floor. Several goals will be placed on the board and you must navigate your robot to them in a specific order. The boards can be combined in several different ways to accommodate different player counts and races can be as long or as short as player's desire.

In general, players will first fill all of their robot's "registers" with facedown movement cards. This happens simultaneously and there is a time element involved. If you don't act fast enough you are forced to place cards randomly to fill the rest. Then, starting with the first register, everyone reveals their card. The card with the highest number moves first. After everyone resolves their movement they reveal the next card and so on. Examples of movement cards may be to turn 90 degrees left or right, move forward 2 spaces, or move backward 1 space though there are a bigger variety than that. You can plan a perfect route, but if another robot runs into you it can push you off course. This can be disastrous since you can't reprogram any cards to fix it!

Robots fire lasers and factory elements resolve after each movement and robots may become damaged. If they take enough damage certain movement cards become fixed and can no longer be changed. If they take more they may be destroyed entirely. The first robot to claim all the goals in the correct order wins, though some may award points and play tournament style.

The game was reprinted by Avalon Hill (Hasbro/WotC) in 2005.

Epic Railroad Building in North America

Discover a modern North American classic. Celebrate one of our most vital and enduring passions: railroads. Use your initial investment to build track. Then pick up commodities where they are grown, mined, or manufactured and deliver them to a lucrative place of demand. Complete a delivery and make the money you need to buy larger, faster trains, and expand your railroad empire. Win the game by building the most effective railroad empire!

The original and flagship of Mayfair's crayon-rails line allows players, using washable crayons, to draw their train routes over a map of North America. Players start with an initial sum of money which they use to build short lengths of track during their first couple of turns. For the rest of the game, players operate their trains over the track network drawn on the board to pick up and deliver loads to various cities, and then have the opportunity to add to their track network or improve their train. The game uses demand cards which list three demands, each of a commodity to be delivered to a specified city for a given payoff. Each player has three demand cards to provide opportunities for income.

Each turn consists of an operations phase and a building phase. During the operations phase, trains are moved to cities where commodities are picked up at no cost and moved to one of the cities on that player's demand cards. When the commodity is delivered, the player receives the payoff and trades that demand card for a new one. Event cards are mixed in the deck with the demand cards. When an event card is drawn the instructions are followed. During the building phase a player may pay to build more track or upgrade his train.

A player wins by being the first to connect his track network to six of the seven major cities on the board and acquire $250,000,000 in cash on hand.

From the publisher's website:

World War 2 air combat game depicting the nighttime air raids of British bombers hitting German cities.

As the head of the British Bomber Command, you plan the attacks on Germany in order to undermine the morale of the civilian population. Or as a General of the German Air Force (Luftwaffe), you defend using your ace squadrons and organizing an effective civil defense.

The gameboard enables you to set up countless variations of these historic events. You play as many nights as you wish - each night takes 30-45 minutes to resolve.

Immerse yourself in the strategic and tactical thinking needed to survive in those dark times.

Gameplay allows for easy entry into the action with some advanced rules for the hearty wargamer. The game rules include weather conditions, full moon/new moon bonuses and penalties, clouds and thunderclouds, fog, flak, searchlights, balloon barriers, target markers, and much more.

The British player secretly plots the course of the bomber while the Mosquito acts as escort or decoy. The German player tries to figure out where the bomber is going, making sure to efficiently use the fuel to get as many hits on the bomber as possible.

Expanded by:

Duel in the Dark: Ju88 Night Fighter
Duel in the Dark: Railroad Flak
Duel in the Dark: Acoustic Mirror
Duel in the Dark: Quad Flak
Duel in the Dark: Skilled Gun Crew
Duel in the Dark: The Walls Have Ears
Duel in the Dark: 3-5 Player Variant
Duel in the Dark: British 3.7in QF Anti-Aircraft Gun
Duel in the Dark: British Searchlight
Duel in the Dark: Early Nights
Duel in the Dark: Baby Blitz
Duel in the Dark: V1-Bunker

Home Page: http://www.duelinthedark.com/

In Gravwell: Escape from the 9th Dimension, players command spaceships that have been pulled through a black hole, transporting them into a different dimension. With each ship lacking fuel to get home, each player must collect basic elements from surrounding asteroids, using the gravity of the dimension and what little resources they have in order to reach the warp gate that will take them home. But in this dimension, moving ships will travel towards the nearest object, which is usually another ship, and when those objects are moving either forward or backward, reaching the warp gate isn't always easy. Time is running out to save your crew and your ship! As a grim reminder of the cost of failing to escape, the frozen hulks of dead spacecraft litter the escape route – but with careful cardplay, you can slingshot past these derelict craft and be the first to escape from the Gravwell!

This easy-to-learn game uses 26 alphabetized cards to determine movement order and thrust; most cards move your ship towards the nearest object, but a few move you away from it. Players will draft fuel cards in each round – picking up three pairs of two cards, with only the top card of each pile being visible – giving you some information as to which moves you can expect from the other spaceships. During a round, each player will play all of his fuel cards in the order of his choosing. During each phase of a round, each player will choose one card, then all cards are revealed and resolved in alphabetical order. When your opponents move in ways you didn't expect, you won't always be heading in the direction you thought you would! Each player holds an "Emergency Stop" card that he may tactically play only once per round to avoid such a situation.

Whoever first reaches the warp gate wins, but if no one has escaped after six rounds, then the player who is closest to the gate wins.

Description of the game play from co-designer Michail Antonow:

The board shows the Caribbean in the 18th century. Six pirate ships lie in wait on sea, ready to pillage the rich ports or to rob the booty from other ships.

The sea is divided into spaces. Each player is in possession of three safe havens, marked in his color on the board. If only two or three players are playing, the safe havens in the vacant color(s) are treated as normal sea spaces.

The aim of each player is to lure the pirates to deliver treasure crates to one of their own safe havens, and not to the safe havens of the opponents.

The pirate ships do not belong to any player. That is why the players must bribe the pirates each time they want a pirate ship to act on their behalf. And what is the greatest temptation for a Caribbean pirate? Rum of course, barrels full of rum!

In every round the players try anew their best to bribe the pirates. The player who has offered the most rum to a ship gets to move that ship as many spaces as the number of barrels shown on the bribing chip. An active ship can (a) rob a crate from a port or from another ship, (b) reach a crate over to another ship, (c) swap crates with another ship, and/or (d) deliver a crate into a safe haven.

The aim is to have the most doubloons at the end of the game.