Action Point Allowance System

Soar to dizzying heights in the electrifying cooperative adventure. Work as a team to explore a mysterious platform that floats at the center of a savage storm. Connect a circuit of cables to launch a secret rocket — all before you are struck by lightning or blown off to the depths below. It's a high-wire act that will test your team's capacity for courage and cooperation. One false step and you all could be grounded…permanently!

This latest installment in the Forbidden... game series takes you to new heights with several novel challenges, including collectively planning a terrain using only limited information and constructing a real electrical circuit.

In Dinosaur Island, players will have to collect DNA, research the DNA sequences of extinct dinosaur species, and then combine the ancient DNA in the correct sequence to bring these prehistoric creatures back to life. Dino cooking! All players will compete to build the most thrilling park each season, and then work to attract (and keep alive!) the most visitors each season that the park opens.

Do you go big and create a pack of Velociraptors? They'll definitely excite potential visitors, but you'd better make a large enough enclosure for them. And maybe hire some (read: a lot of) security. Or they WILL break out and start eating your visitors, and we all know how that ends. You could play it safe and grow a bunch of herbivores, but then you aren't going to have the most exciting park in the world (sad face). So maybe buy a roller coaster or two to attract visitors to your park the good old-fashioned way?

The dragon has been asleep for many long years. In that time, the cave under which it slumbered has changed greatly…Goblins and strange monsters have filled its gloomy depths and there are whispers that the cave itself has begun thinking, shifting, and growing evermore dangerous.

Still, stories of peril rarely overshadow the rumors of riches. And riches there may be… For where a dragon slumbers, there also lies a fiercely guarded treasure. Fortunately for the slumbering beast, malevolent crystals fill the cave’s rooms with spectral light, hiding the entrance to the immeasurable treasure trove. Many have given their lives to the search and over the years the rumors have faded to legend.

But the most courageous adventurers will not be discouraged by bloodshed. On this day, a knight steps into the darkness, her gloved hand gripping the hilt of her sword. Her years of quests--all of the victories and defeats--have led to this one final adventure. Knowing the kingdom can never truly be at peace with the dragon beneath the cave, she has come to make a final stand. Little does she know that she will awake everything that slumbers in the shadows… and begin the final battle in the darkness.

Enter the world of Vast: The Crystal Caverns!

Vast takes you and your friends into the torch light of a classic cave-crawling adventure, built on the concept of total asymmetry. Gone are days of the merry band of travelers fighting off evil. In Vast, you will become part of a new legend... Any part you wish!

Play as the classic, daring Knight, the chaotic Goblin horde, the colossal, greedy Dragon, or even the Cave itself — powerful, brooding, and intent on crushing the living things that dare to disturb its gloomy depths. Each role has its own powers, pieces, and paths to victory...and there can be only one winner.

As the ultimate asymmetric board game, Vast: The Crystal Caverns provides a limitless adventure, playable again and again as you and your friends explore the four different roles in different combinations. Play one-on-one in a race to the death between the Knight and the Goblins, or add in the Dragon and the Cave for deeper and more epic experiences, different every time.

The low land is a rough area where hard-working folk make a living by the sweat of their brow. Under constant threat of storm and flood, communities here rally together to build dikes that keep the rising water at bay. But every citizen constructing a dike is one fewer citizen tending flocks and maintaining the family farm. The residents here are constantly torn between selflessness and self-interest, and only those who can strike this delicate balance can thrive in this harsh landscape.

In Lowlands, you carve your farm out of this unforgiving land, gathering and spending resource cards to transform your farmyard into pastures that allow you to profit from breeding sheep. Adding expansions to your farm will unlock new options and score you victory points, but helping to build the dike that collectively protects all players is also rewarded. No matter what, the tide will rise and, if the dike isn't high enough, it could rush in and sweep away your hard-earned profits. Will you sacrifice your own farm for the good of the community, or will you pursue your own agenda? The choice is yours.

Even without the poor weather, life on a farm is one of constant work where you find yourself tending flocks of sheep, extending their pastures, and looking for the right moment to sell them for a profit. To complete all these tasks, Lowlands gives you a group of farmers that you can assign to various tasks around your farm. To get the most out of them, you must think strategically, deciding which actions you want to take and the best time to take them. Once they've been assigned, your farmers help you build a bustling farm where there was once scrubby bushes, trees, and lakes. You begin the game with only two sheep and a small pasture, but your farmyard is rife with possibilities, its many empty spaces inviting you to customize your farm as you see fit.

While you could simply focus on creating more area for your sheep to roam, the game also provides plenty of options for customizing your farm with various buildings and features. Not only are these tiles worth victory points at the end of the game, they also make your farm more efficient and more profitable. You might add a feeding trough to your farm, for example, to immediately earn another sheep and the ability to house two sheep per pasture space instead of just one. Or you could construct a lake cabin on your property to get away from it all for a bit. While this tile doesn't give you any special abilities, it increases the value in victory points of the farmyard spaces immediately adjacent to it. Ultimately, you are free to pursue whatever strategy you see fit, building a farm wholly your own.

On top of the challenges of building a successful farm, of course, you also have to deal with the tempestuous weather that comes with living on the wave-battered coast of the North Sea. Here, the tides always seem to rise a little higher, threatening to take a dent out of your profits by sweeping away some of your flock. To ensure that this doesn't happen, you always have the opportunity to send your farmers to contribute to the dike instead of working on your farm. When you do, you also commit resources to creating dike elements that are added to the board as a buffer against the rising waters. Add enough of these pieces and you might prevent disaster for everyone. The tide turns repeatedly, bringing with it new flood pieces. If there are enough dike elements in place to hold back the rising waters, players' farms are spared. If the dike breaks, however, you could be forced to take dike breach tokens that have adverse effects at the end of the game.

While lending a hand with the dike at the expense of your own farm is certainly a nice gesture that keeps everyone safe from the floodwaters, it has rewards of its own. For each resource you contribute to the dike, you advance one step up the dike track. Not only does advancing far enough on this track grant victory points, it also amplifies your reward if the dike holds and lessens the blow when it breaks. It is in your best interest, then, to keep pace with other players on the dike in order to protect your investments back home one the farm.

—description from the publisher

Altiplano, a bag-building game along the lines of Orléans set in the South American highlands of the Andes — the Altiplano — is not a simple game, presenting players with new challenges time and again. There are various ways to reach the goal, so the game remains appealing to try out new options and strategies, but success or failure also depends on whether your opponents let you do as you like or thwart the strategy you are pursuing. The competition for the individual types of goods is considerable — as is the fun in snatching a coveted extension card from under another player's nose!

At the start of the game, players have access only to certain resources and goods, due to the different role tiles that each player receives that provide them. At the market, however, a player can acquire additional production sites that give new options. The numerous goods — such as fish, alpaca, cacao, silver, or corn — all have their own characteristics and places where they can be used. Whereas silver makes you rich, fish can be exchanged for other goods, and alpaca give you wool that you can then make into cloth.

Aside from building up an effective production, you must deliver the right goods at the right time, develop the road in good time, and store your goods cleverly enough to fill the most valuable rows with them. Often, a good warehouseperson is more relevant in the end than the best producer.