Area Control / Area Influence

Regarded by many as Reiner Knizia's masterpiece, Tigris & Euphrates is set in the ancient fertile crescent with players building civilizations through tile placement. Players are given four different leaders: farming, trading, religion, and government. The leaders are used to collect victory points in these same categories. However, your score at the end of the game is the number of points in your weakest category, which encourages players not to get overly specialized. Conflict arises when civilizations connect on the board, i.e., external conflicts, with only one leader of each type surviving such a conflict. Leaders can also be replaced within a civilization through internal conflicts.

Part of what is considered Reiner Knizia's tile-laying trilogy.

In The Golden Ages, you lead your civilizations through history. The game lasts four different eras, during which you develop technologies, create fine arts, erect buildings, and build wonders. You'll send explorers to discover the continents, found cities in distant lands, and send your soldiers into battles.

The first player starting a Golden Age during an era chooses a "History Judgement" card that states the way all the players will score in that round. Each player who started a Golden Age continues taking money at his turns until all other players have passed.

There are many ways to score points — artists, the judgement of history, wonders, technologies, attacks, money, secret future technologies, etc. — as well as many different ways to achieve a victory. Will you succeed in evolving your civilization through history, overwhelming your opponents on the way to glory?

The mad Fire Elemental lord is out to burn down the dream forest. Attacking in waves using Fire Elementals, your only defense are trees and fountains and those animals brave enough to offer aid before scurrying away to safety. Using a unique drafting system and combining it with a tower defense game, will you be able to keep your forest green?

Sylvion is a tower-defense type game in which attacks come down four rows and in waves. You build a deck using a unique drafting process and play cards from your hand by paying with other cards in your hand. You can play cards to the rows like fountains and trees or play animals for instant effects or to manipulate the enemy decks of cards. When all the waves have finished, you must have your marker on a green space to indicate that you have saved the forest; if you stand on a red space, then your precious forest has burned down.

Cacao is a tile-placement game that immerses players in the exotic world of the "fruit of the Gods". As the chief of your tribe, you must lead your people to prosperity through the cultivation and trade of cacao — and to do that, you'll need to put them to work in the best way possible.

In the game, each player has an individual deck of square worker tiles, with the number of workers on each side of the tile varying from tile to tile. The playing area starts with only a couple of jungle tiles in play: a cacao field and a small market; two jungle tiles are laid face up, and the remaining jungle tiles stacked as a draw pile.

On a player's turn, she places one of her worker tiles on the board adjacent to one or more jungle tiles already in play, then (if two worker tiles are next to an empty space) adds one of the jungle tiles to the playing area in this space. Her workers then get busy and deliver the results of their effort: If you placed workers next to a cacao field, you receive one or two cacao markers per worker; if they're next to a market, you can choose to sell one cacao marker per worker at the listed price; if next to a well, you receive water; if next to a temple, they stand and look good until the end of the game; and so on. She then refills her hand from her personal deck to three worker tiles.

Once all players have used all of their worker tiles, the game ends. Players score (or lose) points based on their water supply, and each temple rewards whichever players sent the most workers to it. In the end, whoever has collected the most gold wins.

Set in the Italian countryside, this game features various city-states vying for population. Each player is given two cities to start with, and is charged with expanding the different aspects of the cities to attract larger populations.

Players build farms to feed their people, quarries to finance their expansions, marketplaces to allow growth in their cities, and bathhouses to keep their people clean and healthy. Additionally, structures can be built that give the city influence in one of three categories. Superiority in one of these categories will cause population to shift from other nearby cities when the Voice of the People is decided at the end of each turn.

At the end of six turns, the player with the most victory points, which are determined from well-rounded cities, well-fed populations, and overall size of population, will be the winner.

Note: The correct pronunciation is like "Cheetah", but with the accent on the last syllable: "La Chee-TAH".