Area Enclosure

In Rise!, players race to be the first to construct three towers on the growing game board, moving workers to and fro to keep the towers rising and the opponent befuddled.

To set up, place 12 hexagonal tiles in a dogbone shape as specified in the rulebook, then place one token for each player on their starting locations. On a turn, a player takes two actions (possibly the same action twice) from this list of options:

Place a land tile adjacent to any existing tile.
Place a worker adjacent to any of your workers already on the game board.
Move one of your workers to an adjacent empty space.
Jump an opponent's worker and land on an empty space, removing that worker from play.
Remove two of your workers from the board to remove an opponent's worker from any space.
Remove two of your workers from the board to place one of your workers in any empty space.
Remove one of your tower layers from the board.

If at any time during play you have a circle of six of your workers surrounding an empty space, place the first layer of one of your towers in that space. Your ring of workers must remain in place for two additional turns for the remaining two layers to be added to the tower; if your ring is disrupted, you can complete it later to continue the tower-building. If you completely surround an opponent's tower, you can remove the top level of that tower from the board.

In addition to building three complete towers, a player can also win by eliminating all of the opponent's workers from the game board.

In Cappuccino, players use stacks of coffee cups to capture other players' coffee cups.

Cappuccino features 64 beautiful plastic coffee cups in four different colors, with each player owning one color. At the start of the game, place all the cups face down on the table, shuffle them, then group them together. On a turn, a player can capture a stack that's adjacent to one of his own stacks as long as his stack is the same height as or taller than the adjacent stack. As long as a player's color stays on top of the stack, he controls that stack. If one or more stacks are isolated from the main group and all of these stacks are controlled by the same player, he can take possession of them, removing them from the game. When all the cups have been captured, players stack all of the cups they captured and whoever has the highest stack wins.

Torres is an abstract game of resource management and tactical pawn movement. Players are attempting to build up castles and position their knights to score the most points each turn. Players have a limited supply of knights and action cards that allow special actions to be taken. Efficient use of pieces and cards, along with a thoughtful awareness of future possibilities, is the heart of this game.

Torres is considered by many to be an informal member of what is referred to as the Mask Trilogy.

Reef Encounters of the Second Kind was released at Essen 2006. It is an expansion set for Reef Encounter, introducing new creatures, opportunities, and tactics to the basic game.

The crown of thorns starfish with their voracious appetites have now found the reef and will consume any corals that they can reach. Blue shrimps will assist host shrimps in protecting the larger corals, but these blue shrimps are notoriously unreliable. Meanwhile, the polyp tiles now come in a variety of different forms, and even the rocks are liable to change shape.

A selection of cards provides one-off opportunities to influence the game, to introduce or to move the blue shrimps, or to affect the scoring at the end of the game. An appropriate card is also required before a parrot fish can consume its first coral.

Contents: 4 blue wooden shrimps, 48 special tiles, 56 cards (28 in English and 28 in German), and 2 rules sheets, one in English and one in German.

Expands:

Reef Encounter

Reef Encounters of the Second Kind Microbadge :

In Kingdom Builder, the players create their own kingdoms by skillfully building their settlements, aiming to earn the most gold at the end of the game.

Nine different kinds of terrain are on the variable game board, including locations and castles. During his turn, a player plays his terrain card and builds three settlements on three hexes of this kind. If possible, a new settlement must be built next to one of that player’s existing settlements. When building next to a location, the player may seize an extra action tile that he may use from his next turn on. These extra actions allow extraordinary actions such as moving your settlements.

By building next to a castle, the player will earn gold at the end of the game, but the most gold will be earned by meeting the conditions of the three Kingdom Builder cards; these three cards (from a total of ten in the game) specify the conditions that must be met in order to earn the much-desired gold, such as earning gold for your settlements built next to water hexes or having the majority of settlements in a sector of the board.

Each game, players will use a random set of Kingdom Builder cards (3 of 10), special actions (4 of 8), and terrain sectors to build the map (4 of 8), ensuring you won't play the same game twice!