Area Enclosure

Hacienda

Hacienda has players competing for space on the South American pampas, aiming to bring their livestock to the most markets. You get three actions a turn to buy cards which then let you lay tiles to control land and herds, or you may buy extras, such as waterholes or the haciendas of the title to get bonus points.

The game has two card decks, one showing the different land types on the hex map, the other the different animals (pigs, cows, horses and sheep). Some cards are laid face up and you pay 3 pesos to buy the ones you want, or 2 pesos for an unknown card from the draw deck. You spend the cards to put your markers on land and to place your animal tokens on the board. Animals of a type go together to make a herd naturally, and each time a herd touches a market town on the board, you earn money for the size of herd and land attached. With careful hand and herd management, you can make good cash gains and also block your opponents. You need the money to buy more cards of course. 12 pesos also buys waterholes you can place next to your herds, or haciendas to go on your land or herds. If you run short of money, you can call a harvest and get cash off your land.

But the game is not about money. You score victory points halfway through the game and at the end. The more markets you are serving, the more points you get. The herds and the land get you points. The water and haciendas get you bonus points as well, which can be crucial to your success.

It should be noted, the game board has two sides: a symmetrical dog-bone shape of land types (appears in most of the photos), and a "random" more varied pattern of land types.

Empire Builder

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.

Blokus

Blokus (officially pronounced "Block us") is an abstract strategy game with transparent, Tetris-shaped, colored pieces that players are trying to play onto the board. The only caveat to placing a piece is that it may not lie adjacent to your other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one corner of your pieces already on the board.

There is a solitaire variation where one player tries to get rid of all the pieces in a single sitting.

Components:
Blokus Game Board (400 squares)
84 game pieces (four 21-piece sets of red, green, blue, and yellow)
Each color inlcudes:

1 one-square piece
1 piece with 2 squares
2 pieces with 3 squares
5 pieces with 4 squares
12 pieces with 5 squares

Goal of the Game:

Each player has to fit as many of his/her 21 pieces on the board as possible.

How to Play:
1. Each player chooses a color and places that set of 21 pieces in front of his/her side of the board. The order of play is as follows: blue, yellow, red, and then green.

2. The first player (blue) places any of his/her pieces in a corner square. Play proceeds clockwise around the board (yellow, red, and green), each player putting their first piece down in one of the corner squares.

3. Play continues as each player lays down one piece during a turn.

Each new piece must touch at least one other piece of the same color, but only at the corners.

No flat edges of same color pieces can touch.

There are no restrictions on how pieces of different colors can touch one another.

4. Whenever a player is unable to place one of his/her remaining pieces on the board, that player must pass his/her turn.

End of Game:
The game ends when all players are blocked from laying down any more of their pieces. This also includes any players who may have placed all of their pieces on the board. Scores are tallied, and the player with the highest score is the winner.

Scoring:
Each player counts the number of unit squares in his/her remaining pieces (1 unit square = -1 point).

A player earns +15 points if all his/her pieces have been placed on the board plus 5 additional bonus points if the last piece placed on the board was the smallest piece (one square).

There are unauthorized versions of the game published under various names, including The Strategy Game, Tetris, Blokád (unofficial Hungarian version with cardboard pieces) and The Family Chess Game.

Qin

In Qin players colonize the Chinese hinterland, seize territories, and expand their influence by placing tiles and pagodas.

A move is simple: You choose one out of three tiles from your hand, place it onto the grid of the board, then draw a new tile. Each tile shows two landscapes. If you create a territory that consists of at least two spaces of the same landscape, you seize it. You can also expand your territories, take over territories from other players, and connect your territories to villages on the board. All of this enables you to place pagodas. The player who is first to get rid of all his pagodas wins.

Blokus Trigon

Blokus Trigon is an abstract strategy game from the makers of Blokus. The board pieces have changed from square to triangular. Game play is similar to Blokus, as players try to get rid of all their pieces. The only caveat to placing a piece is that it may not lie adjacent to your other pieces, but instead must be placed touching at least one of your pieces already on the board at a corner.

There is a solitaire version where one player tries to get rid of all the pieces in a single sitting.

Components:
Hexagonal playing board with 486 triangles on the board
4 sets of 22 pieces in red, blue, green and yellow
1 piece made up of one triangle.
1 piece made up of two triangles.
1 piece made up of three triangles.
3 pieces made up of four triangles.
4 pieces made up of five triangles.
12 pieces made up of six triangles.

Set up:
Layout your hexagonal silver board and give each player a set of 22 squares.

Game Play:
Each player begins at one of the marked spaces on the board. The order of play is blue, yellow, red, green colors.
As the play progresses, each new piece is placed on the board. The new piece placed must touch another piece of the same colour and it can only touch at the corners. The constraint is never touch along the sides.

When a player is blocked and cannot place any more pieces on the board, they must drop out of the game. The other players continue until they are blocked or no one is able to place any more pieces on the board.

Scoring:
When all the players are blocked, each player must count the number of triangles that they were unable to place on the trigon board and calculates their score as follows:

Any triangle that is not placed on the board counts towards a negative point.
15 points are awarded as a bonus, if the player has all 22 pieces placed on the board.
This bonus increases to a 20 points if the 22 pieces were placed on the board with the single triangle being placed last.

The winner is the person with the maximum points!

Note: This game is available by request only and requires having a membership to play.
See game associate for details.