Control worker bees to build a beehive, collect nectar, and make honey while also being efficient and strategic to outmanoeuvre your opponents. This 1-4 player Euro-style worker-placement dice game has stunning artwork and broad appeal. There are many paths to a sweet victory - it’s every beehive for themselves!
Cellulose: A Plant Cell Biology Game is a worker placement game that puts 1-5 players inside a plant cell, where they will compete over limited resources in order to undergo photosynthesis, produce carbohydrates, and build the cell wall. With everyone vying for the same actions, players must time their use of proteins, hormones, and cell component cards in order to diversify their strategies and outplay the competition.
Cellulose is the standalone sequel to Cytosis (2017). It has some of the same DNA, but Cellulose expands familiar game systems, allowing players greater control over available resources, strategic paths, and even game length.
—description from the publisher
Set in ancient Mesopotamia, a cradle of civilization, at a time when the location of Ur was a coastal region, players work to build the Great City of Ur, expand its districts, and establish themselves as powerful builders.
Tabannusi: Builders of Ur features a stunning board showing the city of Ur divided into 5 regions, each tied to a specific color die. There are 3 building districts, 1 temple district, and 1 port district.
Each turn, your worker will activate one of these districts. When activating a district, you must first take a die from the district. This die matches the color of the district and serves two functions:
1) The die itself becomes a resource of its color.
2) The value of the die determines which district your worker will activate on the following turn.
Through various actions you will be able to expand your influence in the various districts, expanding construction sites and turning them into buildings to score valuable victory points. But you will also exert your influence in the temple district in order to earn the king's favor. In the port district you can obtain ships with important abilities and for scoring victory points.
You must spend your actions wisely and always make sure that you keep an eye on the general timing of the game. The moment a district is emptied of dice, a scoring will occur.
—description from publisher
Inis is a game deeply rooted in Celtic history and lore in which players win by being elected King of the Island (Inis). Players can try to achieve one of three different victory conditions:
Leadership: Be the leader — i.e., have more clan figures than any other player — of territories containing at least six opponents' clans.
Land: Have your clans present in at least six different territories.
Religion: Have your clans present in territories that collectively contain at least six sanctuaries.
Over the course of the game, players also earn deeds, typically chanted by bards or engraved by master crafters, that reduce by one the magic total of six for any condition. While one victory condition is enough to claim the title of King, a game of experienced players usually has a tight balance of power, emphasizing the leadership of the capital of the island.
At the start of each round, players draft a hand of four action cards (with 13 action cards for three players and 17 for four players) during the Assembly. Action cards not played at the end of one season are not held for the next. Players also have access to leader cards for the territories that allow it and where they were elected leader during the assembly. Each Assembly reallocates those cards. Finally, they collect "epic tales" cards that depict the deeds of the ancient Irish gods and heroes, like Cuchulainn, the Dagda, Lugh and many others. These will be kept and used to inspire the clans and achieve extraordinary feats...under the right circumstances. The cards provide a variety of actions: adding clans, moving clans, building/exploring, and special actions.
Careful drafting, hand management, bluffing (especially once players understand the importance of passing their turn), good timing, and a precise understanding of the balance of power are the keys to victory. After a discovery game you'll be ready for a full and epic game, where an undisputed player will be king by the Assembly for his merit and wisdom.
While Inis has "dudes" that are "on a map", it's a beginner's mistake to play this as a battle game because eliminating other clans reduces your chances of scoring a Leadership victory condition. Peace among different clans, with or without a clear territory leader, is the usual outcome of a clan's movement. Battles will occur, of course, as the Celtic clans can be unruly and a good player will listen to his clan's people (i.e., his hand of cards). That battle aspect is reflected in the clan's miniatures representing warriors. Woodsmen, shepherds and traders complete the set of twelve minis for each player; these occupations have no impact on the game, but give it flavor.
The Zapotec were a pre-Columbian civilization that flourished in the Valley of Oaxaca in Mesoamerica. Archaeological evidence reveal their culture going back at least 2,500 years. Remnants of the ancient city of Monte Albán in the form of buildings, ball courts, magnificent tombs, and finely worked gold jewelry testify of this once great civilization. Monte Albán was one of the first major cities in Mesoamerica and the center of the Zapotec state that dominated much of the territory that today belongs to the Mexican state of Oaxaca.
In a game of Zapotec, you build temples, cornfields and villages in the three valleys surrounding the capital to generate resources needed for building pyramids, making sacrifices to the gods, and performing rituals.
Each round, players simultaneously pick a card from their hand to determine their turn order and the resources they collect. Players then perform individual turns and spend resources to build new houses, gain access to special abilities, make sacrifices to the gods and build pyramids. The played action card determines three important aspects of each player's turn:
The resource printed at the top of the card determines the row or column to activate on the resource grid to collect income.
The icon in the middle of the card matches one of the nine properties of the building spaces on the map (one of three building types, one of three regions, or one of three terrain types). On their turn, players may build only on spaces that match that icon.
The number at the bottom of the card dictates the turn order for the round when the card is played.
At the end of the round, players draft new cards from the central offer, with the final undrafted card becoming the scoring bonus card for the following round.
After five rounds, players score points for pyramids, for their position on the sacrifice track, and for their ritual cards. The player with the most victory points wins.
—description from publisher