Auction/Bidding

In this award-winning game, players take on the roles of Grandes in medieval Spain. The king's power is flagging, and these powerful lords are vying for control of the various regions. To that end, you draft caballeros (knights) into your court and subsequently move them onto the board to help seize control of regions. After every third round, the regions are scored, and after the ninth round, the player with the most points is the winner.

In each of the nine rounds, you select one of your 13 power cards to determine turn order as well as the number of caballeros you get to move from the provinces (general supply) into your court (personal supply).

A turn then consists of selecting one of five action cards which allow variations to the rules and additional scoring opportunities in addition to determining how many caballeros to move from your court to one or more of the regions on the board (or into the castillo - a secretive tower). Normally, you may only place your caballeros into regions adjacent to the one containing the king. The one hard and fast rule in El Grande is that nothing may move into or out of the king's region. One of the five action cards that is always available each round allows you to move the king to a new region. The other four action cards vary from round to round.

The goal is to have a caballero majority in as many regions (and the castillo) as possible during a scoring round. Following the scoring of the castillo, you place any cubes you had there into the region you secretly indicated on your region dial. Each region is then scored individually according to a table printed in that region. Two-point bonuses are awarded for having sole majority in the region containing your Grande and in the region containing the king.

Welcome to Dog Park, a mid-weight, competitive set-collection and point-to-point movement game in which players take on the role of dog walkers who recruit, walk, and care for their dogs over four rounds. Each round is split into four phases:

Recruitment Phase: Players compete in two rounds of offers to add dogs to their kennels. Offers are made with players' reputation (victory points), so must be placed wisely.
Selection Phase: Players decide which dogs to place on their lead to walk this round.
Walking Phase: Players journey through the dog park with their fellow walkers, collecting resources, earning reputation, and interacting with other walkers.
Home Time Phase: Players earn reputation for their walked dogs, and lose reputation for any unwalked dogs in their kennel.

Players must choose their routes and dogs carefully to earn the best reputation and prove they are the most accomplished walker of them all. At the end of the game, the player with the most reputation wins.

—description from the publisher

Welcome to Roller Coaster Rush, a coaster-building game with oodles of kinetic fun! Your goal is to design and construct the best roller coaster for your investors' theme park! At the start of each game, you design a model coaster using the blueprints you have available. During the game, you'll attempt to actually construct your model by winning auctions for the track pieces you used in your design.

If you lose an auction on one of your own blueprints, you'll have to take that track out of your coaster - but if you win someone else's blueprints you'll get to add a new track to make your coaster bigger and better. Along the way, you can demo your model coaster for investors to see how well it works and earn some extra money for auctions.

At the end of the game you get to unveil your fully constructed roller coaster and run it for the public. You earn victory points based on how far your marble makes it down the track. The player with the most points wins!

—description from the designer

The young monarch has no knack for governing. Take advantage of this by taking on all the most prestigious government duties! Share cards, choose the most high-profile jobs...then experience an auction phase as belligerent as it is clever!

In For the King (and Me), you wish to become the most valuable minister by collecting the right cards while lowering the value of your opponents' objectives. The game plays the same as the designer's earlier game Biblios, while allowing for play with up to five people at once.

The game lasts multiple rounds with players first collecting cards, then bidding for cards. During the collection phase, as the active player you draw cards one at a time, keeping one for yourself, placing one in an auction pile, and placing the others face up for the other players to draft. Once you take a card, you can't take another, so sometimes it's a tough call to decide when you want to take something. Once you've had multiple collection phases, the cards in the auction pile will be auctioned one by one.

Some cards are worth points depending on their color, some are worth gold, and some allowing you to manipulate the value of the various colors. Once all the cards have been auctioned, players reveal their hands and tally their points to see who wins.

In the dark corners of Kulbak Prison, away from the prying eyes of the construct guards, inmates play a game of Goblin Vaults in secret...

Goblin Vaults is a strategy card game for 1-5 players featuring bidding, card placement, and scoring patterns. In the game, you wager cards to win loot from the central cell block, then stash that loot wisely in your vault, earning gears based on the position of cards within that vault. You can also gain gears from scoring objectives that change each game.

With cunning and clever scheming, make your bid to be feared amongst your peers! You'll need wits and luck to play your cards right as you fill your vault and influence the warden in your favor. After nine rounds, whoever has the most gears wins!

—description from the publisher