Auction/Bidding

A civilization building game has finally been created that clocks in under two hours. Tempus plays on a modular board with an array of landscapes on each land tile to ensure a different game every session. Each turn pushes players' technological advancements forward, starting from fire and ending in the modern age.

Players are constantly faced with tough choices to vie for technological superiority or better positioning on the game board. This game features a rubber-banding mechanic in technological upgrading, where players catch up to the leader's advances at the end of every turn and shoot forward to take advantage of any new technologies that are discovered. This keeps players constantly in check, while rewarding planning for the next turn by giving an edge-up.

Tempus showcases a simple diceless battle mechanic featuring a subtle fog of war with Idea cards. Each card is dual-purposed. Using a card for war means giving up extra abilities that the Idea cards can grant. Or you might just want to hold on to them to advance in technology.

"The way to have Power is to take it" - William "Boss" Tweed

Tammany Hall is a game of backstabbing, corruption, temporary alliances, and taking power at all costs. If you want to rule New York, you are going to need to play the city's growing immigrant populations against one another. Help the immigrant groups who owe you political favors, call in those favors to slander your rivals, and win elections.

In Tammany Hall, players help immigrants settle in New York, collect political favors from those immigrant groups, send ward bosses into Manhattan to secure votes, and slander political opponents. An election is held at the end of every fourth year, and the player who uses his power base best will be elected mayor. The Mayor's grip on the city is tenuous at best. After every election, the Mayor must pay off his political rivals by placing them in offices that they can wield to try to take control of the city. Every player is your friend, every player is your enemy.

Tammany Hall was the political machine that dominated New York City politics by organizing the immigrant populations. While the organization's influence spanned from its founding in the 1790s to its collapse in the 1960s, this game is set in lower Manhattan roughly between 1850 and 1870 – the era of Boss Tweed.

In The Princes of Florence, players attract artists and scholars to their palace while trying to become the most prestigious family in Florence.

Over seven rounds, players attempt to score points in various ways, with most points being earned by playing profession cards to generate "work points", which can be exchanged for money or victory points. The game includes a variety of professions, such astronomers, organists, and architects; each profession is attracted to a particular combination of building, landscape feature, and social freedom, and players acquire these items via auctions. The more that a player can match these preferences, the more work points they earn — but the minimum requirement of work points increases each round, and you must meet that threshold in order to convert the work points.

Another challenging game of Gods, men, and their monuments from Reiner Knizia!

The game spans 1500 years of Egyptian history. The priests of Ra seek to extend their power and fame. They do this by directing farmers, warriors, merchants, and scribes. They cause others to build granaries, fortresses, markets, and libraries. And they erect a gigantic pyramid for the glory of the Sun God Ra!

This game is a rework of Ra, with most of the same rules but completely different scoring tiles that come up for auction, some of which are two-sided, requiring players to choose which side they will make available for themselves... and for their opponents.

Board & Pieces: The Board has 2 tracks, effectively time and auction. Also there is a space between the two track for a spare bidding tile. In a bag are all the Collectible tiles, some double sided, consisting of Sun of Ra, Priests, Plagues, People, Buildings & Pyramids. Bidding Tiles, used to win auctions. Auction Token, used to show active player to maintain play order.

Play: The game is played over 3 epochs (rounds). Each round ends when the Sun of Ra (time) track is filled.
Any non Sun tile is placed on the Auction track, in the case of double sided tiles the active player decides which side to use. Auctions can either be called by a player (instead of drawing a tile), or automatic when the auction track is filled. Each player may make one open bid, or pass. The winner takes the tiles in the auction track and swaps his bidding tile with the one in the middle. If all players pass (for example to avoid Plague tiles) then these tiles are taken out of play.

Scoring: At the each epoch VPs, or Ankhs, are awarded for most of a type or a variety of People & Buildings. Penalties are awarded for Plagues (which can be offset by a number of Priests). People and Priest tiles are then taken out of play, Buildings, Pyramids & Plagues are carried over into the next epoch, so can be scored again. At the end of the 3rd epoch, Pyramids are also scored by construction height and tiles used. Ankh collections are now converted to points. Finally a bonus & penalty is also awarded depending on a players bidding tiles.

Buying and selling paintings is a very lucrative business, at least that's what Hollywood's led us to believe, and that's the premise of this game. Five different artists have produced a bunch of paintings, and it's the player's task to be both the buyer and the seller, hopefully making a profit in both roles. He does this by putting a painting from his hand up for auction each turn. He gets the money if some other player buys it, but must pay the bank if he buys it for himself. After each round, paintings are valued by the number of paintings of that type that were sold. The broker with the most cash after four rounds is the winner.

Part of the Knizia auction trilogy.