Auction/Bidding

Game description from the publisher:

Cuba prior to the revolution: Under turbulent circumstances, the villages of the island strive for independent wealth and influence. Who can buy and sell his products and goods on the domestic market profitably or take in the most on the trading ships? Who can send the right delegate to parliament in order to influence the government legislative process, or erect distilleries, hotels and banks at the right moment to the benefit of his village?

Whoever has accumulated the most victory points in Cuba by the end of the game wins. Players earn victory points by shipping merchandise from the harbor, but also by erecting and using buildings, and by abiding by the law.

Fremde Federn, which means roughly "to adorn oneself with borrowed plumes," or something like "false feathers."

Fremde Federn is about borrowing elements from well-known games (Eurogames) and constructing a new game out of them. For now, it is a deck-building, worker-placement, drafting race game. The print-and-play files – German only for now – are available on the 2F-Spiele website.

You are a politician who tries to gather enough money and influence to become the next president. Of course, you depend on the work of others to get the needed influence. You start with a set of 10 cards (7 of them are "fatherly friends," which give you 1 money each and 3 of them yield 1 influence each (VPs)). Each round you draw 5 cards from your deck and use one card for the turn order to place your workers. The workers go to the different offices in the government building to buy new cards for you, get influence or to carry out other actions. Each round there is one more space in which you can choose to place your workers. On the game board is a row of cards which you can choose to buy and each round the empty places in this row are filled from a deck of cards divided into 4 different "Ages." The last cards of the deck are Doctoral degrees which you can buy with your money; these give you 1 VP for each unit of money spent. The game ends when all of the Doctoral degrees are bought or when one player has 95 VPs or more.

In Serge Laget's Cargo Noir – his fourth standalone box game from Days of Wonder – players represent "families" that traffic in smuggled goods in a 1950s noir setting. Each turn, you'll set sail to various ports where cargo is known to get "lost" for the right price – Hong Kong, Bombay, Rotterdam, New York and more – and you'll make an offer for the goods on display. If another family then offers more in that port, you'll need to up your bid or take your money and slink away to look for goods elsewhere. Stand alone in a port, though, and you'll be able to discretely move the goods from the dock to your personal warehouse. Says Laget in a press release accompanying the game announcement, "Everything in Cargo Noir grew from a core auction mechanism that is simple and trivial to explain – you can only bid up, and the last bidder standing gets the goods."

Once you collect goods, you can trade them in to add more ships to your fleet – allowing you to scout for wares in more locations – purchase Victory Spoils, or take other actions. The more goods you collect, the more valuable they can be. The player with the most Spoils at game end wins.

A description of the game from Goldsieber:

Akkon, 1189 AD. For weeks, the crusaders besieged the harbor cities in the holy land. There the death of their grandmaster shook up the knights of the Temple Order, and as the besiegers tried to find a successor for the grandmaster, a power struggle flared up among the Temple knights.

The players take on the roll of dignitaries in the Temple Order during the Third Crusade to the holy land. They strive to expand the power of their order in order to increase its gold and renown of the Temple Knights and spread belief in the holy land. This choice group in the Temple Order will determine the most capable member under them to become the new grandmaster.

Each player has 7 Temple Knights available each round. The player must use them in order to buy city cards, to finish them, and to increase gold, belief, power, and the appearance of the Temple Order. Whoever does this the best will receive additional privileges to help him realize his goals. Only the player who uses all of his possibilities and keeps his opponents in mind will be triumphant in the end.

Japan, 1605 – Hidetada Tokugawa has succeeded his father as the new Shogun, ruling from the great city of Edo (a.k.a. Yedo), the city known in present times as Tokyo. This marks the beginning of the golden age of the Tokugawa Shogunate and the so-called Edo Period that will last until 1868. Naturally, the most powerful families in Edo immediately try to curry favor with the new Shogun – and this is the opportunity our clan has been looking for, our chance at power and glory. Our clan will prove ourselves to be indispensable to the new Shogun. We will work from the shadows to acquire information about our rival clans. We will kidnap those who might oppose our ascent and assassinate those who prove a threat. We will use cunning to prevent our adversaries from doing the same to us. We will find glory and honor in the eyes of this new Shogun – or failing that we will end his rule by any means necessary.

In the strategy game Yedo, players assume the roles of Clan Elders in the city of Edo during the early years of the Tokugawa Shogunate. The object of the game is to amass Prestige Points, mainly by completing missions. To do so, players must gather the necessary assets and – most importantly – outfox their opponents and prevent them from completing their missions.

There are several ways to reach your goal. Will you try to complete as many missions as possible and hope that your efforts catch the Shogun's eye? Or will you choose a more subtle way of gaining power by trying to influence the Shogun during a private audience? You can also put your rivals to shame by buying lots of luxury goods from the European merchants. It's all up to you – but be careful to make the right choices, for in Yedo, eternal glory and painful disgrace are two sides of the same coin...