Welcome to the elephant festival in the Indian province of Kerala! Colorfully decorated elephants roam everywhere, and naturally players want to participate and make the most magnificent fairground with as many elephants as possible.
In Kerala, each player wants to take at least one tile of each color, and all tiles of one color should be joined together, but of course the players are constantly getting in the way of one another and grabbing the tiles that someone else wants.
Lorenzo de' Medici, also known as "Lorenzo il Magnifico" (Lorenzo the Magnificent), was one of the most powerful and enthusiastic patrons of the Italian Renaissance.
In Lorenzo il Magnifico, each player takes the role of a head of a noble family in a city during the Italian renaissance. You try to accumulate prestige and fame to gain more victory points (VP) than the others. To do so, you send your family members to different areas of town, where they can obtain many achievements. In one location they get useful resources, in another development cards (which represent newly conquered territories, sponsored buildings, influenced characters, or encouraged ventures), somewhere else they activate the effects of their cards.
Family members are not identical. At the beginning of each round, you roll three dice to determine the family members' value. You must carefully choose where to send your family members with a higher value...
You can gain VP several ways, and you must also pay attention to your relations with the Church. The game is divided into three periods, each formed by two rounds; at the end of each period, players must show their faith, and whoever hasn't prayed enough will suffer hard penalties.
After six rounds, you calculate your final scoring, and the player with the most VP wins.
Patchistory is a strategy board game with cards that symbolize historical heroes and wonders, with the whole game being divided into three eras. During the game, you acquire these cards through auctions and expand your territory by placing cards so that they overlap one another in a 5×5 space in the first era, a 6×6 space in the second era, and a 7×7 space in the third era. When your land—that is, the layout of your cards—is well built, the card functions are activated. You can earn victory points with diplomatic actions, domestic politics, war movement, the actions of production, etc., and at the end of the game, the person with the highest score after the third era wins.
Because you can make combos with lots of features on historical cards and you can score in various ways, Patchistory will give you another new exciting play every time it hits the table.
Game description from the publisher:
By our detailed calculations, more than 2.5 million additional games could be played each year if you took less time picking a start player. Start Player solves this problem: Just turn over a card and you'll know who the start player is. Maybe it's as simple as identifying the tallest player, or the player with the most unbuttoned buttons. It's the most comprehensive system ever devised for choosing who starts a game.
1840: In Kanagawa, the great bay of Tokyo, the Master Hokusai decided to open a painting school to share his art with his disciples. You are one of these disciples, and more than anything, you want to prove yourself worthy of the “crazy, old artist”. Follow his teachings to expand your studio and paint your preferred subjects (Trees, Animals, Characters, Buildings), all while paying attention to the changing of the seasons in order to make the most harmonious print… the one that will become the work of your lifetime!