Card Drafting

The galaxy just got a whole lot smaller...

Two mighty empires are about to collide. Play your cards right and become the ultimate ruler of this microcosm!

Eminent Domain: Microcosm is a quick-playing two-player card game which brings you all the thrill of building a space empire in just 15-20 minutes. Each turn you take a card into your hand from the supply, then you either play a card and carry out its instructions, or pick up your discard pile to refill your hand. Each card also has a scoring condition on it, and to win you'll want to maximize those conditions.

As in the grandfather game Eminent Domain, actions you take can be "boosted" by revealing other cards sharing the same icon. Colonize and attack planets, do research, and take advantage of politics to score the most influence by the end of the game!

Thebes is a game of competitive archeology. Players are archaeologists who must travel around Europe, northern Africa, and the Middle East to acquire knowledge about five ancient civilizations -- the Greeks, the Cretans, the Egyptians, the Palestinians, and the Mesopotamians -- and then must use this knowledge to excavate historical sites in the areas of these civilizations. Through the course of the game, expositions are revealed, and an archaeologist who has treasures from the requisite civilizations may claim the prize (this is a change from the first edition's handling of exhibitions). The archaeologist who learns the most about the civilizations, claims the greatest-valued artifacts, and collects the most exhibitions will win out over his or her colleagues.

The key element to the game is that it is played out over a period of two (or three) years, and each action a player performs takes a certain amount of time -- traveling is a week between cities, gathering knowledge takes time for the level of the knowledge, and actually digging at a cultural site takes time to yield a certain number of artifact tiles. The game uses a novel mechanism to keep track of this. There is a track of 52 spaces around the outside of the board. Each time a player moves and takes an action, he or she moves their player token forward in time. Players take turns based on being the one who is furthest back in "time". So, a player can go to an excavation site and spend 10 weeks digging for artifacts, but that will also mean that the other players will likely be taking several actions in the interim while that player waits for the "time" to catch up.

In addition, the artifact tiles for each civilization are drawn from a bag that also contains dirt. When a player excavates a site, that player pulls tiles from the bag, but some may only be worthless dirt instead of valuable treasure. That dirt is then returned to the bag, making the first draw more likely to provide useful tiles.

This is the new entry for the Queen printing of Jenseits von Theben. As the new game changes several mechanisms of the original, and is available in a much wider release, the two games should be regarded as separate entities.

Re-implements:

Jenseits von Theben

In The Staufer Dynasty, the players are nobles in the 12th century, accompanying Henry VI on his tour of the areas of Europe brought under control by the Staufer family, an area that included much of modern day Germany, went from the Baltic Sea in the North to Sicily in South. You're eager to improve your own lot in the land by placing envoys and nobles in positions of power in the six regions represented in this game.

The game lasts five rounds with each player having three actions per round. Players take action in order of their family members on the action board from top to bottom, and on a turn you either take a supply action (moving to one side of the action board) or a move/deploy action (moving to the other side).

For a supply action, you pick one of the spaces on the supply table, move the indicated number of envoys and nobles from the province to your personal court, then claim any chests underneath that space. The treasure chests come in different colors, with each color having a different function in the game: the brown treasure chests score points based on how many you collect, the orange ones provide immediate points or figures, the blue ones provide a one-shot bonus, and the purple ones let you collect one of the privilege cards on display. The privilege cards often modify other actions or give you a bonus for doing a particular thing.

For a move/deploy action, you decide which office seat you want to occupy in a particular region. If this seat isn't in the region where the king is located, you need to spend one envoy as you move clockwise away from the king, placing each envoy in the top part of those regions, until you reach the region that you want to occupy. You then pay the cost of the office seat, placing one figure — possibly a noble if the seat demands it — in that seat and all the other figures in clockwise order, one per region. When you occupy a seat, you claim the chest underneath it.

After everyone has finished their actions, you score for the round — but you score only in the region indicated in the current row of scoring tiles (Aachen, Nijmegen, Palermo, etc.) and the region that best meets the condition laid out in a separate part of the current row of scoring tiles (fewest chests, most occupants, where the king is located, etc.) If these two regions turn out to be the same one, you score that region only once. Players score points for having the most office seats in a region (or the second- or thirdmost most office seats) based on the point tile placed in the region at the start of the game. Each region also has a printed bonus that players receive, such as bonus chests or additional envoys.

To end the round, you remove all of the office occupants of the region that scored, add new chests under each office seat in those scoring regions and each space on the supply table, then sweep the king clockwise 1-3 regions. As the king moves, he returns all of the envoys that he encounters in the regions that he enters to their owners. After five rounds, players score for their treasure chests as well as for how well they completed their secret job cards, and the player with the most points wins.

In Saint Petersburg, you'll be buying different types of cards: workers, buildings, aristocrats, trading cards, and the new market cards. In every phase, a new type of card will be available for purchase. You'll start with workers, who are good at bringing in rubles. The new market (yellow) cards bring in new resources. Having the majorities in these resources from round to round will earn you additional victory points. This battle for the lead enhances the game experience and expands the tactical and strategic possibilities of the players. In the next phase, buildings can be acquired, mostly granting victory points. Aristocrats provide a mix of victory points and rubles, and also lead to a large end-game point bonus that can't be ignored.

Trading cards allow already purchased cards to be improved. These phases will repeat until one of the card decks runs out. At this point, the final victory points are counted, and the winner is declared.

For this new edition of Saint Petersburg, we've kept the well-known and loved basic game, but also added an additional game phase. This will allow us to fully integrate the fifth player into the game. The new market phase will introduce a new mechanic providing additional victory points and rubles. The purple action cards from the banquet expansion will also have matching cards for the market phase. And, of course, for lovers of the old version, it will still be possible to play the game by the original rules.

The deck-building card game World of Tanks: Rush is based on the World of Tanks online game, uses the same terminology as that game, and has been illustrated by the same artists.

In World of Tanks: Rush you are given the role of a tank squad commander, and you lead your tanks into battle, defend your bases, call for reinforcements, and receive medals. The main idea of the game, which uses simple deck-building principles, is to strategically select cards from the hundreds available to form a strong squad. The goal of the game is to earn more medals than everybody else, and you can earn a medal three ways:

One medal for destroying an enemy vehicle.
Three medals for destroying an enemy base.
Five medals for the end-of-game achievement.