Card Game

Unexploded Cow

Europe. Summer 1997. You and your most creative friends have discovered two problems with a common solution: mad cows in England and unexploded bombs in France. You've decided to bring these two powder kegs together just to see what happens – and you wouldn't say "no" to a little money on the side, so round up your herd, march them through France, and set them loose behind the Cordon Rouge. If you're lucky, you'll come home rich before Greenpeace gets hold of you.

Either way, there's something magical about blowing up cows.

Unexploded Cow is a money game in which players are trying to collect enough points to win the pot. On every turn, you will buy cows and pay for special effects by putting money in the pot, then try to discover bombs with your own cows in an effort to take money out of the pot. All along, you will be earning points from the French as you liberate town after town from the terrors of unexploded bombs, and the player who scores the most points gets whatever's left in the pot.

Unexploded Cow is best played as a series of short games, each of which takes about thirty minutes. The game is quite simple and very chaotic: You'll have a blast.

Infiltration

It is the future, and beneath the flickering glow of the sprawling New Angeles skyline, immense corporations seek every advantage in the burgeoning field of synthetic humanoid technology. On the brink of a revolutionary innovation, CyberSolutions Inc. is poised to become the next global powerhouse, threatening the profits of well-established conglomerates Haas-Bioroid and Jinteki – but unfortunately for CyberSolutions, security at their New Angeles branch has just been compromised.

Set in the dystopian future of Android, Infiltration is a tense card game of futuristic larceny in which two to six players take the roles of thieves, competing to steal valuable secrets from a highly secured corporate facility.

The most vital information lies deep within the complex, but each step inward takes you farther from escape. Worse yet, corporate mercenaries are closing in! How long will you push your luck as you avoid security patrols, surpass rival thieves, and try to download the most data before the building is locked down?

Game description above from the publisher

The layout of the complex is different every game, choosing 6 of the possible 18 first floor cards, 6 of the 18 second floor cards, and 1 of the 3 secret room cards. These rooms are revealed to the players over the course of the game, usually by one of the players entering the room. The rooms contain traps, NPCs, valuable data and items, and even secret exits.

Each turn, players secretly choose actions they will take, then in turn reveal and resolve their actions. Advancing into the complex or retreating towards the exit, downloading valuable data, interfacing with the current room, or using an item are the actions available to players. After the players have had their turn, any active NPCs have a turn, then the proximity dial is increased. Once the dial reaches 99, or all players have left the complex, the game ends. The players who have escaped the complex add up the value of the data they have extracted; the highest value wins!

Gauntlet of Fools

Gauntlet of Fools is an adventure game of skill and fortune for 2-6 that plays in under 30 minutes. Choose your hero from hundreds of possible combinations. You'll make ridiculous boasts to get the best hero – but every boast comes at a cost. How awesome is your knight with a flaming sword after you boast that he'll fight blindfolded with a hangover?

You'll find out in the gauntlet: fifty encounters that will kill you. That's right. You will die, fool! But even a fool wants his gold, and the monsters have it. Roll a handful of dice, slay a monster, get its treasure. Die with the most gold to win the game.

Resistance

The Empire must fall. Our mission must succeed. By destroying their key bases, we will shatter Imperial strength and liberate our people. Yet spies have infiltrated our ranks, ready for sabotage. We must unmask them. In five nights we reshape destiny or die trying. We are the Resistance!

The Resistance is a party game of social deduction. It is designed for five to ten players, lasts about 30 minutes, and has no player elimination. The Resistance is inspired by Mafia/Werewolf, yet it is unique in its core mechanics, which increase the resources for informed decisions, intensify player interaction, and eliminate player elimination.

Players are either Resistance Operatives or Imperial Spies. For three to five rounds, they must depend on each other to carry out missions against the Empire. At the same time, they must try to deduce the other players’ identities and gain their trust. Each round begins with discussion. When ready, the Leader entrusts sets of Plans to a certain number of players (possibly including himself/herself). Everyone votes on whether or not to approve the assignment. Once an assignment passes, the chosen players secretly decide to Support or Sabotage the mission. Based on the results, the mission succeeds (Resistance win) or fails (Empire win). When a team wins three missions, they have won the game.

Rule Correction:

For first printing (2010 purchases), the expansion rules should read: "Games of 5-6 players use 7 plot cards, games with 7+ players use all 15 Plot Cards." and "...each Round, the leader draws Plot cards (1 for 5-6 players, 2 for 7-8 players, and 3 for 9-10 players)" - This has been corrected in the subsequent printings.

Solitaire For Two

Solitaire for Two includes two games: one called Six-Suit Solitaire that was originally released as Indochine 2000, and a second titled Solitaire for Two that (despite the title) can be played with 2-4 players.

Six-Suit Solitaire is a modified version of the solitaire game Klondike, with six suits in the game instead of four as well as three jokers (one in each color). As in Klondike, players try to remove all tiles from play by creating stacks from Ace to King, but unlike in Klondike players have an incentive to keep Aces in play rather than removing them; if a player has one Ace in play, then he can move Queens to empty columns in addition to Kings, and with two or more Aces in play he can also move Jacks to empty columns. A player can place only the rightmost tile in the "talon" – the row of exposed tiles from the stock – but if he cashes in a joker, he can move any tile in the talon to the rightmost position.

Solitaire for Two plays similarly to Six-Suit Solitaire, but the players take turns drawing tiles from the stock – three at a time – and trying to place them in the layout and score as many tiles as possible. Players score points for each tile they lay off; for playing all three tiles drawn; for moving columns of five, seven, nine or eleven tiles; and for other specialized situations. The player with the highest score wins.