Card Game

Verdant is a puzzly spatial card game for 1 to 5 players. You take on the role of a houseplant enthusiast trying to create the coziest interior space by collecting and arranging houseplants and other objects within your home. You must position your plants so that they are provided the most suitable light conditions and take care of them to create the most verdant collection.

Each turn, you select an adjacent pair of a card and token, then use those items to build an ever-expanding tableau of cards that represents your home. You need to keep various objectives in mind as you attempt to increase plant verdancy by making spatial matches and using item tokens to take various nurture actions. You can also build your "green thumb" skills, which allows you to take additional actions to care for your plants and create the coziest space!

—description from the designer

SCOUT is a ladder-climbing game in which cards have two potential values, players may not rearrange their hand of cards, and players may pass their turn to take a card from the current high set of cards into their hand.

More specifically, cards are dual-indexed, with different values on each half of the card, with the 45 cards having all possible combinations of the numbers 1-10. During set-up, whoever is shuffling the cards should randomize both the order of the cards in the deck and their orientation. Once each player has been dealt their entire hand of cards, they pick up that hand without rearranging any of the cards; if they wish, they can rotate their entire hand of cards in order to use the values on the other end of each card, but again they cannot rearrange the order of cards in their hand.

On a turn, a player takes one of two actions:

• Play: A player chooses one or more adjacent cards in their hand that have all the same value or that have values in consecutive order (whether ascending or descending), then they play this set of cards to the table. They can do this only if the table is empty (as on the first turn) or the set they're playing is ranked higher than the set currently on the table; a set is higher if it has more cards or has cards of the same value instead of consecutive cards or has a set of the same quantity and type but with higher values. In this latter case when a player overplays another set, the player captures the cards in this previous set and places them face down in front of themselves.

• Scout: A player takes a card from either end of the set currently on the table and places it anywhere they wish in their hand in either orientation. Whoever played this previous set receives a 1 VP token as a reward for playing a set that wasn't beaten.

Once per round, a player can scout, then immediately play.

When a player has emptied their hand of cards or all but one player have scouted instead of playing, the round ends. Players receive 1 VP for each face-down card, then subtract one point for each card in their hand (except if they were the player scouted repeatedly to end the game). Play as many rounds as the number of players, then whoever has the most points wins.

Museum: Pictura is a standalone set collection game for 2-4 players by Olivier Melison and Eric Dubus, in which you take on the role of an aspiring curator in an art museum.

Set in the roaring 20’s, the game is gorgeously illustrated in art deco style by French artist Loïc Muzy, while the 180 paintings featured in the game have been individually brought to life by Ekaterina Varlamov.

Your goal is to create collections of some of History’s most iconic works of art. To do so, you will be acquiring Painting cards and exhibiting them into your Museum, represented by your player board, to create Collections. These Collection can be based either on the painting’s Period (ranging from the Renaissance period all the way to Impressionism), or its Domain (Historical, Landscape, Mythological…). The Collections you create will earn you Prestige points, and the player with the most Prestige at the end of the game wins.

During play, you will have to deal with the changing trends of the art world, acquiring and exhibiting Paintings depending on what is currently in highest demand. Exhibiting Paintings of the types that are currently in fashion will gain you additional points!

As your Collections grow, you will be able to open them briefly to the public with a Temporary Exhibition, which allows you to immediately score that Collection’s value and obtain special bonuses for the rest of the game. But beware, your visitors will quickly grow tired of seeing the same types of Collection again and again, so timing your exhibitions correctly is essential!

Museum: Pictura brings exciting new mechanisms and strategies to the table, while maintaining a strong family connection to its predecessor.

-description from publisher

Push your luck with Fairy Lights to collect as many points as possible!

To play, shuffle the deck and place it face down. Cards in the deck show 1 or 2 bulbs in one of five colors, and each card is worth 0-2 points. At the start of your turn, see how many cards are in the "shop", the central area of play:

If the shop has 5 cards, you can only take cards on your turn.
If the shop has 1-4 cards, you may draw from the deck.
If the shop has 0 cards, you must draw.

When you draw, place the revealed card at the end of the shop line. If it's the same color as the last card in the shop, your turn ends immediately. Otherwise, if the shop doesn't contain five cards, you can choose to draw again, or you can end your turn and take cards. If five cards are now in the shop, you must take cards.

When you take cards, if 1-4 cards are in the shop, take all cards of a single color from the shop and add them to your collection; if five cards are in the shop, take all cards of two colors from the shop instead. If the number of bulbs in a color in your collection is now a multiple of three (3, 6, 9, 12), score those cards, placing them face down in a corner of your playing area. If you have 1-2 bulbs of a color, leave those cards where they are. If you have four or more bulbs of a color and didn't score them, discard all bulbs of that color. The next player then takes their turn.

When the final card is revealed from the deck, the active player finishes their turn, then the game ends. Add the points on your scored cards, then subtract the points showing on all cards that remain in your playing area. Whoever ends up with the most points wins!

You and your fellow players are eager and curious astronomers, determined to explore and understand the constellations of the mysterious night sky. You are willing to assist each other and share your discoveries, but in the end, only one of you will become famous enough to be remembered throughout history.

Astra is a clever mix of tactics and strategy, with a streamlined and intuitive rule set that makes it easy to pick up and quick to play. A game of Astra consists of continuous player turns until a certain number of Constellation cards are taken, when, after an endgame scoring, the player with the most Fame points wins.

On your player turn, you may choose to either Observe or Rest.

The Observe action allows you to spend Stardust to discover stars on the Constellation cards using your dry erase marker. You may only mark stars in a straight continuous line, but you may spend Telescope tokens to start new observations. As soon as you mark the last star in a Constellation, you take the card from the Night Sky, granting you a powerful reusable ability for the rest of the game. But other players also benefit from the discovery: based on how many stars they marked, they may choose one of the card’s instant benefits (Boons) at the time it is discovered.

The Rest action allows you to not only refill your Stardust up to your capacity, but also to reactivate all of your card abilities that match the currently active Sphere. Your card abilities are very powerful and strategy-enabling, so a well-timed Rest action can give you a huge advantage.

—description from the publisher