Category: Dized Tutorial

Stamp Swap

Designer Paul Salomon (Honey Buzz, Genotype) brings stamp collecting to life on tabletops in Stamp Swap! Draft from a public pool of face-down and face-up tiles (along with some bonus cards), then simultaneously divide them into 2 groups. You will select one group from another player and keep the group of yours that isn't selected. Organize your growing collection each round and score 1 of 4 goals--choose wisely, as you can't score that goal again.

The art of stamp collecting is not just in accumulating many stamps, but in collecting high-quality stamps (including rare gold-foil stamps). This 3-round game for 1-5 players is your chance to meet other attendees, put together a beautiful and well-focused stamp collection, and show it off in a series of contests. Do well and you may walk away with the top prize at this year’s Stamp Swap!

—description from the publisher

Wyrmspan

You are an amateur dracologist in the world of Wyrmspan, a place where dragons of all shapes, sizes, and colors roam the skies. Excavate a hidden labyrinth you recently unearthed on your land and entice these beautiful creatures to roost in the sanctuary of your caves.

During a game of Wyrmspan, you will build a sanctuary for dragons of all shapes and sizes. Your sanctuary begins with 3 excavated spaces—the leftmost space in your Crimson Cavern, your Golden Grotto, and your Amethyst Abyss. Over the course of the game, you will excavate additional spaces in your sanctuary and entice dragons to live there, chaining together powerful abilities and earning the favor of the Dragon Guild.

Wyrmspan is inspired by the mechanisms of Wingspan, though its unique elements make Wyrmspan a standalone game (not compatible with Wingspan).

—description from the publisher

El Grande

In this award-winning game, players take on the roles of Grandes in medieval Spain. The king's power is flagging, and these powerful lords are vying for control of the various regions. To that end, you draft caballeros (knights) into your court and subsequently move them onto the board to help seize control of regions. After every third round, the regions are scored, and after the ninth round, the player with the most points is the winner.

In each of the nine rounds, you select one of your 13 power cards to determine turn order as well as the number of caballeros you get to move from the provinces (general supply) into your court (personal supply).

A turn then consists of selecting one of five action cards which allow variations to the rules and additional scoring opportunities in addition to determining how many caballeros to move from your court to one or more of the regions on the board (or into the castillo - a secretive tower). Normally, you may only place your caballeros into regions adjacent to the one containing the king. The one hard and fast rule in El Grande is that nothing may move into or out of the king's region. One of the five action cards that is always available each round allows you to move the king to a new region. The other four action cards vary from round to round.

The goal is to have a caballero majority in as many regions (and the castillo) as possible during a scoring round. Following the scoring of the castillo, you place any cubes you had there into the region you secretly indicated on your region dial. Each region is then scored individually according to a table printed in that region. Two-point bonuses are awarded for having sole majority in the region containing your Grande and in the region containing the king.

Apiary

In a far-distant future, humans no longer inhabit Earth. The cause of their disappearance (or perhaps their demise) is unknown, but their absence left a void ready to be filled by another sentient species.

Over the span of untold generations, one species of the humble honeybee evolved to fill that void. They grew in size and intelligence to become a highly advanced society. They call themselves Mellifera, and they have made substantial technological advances in addition to the technology they adapted from human ruins, up to and including space travel.

In Apiary, each player controls one of twenty unique factions. Your faction starts the game with a hive, a few resources, and worker bees. A worker-placement, hive-building challenge awaits you: explore planets, gather resources, develop technologies, and create carvings to demonstrate your faction's strengths (measured in victory points) over one year's Flow. However, the Dearth quickly approaches, and your workers can take only a few actions before they must hibernate! Can you thrive or merely survive?

—description from the publisher

Mists over Carcassonne

Mists over Carcassonne is a co-operative version of the well-known tile-laying game Carcassonne. Working together, you place tiles and score points while trying to stop the spread of ghosts, contain haunted ground in cemeteries, and use haunted castles to your advantage. If too many ghosts are loose on the ground or you've collected too few points when the tiles run out, you lose the game. If you do manage to survive three days, you can adjust the difficulty level of the game to increase the challenge.

Mists over Carcassonne includes 45 meeples in two new types and 60 tiles that match the graphics of the 2021 edition of Carcassonne, and this game includes rules for how to incorporate material in a regular competitive game of Carcassonne.