City Building

Expancity

Expancity is a city-building game in which players both collaborate and compete to build a thriving metropolis block by block!

Lay down residential and commercial tiles, then claim them with your stackable building blocks to break ground on towers that will rise high above the playing field. Score extra points by building near common city buildings like banks, schools, and parks. You can also get a leg up on the opposition by working on secretly-held contract cards that offer players unique and challenging tasks to complete for bonus points. Cities expand both horizontally and vertically as the game progresses, and no two cities will ever be alike!

On the Origin of Species

"I am very anxious to see the Galapagos Islands, -- I think both the Geology & Zoology cannot fail to be very interesting." -- Charles Darwin, Letter to his sister, Catherine in August 1835.

Assist Charles Darwin during the Beagle journey across the Galapagos Islands, discovering new species and researching them in order to improve your knowledge.

During their turn, the active player must choose between two actions:

Research: Put 2 research pieces on 2 different species tiles on the board, gaining the knowledge of air, land or water habitat.
Discover: use the acquired habitat knowledge to place new species tiles on the board, obtaining victory points and evolution, characters and objects cards. Additionally advance the Beagle on its track.

The game finishes when the Beagle reaches the last space of its trip, leaving the archipelago through New Zealand. The players score the evolution points according to the final goal card, adding them to the points obtained during the game. The player with more points in the scoring track wins.

—description from the publisher

Santa Monica

In Santa Monica, you are trying to create the most appealing neighborhood in southern California. Will you choose to create a calm, quiet beach focused on nature, a bustling beach full of tourists, or something in-between to appeal to the locals?

Each turn, you draft a feature card from the display to build up either your beach or your street. These features work together to score you victory points. The player with the most points wins!

—description from the publisher

Guilds

Description from the publisher:

The bloody War of the Seven Kingdoms has been over for more than thirty years, and the kingdom of Anderis is experiencing a period of great expansion, thanks in part to its central position which has quickly transformed it into an important commercial crossroads. New roads have been built in the kingdom, with a new city founded at their meeting point which has grown so much that the King has decided to move the capital there and build a new castle.

Numerous corporations of craftsmen were already present in the city, but now guilds are forming, which are larger and more wide-ranging, powerful and in competition with one another. With the goal of obtaining favor with the King, the guilds will gather together the most prestigious personages within them, not to mention those who can bring the largest influx of money or useful talent.

What better place than the central square to find new members? For this reason, each guild places its tents in the central square every week, inviting the persons it considers most interesting to sign up by incentivizing them with precious gifts. This is certainly not a low-cost operation considering that it can cost many pieces of silver to put together the most convincing gift.

At the same time, each guild must build its headquarters, spending large amounts of gold to enlarge it with a range of luxurious rooms suitable for its members; if this were not enough, the guilds must also take into account the King's current tastes on what is most important for a guild worthy of his approval.

Will you manage to make your guild stand out so that it becomes the most important in the city? Which means will you be willing to use in Guilds to win the King's favor?

Blue Moon City

Blue Moon City - the board game - picks up where the two-player game, (Blue Moon), ended: the reconstruction of the destroyed city of Blue Moon. The board, illustrated by Franz Vohwinkel as well as many well-known American fantasy artists, consists of 21 large building tiles, which show building plans on one side and the buildings in their reconstructed glory on the other. As in the 2-player game, the game includes 3 large molded plastic dragons.

At the start of the game, the board tiles all show their building plan sides. The object of the game is to use cards featuring the races of Blue Moon to help rebuild the city and, at the end, put the large Crystal of the Obelisk in the middle of the city back together. Whenever a building is completely rebuilt, its tile is turned back over to its rebuilt side. The players who helped with a building get crystals and dragon favors, which can be traded in for crystals at certain times.

The player who first manages to add the required number of markers by paying crystals to the Obelisk wins the game. (four markers in a 4-player game, five markers in a 3-player game, and six markers in a 2-player game)

There are two mini-expansions for this game (Blue Moon City: Expansion Tile Sets 1 & 2), each consisting of two tiles that can be added to the main game either separately or combined. The first mini-expansion was included with the Der Knizia Almanach. The second mini-expansion was included in the 6/06 issue of Spielbox.

Original Knizia design--after dragon scales score, ALL players discard scales. This rule was modified by the publisher. [citation needed]