Deck / Pool Building

In ancient Egypt, even a lowly peasant could seek an audience with the Pharaoh, and in Favor of the Pharaoh 2–4 players vie for the Pharaoh's favor by working their way up through Egyptian society, gathering influence (represented by dice and powers) to gain entry to the next level of society. Once any player gains the Queen's influence, a final contest occurs for the Pharaoh's favor.

Favor of the Pharaoh tasks players with building a dice-rolling engine—not to mention adding and manipulating dice—in preparation for a final roll-off between all players to gain the Pharaoh's favor and win the game.

Favor of the Pharaoh includes more than one hundred tiles, over twenty standard and custom dice, dozens of bonus tokens, level bars, locking pyramids, and more. With so many combinations of level bars and tiles, no two games will ever be set up the same!

Players compete to build the best resort for attracting fantasy heroes and tourists looking for fun and relaxation. The more you attract, the more likely monsters will attack!

Overview

Hire and train your workers, build and upgrade your attractions, and convince your battle weary heroes to fight just one more time so without letting too many tourists get eaten! Gain Victory points by upgrading attractions and giving Heroes the rest they need. The highest scoring player when all monsters are defeated is the winner.

Setup

Each player begins with a humble resort consisting of a Beach, a Tiki Hut and a small number of Tourists, placed at each attraction. Each player starts with their own worker Deck consisting of 7 Apprentices, 3 Street Performers, and 3 Lazy Peons.

Gameplay

Each round consists of 4 phases:

Phase I - Get to Work

Each Player draws a hand of 5 Workers from their Worker Deck.
Players simultaneously send worker cards from their hand to do work at each of their Attractions. Any missing units of work (are required by the Attraction) cause Tourists to leave before gathering resources.
Players gain the primary resource of Gold by having more tourists at each attraction, and Flair by having less tourists.

Phase II - Action: Attract, Hire & Upgrade

In order, players take one action per turn or pass. Players will be interacting with common draft areas, as well as using abilities from their own workers and attractions. Possible actions include:

Attract Tourists from the Dock (Spending Flair) - Tourists are placed at attractions, potentially increasing the Gold gained on the subsequent turn.
Attract a Hero from the Dock (Spending Flair) - Heroes start with low health, which is gained at the end of each round. Fully Rested Heroes are scored for Victory Points.
Upgrade an Attraction (Spending Gold) - Providing higher tourist capacity, better Gold payout, better abilities and more Victory Points. Upgraded attractions typically require more workers to keep them fully staffed.
Train or Hire new Workers (Spending Gold) - Upgrade your workers to provide more work, or better abilities. Training locks a worker draft pile, preventing other players from upgrading to that particular worker during the round. Training workers is a 1-for-1 exchange, keeping players' Worker Deck lean by design.
Pass - The first Player to Pass becomes the Start Player for the next round

Any time during a player's turn, he may use abilities from fully-staffed attractions, or discard worker cards to use their unique abilities.

Phase III - A Ship Arrives

The dock is refilled with new Heroes and Tourists from a center pile. While refilling, it's possible to trigger a Monster Attack!

If an Attack! card is revealed, the top Monster from the Monster Pile will choose which player it's attacking; typically by Most Tourists or Most Heroes at their resort, ties broken clockwise from the start player.
If a Hero defends against a Monster Attack, he loses 1 health. Any undefended damage causes tourists to be eaten by the Monster.
Heroes may dodge into, or out of, a Monster Attack up to one time per round.
If an attraction has no Hero or Tourists, a Monster will Damage it, potentially destroying the attraction.
A player may chose (if they have one) to throw a Lazy Peon at the monster, ending the attack and permenantly removing the Worker Card from the game.
The Dock Continues to refill, potentially triggering more Monster Attacks, until it is full.

Phase IV - Clean Up

Used and unused Workers are placed in players' discard piles.
Any fully-rested Heroes are scored - Placed to the side, each worth Victory Points at the end of the game. This Hero also removes the top Monster from the remaining Monster Deck.
Remaining Heroes gain 1 Health each.
Any Locked Worker Draft Piles and Attraction Abilities are made available for the next round.
Any unused Flair is sent back to the supply. Gold carries over to the next round.

Gameplay continues with Phase I

Game End

If at the end of the round there are no Monsters remaining, the game is over and players total Victory Points from Attractions, Scored Heroes, and 1 point for each remaining Hero at their resort. The player with the highest Victory Point total has built the most Epic Resort and is victorious!

During the medieval goings-on around Orléans, you must assemble a following of farmers, merchants, knights, monks, etc. to gain supremacy through trade, construction and science in medieval France.

In the city of Orléans and the area of the Loire, you can take trade trips to other cities to acquire coveted goods and build trading posts. You need followers and their abilities to expand your dominance by putting them to work as traders, builders, and scientists. Knights expand your scope of action and secure your mercantile expeditions. Craftsmen build trading stations and tools to facilitate work. Scholars make progress in science, and last but not least it cannot hurt to get active in monasteries since with monks on your side you are much less likely to fall prey to fate.

In Orléans, you will always want to take more actions than possible, and there are many paths to victory. The challenge is to combine all elements as best as possible with regard to your strategy.

In Mombasa, players acquire shares of chartered companies based in Mombasa, Cape Town, Saint-Louis, and Cairo and propagate trading posts of these companies throughout the African continent in order to earn the most money.

Mombasa features a unique, rotating-display hand-mechanism that drives game play. Each round players choose action cards from their hand, then reveal them simultaneously and carry out the actions. These cards are then placed in a discard pile, and the previously played cards recovered for the subsequent round.

Each company has a double-sided company track, so games will vary quite a lot based on which tracks are revealed and at which companies they are placed.

Your last village was ransacked by barbarians. You barely had time to pick up the baby and your favorite fishing pole before they started the burning and pillaging. You wandered over a cruel desert, braved frozen peaks, and even paddled a log across a rough sea, kicking at the sharks whenever they got too close, the baby strapped tightly to your back.

Then you found it! The perfect place to make your new home. But as soon as you had the first hut built, you discovered a vast network of caverns underground, brimming with shiny treasures, rare resources, and untold adventure. How could you limit your new village to the surface? You immediately start organizing expeditions and building houses underground as well as on the surface.

With any luck, you'll build a village even stronger than your last-- strong enough, even, to turn away the barbarians the next time they come knocking.

Above and Below is a mashup of town-building and storytelling where you and up to three friends compete to build the best village above and below ground. In the game, you send your villagers to perform jobs like exploring the cave, harvesting resources, and constructing houses. Each villager has unique skills and abilities, and you must decide how to best use them. You have your own personal village board, and you slide the villagers on this board to various areas to indicate that they've been given jobs to do. Will you send Hanna along on the expedition to the cave? Or should she instead spend her time teaching important skills to one of the young villagers?

A great cavern lies below the surface, ready for you to explore-- this is where the storytelling comes in. When you send a group of villagers to explore the depths, one of your friends reads what happens to you from a book of paragraphs. You'll be given a choice of how to react, and a lot will depend on which villagers you brought on the expedition, and who you're willing to sacrifice to succeed. The book of paragraphs is packed with encounters of amazing adventure, randomly chosen each time you visit the cavern.

At the end of the game, the player with the most well-developed village wins!