Dice Rolling

Golem is an engine-building game by Simone Luciani, Virginio Gigli and Flaminia Brasini, the same team that brought you Grand Austria Hotel and Lorenzo il Magnifico.

The game is based on the 16th-century legend of the Golem of Prague, an anthropomorphic creature that Rabbi Loew animated from a clay statue to protect his people. In the game, players take on the role of rabbis who create and grow these powerful creatures that will be moved around the neighborhoods of Prague under the control of students. Be careful, because if a golem becomes too powerful, it will destroy everything it encounters on its way. Players can also kill their Golems in order to get bonuses.

Players also create powerful artifacts and acquire knowledge by collecting ancient books.

The game is divided into four rounds, and each round is composed of 7 phases:

1) Refresh
2) Golem Movement
3) Actions (2 marble actions and 1 rabbi action)
4) Turn Order
5) Influence Character
6) Income and Development
7) Golem Control

At the beginning of each round, the players will shuffle the colored marbles into the 3D synagogue that will split them into five lines corresponding to the five main actions available in the game:

Work: By paying Knowledge, you can activate the Golem placed in the city of Prague and get bonuses.
Golem: Obtain clay to create new golems and upgrade the developments on your personal board.
Artifact: Obtain coins and buy gold to build artifacts that offer permanent bonuses in the game and upgrade developments on your personal board.
Spells: Obtain Knowledge and perform spells (with a scoring for book collection) and upgrade developments on your personal board.
Mirror: Perform one action of your choice by paying 1 coin.

The number of marbles available in the corresponding action line determines how much the player gets from the action. When you choose an action, you collect one marble of your choice in the corresponding line and depending on the color of the marble you chose, you also move your student forward on one of the districts of Prague.

It's important to advance your students on those tracks to be able to keep your golems under control. At the end of the round, knowledge can also be used to control a golem that surpassed its students, but if one of these creatures is uncontrolled, it may become dangerous and destroy the neighborhood, after which you will have to destroy and bury it!

The marble color also matters, because at the end of the round, if you get the correct combination of two colors, you receive the favor of one of the powerful Prague characters, which will differ each round.

At the end of the fourth round, players score points for active or buried golems, artifacts, books, development on their personal board, and collected goal cards.

Set in ancient Mesopotamia, a cradle of civilization, at a time when the location of Ur was a coastal region, players work to build the Great City of Ur, expand its districts, and establish themselves as powerful builders.

Tabannusi: Builders of Ur features a stunning board showing the city of Ur divided into 5 regions, each tied to a specific color die. There are 3 building districts, 1 temple district, and 1 port district.

Each turn, your worker will activate one of these districts. When activating a district, you must first take a die from the district. This die matches the color of the district and serves two functions:

1) The die itself becomes a resource of its color.
2) The value of the die determines which district your worker will activate on the following turn.

Through various actions you will be able to expand your influence in the various districts, expanding construction sites and turning them into buildings to score valuable victory points. But you will also exert your influence in the temple district in order to earn the king's favor. In the port district you can obtain ships with important abilities and for scoring victory points.

You must spend your actions wisely and always make sure that you keep an eye on the general timing of the game. The moment a district is emptied of dice, a scoring will occur.

—description from publisher

Skelit's Revenge....the most feared ship on the high seas....and you've finally taken it. Captain Fromm and his skeleton crew have amassed a massive treasure, and now is your chance to take it all. Players take on the role of Pirates who are boarding Skelit's Revenge for one purpose....to take the loot. They must battle the flames, the skeleton crew, and their own fatigue if they hope to make it out alive.

Dead Men Tell No Tales is a co-operative game for 2-5 players. The game uses the common Action Point system to determine what a player does on their turn...with a twist. As players work together, they can pass their Actions on to their teammates in order to best utilize the assets that they have. Players will build the board as they play, ensuring that no two games will ever be alike. As they search the ship for the Treasure, they will encounter Enemies and Guards that they must battle, along with various items that will help them in their quest. all the while, battling the inferno that resulted when they took over the ship. Unique systems for tracking fire, enemy movement, and a player’s fatigue all combine into an interesting and unique cooperative gaming experience.

Do you and your crew have what it takes to make off with all of the treasure and live to tell the story? Or are you going down with the ship in Dead Men Tell No Tales?

Since time immemorial, the mines of Runedar have supplied gold to generations of dwarves. Today, only a handful of them remain, guarding the fortress surrounding the entrance to the old, depleted mine... or so it was thought. This group of dwarves have been fortunate enough to accidently stumble upon a new vein of the purest gold and have managed to extract a small treasure. Unfortunately, just as they were about to set off to the safety of the nearest stronghold, they discover that the old fortress of Runedar is surrounded by orcs who are willing to do anything to get their hands on the precious metal. Now, the dwarves not only need to defend the fortress, they also must dig a tunnel under the mountain to escape and get their hard-earned gold to safety.

The Siege of Runedar is a co-operative game for 1-4 players who take on the role of dwarves charged with defending the walls of Runedar and the treasure they keep within. They will have to face orcs, goblins, and trolls, fighting in hand-to-hand combat against those who manage to get past the walls and shooting from a distance at those who try to enter. A deck-building system allows players to upgrade their weapons and tools as they must hold off the raiders long enough to build a tunnel to escape the terrible siege they have been subjected to and get the treasure to safety.

—description from the publisher

"The time of small nations is past, the time of empires begins." — Chamberlain

What if all of world history had unfolded differently?
What if the great empires of our history had never come into being?
What if other forgotten civilizations had passed into posterity in their place?
The defeated could have been the victors, and the colonizers could have been the colonized — after all, empires are won and lost on a roll of the dice!

In First Empires, each player takes control of the fate of an ancient nation through a player board, meeples, and cards. The game lasts a number of rounds depending on the player count, and on a turn you roll dice based on how you've developed your empire board. The six sides of the dice correspond to the five abilities on your board. To expand to new territories or invade opponents, you need to unlock movement ability; to annex a territory, you have to outnumber the current occupant or have a "sword" result on the dice, with the inhabitants then fleeing elsewhere. The dice also allow you develop your player board by using the die face that corresponds to the improvement and controlling an associated territory. You can gain more dice and additional re-rolls, while also unlocking achievement cards.

At game's end, you earn points based on played achievement cards, points unlocked on your personal board, and the sum of cities under your control.