Dice Rolling

Description from the publisher:

The shadow of Bhaal has come over Baldur's Gate, summoning monsters and other horrors from the darkness!

As you build and explore the iconic city's dark alleys and deadly catacombs, you must work with your fellow adventurers to survive the terrors ahead. That is, until some horrific evil turns one — or possibly more — of you against each other. Was it a mind flayer's psionic blast or the whisperings of a deranged ghost that caused your allies to turn traitor? You have no choice but to keep your enemies close!

Based on the award-winning Betrayal at House on the Hill board game, in Betrayal at Baldur's Gate you'll return to Baldur's Gate again and again thanks to the fifty included scenarios only to discover it's never the same game twice.

Can you and your party survive the madness, or will you succumb to the mayhem and split (or slaughter!) the party?

In Space Base, players assume the roles of Commodores of a small fleet of ships. Ships begin docked at their stations and are then deployed to sectors as new ships are commissioned under your command. Use cargo vessels to engage in trade and commerce; mining vessels to build reoccurring base income; and carriers to spread your influence. Establish new colonies for a new Commodore in a sector to gain even more influence. Gain enough influence and you can be promoted to Admiral!

Space Base is a quick-to-learn, quick-to-play dice game using the core "I roll, everyone gets stuff" mechanism seen in other games. It's also a strategic engine builder using a player board (your space base) and tableaus of ship cards you can buy and add to your board. The cards you buy and the order you buy them in have interesting implications on your engine beyond just the ability on the card you buy, making for a different type of engine construction than seen in similar games. Players can take their engine in a number of directions: long odds and explosive gains, low luck and steady income, big end-game combos to launch from last to first, or a mix-and-match approach. Ultimately, Space Base is a game you can just start playing and teach everyone how to play in the first round or two and has a satisfying blend of dice-chucking luck and challenging strategic choices.

It is the year 2849, one millennium after the Gold Rush, and the mining of raw materials has reached a whole new level. Humankind has successfully tested the first Stellar Mirror and harnessed enough power from a Pulsar to open the first space gate.
A New Era has just begun...

Draft dice to explore the universe in Pulsar 2849. Each round, roll dice based on the number of players, sort them based on their values, then draft dice to take actions, such as adding another spaceship to your fleet or visiting (or flying through) an unexplored star system or tagging a pulsar with one of your identity rings or advancing on your personal tech track, which differs from those of other players. At the end of the round, the turn marker advances based on the dice rolled that turn, and when the marker reaches the end of the track, the game ends.

Players score points each round based on what they've discovered and explored, and everyone has hidden goals that they want to achieve, while also trying to claim the right to public goals that supply additional endgame scoring.

In the cooperative, press-your-luck game Hotshots, crews of 1 to 4 players take on the roles of wildfire fighters — crew boss, spotter, swamper, and sawyer — with special abilities, then roll dice on burning terrain tiles to match the combinations shown on those tiles. The more faces they roll, the better they fight the fire. Players can choose to cut firebreaks, which protect tiles from embers blown by wind gusts, or push their luck to reduce flames and possibly even generate reward tokens. If players bust and fail to match at least three of the six symbols on the tile, the fire grows. Another option is to maneuver vehicles — air tanker, helicopter, and brush rig — to save the forest.

Flame tokens are added at the end of each player's turn by the draw of a fire card, which can bring about light or strong wind gusts, increase the strength of the flames on certain tiles, and start fires. Too many flame tokens will cause a tile to scorch and be lost. Losing a terrain tile could also affect the game play. Some tiles are tied to crewmembers' special abilities, while others help the firefighters, and still others cause the fire to spread in unique ways. If eight tiles scorch or the fire camp scorches, the game is over and the forest is lost — but if the intrepid crew can extinguish the fire, the team wins together.

The press-your-luck mechanism with ratcheting rewards creates tension, and the variety of ways to fight the fire makes for interesting choices. The modular tile layout and fire cards bring high replayability to the game, and the acrylic flame tokens provide an enticing table presence.

Rhino Hero is back on the job — and this time not only does the wobbly skyscraper need to be climbed, but there will also be fierce battles between the four super-heroes Rhino Hero, Giraffe Boy, Big E. and Batguin. Who will win the battles and not let themselves be bothered by the mean, hanging spider monkeys?

Rhino Hero: Super Battle is a turbulent 3D stacking game.