Economic

Far to the north, in a remote winter land, rivers are frozen most of the year. When the villages along the riverside eventually are accessible, a small river cruise company offers exotic tours like polar bear safaris, reindeer trips, ice fishing, and more. Lucky tourists may even get a chance to see the northern lights.

You work as a tour guide trying to attract tourists to your guide boats for spectacular excursions.

Riverside is a different kind of roll-and-write game: The game comes with a modular game board, which composes the route for the game. On a river cruise boat, everyone follows the same route, but you can take your tourists on different tours. You may plan ahead, but beware, the dice may force you to change your plans.

You start each round by rolling dice into a common pool. Simultaneously, each player chooses one die of one specific color (without physically taking it) and fill seats on the matching guiding boat on their own player sheet. Whenever they have completed a row of seats, they have sold a group ticket of the corresponding color (excursion). The longer the row, the more points they get. Additionally, this ticket is valid for the remainder of the game: Every time they go on an excursion in a village of this color, they take this group with them to earn even more points. The player with the most points wins the game.

Each dice color represents tourists with a preference for one specific type of excursion. The transparent green die is "wild" and represents the northern lights, something everyone wants to see.

Riverside offers tough decision-making within a short playing time: Some rows are short with low points and bonuses, while other rows are long with higher points and bonuses. Which one do you start to fill? Within each guide boat, you need to score higher and higher, so taking too many tourists on your first excursions could be fateful. Players are rewarded if they manage to please all five kinds of tourists, so maybe you need to score a new color instead of scoring really high in another color? Higher dice represent tourists who are freezing and cost fire symbols to get. Note that the "wild" green die always costs fire symbols to get! You have a limited number of fire symbols to use, so when will be the right time to use them?

—description from the designer

The heron flies over the Himeji sky while the Daimio, from the top of the castle, watches his servants move. Gardeners tend the pond, where the koi carp live, warriors stand guard on the walls, and courtiers crowd the gates, pining for an audience that brings them closer to the innermost circles of the court. When night falls, the lanterns are lit and the workers return to their clan.

In The White Castle, players will control one of these clans in order to score more victory points than the rest. To do so, they must amass influence in the court, manage resources boldly, and place their workers in the right place at the right time. The authors are Sheila Santos and Israel Cendrero, the duo known as Llama Dice who also designed the successful The Red Cathedral with Devir. In this case, we leave the Moscow of Ivan the Terrible behind to explore the most imposing fortress in modern Japan, Himeji Castle, where the banner of the Sakai clan flies under the orders of Daimio Sakai Tadakiyo.

The White Castle is a Euro type game with mechanics of resource management, worker placement and dice placement to carry out actions. During the game, over three rounds, players will send members of their clan to tend the gardens, defend the castle or progress up the social ladder of the nobility. At the end of the match, these will award players victory points in a variety of ways.

The central panel shows Himeji Castle in all its splendor, divided into several zones. The largest is inside the castle, with the Room of the Thousand Carpets, where the courtiers must ascend socially until they reach the circle closest to the Daimio to enjoy his favor. There is also the pond and the gardens, patiently tended by the gardeners where everyone can relax and contemplate its beauty without restriction. Another important area is the wall and the outside of the castle, where the warriors patrol and stand guard. Finally, we find the area of the three bridges, where the three types of dice that can be used to carry out actions are accumulated, and the personal domain of each player, where they will keep track of their resources and where they will have the reserve of workers.

With accessible rules and a very careful setting, The White Castle is a very versatile title that will fit in with different gaming groups. As is tradition with Llama Dice titles, its sleek and simple design belies a great deal of strategic depth within the grasp of players.

—description from the publisher

A combination of Tetris, rummy, Sim City, and dominos. Buy properties and build your business empire. But make sure all your suppliers are linked, or it can all fall apart.

You can play a solo game, or competing against others, or play co-op. There are over 200 cards with over 150 of those being unique.

Each player starts with a main office and a family business. Players buy, sell, and trade properties to grow a sprawling cityscape. All cards have links so you may connect a producer with its suppliers. Watch out for run-down derelict properties that your competitors might stick on you.

When all the properties are gone, the game is over. Players add up their victory points to determine the winner. Different properties vary in point values. An iron mine might have only 1 VP while the coveted Department Store has 10 VP.

—description from the designer

In Great Western Trail: New Zealand, you are a runholder — that is, the owner of a sheep station — on the South Island of New Zealand at the end of the 19th century. Recent years have seen your family farm prosper by diversifying your breeds of sheep and by increasing the value of your wool.

With the dawn of the new century, new challenges have arisen. You must acquire new and improved breeds of sheep to ensure the prosperity of your family business and the laborers who work for you.

In Pendulum, each player is a powerful, unique noble vying to succeed the Timeless King as the true ruler of Dünya. Players command their workers, execute stratagems, and expand the provinces in their domain in real time to gain resources and move up the four victory tracks: power, prestige, popularity, and legendary achievement.

Players must use actual time as a resource in managing their strategy to best their opponents, using time on different action types and balancing it with time spent planning and analyzing. The winner will be the player who manages and invests their time most effectively and who builds the best engine, not the player who acts the quickest.

Pendulum is the highest-rated protoype in the history of the Stonemaier Games Design Day.

—description from the publisher