Economic

From the back of the box:

Venice, the 1400's. You are a young merchant trying to make your name in this legendary port of vibrant commerce. Trade in spices, silks, gems, iron, and grain can bring great wealth... if you can bend the market to your will. Buy goods as they enter the city docks and sell them to the tradesmen who need them. Increase your profits by buying shares of the shops that use the goods in which you trade. Gain gold and prestige by fulfilling the orders of the Guild Hall craftsmen.

But Venice is a city of fickle demands and mercurial politics. Spend your ducats wisely and look for help from powerful people such as the Guildmaster, the Harbormaster, the Tax Collector... or perhaps a Thief. Even the humble Gondolieri have powerful connections in Venice. In the end, the most important thing to remember is the simple rule of commerce... buy low and sell high! Only those with the most gold and the highest prestige can truly become... Masters of Venice!

In Master Builder, the players are builders in a small town (represented by 3D cardboard buildings). They try to acquire building contracts, which they then attempt to complete.

The contracts are gained by bidding on them. After that, the buildings must be constructed using workers. Each worker has his own specialty, and you'll need several different workers to complete a building.
Initially, players hire these workers to complete the buildings. Later, these workers can leave them, sometimes because they have been lured away by other players.

Master Builder is #4 in the Valley Games Modern Line.

London was Treefrog's 2010 Essen release.

(Inspired by the history of the city from just after the Great Fire until 1900, the game has evolved since the description originally listed on the Treefrog website).

London is a 2-4 player game with a playing time of aproximately 90 minutes. Players select cards with varying powers of cashflow, victory points, and poverty penalties, and compete to manage them most efficiently.

"London lies devastated after the Great Fire of 1666. This is your opportunity to build a new city on the ashes of the old. It is up to you how you employ the talents of the people of London to this end. Will you favour the business classes, who will earn you money? Or would you prefer to spend more money than you can rightly afford on grand monuments and sumptuous palaces? You must also deal with the problem of rising poverty and how to employ the many paupers of the city. Throughout the game you will be forced to make tough decisions. To achieve one aim you must sacrifice another, which may open an opportunity for a competitor."

Nearly 250 years of progress is glimpsed in this game. Famous buildings and monuments of the era as well as engineering developments such as streetlights are illustrated on the cards.

The publisher calls London "a relatively simple game that can be played easily within ninety minutes."

Description below is quoted from Kris Hall's BGN interview with Martin Wallace:
http://www.boardgamenews.com/index.php/boardgamenews/comments/kris_hall_...
(Note: Some elements of the game described below have changed as shown in the final rulebook available online)

As with a lot of games, London is about scoring the most VPs. Players manage their hand, selecting cards to play into their building display by laying them out in a line. At some point a player will choose to run his city. They can activate their buildings in whatever order they prefer. The resulting actions can generate money and VPs, reduce poverty or have some other effect specified on the card. Some cards have an entry cost which must be paid before the action can be performed.

From the back of the box:

"Jambo is the friendly greeting Swahili traders offered their customers in Central Africa before colonization. The players are traders in this day, competing to be the first to earn 60 gold by buying and selling tea, hide, fruits, salt, silk, and trinkets. The game is played with cards which allow players to buy and sell goods, can help you or hinder your opponent, and others which add a bit of spice to the game. Return to the dark continent where the players alternate turns with up to 5 actions each until one player reaches the goal and wins the game."

Original description from Games4You.

Players take on the role of merchants offering their wares from market stands. On a player's turn, he has five actions to choose from. Actions can be used to draw cards, play cards and activate buildup cards.

In order to sell wares, the merchants must first lay the wares out, since customers will only buy where all the wares they want are being offered. And since market space is at a premium, players have to think hard about which wares to offer.

By owning important buildup cards and properly using the assets of other village inhabitants, the merchants succeed in attracting especially many customers to their stalls, making bargain buys, and messing with their opponents' plans.

The first player to reach a set cash level through buying and selling of wares is the winner.

The game's attraction lies with the many special cards. Many different combinations are possible during the game, and each game plays out differently as a result.

Integrates with:

Asante

There's hustle and bustle at Istanbul's grand bazaar as merchants and their assistants rush through the narrow alleys in their attempt to be more successful than their competitors. Everything must be well organized: wheelbarrows must be filled with goods at the warehouses, then swiftly transported by the assistants to various destinations. Your goal? Be the first merchant to collect a certain number of rubies.

In Istanbul, you lead a group of one merchant and four assistants through 16 locations in the bazaar. At each such location, you can carry out a specific action. The challenge, though, is that to take an action, you must move your merchant and an assistant there, then leave the assistant behind (to handle all the details while you focus on larger matters). If you want to use that assistant again later, your merchant must return to that location to pick him up. Thus, you must plan ahead carefully to avoid being left with no assistants and thus unable to do anything...

In more detail, on a turn you move your merchant and his retinue of assistants one or two steps through the bazaar, either leave an assistant at that location or collect an assistant left earlier, then perform the action. If you meet other merchants or certain individuals at the location, you might be able to take a small extra action. Possible actions include:

Paying to increase your wheelbarrow capacity, which starts the game with a capacity of only two for each good.
Filling your wheelbarrow with a specified good to its limit.
Acquiring a special ability, and the earlier you come, the easier they are to collect.
Buying rubies or trading goods for rubies.
Selling special combinations of goods to make the money you need to do everything else.

When a merchant has collected five rubies in his wheelbarrow, players complete that round, then the game ends. If this player is the only one who's reached this goal, he wins immediately; otherwise ties are broken by money in hand.