Economic

Players are attempting to be in first or second place majorities in a variety of categories throughout the game. These include commodity markets, trading colonies, and warehouses in Amsterdam.

On a player's turn, that player draws three cards and decides how to resolve them for the turn. A player can either remove the card from the game, keep it for him or herself, or put it up for auction. The cards allow players to advance or place one of their markers in the various categories.

There are also time-marker cards which, when drawn, move the game through various "historical" phases until the last which ends the game. The historical phases follow a period of time in the history of Amsterdam which can range from no effect, to scoring rounds for particular categories, to bonuses, and towards the end of the game to some penalties as wars begin to disrupt business markets.

The unique twist in the game is that the game comes with a spring-driven auction clock to perform the Dutch auctions throughout the game. You start the clock and it ticks down as all of the players hold their hands ready close by. The idea is that as time passes the cost of the card lowers and it is simply an issue of who will pay for it first by slapping down on the clock and thus stopping it at a certain price.

El Capitán, a game that is based upon Tycoon but with many improvements and upgrades.
The game is now playable with 2-5 players (instead of 2-4); it has 11 new groundbreaking rules, and on top of it all, expansions and a whole new exciting look!
All together we have now the following changes/improvements for the basic game:
new grouping of the cities on the game board
new payout table for distribution
3 new Distribution Cards
new rules for the forts
start money is 20 florins instead of 15
place up 4 multi travel cards instead of 2
new rule for the loan cards (not allowed in the first round)
new start player after a payday (a special start player figure is added)
building up to 12 (instead of only 9) warehouses in a city
limitation of warehouses in series (limited to 3 now)
a rule for the first warehouse in a city

Also included is the first expansion "Portuguese Powers" with some extra city boards and strategy!!
There are now special rules for 2 or 3 players (extra renovation fields) and a special rule for 2 players (payday and additional warehouses).

The game was published in October 2007 by QWG Games in the Benelux, by Pro Ludo in Germany, by Ystari Games in France, and by Z-Man Games in USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and Ireland.

Ostia is an economic game of trading goods and donating them to the senate of Rome. You have to decide, whether you want to earn money for your goods or whether you want to donate some of them to the senate. The senate grants victory points for the most needed goods, but no money. Therefore you have to put some goods to the market, hoping that they are rarely sold there to earn enough money for the next trading phase.
The ranking of goods mostly needed changes each round and you can see the ranking for the next round. Accordingly you may decide to keep some of the goods for next round, when they are more valuable to the senate. But you can keep only one card of goods per storehouse and storehouses are expensive.

Welcome to Santiago, the second largest city in Cuba, home of legendary rum and birthplace of the revolution! The chaotic streets hum with the sounds of bustling crowds and busy commerce. Cargo ships constantly arrive and depart from the port. Demand is continuous, if unpredictable, for a supply of local products such as exotic fruits, sugar, rum, tobacco, and cigars.

In Santiago de Cuba, your business card says "broker", but in reality you're a shady wheeler-dealer who arranges deals with the locals and with corruptible officials to move goods and meet the demand of those ever-present cargo ships – and your ability to procure these goods is only as reliable as your "connections".

At the start of the game, nine locals – the Cubans – are randomly arranged on a path around Santiago, with the port being the tenth location on the circuit. Each Cuban has a different ability: e.g., give a player two tobacco, give a player a good of his choice, force opponents to give you something, give money or victory points (VPs), and seize a building or allow a player to use a previously seized building. What are these buildings? At the start of the game, twelve buildings are randomly placed on the game board in four color-coded groups (white, yellow, etc.) of three. As with the Cubans, these buildings give players a special ability when used: convert tobacco to cigars, change VPs to money or vica versa, increase the value of goods delivered to the ship, render a Cuban inactive for the next round, and so on.

Players will deliver goods to seven ships throughout the course of the game. The demand for each ship is determined via a die roll; the active player rolls five dice – one for each type of good – then chooses four of the values rolled to represent demand for goods of the same color as the die.

All players share a car and travel around the island together. On a turn, the active player can move the car to the next location on the path (whether Cuban or port) for free, or pay one peso for each spot moved beyond that. After taking a Cuban action, the player then must move his player piece to a building of the same color as the flower on that Cuban. If he takes an action in a building owned by someone else, that player earns 1 VP. (One Cuban allows a player to use the same building where his piece is currently located.)

If a player moves to port, players take turns delivering all goods of one type to the ship to meet demand, adjusting the demand dice as needed. A player earns 2-4 VP for each good delivered; a player doesn't have to deliver goods. If the ship's demand isn't met after everyone delivers or passes, the VP bounty per good is increased by one and the ship remains in place – unless the value was already at 4 VP, in which case the ship sails. In this case, or when all the demand is met, a new ship comes into port with new demand values.

After seven ships have sailed, the players earn 1 VP for every three goods still on hand, then tally their VPs. The player with the most VPs wins, with ties broken by goods remaining, then money.

Each game poses new tactical challenges for the players, thanks to ever-changing combinations of buildings, Cuban inhabitants and demand for goods.

The 2012 rerelease of Wallenstein tweaks the 2002 title from designer Dirk Henn and publisher Queen Games, while including two new expansions.

The setting and game play of the two games are mostly the same. In 1625, the Thirty Years' War is underway, and military leaders like Albrecht von Wallenstein and Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim are roaming the country, fighting for land, and trying to establish the best of everything for themselves. The game lasts two "years," with players taking actions in the spring, summer, and fall, then possibly suffering from grain shortage and revolts in the winter before scoring points for the year. After two years, the player with the most points – with points being scored for land and buildings under one's control – wins.

In each of the "action" seasons, ten action cards are shuffled, then laid out, with five face-up and the rest face-down. The five bonus tiles (which provide extra money, grain, or armies) are also laid out. Each player then secretly assigns one of his county cards (or a blank card) to each of the ten actions on his individual player board, in addition to bidding for player order and choice of bonus tile.

After revealing that round's event card and determining player order, players carry out actions in the order determined earlier, revealing which county is taking the current action, then revealing the next face-down action, thus giving players some information about when actions will occur, but not all. Taxing a county or taking grain from it can increase the chance of a revolt during winter, but without money you can't deploy troops or build palaces or churches and without grain you increase the chance of revolt.

Combat and revolts are handled via a dice tower in which players drop army units and peasants (colored wooden cubes) into the top of the tower and see which ones emerge in the bottom tray (representing the fighting forces for that combat) and which get stuck in the tower's baffles to possibly emerge in the future.

Wallenstein includes two expansions: "Emperor's Court," in which a player's army tokens that fall from the dice tower at the start of the game become courtiers who compete for favors (special actions) from the emperor; a player can convert armies to courtiers during the game, and whoever has the most courtiers in the court's entrance hall each turn gets first shot at the favors available. "Landsknechte," which can be used with "Emperor's Court" or on its own, consists of a set of four cards for each player stacked in a particular order. If after determining turn order, a player controls counties in four different regions, he removes the top card from the stack, then takes one of the bonuses (such as money or armies in the tray) shown on the newly revealed card. This stack resets after winter ends.

Reimplements:

Wallenstein (first edition)

Similar to:

Shogun