Economic

Tzolkin: The Mayan Calendar presents a new game mechanism: dynamic worker placement. Players representing different Mayan tribes place their workers on giant connected gears, and as the gears rotate they take the workers to different action spots.

During a turn, players can either (a) place one or more workers on the lowest visible spot of the gears or (b) pick up one or more workers. When placing workers, they must pay corn, which is used as a currency in the game. When they pick up a worker, they perform certain actions depending on the position of the worker. Actions located "later" on the gears are more valuable, so it's wise to let the time work for you – but players cannot skip their turn; if they have all their workers on the gears, they have to pick some up. 

The game ends after one full revolution of the central Tzolkin gear. There are many paths to victory. Pleasing the gods by placing crystal skulls in deep caves or building many temples are just two of those many paths...

In Crude: The Oil Game, players take on the role of oil company CEOs, seeking to expand their companies into multi-national energy mega-corporations. Just as with real world energy companies, player will setup facilities for oil drilling, oil pumping, oil refining into gasoline, and gasoline selling to the consumer... all of which are represented by actual plastic pieces placed on the board! Players also speculate by buying and selling oil and gasoline barrels in both the domestic and foreign markets... again represented by actual plastic barrels in their playing area!

However, the changing economic climate, as well as sudden world news events, will challenge players to keep a long-term strategic view of the world energy markets. The first player to reach a corporation value of $750 million is the winner!

Crude: The Oil Game is not only a great simulation of the global oil markets, but with almost 300 plastic playing pieces, it is a sight to behold! Known as McMulti when it was printed in Europe almost 25 years ago, this great game is finally back in print after many years!

Brought back into print in 2012 by Stronghold Games, Crude: The Oil Game has been a highly sought-after ("Grail") game. This is an early Euro-style game – before Euro-style existed! – which accurately simulates the market forces and elements of the oil and gasoline markets at all levels of production, including oil drilling, oil pumping, oil and gasoline buying and selling in the domestic and foreign markets, oil refining, and finally gasoline selling to the consumer.

Description from BoardgameNews

In Agricola, you're a farmer in a wooden shack with your spouse and little else. On a turn, you get to take only two actions, one for you and one for the spouse, from all the possibilities you'll find on a farm: collecting clay, wood, or stone; building fences; and so on. You might think about having kids in order to get more work accomplished, but first you need to expand your house. And what are you going to feed all the little rugrats?

The game supports many levels of complexity, mainly through the use (or non-use) of two of its main types of cards, Minor Improvements and Occupations. In the beginner's version (called the Family Variant in the U.S. release), these cards are not used at all. For advanced play, the U.S. release includes three levels of both types of cards; Basic (E-deck), Interactive (I-deck), and Complex (K-deck), and the rulebook encourages players to experiment with the various decks and mixtures thereof. Aftermarket decks such as the Z-Deck and the L-Deck also exist.

Agricola is a turn-based game. There are 14 game rounds occurring in 6 stages, with a Harvest at the end of each stage (after Rounds 4, 7, 9, 11, 13, and 14).
Each player starts with two playing tokens (farmer and spouse) and thus can take two turns, or actions, per round. There are multiple options, and while the game progresses, you'll have more and more: first thing in a round, a new action card is flipped over.
Problem: Each action can be taken by one player each round, so it's important to do some things with high preference.
Each player also starts with a hand of 7 Occupation cards (of more than 160 total) and 7 Minor Improvement cards (of more than 140 total) that he/she may use during the game if they fit in his/her strategy. Speaking of which, there are countless strategies, some depending on your card hand. Sometimes it's a good choice to stay on course, and sometimes it is better to react to your opponents' actions.

The day has come. The paperwork is complete, the registration filed, and the business cards purchased – you're open for business! So now what? Where do you spend your time? Where do you spend your money? Which tasks are most important? What should take priority? Should you hire new employees? Or maybe invest in a marketing campaign? These are just some of the decisions facing you as a fresh entrepreneur who dreams of running a successful business. You must excel at balancing your time, money and staff because all are scarce and all are required to thrive.

So barter with your fellow colleagues, manage your staff, collect information, expand your office, or schedule your next product shipment. It's up to you – after all, it's your business. Of course, no matter which route you decide to take to reach that corner office at the top of the tallest skyscraper, you must start with everyone else...

...on the Ground Floor!

Over the course of the game, you will:

Convert your employees' time into info, money and results.
Adapt to changing economic conditions and brace for what's ahead.
Produce, promote and sell your goods in the marketplace.
Build your company brand through marketing campaigns.
Challenge other players' enterprises for success and prestige.
Grow your business and build your high-rise!

Neuland is a game about logistics and planning. In the beginning of the game, the land lies undeveloped, a series of blank hexes representing mountains, forests, and grasslands. Players win by building and using prestige properties that allow them to place their family's coat-of-arms onto the board -- first to place all their coats of arms wins.

To use these buildings, though, requires the player have the correct raw materials. Swords and cloth, for example, or coins and paper. Each one of these materials needs even more basic materials, such as iron ore, coal, and so on backward toward the most basic elements such as food, wood, and stone.

To cull these materials from the land, one builds buildings -- a Stonecutter's Hut, Smelter, Coin Manufactury, and so on. Once on the board, buildings can be used by any player, not just the one who built them.

A player doesn't collect these resources for safekeeping as in The Settlers of Catan or Keythedral. Instead, resources claimed via buildings must be used up either in the player's current turn or his next one. If he doesn't, the resources spoil and are removed from the board.

Essentially, the challenge of the game is one of planning logistical supply chains which will allow one to process these resources most efficiently to build the prestige properties the fastest. Since it's a perfect information game, one can also see what one's opponents are scheming, and place workers to interrupt their supply chains, possibly causing their resources to spoil and making the player start from zero again.

Neuland's most interesting innovation is perhaps its Time Track Mechanism, in which players who take less actions in a turn will have turns more frequently, and can forward-plan in order to take a long turn of nearly twenty actions instead of the ordinary maximum of ten.

Neuland was originally published by Eggert-Spiele in 2004, and republished by Z-man in 2006 with some significant rules changes. A majority of BGG users seem to strongly prefer the original Eggert-Spiele rules. Also heavily recommended is the rules re-write file available for download here on BGG, for the one that comes with the 2nd edition is nearly incomprehensible.