exploration

Following the success of unmanned rover missions, the United Nations established the Department of Operations and Mars Exploration (D.O.M.E.). The first settlers arrived on Mars in the year 2037 and in the decades after establishment Mars Base Camp, private exploration companies began work on the creation of a self-sustaining colony. As chief astronaut for one of these enterprises, you want to be a pioneer in the development of the biggest, most advanced colony on Mars by achieving both D.O.M.E. mission goals as well as your company’s private agenda.

In the beginning, you will be dependent on supplies from Earth and will have to travel often between the Mars Space Station and the planet's surface. As the colony expands over time, you will shift your activities to construct mines, power generators, water extractors, greenhouses, oxygen factories, and shelters. Your goal is to develop a self-sustaining colony independent of any terrestrial organization. This will require understanding the importance of water, air, power, and food — the necessities for survival.

Do you dare take part in humankind’s biggest challenge?

On Mars is played over several rounds, each consisting of two phases - the Colonization Phase ​and the Shuttle Phase​.

During the Colonization Phase, each player takes a turn during which they take actions. The available actions depend on the side of the board they are on. If you are in orbit, you can take blueprints, buy and develop technologies, and take supplies from the Warehouse. If you are on the surface of the planet, you can construct buildings with your bots, upgrade these buildings using blueprints, take scientists and new contracts, welcome new ships, and explore the planet’s surface with your rover. In the Shuttle Phase, players may travel between the colony and the Space Station in orbit.

All buildings on Mars have a dependency on each other and some are required for the colony to grow. Building shelters for Colonists to live in requires oxygen; generating oxygen requires plants; growing plants requires water; extracting water from ice requires power; generating power requires mining minerals; and mining minerals requires Colonists. Upgrading the colony’s ability to provide each of these resources is vital. As the colony grows, more shelters are needed so that the Colonists can survive the inhospitable conditions on Mars.

During the game, players are also trying to complete missions. Once a total of three missions have been completed, the game ends. To win the game, players must contribute to the development of the first colony on Mars. This is represented during the game by players gaining Opportunity Points (OP). The player with the most OP at the end of the game is declared the winner.

You are a Dreamwalker, lost in a mysterious labyrinth, and you must discover the oneiric doors before your dreamtime runs out – or you will remain trapped forever!

You may wander through the chambers of dreams, hoping that chance will reveal the doors, or you can linger in each type of room. In both cases, you will have to deal with the slithering Nightmares, which haunt the hallways of the labyrinth.

Onirim is a solo/cooperative card game. You (and a partner, if you wish) must work (together) against the game to gather the eight Door cards before the deck runs out; you can obtain those Door cards either by playing cards of the same color three turns in a row, or by discarding (under specific circumstances) one of your powerful Key cards. In both cases you will have to decide the best use of each card in your hand and carefully play around the Nightmares. Those cards are hidden in the deck and will trigger painful dilemmas when drawn...

Seven mini-expansions, all standalone and compatible with one another, are included with the second edition of Onirim, including these three that were in the first edition of the game:

"The Towers" introduces a new type of card that allows more searching and deck manipulation, while also imposing an additional victory condition.

"Happy Dreams and Dark Premonitions" adds evil time bombs that will impede your progress at predictable moments of your quest as well as helpful but unreliable allies.

In "The Book of Steps Lost and Found", you must find the eight Door cards in a randomly given order and may remove discarded cards from the game to cast powerful spells that will help you complete this difficult task.

In addition to these three variants from the first edition, there are four new modules in the Onirim 2nd edition box. Just like previously, each module consists of something that makes the game easier and something that makes the game harder:

"The Glyphs" introduces a fourth symbol on location cards (apart from Key, Sun and Moon), which makes it easier to compose the row of unrepeated symbols. Player must then find one extra door of each color (so 12 doors in total) to win

"The Dreamcatchers" are four cards that "guard" the Limbo piles. The Limbo pile stays with Dreamcatcher until some effect allows the player to shuffle the pile back to the deck... if all Dreamcatchers are full and new cards should come to Limbo, a Dreamcatcher is discarded and his cards shuffled back. Also, four new "Lost Dreams" cards are supposed to be in Limbo at the end of the game, as an extra winning condition - so discarding all Dreamcatchers means loss.

"The Crossroads and Dead Ends" introduce location cards with a given symbol (3 Sun, 2 Moon, 1 Key), but serving as any color "joker". It also contains 10 "Dead End" cards, that remain in players hand (un-discard-able on its own) and block her 5-cards hand limit... until a player discards the whole hand (=the only way to discard a Dead End).

"The Door To The Oniverse" brings several one-time abilities cards as "inhabitants of the Oniverse"... and one extra colorless door to find.

Apart from all those, there are a few special rules to use the dark meeple in the game (which interferes with Nightmare cards resolving), making the game easier or harder, depending on the chosen variant.

In the late 1840s, thousands of pioneers headed out West to seek wealth and opportunity. Many of these brave souls traveled by wagon over the Sierra Nevada mountain range, into what would soon become the Golden State of California. In the game Sierra West, you are an expedition leader who must guide a party of rough-and-ready pioneers—employing a clever mix of strategy and tactics with each step.

Sierra West comes with four sets of special cards and parts, each of which can be combined with the game's basic components to create a unique mode of play. During setup, the players choose a mode, then build a mountain of overlapping cards with the corresponding deck. Each mode adds new thematic content, alternate paths to victory, and interesting twists on the core mechanics.

The four included modules are:

Apple Hill
Gold Rush
Boats & Banjos
Outlaws & Outposts

Overview of Play
At the start of each turn, you will overlap and arrange three cards into your player board—exposing and concealing a selection of the action icons available on them. This will create two unique paths for your pioneers to follow. Next, you will move your pioneers across their paths from left to right, performing a series of small actions. Common actions include: claiming cards from the mountain, building cabins, gaining resources, and advancing your wagon. Additional actions are brought into the game by the chosen mode—such as: harvesting apples, mining for gold, fishing, and fighting outlaws. As your pioneers complete their paths, they will gain access to the action spaces on the upper portions of your cards. On these, you will be able to exchange resources for to advance on the wagon trail and homestead tracks, or activate other special abilities unique to the mode.

As the game continues—and more cards are removed from the mountain—new and exciting things are discovered! Each piece of the mountain is either a card that can be gained to improve your deck, or a special card that is added to a face-up row at the mountain’s base. As this row extends, more of the mode’s opportunities and challenges come into play. For example, in Boats & Banjos mode, the row is a river that offers more fishing and gold panning options as time goes on.

Sierra West can be set up and played in under an hour, often leaving people with the desire to play it again right away—especially to explore the other modes! It is a highly thematic Eurogame that offers a truly novel and satisfying spin on action-programming, worker-placement, and deck-building.

Includes solo mode by Dávid Turczi.

—Description from the publisher

Note: Contained inside the box are 2 promos for other games:
Teotihuacan: City of Gods – Sierra West Promo
Dice Settlers: Sierra West Promo

On an uninhabited island in uncharted seas, explorers have found traces of a great civilization. Now you will lead an expedition to explore the island, find lost artifacts, and face fearsome guardians, all in a quest to learn the island's secrets.

Lost Ruins of Arnak combines deck-building and worker placement in a game of exploration, resource management, and discovery. In addition to traditional deck-builder effects, cards can also be used to place workers, and new worker actions become available as players explore the island. Some of these actions require resources instead of workers, so building a solid resource base will be essential. You are limited to only one action per turn, so make your choice carefully... what action will benefit you most now? And what can you afford to do later... assuming someone else doesn't take the action first!?

Decks are small, and randomness in the game is heavily mitigated by the wealth of tactical decisions offered on the game board. With a variety of worker actions, artifacts, and equipment cards, the set-up for each game will be unique, encouraging players to explore new strategies to meet the challenge.

Discover the Lost Ruins of Arnak!

—description from the publisher

An incredible new dinosaur graveyard has been discovered, and if the early findings are any indication, it could be a treasure trove of fossils and bones like the world has never seen! In Fossilis, 2 to 5 players become paleontologists working the dig site with shovels, whisk brooms, and chisels looking for a find that could make their career.

Each round, players get two actions to dig at the site or make an extraction. As they remove the top layers of sand, clay, and stone, they'll discover trace fossils, which can be exchanged for tools, the plaster necessary to extract bones, and discovery points. As they delve deeper, precious bones will be exposed. They can make a careful extraction if they have the right amount of plaster, but sometimes shifting the earth to cover up a find and slow down the competition is the right move. Bones on their own can be valuable, but museums are really interested in more complete specimens. Sets of bones can be exchanged for museum cards worth big points!

Fossilis features a unique 3D dig site board, with recessed pockets filled with dinosaur bones, and thick, chunky terrain tiles that cover the dig site. Players have to use strategy, timing, and a little bit of luck if they want to make the best discoveries, get their name in all the paleontology journals, and of course, win the game.

—description from the publisher