Industry / Manufacturing

In the 6th century A.D., ruled by Emperor Iustinianus (commonly called 'Justinian'), Constantinopolis was the largest emporium in the East Roman 'Byzantine' Empire. Built on the shore of the Marmara sea, at the entrance of the Bosporus (Hellispontus), its position let it take on the role of one of the most important harbors. Its quickly expanding trade and exports to close cities were great opportunities for the local businessmen to expand their riches.

Take on the role of an ambitious merchant during this golden era of trade. The task set before you is to become the most successful entrepreneur in the city of Constantinopolis. Compete against your rivals and earn the most renown by completing contracts and establishing viable trade; your fame will be measured by your ability to expand your trade district while managing your delivery contracts.

Constantinopolis is a board game of resource management, economy, and trade for 2-5 players. With a moderate game time of 1 to 2 hours and intuitive rules, Constantinopolis strikes the perfect balance of accessibility and depth.

Tiles in Latin, consistent with Giustiniano's time, are both a reference to the high period of Constantinopolis and a way to make the game entirely language independent.

Using the central board in A Feast for Odin, players have to hunt, gather basic materials, refine those materials, develop their production-buildings, build/buy ships, and raid settlements.

The resulting earnings are placed on the players' board in the best possible pattern to produce income and (later) victory points.

In Arkwright players run up to four factories in England during the late 18th Century. Your goal is to have the most valuable block of own shares. Thus, you must increase your share value and buy shares from the bank.

To run the factories, you need workers. When hiring Workers, demand is automatically created. But of course you want to replace your expensive workers (wage 2-5) by machines (1). To have more output from your factories you may employ new Workers or improve your factory to the next technical level.

You fix the price for your goods during an action round. To enhance your chances of selling goods, you improve your factories to higher levels, increase the quality and make some sales promotion. The higher these factors, the better are your chances of success - the higher the price, the lower.

Each player has an own set of "action tokens" like "build and modernize factories", "employ new workers", "improve quality" etc. On your turn you place one of those tokens on one of the free spaces in your line of the "Administration board" and pay the according administration costs, ranging from 2 to 10 (odd numbers). Some actions depend on how much you paid, i.e. you may buy more machines with one single action, when you pay more (= use a higher space, which is then blocked for the rest of the round). During the game your actions become more and more effective by new tokens, i.e. allow you to buy 3 machines in a single turn instead of 2, increase quality 2 levels instead of only 1...).

After each round of actions one kind of factories is active and you have to pay for all your workers and machines there, then sell the manufactured products. The value of your shares increases for sold products and best quality.

Goods may also be traded to the colonies by ship - provided you have a contract with the monopoly of the East Indian Company.

After four turns each of the factories has produced and the round ends. Players remove the action tokens from the administration board and reveal an event token. After 5 rounds the player with the most valuable block of shares wins. Neither being to be the one with the most shares nor being the one with the highest share value guarantees victory.

Arkwright allows you to act in different ways. Run all four factories with most possible output, set the focus on only two factories and improve them more than the others can; use shipping to colony or focus on the home market. In any way you have to react to the opponents and their strategy. Enter markets with deficit in supply or give up business where the other players start to push you out. Buy shares when they are cheap and increase the value, or first make money and buy shares later.

To get familiar with the market mechanics you may start with a 120 minutes version "Spinning Jenny", but for those who like full strategy in economic themed games, the 240 minute "Waterframe"-Rules come with more options to improve your factory and use ships.

Players in New England Rails each represent a particular state during the 19th century – Connecticut and New Hampshire with two players, with Vermont added for three players, and so on – and start with two or three businesses in play under their control. Your goal in NER is to have more assets than other players at game end, as determined by cash in hand, cost of businesses owned, special routes completed and state subsidies acquired.

The game lasts at most 16 rounds. Each round players forecast the upcoming economic condition – depression, normal or prosperity – for a future turn, then take care of any events that occur, such as "Improved Bridge Building Techniques" that allow players to build across estuaries or "Sheep Boom Goes Bust" which represents the decreased demand for wool from New England farmers as the century progressed. Four of the first five events are fixed and represent historical activities, while the other events – including devastating floods, snow, and an improved business climate – are randomized into a face-down deck. Players then each draft a business or action card, with the option to play it immediately (thereby gaining a free action) if they choose to pay the cost.

During the subsequent development phase, players take two actions in turn order, either building twice, playing cards twice, or doing each action once. Players want to build depots that connect their businesses to one of the major markets in the area: New York, Boston or Montreal; to do so, they need to pay the track costs as well as the cost of the depots themselves. Players can build multiple depots in the same action, but the cost is higher since they're doing more work in the same amount of time. Once a business is connected, it earns the owner more income each turn since it's now supplying a larger, richer market. The cards allow players to start new businesses, play special actions, claim a special route (which generates income), claim one of the six state mail contracts, or collect a state subsidy, which provides special benefits like a free depot.

As the game progresses, the players pass through time time periods, with different businesses being available in each. The first period focuses on crafts and farms, for example, while the second introduces more industrial businesses such as shoe and textile production. When passing from one period to another, players must choose to make some of their existing businesses obsolete. Since a player can manage only eight businesses, however, you'll likely want to make room for more profitable ventures anyway.

If all mail routes, state subsidies and special routes are claimed by the end of any round, the game ends at that point; otherwise the game ends after round 16, with the richest player winning New England Rails.

Spyrium is set in an alternate world, an England set in a steampunk-based universe. Players build factories, needing workers to manage the production of a commodity previously unknown to us called "Spyrium". Producing Spyrium in one factory, then processing it in the next results in victory points (VPs) for that particular player. Alternatively, Spyrium can be purchased, but the material is rare and expensive, and players are constantly scraping for money.

Only those who from the beginning of the game manage to increase their regular income or their base of permanently employed workers (who can be used again and again to raise money) will be flexible enough to get their hands on the important end-of-game buildings to generate many VPs.

The circular nature of the game is flexible as each player can decide for himself when to move out of the placement phase and into the activation phase. With the two tracks in the game, those involved with delivery during the worker phase can then be used to raise money, to purchase an adjacent card, or to work on their own in an idle factory. All of these things are important, but in the end only the player who has dealt best with the lack of money, workers and Spyrium will win.