Industry / Manufacturing

Bootleggers

It's January 1921. Prohibition has been in effect for a year, and it looks like the 18th Amendment is here to stay. The problem, however, is that outlawing the "manufacture, sale, or transportation of intoxicating liquors" hasn't done anything to reduce the demand for booze! As a result, illegal stills dot the countryside and secret (or not-so-secret!) speakeasies are popping up all over in cities large and small. Local law enforcement may look the other way (especially if they're properly motivated) but Elliot Ness' G-Men are harder to convince. With this much money at stake, organized crime is sure to take an interest.

In Bootleggers, players take on the role of enterprising bosses seeking to make a name for themselves in the illegal alcohol trade at the height of the 1920's prohibition era. Deceit, lies, and alliances of convenience are the norm as players attempt to control distribution through money and corruption by muscling in on the competition, paying off the local law authorities, building underground speakeasies, and shipping trucks of "hooch"!

Tentative plans for the 2012 edition of Bootleggers include two double-influence cards, four blank cards, more cash, a revised rulebook, colored dice for each player, additional variants (including a two-player scenario), and improved trucks with easier-to-read numbering.

Parfum

Who will be the most successful perfumer? Parfum takes the players to the wonderful world of fragrances. Using ingredients like vanilla, lavender or violets, the players distill precious essences in order to create unique perfumes. Only the player conceding their clientele's preferences will be able to sell their perfume. Each customer favors their specific fragrance that must be contained in a flask to make them buy it.

Kanban: Automotive Revolution

"Kanban" — the Japanese word for billboard — is a term for the visual cues that might be used in a lean, efficient assembly line in order to expedite and smooth workflow. These signals get the workers what they need, where they need it, when they need it to create a just-in-time (JIT) production system.

The setting for the game Kanban: Automotive Revolution is an assembly line. The players are ambitious managers who are trying to impress the board of directors in order to achieve as high a position as possible in the company and secure their careers. With promotions come advantages at the factory, such as more space to store precious materials and greater prestige to accelerate your ascent. Through solid management, you must strive to shine next to your peers. You need to manage suppliers and supplies, improve automobile parts, innovate — anything to stay on the cutting edge, or getting your hands greasy on the assembly line in order to boost production. You must exercise wisdom in choosing which projects you should start, selecting only those that will give you the upper hand and shunning those that will bog you down or cause the unthinkable — failure — which would diminish you in the eyes of the board.

Over the course of the game, you persuade the board and the factory tender to help you develop and improve automobile parts. You make shrewd use of the outside suppliers and the limited factory supplies in order to appropriate needed part when the suppliers come up short. Because the factory must run at optimum efficiency, production doesn't wait for you or for mistakes.

Like the process itself, Kanban: Automotive Revolution proves to be both innovative and rewarding. Game mechanisms tightly tied to the automobile manufacturing theme include:

The factory manager is a game-driven non-player character with two modes of play ("nice" or "mean") to offer a friendly or more competitive gameplay environment.
Two independent player-influenced game timers — the factory production cycle and work week clock — provide timing tension to the game, trigger intermediate scoring phases, and factor into the game end conditions.
A simulation of the factory assembly line with spatial point-to-point movement adds an element to the game that requires optimal timing.
A design and innovation department, leveraged to manipulate the value of the various car models and component upgrades produced within the factory, drives the economy of the game.
Departmental training and certification tracks provide players a means to operate more efficiently.

If you want a seat on the board someday, you need to show that you can keep a complex machine running smoothly, efficiently, with everything happening just at the right time. Kanban: Automotive Revolution is a pure Eurogame focused on economics and resource management that puts you in the driver's seat of an entire production facility, racing for the highest level of promotion.

Toledo

In Toledo players try to forge magnificent swords and bring them into the fortress of the city, the “Alcazar”.
Each player can send his five helpers on the map and on to the roads of Toledo, in order to acquire steel and jewels from dealers. Thus they get swords manufactured at the most famous armorer in the city. Afterwards those swords are to be delivered to Alcazar.
In addition there are two taverns (at which one “refuels” cards) as well as a place where the works of art of the resident painter, El Greco, are available.
There is a lot to discover in Toledo.

Goblins, Inc.

Goblins, Inc. is a corporation dedicated to building unstoppable giant doomsday robots, and it's looking for a new Boss. Do you have what it takes?

Team up with your greed-driven fellow goblins and build the ultimate doomsday robot. Meet other teams in epic battles and blow them up, but always remember, only one goblin can win because there is no "G" in team work!

The game plays over two rounds in which you partner up with each of your fellow players to try to build the ultimate giant doomsday robot – but the other players don't know which hidden agendas you must complete to impress the Boss! During the four phases of the round, the teams take turns designing, building and piloting their robots in order to destroy the other team and get one step closer to becoming the next Boss of Goblins, Inc.