Medieval

Guildhall: Job Faire

Game description from the publisher:

The not-so-Dark Ages is blowing up! Skilled workers clamor to get into your Guildhouse. Organize them into chapters and put them to work. Each additional worker you add to a chapter provides a bigger bonus to the workers you play in the future – but look out as your opponents might steal your valuable workers for their own chapters!

In Guildhall: Job Faire, 2–4 players compete to create a prosperous kingdom by recruiting skilled laborers into their guild chapters. Collect sets of cards with unique abilities. Use completed sets to claim victory cards. But will you go for points or use a special power? Which will lead to ultimate victory?

Guildhall: Job Faire is a standalone game, but is also fully compatible with Guildhall: Old World Economy.

Integrates with:

Guildhall

Guildhall

Progress! That's what these Dark Ages need, someone with a little get-up-and-go. You've been a serf in this one-pig town long enough, and it's time to shake things up. You've opened a guildhall for like-minded professionals from all over Europe to work together, build their trades, and get some economic stability.

Now if only everybody else didn't have the same idea...

Well, you'll just have to do it faster than those other guys! Gather professionals into chapters, and use their combined might to reach for victory. Collect complete color sets of professions (all five colors of Trader, for instance), which you use to buy victory points (VP). The first player to gain 20 VP on her turn wins.

In Guildhall, each profession grants you special abilities, and these abilities grow stronger the more of the set that you complete. When you cash in the set for victory points, however, you lose the ability until you can build it up again. Which professions are worth risking VP to keep?

Integrates with:

Guildhall: Job Faire

Templar: The Secret Treasures

Templar: The Secret Treasures is an exciting family game in which the players help the Knights Templar to get their treasures to a secret abbey and hide them inside. Each player can use the different members of the abbey to help them hide the treasures – but every character is different and needs to be used wisely. Whoever hides the most treasures wins!

Each player has a hand of ten character cards and a starting supply of treasure: one book, one chalice, and a handful of signet rings that come in three types. A harbor with six storehouses is stocked with additional treasures, and three characters – Abbot Remigius, Vitus, and Prior Severus – are placed in the 13-room abbey.

For the first round of the game, each player secretly chooses a character card, then they all reveal them simultaneously, with players then carrying out the actions on those cards in player order. Some characters represent monks who help you move through the abbey and hide treasure, others allow you to take treasure from the harbor, open a locked door while closing off another passage, or move treasure that another player has already stashed, among other things. When a player moves Abbot Remigius, the Abbot rewards all players who have stashed treasure in the room in which he ends his movement, with all of the treasure then being marked as scored – other than duplicate signet rings, which can score again should the Abbot return. (Vitus, who isn't controlled by a card, follows the Abbot closely to spy upon him, thus keeping the Abbot from returning to the most recent room he entered.) If the Prior Severus is in a room, though, the Abbot can't do his thing as Severus would then discover the treasure and learn of the Knights' actions.

After the initial round, a player must play a character card that doesn't match the top character card on any player's discard pile – which means that you (and others) play both offense and defense with the same character card, restricting the action of others while ideally making good use of the character yourself. When a player lays down The Bells card, he picks up all of his played cards, then restocks the harbor based on the number of his previously played character card.

When the harbor can no longer be filled properly or when a player has placed at least one treasure in each room, the final round is triggered, then players have a final scoring for their rings still in the abbey and for the number of rooms that hold their treasure. Whoever scores the most points wins!

Dominion Big Box (English)

Dominion, the popular strategy card game now comes to you in this massive combination pack jammed full of the best boxed sets, additional cards and extras.

You are a monarch, like your parents before you, a ruler of a small pleasant kingdom of rivers and evergreens. Unlike your parents, however, you have hopes and dreams. You want a bigger and more pleasant kingdom, with more rivers and a wider variety of trees. You want a Dominion. In all directions lie fiefs, freeholds, and feodums. All are small bits of land, controlled by petty lords and verging on anarchy. You will bring civilization to these people, uniting them under your banner. But wait. There must be something in the air; several other monarchs have had the exact same idea. You must race to get as much of the unclaimed land as possible, fending them off along the way. To do this you will hire minions, construct buildings, spruce up your castle, and fill the coffers of your treasury. Your parents wouldn’t be proud, but your grandparents would be delighted.

Contains the core Dominion card game and the expansions Alchemy and Prosperity. Additionally it contains promo card sets which may vary and a full color play mat. These are only available with this set.

Part of the Dominion series.

In the Year of the Dragon

Stefan Feld's 3rd game by Alea is Im Jahr des Drachen (In the Year of the Dragon).

Players take on the role of Chinese rulers around the year 1000. The game plays out in twelve rounds, with each round representing one month in a year that seems to go from bad to worse. Disease, drought, and attacks from the Mongols may claim lives, but make sure you have enough money to offer a tribute to the Emperor.

The game play is easier than it may appear. Every player has a set of "person" cards. Each round, you choose one action (most of which call on your workers' abilities) help you prepare for the months ahead. Then you play one person card, recruiting that person and placing him into one of your palaces. Each person brings different skills and abilities to help you ride out the year. (Farmers help you gain rice to survive a drought month, Tax Collectors raise money, etc.) At the end of each round, that month's event is triggered, which may cost you some of your workers, some money, or give you points.

Careful planning is the key to surviving "the year of the dragon," but survival alone may not win you the game.