Modular Board

Viscounts of the West Kingdom is set at a time when the King’s reign began to decline, circa 980 AD. Choosing peace over prosperity, our once strong King began offering our enemies gold and land to lay down their axes. But peace is a tenuous affair. As poverty spread, many people lost faith in his ability to lead and sought independence from the crown. Since finding favour in his courts, our future has also become uncertain. As viscounts, we must be wise and decisive. Loyalty is to be upheld, but gaining favour among the people must be our priority, should there be a sudden shift in power.

The aim of Viscounts of the West Kingdom is to be the player with the most victory points (VP) at game's end. Points are gained by constructing buildings, writing manuscripts, working in the castle and acquiring deeds for new land. Players begin with a handful of townsfolk, but should quickly seek out more suitable talents to advance their endeavours. Each turn they will be travelling around the kingdom, looking to increase their influence among the various areas of society. The game ends once the Kingdom reaches poverty or prosperity - or potentially both!

—description from the publisher

Puzzling and animal breeding: Designer Uwe Rosenberg is at his best! In New York Zoo, you are constructing an animal park. Build animal enclosures, introduce new animals and raise their offspring. The game play is straight forward as you have only two turn options: Puzzle a new enclosure tile into your zoo area or gain new animals to populate your animal encounters. But be sure to time your actions well since you want your zoo to participate in as many animal breedings as possible.

—description from the publisher

King Nebuchadnezzar II has spoken: "Build me the most wondrous gardens the world has ever seen!" The gardening guilds of Babylon have answered, and it is now up to the players, as leaders of these guilds, to build one of the seven wonders of the ancient world and lead their guild to victory in the cutthroat world of competitive gardening.

Gardens of Babylon is a 1-4 player, competitive euro-style game in which players strive to earn the most points by planting flower seeds on the most valuable tiles. Taking turns, players place tiles to create a maze-like ziggurat of pathways, strategically move their gardeners to gain positional advantage, and plant seeds to claim tiles, earning victory points and triggering cascades down connected waterways to steal those of their opponents in the process!

Featuring simple rules and strategic thinking, Gardens of Babylon offers infinite replayability with 78 distinct ziggurat tiles that form a unique 2.5-dimension modular board. A novel cascade mechanism allows a well-placed seed to change the course of the game in an instant, offering emergent gameplay and keeping players on their toes until the very end.

—description from the publisher

Good times in the tiny kingdom of Emara: During the reign of King Thedorius the Wise, wars, uprisings, and other inconveniences became a thing of the past. Thedorius always cared more for the well-being of his subjects than for power or riches. Therefore, only the nobleman who is able to care for Emara's citizens as well as Thedorius himself did shall become Thedorius' successor and wear the Crown of Emara.

To test the skills of all aspirants, Thedorius and his counselors issue a challenge of practical use: Whoever can persuade the majority of the newly arrived citizens in the capital to support their claim shall become the future king of Emara. To achieve this, players have to cater to the citizens' needs and — most importantly — offer proper housing for everyone. This means that promoting the building activities in town will be one of the major tasks of the candidates.

Crown of Emara skillfully combines card actions with worker movement actions, allowing players to plan their turns carefully during their downtime. The two counselors available to every player move in two separate roundabouts, requiring players to optimize every move. Additionally, two scoring tracks lead to a multidimensional playstyle as only the lower score counts towards victory and thus both tracks have to be advanced equally.

Adds material for the 5th and 6th players. And introduces monuments as a a new buidling type.