Modular Board

The city of Karez was once the crowned jewel in the vast kingdom of King Tyrial, but as he lost grasp on his kingdom, the city fell to ruins at the hands of the dark forces surrounding it. Now the king has died, and his heir, King Tyrial II, has decided to dispatch his finest lords to raise the fallen city and stand ground against all its enemies, within and outside the city walls.

In Fallen City of Karez, each player will take the role of a lord of one of the guilds who seek to tighten their grasp on the rising city. The players will strive to maintain a balance between keeping the city safe for its citizens by sending exploration parties to defeat any threats, and at the same time attracting to the emerging city new adventurers wishing to fill their pockets with fortunes and their names with glory.

In the action phase at the start of each of the eight turns, players can assign two citizens or one adventurer to act on their behalf in the various buildings of Karez, send an exploration party to remove any threats that lurk near Karez, or buy new equipment to reinforce their parties of heroes. Some guild houses may choose to erect their own private Dungeons (!) in an attempt to inflict havoc and dismay on the other houses. After everyone performs their actions, the players must check how these actions affected migration to Karez; the results of this phase will reflect on the growth of Karez towards a city state, which is the common aspiration of all players.

Players start with different initial possessions and owned buildings. In addition to the common goal of raising the city, each house also has some unique goals (ambitions), which will eventually determine the sole winner. That said, the game is semi-cooperative in that while each guild has its own ambitions, all players must succeed in raising the city by the end of the game or else everyone loses.

Set sail in a mystical archipelago filled with bustling towns, sea monsters, pirates, and gold! Compete to build the best sea-faring nation with up to three friends by collecting treasure, hiring crew, and conquering or befriending island towns.

In Islebound, you take command of a ship and crew. You sail to island towns, collecting resources, hiring crew, and commissioning buildings for your capital city. Each building has a unique ability, and your combination of buildings can greatly enhance your strength as a trader, builder, or invader. You also recruit pirates and sea monsters to conquer towns, which, once conquered, allow you to complete the town action for free, and charge a fee to opponents if they want to use it. Alternatively, you can complete events that give influence, which can be used to befriend towns.

There are many routes to success. Will you be a ruthless conqueror, careful diplomat, or shrewd merchant in your race to the top?

The player with the most wealth and most-impressive capital city will win the game!

Part of the Kosmos two-player series, Elk Fest or Elchfest is a two player dexterity game in which players attempt to navigate their moose across a river along a series of stones. Players take turns flicking 2 stones, represented by disks, and moving their moose along said stones. Care must be taken when moving ones moose as if the front and back hooves of the moose do not rest atop of the stones the players turn immediately ends, the moose is returned to its previous position, and the opposing player may flick 3 stones. The winner is the first person to move their moose to the opposing river bank!

Game description from the publisher:

Two elk (Jule and Ole) stare at each other across a river. Longing for the greener grass where the other elk is, they set out to beat each other to the opposite bank! In Elk Fest, move your elk to the other bank by flicking wooden disks across the table and balancing your elk on them. Can your elk get to the greener grass across the river? Good grazing is just a stone's flick away!

In Imhotep, the players become builders in Egypt who want to emulate the first and best-known architect there, namely Imhotep.

Over six rounds, they move wooden stones by boat to create five seminal monuments, and on a turn, a player chooses one of four actions: Procure new stones, load stones on a boat, bring a boat to a monument, or play an action card. While this sounds easy, naturally the other players constantly thwart your building plans by carrying out plans of their own. Only those with the best timing — and the stones to back up their plans — will prove to be Egypt's best builder.

Everybunny knows that rabbits love the countryside — and carrots, of course! The best carrots of all grow between the train tracks, but you have to keep an eye out for trains! Roll the dice and hop your rabbit to the best carrot patch; as long as you don't need to flee out of the path of the train, you can happily nibble away. Chomp, chomp, chomp...

In Karnickel, each player places his rabbit on the circular train track made of eight interchangeable tiles, sets the train engine on its start space, then takes turns rolling the custom dice. After you roll, set any die that shows the "train" out of play, then count up how many times each of the player colors appears on the remaining dice; you must move one of the rabbits (yours or another player's) clockwise around the track the full number of spaces. You then pass the rabbit dice to the next player. Players take turns, each time rolling only the dice passed to them and hopping the rabbits from tile to tile, trying to land on the tiles where they will be able to collect the most carrots.

When a player rolls only trains, the rabbit hopping has to stop as the train is ready to move! That player rerolls all seven dice, counts up the number of trains rolled, then moves the train that many spaces around the track. Every rabbit on a tile that the train moves through is scared away by the engine and hops off the track, failing to collect any carrots this time. All rabbits still on the track after the train moves — either because the train didn't reach them or because they were on one of the two tunnel tiles — get to grab 1, 2 or 3 carrots...or maybe lose one — exploding carrots are a risk!

Everyone then hops back onto the track, and the next player rolls all the dice to start a new round of play. Whoever has the most carrots when one player has at least eight carrots wins!