Nautical

Goa, a strategy game of auctions and resource management, is set at the start of the 16th century: beautiful beaches, a mild climate, and one of the most important trading centers in the world. Competing companies deal in spices, send ships and colonists into the world, and invest money. Are you on top or at the bottom? It depends on how you invest your profits. Will you make your ships more efficient? Enhance your plantations? Recruit more colonists? Only a steady hand in business will help.

Each turn begins with an auction phase, where each player gets to auction one item (and the starting player two items). The first item being auctioned gives the right to go first the next turn (along with a card that gives an extra action). If you buy your own item, you pay it to the bank. If someone else buys the item you sell, they pay you. Items include plantations complete with crops, income tiles (income in money, ships, plantation refills each turn etc.), ships, settlers, and later on tiles that score points for certain achievements.

After the auction, players get three actions to either improve their technologies or produce things such as spices on plantations, ships, money or build more plantations. Each player has a board showing their advancement for various things: getting ships, planting new spices, getting colonists, etc. The more a player advances along one track, the better one is doing that particular action. The further you get along a certain track, the more points that track is worth at the end, and there are also rewards to the first player who reaches the last two levels along each track. On the other hand, each player normally needs to perform the actions for all the tracks at some point, so it's not necessarily a good idea to concentrate on just a couple of them. Goa is a game that gives plenty of opportunity for tough decisions, since a player always has at least one action too few.

The game mixes an interactive element of the auction, which encourages you to nominate things that other players want so you receive cash with the solitaire management of your plantation, which then interacts later on as players race to be first in the top tech levels.

The 2012 edition of Goa includes four new tiles and a new play variant, as noted on the cover of the Z-Man Games edition.

The players explore the islands of Polynesia. The winner is the player who scores the most points from putting tiles on his display. Palms, huts, shells, and boats on the tiles influence the scoring. It can be played with 2 to 5 players.

In Amerigo, the players help Amerigo Vespucci on his journey to discover new land. The players explore the islands of South America, secure trading routes, and build settlements.

The actions available to players are determined through the use of a specialized cube tower, which has appeared in the Queen titles Im Zeichen des Kreuzes and Wallenstein. At the start of the game, this tower is seeded with action cubes, which come in seven colors, with each color matching a particular type of action. During the game players will drop additional action cubes into the tower – but some of these cubes might get stuck in the floors of the tower while other cubes already in the tower are knocked free. Thus, players need to play both tactically – taking advantage of the actions currently available in the best way possible – and strategically – using their knowledge of which actions do what to play well over the course of the game.

The game board is composed of nine, twelve or sixteen tiles, depending on the number of players. Players sail their ships through the landscape created for this game, landing on islands to plan and build settlements, which then supply resources and allow the player to earn victory points. Players might want to invest in cannons to protect themselves from pirates roaming the waters or acquire progress tokens to gain special advantages.

Red November is a cooperative game in a gnomish attack submarine where everything is going wrong. The sub is descending and the water pressure increasing, the nuclear reactor is overheating, the nuclear missile launchers are pre-igniting, fires and water leaks are everywhere, there's a giant Kraken looming nearby and there’s very little oxygen and vodka left. While the storyline feels more and more like a disaster movie, the players must get organized to solve the problems, divide the tasks among themselves to minimize the risks, and sometimes accept to sacrifice themselves for the common cause.

The game is played on the map of the submarine. The conditions in the submarine are represented by three disaster tracks: Asphyxiation, Heat and Pressure. During the game, these conditions get worse, and if anyone of them reaches its maximum value, the submarine is lost. In addition, various emergencies can occur which have to be dealt with swiftly, or they'll also lead to the loss of the submarine.

Each turn, a player can move to a new location, and perform some action there. Such an action can be repairs (which will improve conditions on the sub and/or fix emergencies), removing obstacles (unblocking hatches, removing flooding or extinguishing fires) or stocking up on equipment (which will help with later actions). Each action is paid for with time. The more time a player spends on an action, the greater the chance of success. After each player's turn, a number of events will happen; the more time was spent, the more events will occur. Such events will be the worsening of conditions in the submarine, or the triggering of emergencies.

If the Gnomes can keep alive long enough, rescue will arrive and the game is won.

In Le Havre, a player’s turn consists of two parts: First, distribute newly supplied goods onto the offer spaces; then take an action. As an action, players may choose either to take all goods of one type from an offer space or to use one of the available buildings. Building actions allow players to upgrade goods, sell them or use them to build their own buildings and ships. Buildings are both an investment opportunity and a revenue stream, as players must pay an entry fee to use buildings that they do not own. Ships, on the other hand, are primarily used to provide the food that is needed to feed the workers.

After every seven turns, the round ends: players’ cattle and grain may multiply through a Harvest, and players must feed their workers. After a fixed number of rounds, each player may carry out one final action, and then the game ends. Players add the value of their buildings and ships to their cash reserves. The player who has amassed the largest fortune is the winner.

Le Havre was released by Lookout Games October 2008 in German and Australian English.