Open Drafting

Middle Ages

You are the head of a fiefdom and its future is in your hands. Will you develop agriculture with fields and mills? Or will you become a pious church-builder or prefer to feast in your sumptuous palaces? Develop your lands in your image and become the most influential lord in the kingdom.

In Middle Ages, you explore the essence of medieval urban life through eight distinct tiles: fields, farms, villages, forts, markets, barracks, churches, and palaces. Each tile features its own scoring system, yet it's linked to others, offering a rich and immersive gaming experience. Unleash strategic maneuvers, from daring assaults on rival fiefdoms to reserving tiles for future use. Harness the power of tactical combinations to amplify your income and pave your way to triumph!

—description from the publisher

Magna Roma

You are summoned by the Roman emperor to hear about his great plans for expansion. He wants you to found the next great Roman city and bring glory to the Roman Empire!

Carefully plan your city and efficiently connect neighborhoods to gain valuable resources! Spend coins and employ population to build magnificent monuments! Use legions to conquer distant lands for the Emperor! Produce valuable luxuries to use for scoring points! Gain the Will of the Gods and use it to empower your city! Glory is within your grasp!

Build the greatest Roman cities and bring glory to Rome in this tile-placement, city builder board game for 1-4 players!

In Magna Roma, the objective is to make the most points at the end of the game by building your city efficiently! To do so, players take turns to place city tiles in their city. A newly placed tile must be connected to at least one of the previously placed tiles. When a player places a tile, the connection with the adjacent tiles will result in producing one or more resources for the player. For example, connecting two half-circles found on the tiles produces a coin, a rectangle and triangle produce population, a rectangle and half-circle produce a legion etc. What's more, if the connected shapes are of the same color, the game rewards the player with double the resources.

With these resources, players will be able to play the other actions in the game, such as: build different monuments in your city, gain a Luxury Good, gain the Gods' Favor tiles, conquer new provinces for the Emperor all serving the same goal - to gain the most points at the end of the game and build the greatest Roman city that ever existed!

—description from the publisher

Flowers: A Mandala Game

In Flowers: A Mandala Game, your goal is to collect flower tiles by achieving majorities through clever card play. Skillfully build mandalas to claim the best tiles, combining and multiplying them to create exquisite flowers of your own!

To set up, layout the game cloth showing three large "mandala" flowers. Shuffle the 36 half-flower tiles in separate decks — 18 each of black and white, with the black flowers being gray, purple, and red on the opposite side and the white ones being green, orange, and yellow — then place one black tile and one white tile face up in each flower. Each player starts with a hand of cards, with the cards coming in six colors that match the flower tile colors.

On a turn, a player lays down one or more cards of the same color onto one of the flowers. (Each player keeps their played cards separate, facing toward themselves.) If that color is already present in the mandala, the player then flips the card(s) face down; if not, the player leaves them face up. If the player laid down one card, they draw two cards from the deck; if they played two or more, they don't draw any cards.

After playing, if you have at least one face-up card on a flower and more cards than any other player, take that flower's "claim" token and place it on your cards. Then, if that flower now has all six colors face up around it, destroy the mandala. Whoever has the claim token on their cards places one of the flower tiles from this mandala in front of themselves; if they already have a flower tile of the same color, they flip this "complete" flower face down. Whoever has the secondmost cards on this mandala takes the second flower tile. Anyone who took a flower tile discards all of their played cards on this mandala; everyone else returns their played cards to their hand. Draw a black tile and white tile from the stack to create a new mandala.

Continue play until someone completes their third flower, then everyone scores their points. Each separate flower half is worth as many points as the number of flowers on it. For each complete flower, if one of the tiles is 3x, triple the number of flowers on the other tile; if both tiles have flowers, double the number of flowers on the tile with fewer flowers. Whoever has the most points wins.

In the Footsteps of Darwin

Twenty years after his expedition around the world, Charles Darwin is writing On the Origin of Species. He wants to gather new information about animal life, particularly about continents he hardly explored. Who other than young naturalists, eager for discovery, could help the renowned scholar finish writing his most famous work?

In In the Footsteps of Darwin, players are junior naturalists who have just arrived aboard the Beagle to help Charles Darwin finish his book On the Origin of Species. During this journey, you will study animals, carry out cartographic surveys, publish your findings, and develop theories. Starting with the naturalist controlling the Darwin token, naturalists take turns in clockwise order, performing these two steps in order:

Study an animal or take inspiration from a character: Choose one of the three tiles facing the Beagle and place it onto your naturalist's notebook. It may be either an animal to study or a character from the Beagle's previous journey who will inspire you. Gain the bonuses depicted or any additional scoring bonuses triggered by the tile's placement.

Voyage of the Beagle: After placing a tile on your notebook, move the Beagle as many spaces forward as the distance between the Beagle and the tile you just selected (1-3 spaces), then draw a new tile to replace the empty space on the journey board.

Your goal is to score more points than your opponents to determine who contributed the most to On the Origin of Species.

—description from publisher

TRICKTAKERs

TRICKTAKERs is a...trick-taking game featuring role selection. After being dealt a hand of cards, the players choose from various characters (such as King or Gambler) that change how they will participate in the game.

The basic game consists of three rounds of trick-taking, and the winner will be the person that wins the most tricks in two of the three rounds. Alternatively, if no one achieves that condition, if a player has taken no tricks in all three rounds, they will be the winner.

Not mentioned above, the game also has a higher priority victory condition and a lower one. Each character in the game grants the player holding it a special "immediate victory" condition that could be achieved. The characters also give the players ways to earn points, and this is the lowest tier of victory determination: who has the most points.

To illustrate some of the character abilities, the Gambler can discard cards from the initial hand to draw replacements, and will bid for how many tricks they take, possibly granting them extra points if successful. The Resistance has the potential to cause a "revolution" which reverses the strength of the ranks, and earns more points if they can win tricks with what would normally be the "high" cards.