In TECH-BUBBLE, 3 to 6 players ride the technology market roller coaster at the turn of the 21st century as it surges and eventually plunges. The players represent various market sectors during the "Dot.Com Bubble". They make decisions to stay in the market and ride out the surge or get out before the bubble bursts. Timing and nerves of steel are everything. And along the way players can affect each other's investments and decisions by crafty play.
Due out October 2009
Tadaaam! is a revision and repackaging by Cédrick Caumont and Thomas Provoost of the earlier Monstermaler. The most obvious change is that Tadaaam! comes in a big box (Monstermaler was just a pad of paper), with cards to suggest people, and now also objects and animals, that players independently draw right and left halves of with pens on wipe-clean boards to make one recognisable picture. The pictures are then revealed and the players guess what those they didn't draw are intended to be.
Along with revisions to the basic rules there are now easy, normal, difficult and character categories of things to draw and a spinner which adds one of six additional challenges to drawing: with the ear on the table, blind under the table, with the "wrong" hand, without the thumb, et cetera…
Re-implements:
Monstermaler
Description from BoardgameNews.com:
While Cyrano de Bergerac was a real person, Cyrano is based on the play Cyrano de Bergerac, written more than two hundred years after Cyrano’s death. In both the play and the game, Cyrano writes poetry to woo a woman for another man. The game Cyrano lasts a number of rounds, and each round starts with a player revealing a theme card and two rhyme cards ("-aid", "-ed" and so on with homonyms being acceptable). Each player then composes a quatrain (a poem of four lines) with two of the lines ending with one of the rhymes and the other two ending with the other rhyme. Players read their poems and score points Boggle-style, with each unique ending word being worth one point; these points are recorded by blacking out squares on a ladder, which represents the lover’s climb toward his object of affection.
Everyone then secretly votes on which poem he or she most appreciated, whether for its beauty, adherence to theme, or some other artistic qualification. Players reveal their votes simultaneously, and for each player who voted the same way you did, you receive one point, with these points being recorded by the maiden’s descent from the tower. Whichever player first brings the loves onto the same floor of the tower wins, with ties being broken by a rhyming duel.
Before they can roll and move, players must pick a card and present the rest of the players with a nasty choice between two thoroughly unpleasant hypotheticals in categories such as pain, embarrassment, ethics, and ingestion. If the player guesses the majority preference, he gets to move otherwise he must pass. Some spaces allow the player to invent their own awful hypothetical choice. The other players vote secretly on their choice in this case. If the vote is not unamimous, the player can move or send someone else back. Players roll a six-sided die and there are only 10 spaces to the goal so games go very quickly. Typical choices on the cards include, "Would you rather lie naked in a bathtub full of live roaches or dive head first into a pool of tobacco spit?" The answer "neither" is NEVER allowed.
Variant:
The 2003 version of this game "Would You Rather?" appears to have quite different rules to the above described game. There is a new simpler square board with more spaces. Unlike the 20 minutes of the above game, 1-2 hours is recommended by the manufacturer. Players roll a dice, then move and depending where they land, draw cards with dilemmas to pose to the rest of the other players. The current player must try to secretly predict the result of the other players' subsequent open discussion and consensus view. No-one is penalised for an inability to reach consensus, the game encourages one option picked at random perhaps by flipping a coin, to keep the game moving. If the current player predicted correctly, they get a bonus turn.
Typical questions include "Would you rather ... On senior prom night, have to take your parent -OR- your 12 year old sibling?"
Every so often players get the opportunity to take a difficult challenge with the winner being the first person to complete their third challenge.
Part of the 3M Bookshelf Series later acquired by Avalon Hill
From the box:
"POINT OF LAW is an exciting game of involvement for all players. You are the judge and jury! You decide which argument is most convincing. Many an interesting discussion -- and an occasional laugh or two -- takes place as players use logic and intuition in reaching their decisions.
"Will your decisions be just? Will you declare the 'Feral Financier' a public nuisance? How will you rule in the case of the IRS against the 'Self-Rising Sinner'? Can the 'Mixed-Up Marriage' be annulled? Was the 'Midnight Murder' really murder? Any number can play. Bookshelf case contains Point of Law Case Book with 100 courtroom dramas and decisions, decision sheets, score board and marker."