Press Your Luck

Ancient Terrible Things

In Ancient Terrible Things, a pulp horror adventure game for 2-4 players, you play the role of an intrepid adventurer, exploring a dark jungle river. Each turn you must travel to a Fateful Location, face an Ominous Encounter, and attempt to unlock its Ancient Secrets. If you succeed (using a combination of dice, tokens and cards), you add the Secrets to your score; if you fail, you unleash a Terrible Thing, which counts against your score at the end of the game. The object of the game is to be the player with the most Ancient Secrets when the game ends at the Unspeakable Event.

Game play involves rolling dice to achieve combinations: runs, pairs, three or more of a kind, and single die showing a particular number or higher. Dice combos are used to overcome Encounter cards that are worth points at the end of the game and to acquire resource tokens: Focus, Courage, Treasure and Feat.

Focus tokens are used to re-roll individual Focus dice.
Courage tokens are spent to overcome an Encounter, before rolling your dice.
Treasure tokens are spent on Swag cards from the Trading Post,which give you a permanent game effect.
Feat tokens are spent to play Feat cards from your hand, which allow for one-shot effects.

Pandemic: The Cure

Pandemic: The Cure, a dice-based version of the popular Pandemic board game, sets up in less than a minute and plays in 30 minutes. As in the board game, four diseases threaten the world and it's up to your team to save humanity. You and your team must keep the world's hotspots in check before they break out of control, while researching cures to the four plagues.

Players roll dice each turn to determine the actions available to them. They can fly and sail between the six major population centers of the world, treat disease in their current region, collect samples for further study, and exchange knowledge to help them in their goal of discovering cures. Each player takes on a different role that has its own unique set of dice and abilities — and players must take advantage of their specializations if they are to have any hope of winning the game. The Dispatcher, for example, can spend dice to fly others around the board, while the Medic is particularly adept at treating disease. Players can roll their dice as often as they like, but the more times they re-roll for the perfect turn, the more likely the next epidemic will occur.

At the end of each turn, new "infection dice" are rolled to determine the type and location of newly infected populations. If any region on the board is infected with more than three dice of a given color, an outbreak occurs, spreading disease into an adjacent region. If too many outbreaks take place, too many people get infected, or the rate of infection gets too high, all the players lose. If, however, the players can discover the cures to the four diseases, they all win and humanity is saved!

Tobago

Tobago is an adventure game, in which the players possess different parts of treasure maps. During the game, more and more information about the locations of the treasures are revealed, and the possible locations are narrowed down. When a player identifies the location of one of the treasures, they try to reach it as fast as possible to secure the findings.

The game features a modular game board.

Priests of Ra

Another challenging game of Gods, men, and their monuments from Reiner Knizia!

The game spans 1500 years of Egyptian history. The priests of Ra seek to extend their power and fame. They do this by directing farmers, warriors, merchants, and scribes. They cause others to build granaries, fortresses, markets, and libraries. And they erect a gigantic pyramid for the glory of the Sun God Ra!

This game is a rework of Ra, with most of the same rules but completely different scoring tiles that come up for auction, some of which are two-sided, requiring players to choose which side they will make available for themselves... and for their opponents.

Board & Pieces: The Board has 2 tracks, effectively time and auction. Also there is a space between the two track for a spare bidding tile. In a bag are all the Collectible tiles, some double sided, consisting of Sun of Ra, Priests, Plagues, People, Buildings & Pyramids. Bidding Tiles, used to win auctions. Auction Token, used to show active player to maintain play order.

Play: The game is played over 3 epochs (rounds). Each round ends when the Sun of Ra (time) track is filled.
Any non Sun tile is placed on the Auction track, in the case of double sided tiles the active player decides which side to use. Auctions can either be called by a player (instead of drawing a tile), or automatic when the auction track is filled. Each player may make one open bid, or pass. The winner takes the tiles in the auction track and swaps his bidding tile with the one in the middle. If all players pass (for example to avoid Plague tiles) then these tiles are taken out of play.

Scoring: At the each epoch VPs, or Ankhs, are awarded for most of a type or a variety of People & Buildings. Penalties are awarded for Plagues (which can be offset by a number of Priests). People and Priest tiles are then taken out of play, Buildings, Pyramids & Plagues are carried over into the next epoch, so can be scored again. At the end of the 3rd epoch, Pyramids are also scored by construction height and tiles used. Ankh collections are now converted to points. Finally a bonus & penalty is also awarded depending on a players bidding tiles.

Gunship: First Strike!

Game description from the publisher:

Gunship: First Strike! is Escape Pod Games' core release in a planned series of tactical space combat games. Players fight to win battles in a futuristic civil war with a variety of ship types. From the agile and speedy Fighters, to lethal Gunships and intimidating Capital Ships, every battle is a well-balanced slugfest that comes right down to the wire. Our new Trinity Mechanic uses boards, cards and dice together in an extremely innovative and easy-to-learn system that lets new players jump right in.

What makes the Gunship series unique are the numerous combinations of ships that the players "build" at the start of each battle. By choosing from an ever-growing selection (through expansions) of available Weapons and Upgrades, players are able to create a custom Gunship that is suited to their particular style of play or battle situation. Some guys are "defensive" minded; they'll choose Heavy Armor, +1 Shield Generators and 4 Blaster Cannons to fend off the enemy Gunship. But another player might prefer to build a "Carrier Killer" complete with wings full of Bombs and an Autoblaster Cannon to shred his way through the enemy Fighter Squadron. While most of the Upgrade cards are geared toward the Gunships (the true star of the show) you can also do some great things to your Fighters and Capital Ships. New kinds of ships will come with every expansion to further add to the possibilities. No two battles are ever the same!

In Gunship: First Strike!, the civil war has just started. Your orders are simple: Command a task force of one Assault Carrier and its Gunship and Fighters on a mission to destroy the enemy's Carrier. Guess what? He has the very same orders! Dogfights will ensue, Torpedoes will strike home and Thruster Bombs are going to pound the Capital Ships mercilessly. If your Gunship takes too much damage for comfort, or if the battle situation changes and you want a different weapon load, land inside your Carrier for a quick "pit stop". Make sure that you defend it with all your might because once your Carrier is gone, the only option left to you is to flee the battlespace and hope to take revenge another day.

As the Gunship universe grows, players will be able to fight bigger and bigger battles. Soon the objectives will include breaking through the enemy picket line to drop troops on the planet below. The Gunships will be called upon to not only assault other ships, but also to go dirtside and give air support to the land battle raging below A free Campaign System is planned where players can keep track of a fleet of ships and territories. Lose your Carrier in today's battle and you might lose a critical Outpost next week. Don't let the enemy find the Shipyard where your damaged Destroyers limped home last time – if he does, they're toast!