Puzzle

Moles have traveled from all over to compete in the annual Mountain Maker tournament. In this light strategy game, competitors show their skill based on how high they can pile their Molehills, and by how many Mountains they control. The Mole that can build and control the most Mountains out of Molehills over 6 rounds will be declared the "Top Tunneler" and win the game. Features a two-level game board and full-color acrylic standees for each Mole!

Mountains Out Of Molehills is played over six rounds, and each round has four phases. In Phase 1 players take turns drafting action cards from a face up market to form a hand of 4 cards each. These actions will move Moles underground while adding Molehill pieces to the bottom of the Mountains above them.

In Phase 2, each player simultaneously determines the order they plan to resolve their action cards, they place these cards face down in a stack from first action, to last. Once the order is set it cannot be changed! Carefully planning will help ensure you take control of the most valuable Molehills, but be careful as your opponents may block your path, throw a Rock in your way, or even cause your best Mountains to Topple over, spilling the pieces onto other Mountains!

In Phase 3 players take turns revealing the top card from their stack and resolving its action. In Phase 4 players score the round. Each player controls the Mountains that have their color Molehill on the bottom, and they earn 1 point for each piece in the Mountains they control.

After scoring, players draft the turn order for the next round, starting with the player who has the most pieces on TOP of each Mountain. The player who goes first gets first choice when drafting cards, but the player who acts last gets the final movement of the round.

After six rounds players total up all their points from the 6 rounds and the player with the most points is dubbed the Top Tunneler and wins the game!

Renowned mediums are competing to figure out a secret object and prove they can connect with the "World Beyond". The first team to figure out the secret object wins!

To set up Phantom Ink, divide players so that the Sun team and the Moon team each have one Spirit and up to three Mediums. The mediums on a team share a hand of seven question cards, and the spirits begin the game by choosing one of the five objects on a card as the secret object. On a turn, the mediums pass two question cards to their spirit, with sample questions like "What color is it most commonly?", "What fictional character has it or uses it?", and "If it were a musical instrument, what would it be?"

The spirit discards one question card face up, then returns the question card it's going to answer to their mediums, then slowly writes the answer one letter at a time for all to see. As soon as the mediums think they know what this clue word is, they yell "Silencio", and the spirit stops writing. The other team of mediums might see only the letter "Y", but if you know the question is "What color is it?", then you know the clue must be "yellow". To end your turn, draw two new question cards.

On a turn, instead of handing over question cards, you can attempt to guess the answer — and to do so you write like the spirits, one letter at a time. If you write an incorrect letter, the spirits will stop you, marking out your error, with your partial guess giving the other team more information. If you guess the entire word correctly, you win!

Paris is a two-player board game by José Antonio Abascal infused with Parisian aesthetics by the boardgame’s artist Oriol Hernández. The game is set in late 19th century Paris during the 1889 “Exposition Universelle,” or world’s fair, when public electricity was a hot topic. Electricity spread throughout the city, creating today’s beautiful nocturnal Parisian streets and coining Paris’s nickname “La Cité de la Lumiére”, the city of lights.

The most well-lit buildings are admired more highly by passers-by. In the first phase, players can either place tiles or grow their reserve of buildings. The cobblestone tiles are divided into 4 random spaces (their color, their opponents’ color, a streetlight or a mixed-color space where either player can build).

Then, in the second phase, players build on top of their color or the mixed spaces, in effort to position their buildings as close to as many streetlights as possible. More streetlights solicit more adoration and points. The player with the best lit buildings steals the hearts of Parisian pedestrians and wins the game.

—description from the publisher

Part puzzle, part game. Play as either Land or Sea (or the Cartographer in a 3 player game). Each player plays with 2 double-sided hex tiles containing a mix of land and sea shapes. They take turns placing a tile each to make a map together. Land places tiles trying to complete land areas, and Sea places tiles trying to complete sea areas. Completed areas score a point per tile; land areas for Land, sea areas for Sea. Some tiles score bonus points for whoever completes the area they are in. So players may decide to strategically complete rival’s areas to gain their bonus points. Other tiles allow players to play their second tile, or steal a player’s tile - but not their last one!

Using 2 double-sided tiles (one side always revealed and the other always hidden until played) means there is partial information to plan around, and some surprises too. Players replenish back up to 2 tiles from a choice of 2 face-up tile stacks.

The strategy of the game involves careful tile placement to score from as many land or sea areas as possible, while minimising your rivals’ opportunities to score from the tiles you play. Watch your rivals’ possible plays, and control tempo strategically with Play Again and Steal tiles. Look out for opportunities to score valuable bonus points in your and your rivals’ areas. Carefully select tiles as you replenish your hand to prepare for your next turn.

The game ends once the last tile is placed. The player or team with the most points wins.

The basic Land vs Sea game is simple enough for light / family gamers. After you have played the basic game, you can unlock more scoring options on the tiles to add surprising depth:
1. Mountain & Coral scoring - score for cumulative chains of connected Mountain (Land) / Coral (Sea) sections.
2. Caravan & Ship scoring - score for Caravans & Ships added to Trade Routes on the map, and score each Trade Route you have majority in (more Caravans scores the Trade Route for Land, more Ships for Sea) at the end of the game.
3. Waypoints - bonus points you can place on the map to entice cooperation, or score for yourself.

2, 3 & 4 player modes:
You can play head to head with 2 players, or with 4 players in teams using the basic rules and any of the additional scoring options. 4 player games use Waypoints to prevent alpha players directly instructing their partner.

The challenging 3 player mode uses all of the additional scoring options in a more asymmetric game. The Cartographer scores by connecting Mountain and Coral sections, and all players compete for bonus points and Trade Route scoring.

-description from publisher

Cascadia is a puzzly tile-laying and token-drafting game featuring the habitats and wildlife of the Pacific Northwest.

In the game, you take turns building out your own terrain area and populating it with wildlife. You start with three hexagonal habitat tiles (with five types of habitat in the game), and on a turn you choose a new habitat tile that's paired with a wildlife token, then place that tile next to your other ones and place the wildlife token on an appropriate habitat. (Each tile depicts 1-3 types of wildlife from the five types in the game, and you can place at most one tile on a habitat.) Four tiles are on display, with each tile being paired at random with a wildlife token, so you must make the best of what's available — unless you have a nature token to spend so that you can pick your choice of each item.

Ideally you can place habitat tiles to create matching terrain that reduces fragmentation and creates wildlife corridors, mostly because you score for the largest area of each type of habitat at game's end, with a bonus if your group is larger than each other player's. At the same time, you want to place wildlife tokens so that you can maximize the number of points scored by them, with the wildlife goals being determined at random by one of the three scoring cards for each type of wildlife. Maybe hawks want to be separate from other hawks, while foxes want lots of different animals surrounding them and bears want to be in pairs. Can you make it happen?