Set collection

Splendor is a fast-paced and addictive game of chip-collecting and card development. Players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, means of transportation, shops — all in order to acquire the most prestige points. If you're wealthy enough, you might even receive a visit from a noble at some point, which of course will further increase your prestige.

On your turn, you may (1) collect chips (gems), or (2) buy and build a card, or (3) reserve one card. If you collect chips, you take either three different kinds of chips or two chips of the same kind. If you buy a card, you pay its price in chips and add it to your playing area. To reserve a card — in order to make sure you get it, or, why not, your opponents don't get it — you place it in front of you face down for later building; this costs you a round, but you also get gold in the form of a joker chip, which you can use as any gem.

All of the cards you buy increase your wealth as they give you a permanent gem bonus for later buys; some of the cards also give you prestige points. In order to win the game, you must reach 15 prestige points before your opponents do.

In Pandemic, several virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously all over the world! The players are disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.

The game board depicts several major population centers on Earth. On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. A deck of cards provides the players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout this deck are Epidemic! cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases' activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the "normal" spread of the infections.

Taking a unique role within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists' strengths in order to conquer the diseases. For example, the Operations Expert can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases and which allow for greater mobility between cities; the Scientist needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five—but the diseases are spreading quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!

The 2013 edition of Pandemic includes two new characters—the Contingency Planner and the Quarantine Specialist—not available in earlier editions of the game.

Merkator is about the rise of Hamburg after the Thirty Years' War.

You visit cities to collect goods or fulfill orders. The collected goods are added to the cities when a player visits a neighboring city. Fulfilling an order provides you with another better, but more complex order additional to the fulfilled order which you keep and can fulfill again, although the number of orders you can own is limited. Each order itself is worth a certain amount of points at the end of the game. Also you can exchange these points for special cards which provide additional goods in certain cities or more victory points if you fulfill certain conditions at game end.

Depending on the city you want to enter you either receive a resource called "time" or you have to spend it. By paying a certain time-fee you are allowed to accompany another player on his trip to a town to fulfill your orders in this town (but not to collect goods). The game ends when a player receives the order with the highest value by fulfilling the order one level below.

In Master Builder, the players are builders in a small town (represented by 3D cardboard buildings). They try to acquire building contracts, which they then attempt to complete.

The contracts are gained by bidding on them. After that, the buildings must be constructed using workers. Each worker has his own specialty, and you'll need several different workers to complete a building.
Initially, players hire these workers to complete the buildings. Later, these workers can leave them, sometimes because they have been lured away by other players.

Master Builder is #4 in the Valley Games Modern Line.

From the back of the Box:
The Junkyard has been turned into a racing track, by ‘The Race-Kart Crew’, a team of 8 speedster enthusiasts. They have built their own racing karts and invented some crazy gadgets and traps made from junk found in the Junkyard. You take on the role of one of the crew to create the fastest, meanest racing kart in the Junkyard. Use all your cunning to outwit your opponents, roll bombs, release missiles, lay down dastardly traps whilst speeding through mud and grass and jumping over collapsed bridges. Be the first to complete 5 laps of this mad and hazardous Junkyard to win the race. Sounds dangerous? Sounds crazy? Sounds like a challenge!