Set collection

Darjeeling has two main board areas. The first is an array of squares representing one, two or three half-crates of tea in four different varieties (colors). Each player has a marker which moves about in the array, picking up tea at the rate of one square per turn. There are simple rules governing movement in this array and the players compete for the desirable squares.

Eventually, several times per game, each player has enough squares of a single color to fit them together so that the half-crates all make whole crates. Now he can make a tea shipment. This pays off in victory points in three different ways. First, there is a "demand" award of up to 6 VP depending on how long it has been since anyone shipped this variety. Second, if the shipment was of at least four crates, there is a flat bonus of 1 VP per crate.

Third and most pivotally, there are VP that will be awarded at the beginning of the player's next and subsequent turns. Each tea shipment is represented with cubes of the player's color (not the tea variety color) on a sort of barge. The new shipment of tea is always placed, in the other of the two main board areas, at the top of a column of all the recent shipments (the number of total shipments varying with the number of players in the game), so that as more shipments are made, the old shipments drift farther down the column and eventually out of play. At the beginning of your turn, you look to see where your shipments are in this column, and they pay out VP with better multipliers the higher they still are in the column. This constitutes the driving force of the game, as nobody else wants to see your shipment at the top of the column for several turns in a row. Players thus have an incentive to make a shipment even if they haven't yet assembled a large number of crates.

It's a race to 100 points. A runaway leader can easily take over if the rest of the table is not vigilant, so the best games of Darjeeling are those among vigilant players.

[EN] Strength, balance, bravery and good sense. These are the four key words for the castellers. In this game you will have to use all of them to emulate the brave castellers and to raise the higher towers of the game.

Components: 66 castellers wooden pieces in 4 colours, 2 sets of stickers, 12 pinya base tiles, 2 bonus tokens, 1 bag, a set of rules.
Game has rules in English, Spanish, Catalan and Portuguese.

[ES] Fuerza, equilibrio, valor y sensatez. Estas son las cuatro palabras clave de los castellers. En este juego tendrás que usarlas todas para emular a los valientes castellers y levantar los castells más altos de la partida.

Componentes: 66 castellers de madera de 4 colores, 2 conjuntos de adhesivos, 12 baldosas base de la pinya, 2 fichas de bonus, 1 bolsa, reglas.
El juego dispone de reglas en inglés, castellano, catalán y portugués.

[PT] Força, equilibrio, valor e sensatez. Estas são as quatro palavras chave dos castellers. Neste jogo terás que usá-las todas para simular os valentes castellers e levantar os castells mais altos da partida.

Componentes: 66 castellers de madeira em 4 cores, 2 conjuntos de autocolantes, 12 bases de pinya, 2 fichas de bónus, 1 bolsa, regras.
O jogo vem com regras em inglês, castelhano, catalão e português.

[CA] Força, equilibri, valor i seny. Aquestes són les quatre paraules clau dels castellers. En aquest joc hauràs d'emprar-les totes per tal d'emular als valents castellers i aixecar els castells més alts de la partida.

Components: 66 castellers de fusta de 4 colors, 2 conjunts d'adhesius, 12 rajoles base de la pinya, 2 fitxes de bonus, 1 bossa, regles.
El joc disposa de regles en anglès, castellà, català i portuguès.

In Serge Laget's Cargo Noir – his fourth standalone box game from Days of Wonder – players represent "families" that traffic in smuggled goods in a 1950s noir setting. Each turn, you'll set sail to various ports where cargo is known to get "lost" for the right price – Hong Kong, Bombay, Rotterdam, New York and more – and you'll make an offer for the goods on display. If another family then offers more in that port, you'll need to up your bid or take your money and slink away to look for goods elsewhere. Stand alone in a port, though, and you'll be able to discretely move the goods from the dock to your personal warehouse. Says Laget in a press release accompanying the game announcement, "Everything in Cargo Noir grew from a core auction mechanism that is simple and trivial to explain – you can only bid up, and the last bidder standing gets the goods."

Once you collect goods, you can trade them in to add more ships to your fleet – allowing you to scout for wares in more locations – purchase Victory Spoils, or take other actions. The more goods you collect, the more valuable they can be. The player with the most Spoils at game end wins.

Bohnanza is the first in the Bohnanza family of games and has been published in several different editions.

As card games go, this one is quite revolutionary. Perhaps its oddest feature is that you cannot rearrange your hand, as you need to play the cards in the order that you draw them. The cards are colorful depictions of beans in various descriptive poses, and the object is to make coins by planting fields (sets) of these beans and then harvesting them. To help players match their cards up, the game features extensive trading and deal making.

The original German edition supports 3-5 players.

The newest English version is from Rio Grande Games and it comes with the first edition of the first German expansion included in a slightly oversized box. One difference in the contents, however, is that bean #22's Weinbrandbohne (Brandy Bean) was replaced by the Wachsbohne, or Wax Bean. This edition includes rules for up to seven players, like the Erweiterungs-Set, but also adapts the two-player rules of Al Cabohne in order to allow two people to play Bohnanza.

Note: As mentioned above, the Rio Grande Games edition supports more players than the Amigo release, and also sports two-player rules. You should keep that in mind when perusing the ratings.

Several games use the simultaneous action selection mechanism, but this is perhaps one of the best.

Basari is a game of gem merchants competing in a marketplace, racing, collecting, trading, and predicting what the other merchants will do.

To start the game, players receive 12 gemstones (3 each of 4 colors).
Each turn there will be a movement phase and an action phase:

For movement, everyone simultaneously rolls their die and moves their markers around a track.

They then choose one of three different actions to perform. The actions are:
- to take a variety of gems from a market stall,
- to immediately score from between 4 and 7 points, or
- to roll and move again and also collect points.

The action cards are revealed simultaneously. If only 1 player chose a particular action, they simply perform that action. If 2 players chose the same action, they barter back and forth with gemstones. One player will eventually accept the other's offer of gems, and the other will take the action. If 3 or 4 players all chose the same action card, that action is cancelled. Note that in 4-player games, there will always be a conflict in choice of 3 actions, so much more negotiating goes on.

A new turn begins with everyone rolling their die, moving, then choosing and revealing their action cards. When any merchant piece completes a lap around the board, the round ends and bonus points are awarded based on who has the majority in each gem color and who has completed a lap. After three rounds, the game is over and the highest score wins.

Re-implemented by:

Edel, Stein & Reich