Set collection

Targi

Unlike in other cultures, the desert Tuareg men, known as Targi, cover their faces whereas women of the tribe do not wear veils. They run the household and they have the last word at home in the tents. Different families are divided into tribes, headed by the ‘Imascheren’ (or nobles). As leader of a Tuareg tribe, players trade goods from near (such as dates and salt) and far (like pepper), in order to obtain gold and other benefits, and enlarge their family. In each round there new offerings are made. Cards are a means to an end, in order to obtain the popular tribe cards.

Gameplay:

The board consists of a 5x5 grid: a border of 16 squares with printed action symbols and then 9 blank squares in the centre onto which cards are dealt. Meeples are placed one at a time on the spaces at the edges of the board (not including corner squares). You cannot place a meeple on a square the opponent has a meeple on already, nor on a square facing opponent's meeple. Once all meeples are placed, players then execute the actions on the border squares the meeples are on and also take the cards from the centre that match the row and column of the border meeples.

The game is predominantly scored and won by playing tribal cards to your display. These give advantages during the game and victory points at the end. Usually cards are played (or discarded) immediately once drawn. A single card can be kept in hand but then requires a special action to play it (or to discard it to free the hand spot for another card). Each card has a cost in goods to play. Goods are obtained either from border spaces or from goods cards.

The display (for scoring) consists of 3 rows of 4 cards that are filled from left to right and cannot be moved once placed (barring some special cards). There is also a balance to be found between the victory point score on the cards themselves (1-3 VP per tribal card) and in the combinations per row (a full row of 4 identical card types gets you an additional 4 VP, and a full row of 4 distinct card types gets you 2 VP).

The winner at the end of the game is the player with the most victory points.

Samurai

Part of the Knizia tile-laying trilogy, Samurai is set in medieval Japan. Players compete to gain the favor of three factions: samurai, peasants, and priests, which are represented by helmet, rice paddy, and Buddha tokens scattered about the board, which features the islands of Japan. The competition is waged through the use of hexagonal tiles, each of which help curry favor of one of the three factions — or all three at once! Players can make lightning-quick strikes with horseback ronin and ships or approach their conquests more methodically. As each token (helmets, rice paddies, and Buddhas) is surrounded, it is awarded to the player who has gained the most favor with the corresponding group.

Gameplay continues until all the symbols of one type have been removed from the board or four tokens have been removed from play due to a tie for influence.

At the end of the game, players compare captured symbols of each type, competing for majorities in each of the three types. Ties are not uncommon and are broken based on the number of other, "non-majority" symbols each player has collected.

Bring Out Yer Dead

Bring Out Yer Dead is a morbid game of grave family plots.

As the head of your family, you must get the "dying" members of your family into the best plots in the city's newest cemetery. Each day the Grave Keeper brings the cart around the city and you must vie to get your family members in the cart before other families do. But be careful! The Grave Keeper is a lazy guy and any coffins he can't fit in the cart are tossed aside in the river; he'll never bother to bury them at all!

Get your recently departed family members buried in the best plots in the cemetery to gain influence in the city. You may even have to resort to some early morning grave swapping — or you could just rob the graves of all the jewelry you can dig up...it isn't like they're going to need it anyway! Influence is everything! The player with the most influence at the end of the game wins.

Grog Island

Even for the mightiest pirates there comes a time when they must retire from their lives of invading and plunder — but what's coming afterward? Well, on the five peninsulas of Grog Island, they can invest their loot in rock-solid businesses, such as peg-leg shops, carpentries for figureheads, workshops for voodoo dolls, or the infamous "Grog Hole" pub.

The core of Grog Island is its unique auction mechanism, which uses five colored dice. The players use these dice and the pips on them to create and raise bids. While the winner of an auction can claim buildings on certain peninsulas, the players who have passed are also rewarded: Not only do they receive goods like grog bottles or treasure maps but they also visit merchant ships where they can trade these goods for money, parrots or treasure chests. The auction mechanism of Grog Island makes for tactical and interesting gameplay as in certain moments, passing can be almost as rewarding as winning an auction. Finding the right balance between bidding and backing out is the key to winning.

The game ends as soon as one player has claimed a certain number of buildings, then all players score the secret goal cards they received both at the start of and during the game. These cards may give points for majorities on peninsulas as well as for claiming certain types of buildings or collecting certain goods. The player with the most points wins.

Tides of Time

Play as an ancient civilization as they prosper and collapse through time. Build gigantic monuments, raise impenetrable fortifications, and amass vast knowledge as the ages pass. The greatest civilizations will leave their mark long after their collapse. From times long forgotten to times recently lost, civilizations will rise and fall as the tide of time carries them.

Tides of Time is a drafting game for two players. Each game consists of three rounds in which players draft cards from their hands to build their kingdom. Each card is one of five suits and also has a scoring objective. After all cards have been drafted for the round, players total their points based on the suits of cards they collected and the scoring objectives on each card, then they record their score. Each round, the players each select one card to leave in their kingdom as a "relic of the past" to help them in later rounds. After three rounds, the player with the the most prosperous kingdom wins.