Set collection

Origin

Starting from the heart of Africa, players in Origin will determine the course of mankind's expansion on our planet, with the tribes gradually growing more diversified over time while still maintaining links to their ancestors and to all inhabitants of Earth.

The game tokens in Origin come in three colors, three heights, and three thicknesses, and at the start of the game one of the smallest, skinniest pieces is placed in the center of Africa. In addition, you place three technology tiles at random on the tan, orange and violet sections of the tech chart and six random tiles on the brown section; the tech tiles show 1-5 arrows. You also shuffle tan, orange and violet decks of cards and place them in the appropriate places. Tan cards provide an one-shot effect, orange cards give you a permanent power, and violet cards present you with an objective you must meet; if you do so, you can play the objective card on your turn, and immediately draw another. You can play at most one card of each color each turn.

On a turn, a player takes one of three actions:

Place a new piece on a region of the game board, with this piece sharing two of the three characteristics of a piece in a neighboring region; the new piece cannot be shorter than the original piece. Mark this piece with a token of your player color.
Move one of your pieces on the board to an empty region, with short pieces moving only one space, medium height pieces moving up to two spaces, and tall pieces up to three.
Take over a region controlled by an opponent by moving one of your pieces into this region and relocating the opponent's piece to the region your piece left. You can do this only if the attacking piece is thicker than the opponent's piece.

When you place a new piece on the board or move an existing piece, you're rewarded based on the color of the space you occupy. If you place in or move into a tan, orange or violet region, either you take a tile and the top card of this color or you draw three cards of this color and keep one of them. For a brown region, you either draw two tiles from the brown section of the tech board or draw one tile from anywhere. The technology tiles must be acquired from low to high – so you can't acquire a 4 unless you have a 3 – but you can have multiple tech stacks. You must meet a certain technology threshold in order to play the orange cards and acquire their special power.

In addition, you can score points during the game by occupying a grassland on a continent or the two regions on opposite sides of a waterway strait.

Players take turns until either all of the pieces are on the game board or all the tiles have been acquired or all the cards of one color have been drawn. Once this happens, players tally their points for objectives, grasslands, straits, tech tiles, and cards still in hand to see who wins!

Shadows over Camelot

Shadows over Camelot is a cooperative/semi-cooperative hand-management and deduction-based board game for 3–7 players.

Each player represents a knight of the Round Table and they must collaborate to overcome a number of quests, ranging from defeating the Black Knight to the search for the Holy Grail. Completed quests place white swords on the Round Table; failed quests add black swords and/or siege engines around Camelot. The knights are trying to build a majority of white swords on the Table before Camelot falls.

On each knight's turn, the knight takes a "heroic action", such as moving to a new quest, building his hand, or playing cards to advance the forces of good. However, he must also choose one of three evil actions, each of which will bring Camelot closer to defeat.

Moreover, one of the knights may be a traitor, pretending to be a loyal member of the party but secretly hindering his fellow knights in subtle ways, biding his time, waiting to strike at the worst possible moment...

But enough words... don your cloak, climb astride your warhorse, and gallop into the Shadows to join us in Camelot!

Stone Age

The "Stone Age" times were hard indeed. In their roles as hunters, collectors, farmers, and tool makers, our ancestors worked with their legs and backs straining against wooden plows in the stony earth. Of course, progress did not stop with the wooden plow. People always searched for better tools and more productive plants to make their work more effective.

In Stone Age, the players live in this time, just as our ancestors did. They collect wood, break stone and wash their gold from the river. They trade freely, expand their village and so achieve new levels of civilization. With a balance of luck and planning, the players compete for food in this pre-historic time.

Players use up to ten tribe members each in three phases. In the first phase, players place their men in regions of the board that they think will benefit them, including the hunt, the trading center, or the quarry. In the second phase, the starting player activates each of his staffed areas in whatever sequence he chooses, followed in turn by the other players. In the third phase, players must have enough food available to feed their populations, or they face losing resources or points.

Cootie

Players race to construct a plastic bug, rolling a die to see which piece they get to add.

The Hennepin History Museum states that the first Cootie game was designed by William H. Schaper in 1949. However, Schaper's game was not the first based upon the insect known as the "cootie". The creature was the subject of several tabletop games, mostly pencil and paper games, in the decades of the twentieth century following World War I.

In 1927, the J. H. Warder Company of Chicago released Tu-Tee, and the Charles Bowlby Company released Cootie; though based on a "build a bug" concept similar to Schaper's, both were paper and pencil games.
Schaper's game was the first to employ a fully three dimensional, free-standing plastic cootie.

Known in Australia as Creepy Critters and in the UK as Beetle Drive.

Ticket to Ride: The Card Game

A New Train Adventure Begins!

The Ticket to Ride Card Game delivers all of the excitement, fun, and nail-biting tension of the original Ticket to Ride board game, but with several unique game-play twists in a new stand-alone, card game format.

Players collect sets of illustrated Train cards, which are then used to complete Destination Tickets - routes between two cities depicted on each ticket. But before their Train cards can be used, players must face the risk of "train robbing," where another player may force them to lose their hard-earned cards.

Contains 96 illustrated train car cards, 46 destination tickets, 6 big city prize cards, and a rulebook.

Part of the Ticket to Ride series.

To begin the game, each player is dealt train car cards and destination ticket cards. All these cards are kept secret from the other players until played or scored. Each player may keep all his ticket cards, just one or any number in between. A player's turn has two parts: first the player moves face up train car cards from his Railyard to his face down, On-the-Track stack; second the player may perform one of the following actions: 1) draw more train car cards, 2) place train car cards in his Railyard, or 3) draw destination tickets. Like the original Ticket to Ride board game, when a player chooses to draw train car cards, he may choose from the five face up cards or draw from the top of the face down deck. When placing cards in the Railyard, a player may place two or more cards of the same color including locomotives which are wild, or three cards, each of a different color. Also when placing cards in the Railyard, a player may not play cards of the same color as those currently present in his Railyard nor of the same color as those present in any opponent's Railyard unless he plays more of that color than are present in the opponent's Railyard. If the player plays more, then the opponent must discard his cards of that color. This is called "Train robbing." When drawing destination tickets, a player draws four and may keep any number of them including none.

When the train car card deck is exhausted in a two or three player game, each player gets one more turn and the game ends. In a four player game, completed tickets are scored and discarded train car cards are reshuffled into a new draw deck. When that deck is exhausted, each player gets one more turn and the game ends. At the end of the game all tickets not previously scored are scored. The point values of completed tickets are added to a players score while those of tickets not completed are subtracted. To complete tickets, players match train car cards in their On-the-Track stack by color and quantity with their tickets. Each big city bonus is awarded to the player with the most completed tickets having that city. These bonus points are added to the player's score. The player scoring the most total points wins.