Strategy

As aurora borealis fills the night sky with fantastical light, and the eyes of those who came before look upon you, it has fallen on you to lead your village to power and prosperity. Now is the time to grow in numbers and strength, to build, to hunt, to look to the spirits of the white wilderness, and to prove yourself the greatest leader of the Snow Folk.

Inuit: The Snow Folk is a card-based strategy game of drafting and tableau building for 2-4 players.

On your turn:
1. Draw cards from the common deck and place them face up on the table.
2. Choose one type of card to draft into your village.
3. The number of cards you draft is based on the number of Inuit of a given occupation:
- Elders expand your village.
- Shamans call upon powerful Spirits and perform mysterious Rites.
- Warriors bring you the weapons of those they conquer.
- Hunters provide precious game: seals, orcas, and polar bears.
- Scouts allow you to choose from more cards each turn.

Inuit: The Snow Folk is a creative reimplementation of Natives, a 2017 release, updated with new lavish art and adding 2 new modular expansions: The Spirit of the Great White and Rising Sun.

Architects of the West Kingdom is set at the end of the Carolingian Empire, circa 850 AD. As royal architects, players compete to impress their King and maintain their noble status by constructing various landmarks throughout his newly appointed domain. Players need to collect raw materials, hire apprentices, and keep a watchful eye on their workforce. These are treacherous times, and rival architects will stop at nothing to slow your progress. Will you remain virtuous, or be found in the company of thieves and black marketeers?

The aim of Architects of the West Kingdom is to be the player with the most victory points (VP) at game's end. Points are gained by constructing various buildings and advancing work on the Archbishop's cathedral. Throughout the game, players need to make a lot of moral decisions. However, only at game's end will their virtue be judged. A few underhanded deals here and there might not seem like much, but fall too far and you will be punished. The game ends once a set number of constructions have been completed.

—description from the publisher

War Chest is an all-new bag-building war game! At the start of the game, raise your banner call (drafting) several various units into your army, which you then use to capture key points on the board. To succeed in War Chest, you must successfully manage not only your armies on the battlefield, but those that are waiting to be deployed.

Each round you draw three unit coins from your bag, then take turns using them to perform actions. Each coin shows a military unit on one side and can be used for one of several actions. The game ends when one player — or one team in the case of a four-player game — has placed all of their control markers. That player or team wins!

—description from the publisher

Kodama Duo is a two-player standalone version of Kodama: The Tree Spirits and a 6th player expansion. You will grow a tree by placing branch cards in clever arrangements, making a happy home for your Kodama!

Kodama Duo is a card placement game for 2 players that plays in 30 minutes. Players will turn over one Decree card per season to set the unique conditions. During the Growing Phase, players take turns revealing branch cards and splitting them into two piles until each player has added four branch cards to their tree. In the Kodama phase, players will each choose one of their Kodama to score and live in their tree. The game last 3 seasons (12 turns) and whoever cares for their Kodama best will be remembered for generations!

There are a couple of cool twists on the original Kodama rules for Duo.

First, instead of a display of branch cards to choose, each turn one player (the splitter) will reveal three branch cards from the deck. They will then split those cards into two piles. The other player (the chooser) will select one of the branch piles. The other pile will go to the splitter. Then, both players will add one of the branch cards they received to their tree. The player who received two branch cards will discard the extra card.

Second, Duo introduces spirit tokens, which are tokens with the six features from Kodama. After the player that received two branch cards discards one, the other player receives a spirit token from the discarded branch card. They pick one of the features from that card and take the corresponding spirit token. That player then places that token over one of the icons on their tree. This allows interesting scoring interactions as feature chains can be shortened or lengthened to increase the scoring potential for future branch placements.

Additionally, most of the new Kodama cards and Decree cards interact with the spirit tokens and splitter/chooser mechanic. All of these changes provide an interesting twist on the core mechanics you already love about Kodama.

Duo also introduces the ability to play Kodama: the Tree Spirits with six players. With this update, we've included new rules for branch selection. Each player will secretly choose from four branch cards simultaneously in a draft format. Players will also be allowed to place and score their branch cards simultaneously. This will shorten the downtime that could have been added by including more players.

A minute to learn. A century to master.

A simple game with endless levels of strategy for 2-4 players. The goal is to win each round by collecting more points than your opponents. The first player to win three rounds wins the game.