Territory Building

Crafters, builders and carriers — your help is needed to dispel the mists of Nebula! The people of the valley will reward you handsomely if you harvest and exploit our many resources, open paths through the mists, and help our settlers build new structures. Cooperate temporarily with other builders in order to create paths and share goods, but do not forget your own objectives. Will you have a statue erected in your honor on the Nebula City plaza?

A game of Via Nebula starts with a board showing a hexagonal grid, some production sites with a few available resources on them (wood, stone, wheat, and pigs), building sites in various areas scattered over the whole board, and a lot of mist.

Turn after turn, players have two actions at their disposal from these options: They may clear the mist of a hex to create new paths of transportation, open new production sites, open a building site in a city, carry resources from any production site to their own building sites, and, of course, achieve a construction. Resources and paths through the mist may be used by all the players. This initially induces a kind of cooperation, but eventually other players will take advantage of your actions!

To achieve a construction, you fulfill a contract on one of your cards. You start the game with two contracts, and four more contracts are available for all players to see and use on a first come, first served basis — and that's where the cooperation abruptly stops. Additionally, most contracts have special powers that are triggered on completion.

The game ends when a player finishes a fifth building. Opponents each take two final actions, then players score based on the number of cleared hexes and opened production sites and the point value of their contracts, with a bonus for the player who ended the game.

String Railway is a unique train game that consists of colored strings, tokens, station tiles, and a board for scoring. To set up, first place the string tied in a big circle on the table to establish the field area for the game. Next, place a small circle of string to represent mountains and a line of string to represent a river. Finally, place the main stations for each player equal distances apart from one another.

On a turn, you draw and place a station tile, then try to place a railroad string between your stations in an effort to connect them in order to form your own train network. Connected stations earn victory points (VPs).

After five turns, the game ends and the player with the most VPs wins.

Lots of animals live on the African plains. Elephants, lions, zebras, hippos, giraffes — we aren't sure exactly how they live, so animal researchers are constantly studying them in order to find out more.

In String Safari (a.k.a. String Savanna), the players are zoologists, trying to get as much information as possible about the animals scattered across the savanna to complete research goals. Before you can study the animals, though, you need to have them under control, so you'll need to enclose them in your study range — that is, your string — which earns you a point at the same time. The animals all have different attributes, and the topography also influences your ability to study the animals. In the end, whoever completes the most research on the correct animals wins.

Special rules are included so that even young children can play.

Isle of Skye is one of the most beautiful places in the world, with soft sand beaches, gently sloping hills, and impressive mountains. The landscape of Isle of Skye is breathtaking and fascinates everyone.

In the tile-laying game Isle of Skye: From Chieftain to King, 2-5 players are chieftains of famous clans and want to build their kingdoms to score as many points as possible — but in each game only four of the sixteen scoring tiles will be scored.

Thanks to the scoring tiles, each game is different and leads to different tactics and strategies, but having enough money is useful no matter what else is going on. Managing that money can be tricky, though. Each turn, each player places two area tiles in front of them and sets the selling price for the tiles. Setting a high price is great, but only so long as someone actually pays the price because if no one opts to buy, then the seller must buy the tiles at the price they previously requested.

In the end, the player with the best kingdom — and not the richest player — becomes the sovereign of the island.

This light strategy game is divided into two Epochs, ancient and modern. At the start, the board consists of only five areas (the Mediterranean, Africa, Middle East, India and China), after all areas have been evaluated, four more territories become accessible (Russia, Europe, Southeast Asia, America).

Players choose historical "Heroes" such as Julius Cesar, Nebuchadnezzar, Lao-Tse, Shakespeare or Mozart and use their special abilities; the first is to grow the population in one or more of the nine areas of the map (depending on the hero, only certain areas of the map can be used). The second action is to randomly draw cultural advancement tokens and place them on the map. The third action allows the players to attack other players' pieces, and the fourth action is taking money.

With money, "wonders of the world", such as the Hanging Gardens, the Great Wall etc., can be purchased, and migrations of peoples are possible.

Victory points are awarded for building civilization tokens; after three (or four, depending on the territory) placements, the player with the most pieces gets additional points, the player with second most armies half of that, while the third player only gets victory points equal to the lowest token.