Territory Building

The Rivals for Catan: Age of Darkness, a 90-card expansion for The Rivals for Catan, includes three separate theme sets that can be used with the base game:

• The Era of Intrigue – You will witness the confrontation of followers of new and old beliefs and take part to determine Catan's spiritual balance. "Religious Dispute" causes both players to lose cards; Churches and Temples minimize losses; Temple cards strengthen your access to your own draw stacks. Church cards lure opposing heroes and earn gold. With a Church and a Temple, you may build the Great Thing stead and end the conflict.

• The Era of Merchant Princes – Using the "Commercial Harbor" and the "Merchant's Residences", decisive buildings in the struggle for trade advantage, players try to control Catan's commerce. "Maritime Trade Monopolies" and the "Master Merchants" enhance trade ships. "The Shipbuilder" reduces the building costs of ships. Dominate trade using clever card combinations!

• The Era of Barbarians – Use Castles, Border Fortresses, the Strategist, the Caravel, and new heroes to fend off both the barbarian attacks and your rival's efforts to dominate your holdings.

The Rivals for Catan is a reimplementation of Catan Card Game.

The Rivals for Catan was released in German in September of 2010, on the 15th anniversary of the original card game. An English edition was released in the fourth quarter of 2010. The designer of the game, Klaus Teuber, has stated that he completely reworked many of the original card game's mechanics to make it easier for newcomers to play the game.

Each player portrays a prince for Catan, developing their individual provinces and competing to build a more successful province than the other. The basic mode of play is similar to the original Catan Card Game, where players expand their provinces by building settlements connected by roads. Players may also build expansions in their settlements that aid them in various ways, or upgrade their settlements to cities to allow more expansions to be built. They build these additions by using resources that they accumulate each turn, which are determined by the roll of a die. Cards are drawn on each turn to replenish the players' hands. The players may also use action cards that directly affect either their own province or their opponent's province.

The Rivals for Catan features a reduced pool of cards, without the more aggressive style of action cards found in the original Catan Card Game. Therefore, all action cards will be able to be used from the beginning of the game unlike in the original card game.

Ways to Play:
The Introductory Game focuses on the basics of the card game, featuring gameplay that is more appropriate for newcomers. This game is played to 7 victory points and includes 36 Expansion Cards in four stacks. This play style should take beginner players 25 to 30 minutes to play.

Three Theme Games add more rules, expansions, and aggressive cards. These Theme Games may be played individually or combined to play a variant called "The Duel of the Princes." Each Theme Game adds 24 Expansion and Event Cards to the cards from the Introductory Game, which are placed in two stacks separately from the cards from the Introductory Game. When playing a Theme Game, playtime should be around 45 to 60 minutes.

As with the original Catan Card Game, players can also play the Tournament Game, in which each player chooses specific cards to build their deck ahead of time from which they draw from during the game.

Theme:
The theme of The Rivals for Catan is no longer restricted only to the feudal era of the Middle Ages like the original Catan Card Game. The Introductory Game portrays the very early years of the world of Catan, while each Theme Game takes place in progressively later eras. These eras are known as "The Era of Gold," "The Era of Turmoil," and "The Era of Progress."

Belongs to the Catan Series.

Trains returns with all-new cards and strategies for you to build the best rail system in Japan. Trains: Rising Sun not only features all new cards, it includes three entirely new boards. Two of the boards are designed specifically for two-player games, while the Nagoya map is for 2 to 4 players. This standalone game can mix easily with the original Trains game for even greater replay possibilities!

Trains: Rising Sun also introduces Route Bonus Cards, allowing you to score additional points for being the first to connect specific stations. Route Bonus Cards are included for the original Trains game as well!

Integrates with Trains

You are a tiny kingdom with big ambition. You want to expand your population throughout the realms, learn powerful magic, build grand towers, and have your neighbors quiver at the mention of your name. The conflict? All of the other kingdoms want the same thing and there's not enough room for everyone to succeed...

In Tiny Epic Kingdoms, a 4x fantasy game in a pocket-size package, each player starts with a unique faction (which has a unique technology tree) and a small territory. Throughout the game, players collect resources, explore other territories, battle each other, research magic, and work to build a great tower to protect their realm.

In Rise!, players race to be the first to construct three towers on the growing game board, moving workers to and fro to keep the towers rising and the opponent befuddled.

To set up, place 12 hexagonal tiles in a dogbone shape as specified in the rulebook, then place one token for each player on their starting locations. On a turn, a player takes two actions (possibly the same action twice) from this list of options:

Place a land tile adjacent to any existing tile.
Place a worker adjacent to any of your workers already on the game board.
Move one of your workers to an adjacent empty space.
Jump an opponent's worker and land on an empty space, removing that worker from play.
Remove two of your workers from the board to remove an opponent's worker from any space.
Remove two of your workers from the board to place one of your workers in any empty space.
Remove one of your tower layers from the board.

If at any time during play you have a circle of six of your workers surrounding an empty space, place the first layer of one of your towers in that space. Your ring of workers must remain in place for two additional turns for the remaining two layers to be added to the tower; if your ring is disrupted, you can complete it later to continue the tower-building. If you completely surround an opponent's tower, you can remove the top level of that tower from the board.

In addition to building three complete towers, a player can also win by eliminating all of the opponent's workers from the game board.