Theme: Mining

Kutná Hora: The City of Silver

Join other ambitious guild leaders in mining and developing the famous City of Silver during its period of rapid economic growth and expansion in the 14th century — from the first discovery of silver near the Cistercian monastery to the construction of Kutná Hora, which quickly became one of the most important cities in central Europe.

Kutná Hora: The City of Silver is a historical city-building Eurogame for 2-4 players that features a real-life supply and demand experience in which every action you take has an impact on the game's dynamic economic systems.

In each round, players take turns selecting actions from a hand of double-sided cards to engage strategic plans like mining, purchasing plots of land on which to build, gaining permits, raising buildings for their affiliated guilds, gaining profit from their production, and of course working towards the construction of Saint Barbara's Cathedral.

The asymmetrical nature of each player's available guilds makes for highly interactive rounds in which each decision impacts the economy and other players in interesting ways as they expand their mines and build infrastructure across a shared board.

Mine ore and smelt it into a fortune of silver for expanding this beautiful historic city, but take care to balance your personal goal advancement with the need to further the city's growth. Everything is connected, and sometimes the path to personal victory relies on the prosperity of the many.

—description from publisher

Stardew Valley: The Board Game

A cooperative board game of farming and friendship based on the Stardew Valley video game by Eric Barone. Work together with your fellow farmers to save the Valley from the nefarious JojaMart Corporation! To do this, you'll need to farm, fish, friend and find all kinds of different resources to fulfill your Grandpa's Goals and restore the Community Center. Collect all kinds of items, raise animals, and explore the Mine. Gain powerful upgrades and skills and as the seasons pass see if you're able to protect the magic of Stardew Valley!

The goal of the game is to complete Grandpa's Goals and restore the Community Center, which requires you to gather different types of resources represented by tiles. You have a fixed amount of turns to accomplish this. This is driven by the Season Deck of 20 cards, one of which is drawn each turn to trigger certain events. Cooperatively the players decide each turn where they will focus their individual actions and place their pawn in that part of the Valley. Using their actions, they visit specific locations, trying to gather resources to complete their collective goals. Actions include things like: watering crops, trying to catch fish, rolling dice to explore the mines, and many more. When the Season Deck is exhausted, the game ends.

Caverna: Cave vs Cave – The Big Box

In the two-player game Caverna: Cave vs. Cave, each player starts the game with only two dwarves and a small excavation in the side of a mountain. Over the course of eight rounds, they'll double their workforce, open up new living space in the mountain, construct new buildings and rooms in which to live, and dig for precious metals.

In more detail, each player starts the game with an individual player board that's covered with a random assortment of face-down building/room tiles and only one space. Some tiles are face up and available for purchase at the start of play. Four action tiles lie face up as well. At the start of each of the eight rounds, one new action tile is revealed, then players alternate taking actions, with the number of actions increasing from two up to four over the course of the game. As players excavate their mountainous player board, new building and room tiles are added to the pool; some rooms can be used immediately when acquired, whereas others require the use of an action tile.

After eight rounds, players tally their points for buildings constructed and gold collected to see who wins.

In Caverna: Cave vs Cave – Era II, players start exploring a side cave abundant in ore. Donkeys help you move the ore to the surface so that you can cast iron and forge weapons out of it — to protect your cave from anyone who wishes it harm, of course. In the meantime, your tribe has grown four primates capable of work. Keep on collecting grains, fibers, and building resources to increase your wealth. Shortly you will be engaging in agriculture...

Caverna: Cave vs Cave – The Big Box contains all of the material in the base game and first expansion in a single package.

Tinners' Trail

In Tinners' Trail, set in 19th century Cornwall, you represent a mining conglomerate at the height of the tin and copper mining industry. You must buy plots of land across Cornwall in auctions and survey them for tin and copper, always managing your "work points" and money effectively.

Once you have a mine in place, it's time to extract the ore and (ideally) make a profit, but the deeper your mine goes, the more expensive the process gets. To reduce the cost of mining, you can place developments, such as ports, train stations, and adits (drainage tunnels), but there's only so many improvements to go around. Once you have made your money — trying to time the market to sell when prices are high — you can invest it in industries outside of Cornwall, which gains you victory points. The earlier you invest, the better the return. Can you outplay the competition and make the most money, or will you be left without two shillings to rub together?

This edition of Tinners' Trail differs from the original 2008 version in several ways. The player count, for example, is now 1-5 instead of 3-4, and the resources on the board are now set up via tiles instead of die rolls to maintain variability while reducing the randomness. Dual-use cards are now an important part of the game, giving you information before an auction or an extra boost after an auction.

With lead development and expansion designs by David Digby