Tile Placement

Description from the publisher:

America in the 19th century: You are a rancher and repeatedly herd your cattle from Texas to Kansas City, where you send them off by train. This earns you money and victory points. Needless to say, each time you arrive in Kansas City, you want to have your most valuable cattle in tow. However, the "Great Western Trail" not only requires that you keep your herd in good shape, but also that you wisely use the various buildings along the trail. Also, it might be a good idea to hire capable staff: cowboys to improve your herd, craftsmen to build your very own buildings, or engineers for the important railroad line.

If you cleverly manage your herd and navigate the opportunities and pitfalls of Great Western Trail, you surely will gain the most victory points and win the game.

Described by Tom Vasel as "an engine-building type game that plays very quickly... in the Splendor category", Arcane Academy is the first collaboration between Eric Lang and Kevin Wilson.

Challenge rival students to become the best in class in Arcane Academy, an innovative board game of tile-linking, wizardry for 2-4 players that pits young spellcasters against one another in a duel for honor and prestige. Forge potent magic items and wield wickedly powerful elemental energies to outthink and outmaneuver your opponents in this elegantly simple and quick-to-learn board game that will appeal to families and experienced players alike!

Arcane Academy is based on the critically acclaimed, all-ages comic series Finding Gossamyr, which is set in a fantasy world in which math is the language of magic. It features game design by industry superstars Eric M. Lang (A Game of Thrones, Star Wars: The Card Game, Quarriors) and Kevin Wilson (Descent, Arkham Horror and Android) in their first-ever design collaboration!

Scrabble game features six interchangeable board games. You can play the classic game, or try a version with "blanks" and "blockers." You can even design your own custom game with the nine mini-boards. Some of the boards have themes like "outer space" or "in the clouds."

Other than the classic game, here are the variations you can try with Scrabble Switch-Up

Blanks and Blockers: If you play a letter that covers a blank or block square you take the appropriate tile. A blank acts as a normal wild card with the added bonus that it doesn't count as one of your seven. A blocker is a tile you can play immediately to prevent someone else from using a specific square.

Bustin' Out: Make words that lead you outside the walled in junkyard. This variation also uses cards - land on a guard dog and draw a card that you can use to mess up another player.

Hyper-Race: A two player game with the object of making words crossword style that lead from the space station at the top to the earth below. Land on a comet and get a free blank tile. Land on a flying saucer and draw a card similar to the guard dogs above.

Free for All: Uses a smaller 9X9 grid with the expanded rule that words can now be made diagonally with a limit of three words made per turn.

Surprise: Allows you to completely change the traditional Scrabble board by mixing up where the premium spots are located plus adds new ones such as wild and quadruple score. You have nine double sided squares that you use to make up the entire board.

In New Haven, set in colonial New England, players must develop the riches of the land and build a thriving settlement. Players place tiles strategically to a shared game board to cut timber, quarry stone, plant fields of wheat, and fill pastures with fat sheep. Players then use these resources to erect buildings on their own village boards, attempting to complete rows and columns for population points. Whoever can build the biggest and most prosperous town will end up with the biggest population and win the game!

New Haven is a tile-laying game with a drafting component. The center board is the land between the player villages from which resources will be gathered. Players select from their two hidden tiles and play on this board to generate available value in some of the four resources. Once per game, each player can get a shipment which delivers a large value of one specific resource type.

This value is then used by the player to play building tokens on his personal village board. However, he can play only building tokens already owned behind his player screen, with restrictions on how buildings must be arranged. He can elect to play a token face down for more flexibility, but this means a lower score if he successfully completes that row or column of buildings.

Once a player is done building, any value he hasn't used is available for his opponents to use to build! Thus, the goal when placing resource tiles is to generate just enough for what is needed, not the most that can possibly be created. Finally, the player drafts new building tokens for use on future turns; plan your creation and consumption of resources to perfectly match your needs, and you'll be rewarded with additional tokens.

The base game lasts ten turns, and the player who attracts the most colonists to his village by completing roads and avenues of buildings wins the game.

New Haven plays well with 2, 3, or 4 players, lasting about 15 minutes per player, with a bit more time needed for learning games. The game includes a side B game board with some twists, as well as rule variants that can make the gameplay either more forgiving or more strategic.

In the 2400s, mankind begins to terraform the planet Mars. Giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment is habitable. In Terraforming Mars, you play one of those corporations and work together in the terraforming process, but compete for getting victory points that are awarded not only for your contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other commendable things.

The players acquire unique project cards (from over two hundred different ones) by buying them to their hand. The projects (cards) can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere. The cards can give you immediate bonuses, as well as increasing your production of different resources. Many cards also have requirements and they become playable when the temperature, oxygen, or ocean coverage increases enough. Buying cards is costly, so there is a balance between buying cards (3 megacredits per card) and actually playing them (which can cost anything between 0 to 41 megacredits, depending on the project). Standard Projects are always available to complement your cards.

Your basic income, as well as your basic score, is based on your Terraform Rating (starting at 20), which increases every time you raise one of the three global parameters. However, your income is complemented with your production, and you also get VPs from many other sources.

Each player keeps track of their production and resources on their player boards, and the game uses six types of resources: MegaCredits, Steel, Titanium, Plants, Energy, and Heat. On the game board, you compete for the best places for your city tiles, ocean tiles, and greenery tiles. You also compete for different Milestones and Awards worth many VPs. Each round is called a generation (guess why) and consists of the following phases:

1) Player order shifts clockwise.
2) Research phase: All players buy cards from four privately drawn.
3) Action phase: Players take turns doing 1-2 actions from these options: Playing a card, claiming a Milestone, funding an Award, using a Standard project, converting plant into greenery tiles (and raising oxygen), converting heat into a temperature raise, and using the action of a card in play. The turn continues around the table until all players pass.
4) Production phase: Players get resources according to their terraform rating and production parameters.

When the three global parameters (temperature, oxygen, ocean) have all reached their goal, the terraforming is complete, and the game ends after that generation. Count your Terraform Rating and other VPs to determine the winning corporation!