Tile Placement

Ancient Balinese legend describes a host of powerful spirits who help poor rice farmers achieve success. These farmers have long used a sophisticated irrigation system to organize rice cultivation by integrating religious devotion and social responsibility with traditional farming methods. Even modern farmers seek to placate the spirit world in their quest to produce an abundant harvest.

In Spirits of the Rice Paddy, players must compete with fellow rice farmers to construct and tend rice paddies. Oxen can build walls and remove large rocks. Ducks can be employed to eat harmful pests and fertilize the fledgling crops. Weeds must be kept at bay. Most importantly, water must be conserved and released with the greatest of care. With a little luck, all that back-breaking labor will pay off in the end. The good news is that the spirits are eager to assist, granting many special abilities, blessings, and magic. The farmer who produces the most rice over seven rounds wins the game.

Game description from the publisher:

You know there is money in chocolate, but it doesn't just grow on trees. You need to control the links in the production chain to get your cut of the cash, to make sure the cocao flows through your businesses instead of your competitors'.

Sometimes you need to help your customers and suppliers to help yourself. If you are wily, you can figure out a way for your competitors to do the work for you. Create monopolies, cut off the supply chain, disrupt other players' finely honed plans — do whatever it takes to become King Chocolate.

The fruit of the cacao tree goes through six steps to become chocolate. You can control only a few of these steps, so you must work with your fellow chocolate makers to keep the chocolate flowing through the production chain. It sounds cooperative and friendly — but did we mention that the chocolate maker with the most money wins? Things always get complicated when money is involved.

To ensure your portion of the production process is used the most so that it earns you cash, occasionally you'll help your customers and suppliers. At the same time, you will attempt to crush your competitors, force others to help you, and manipulate the supply chain.

You'll do whatever it takes to become the king of chocolate.

The time has come for the tribe to leave its shelter and head for new lands. As the chief of your clan, it's up to you to guide your prehistoric people through the valley: Take advantage of the environment, pick and hunt for food, discover big and safe caverns for the upcoming winter, gather your tribe and discover the valley!

Sapiens is a short and easy-to-learn tile-placement game that can prove much deeper than it seems for gamers. Each player has a personal game board that represents the valley on which they will play tiles to determine the journey of their tribe through several prehistoric life scenes. Their aim is to gather food points on the plains and in the forests of the valley and to get shelter points for reaching caves in the mountains. A player's turn consists of two steps:

Connect one new tile from the four in his personal pool to the tiles already in play on his board, with connected scenes needing to match. These placements earn food points when a connection is made, earns shelter points when a cave is reached, and sometimes provides a special ability based on the connected scenes.
Choose a new tile from the five available in a common pool to re-fill his personal pool to four tiles.

Sapiens relies on instinctive domino-like mechanisms that are improved by interesting twists:

Laying tiles on personal (modular) game boards brings a bit of a puzzle feel to the game.
Having two separate scores — food and shelter — and knowing that only their lower one matters when determining who wins confronts players with interesting needs and dilemmas.
Including special powers linked to the eight different scenes represented on the tiles brings a lot of interaction and choices.

In Bedpans & Broomsticks, all but one of the players are the Elders of the Shady Pines Village retirement home. You are all trying to get to one of the 3 exits from the building. Another player controls the Staff of doctors, nurses, and orderlies who are trying to stop you and return you to your bed.

Each round you move your pieces on a layout consisting of room-tiles that represent the layout of the Village. You start on a single tile, but you can't remember the rest of the layout. So you place a new tile each time you look through an open, exterior corridor onto a room tile that you have not seen before. Along the way you can pick up and use Stuff-markers that you find.

This movement and exploration continues until enough of the Elders are captured or neutralized by the Staff, or until one or more of the Elders reaches an exit and escapes.

The castle at the center of the Oniverse is under attack. The dream denizens of the oniverse rush to build their castle defense against three monster attacks. Towers allow you to see what is coming. Keeps can help minimize damage. Ranks can reduce the effects of the traitors found inside your walls. Of course, the denizens have special powers of their own to aid in the defense. Will you be able to survive these attacks?

Castellion is a tile-laying game in which you form parts of the castle for defense against monsters. Each turn you flip over a tile and either use its special ability or place it as part of your castle. The more towers and keeps you form, the better your defense against attacks. Ranks prevent traitorous tiles from affecting you fully. When all three monsters have attacked and you still have a base of six tiles, you win.