Voting

City of Horror is a backstabbing survival-horror game. As in classic zombie movies, a shambling horde is invading the city. The goal is to survive the assault. (Un)fortunately, surviving often means sacrificing some of your fellow players to the undead...

Each player controls several characters with different abilities; these characters can move to various limited-capacity locations, which they can then barricade and scavenge for items and weapons. Critical situations, such as zombies breaking in and eating a character, are resolved using vote.

The basic game mechanisms are the same as in Mall of Horror (also designed by Nicolas Normandon), but City of Horror differs in both materials and game play in a number of ways: the city map changes each game, twenty characters are included, they can use antidotes (or die), action cards become scarce as the game goes on, you can gain points with other stuff than surviving characters...

In City Council each player takes the role of a council member of a newly founded city. The government will select the members of the city council for the first few years until the city rises and flourishes, by which time the most popular member will receive the position of Mayor.

In order to build the city, you and the other councilmen must maintain a low level of pollution, fight crime, create jobs, and sustain an adequate city budget. If you and the others don't keep up the good work, the city project might not succeed, the government will take over, and all players will lose.

As a member of the council, you must also strive to gain the favor of the different political groups who rule the streets of your city. As the game progresses and the city grows larger, more and more political interest groups will try to impose their will on the city by knocking on your office door and asking you for small "favors" in which you will have to act on their behalf. In return, they'll offer you their support and you'll receive victory points for your personal cause, possibly allowing you to become the city's first Mayor.

GiftTRAP won a special Spiel des Jahres prize in 2009, and was voted "Best Party Game of the Year" by Games Magazine in 2008, proving that while buying real gifts can be traumatic, giving virtual gifts to find out how people really feel is heaps of fun. Be prepared for some surprises! It's a conversation starter that will get you and your friends talking about things that matter. Unlike other party games you don't need skills in drawing, acting or trivia, so it works well when you have a crowd of mixed ages/skills. GiftTRAP is played over a series of rounds. Each round has the following steps: DEAL - deal random gifts from one of the 5 packs of gifts. Packs have similar monetary value. SHOP - think about how to match these gifts to the players. GIVE - give one of these gifts to each player (using gift tokens). GET - choose which gifts you want yourself (using get tokens: Ok, Good, Great & No Way). REVEAL - show people what you wanted and see what you were given by each player. SCORE - the giver and the receiver score for each gift (the giver gets GIVING points, the receiver gets GETTING points). The first to reach the end of both the Giving and Getting tracks is the winner.

Players represent various office holders in the ruling Junta. Depending upon his office and the various cards he holds, each player has a certain number of votes. These are important as they must first elect El Presidente and then vote on the budget that he proposes. Here's where it can get sticky. El Presidente draws cards face down from the money deck (which varies in denomination from $1 to $3) and must propose a budget for the year, distributing the money as he sees fit amongst the various offices. Of course, loyalty to him is usually rewarded, while those pesky "thorns in his side" are usually cut off completely. The beauty of all this, though, is that El Presidente can — and most always does — keep some of the loot for himself. And since no one but he knows the value of what he drew, no one knows how much he's keeping. Suspicion is always keen.

Players may attempt to assassinate the other players by guessing where they will be from among five locations. Players who successfully assassinate another player take that player's money, as the only safe money is the money that has been deposited in a Swiss bank account, and the only way to get to the bank is to survive the assassination round.

If the players are unhappy, and there is an excuse, they can call for a coup, where the opposition players seek to take control of a majority of the power centers. Rebel players control the forces of the role which they were assigned (e.g. army, navy, air force), and players loyal to El Presidente do the same, seeking to control the strongholds until the rebellion is quelled.

The goal is to amass the greatest wealth secreted away in your Swiss bank account.

Description from BoardgameNews.com:

While Cyrano de Bergerac was a real person, Cyrano is based on the play Cyrano de Bergerac, written more than two hundred years after Cyrano’s death. In both the play and the game, Cyrano writes poetry to woo a woman for another man. The game Cyrano lasts a number of rounds, and each round starts with a player revealing a theme card and two rhyme cards ("-aid", "-ed" and so on with homonyms being acceptable). Each player then composes a quatrain (a poem of four lines) with two of the lines ending with one of the rhymes and the other two ending with the other rhyme. Players read their poems and score points Boggle-style, with each unique ending word being worth one point; these points are recorded by blacking out squares on a ladder, which represents the lover’s climb toward his object of affection.

Everyone then secretly votes on which poem he or she most appreciated, whether for its beauty, adherence to theme, or some other artistic qualification. Players reveal their votes simultaneously, and for each player who voted the same way you did, you receive one point, with these points being recorded by the maiden’s descent from the tower. Whichever player first brings the loves onto the same floor of the tower wins, with ties being broken by a rhyming duel.