Voting

Would You Rather...?

Before they can roll and move, players must pick a card and present the rest of the players with a nasty choice between two thoroughly unpleasant hypotheticals in categories such as pain, embarrassment, ethics, and ingestion. If the player guesses the majority preference, he gets to move otherwise he must pass. Some spaces allow the player to invent their own awful hypothetical choice. The other players vote secretly on their choice in this case. If the vote is not unamimous, the player can move or send someone else back. Players roll a six-sided die and there are only 10 spaces to the goal so games go very quickly. Typical choices on the cards include, "Would you rather lie naked in a bathtub full of live roaches or dive head first into a pool of tobacco spit?" The answer "neither" is NEVER allowed.

Variant:
The 2003 version of this game "Would You Rather?" appears to have quite different rules to the above described game. There is a new simpler square board with more spaces. Unlike the 20 minutes of the above game, 1-2 hours is recommended by the manufacturer. Players roll a dice, then move and depending where they land, draw cards with dilemmas to pose to the rest of the other players. The current player must try to secretly predict the result of the other players' subsequent open discussion and consensus view. No-one is penalised for an inability to reach consensus, the game encourages one option picked at random perhaps by flipping a coin, to keep the game moving. If the current player predicted correctly, they get a bonus turn.

Typical questions include "Would you rather ... On senior prom night, have to take your parent -OR- your 12 year old sibling?"

Every so often players get the opportunity to take a difficult challenge with the winner being the first person to complete their third challenge.

What's It To Ya?

Your goal in What's It To Ya? (aka Oh, Really!) is to think like the crowd – or at least like your partner. Five item cards – such as "Hope", "Garbage Collectors", "Underwear", "Wisdom", and "Hearing" – are placed on the table next to letters A-E. Each player then secretly places rank cards in order based on which item is most important to her: "B" first since you don't want to live in filth, then "D" because being wise is next most important after a clean home, and so on.

Players then reveal their cards, showing all the cards in the first rank, then the second rank, and so on. Whichever letter appears the most in a position is the crowd favorite; those letters stay revealed, while all other letters are turned face-down again. Whichever player (or players) has the most cards revealed at the end of a round scores a point; if a player has all five cards revealed, she scores two points. Whoever scores seven points first wins.

WITY can also be played in teams, with one player on a team trying to match the ranking of the other member. Scoring is handled the same as in the group game, and the first team to earn seven points wins.

Catan: Traders & Barbarians

Traders & Barbarians is distributed as the third major expansion for The Settlers of Catan, although it is actually a compilation of small expansions and variants. (It is independent of the Seafarers and Cities & Knights expansions, but can be combined with them.)

All of the variants and three of the scenarios have been available from various sources in Europe and the United States or through official websites. The Great Rivers and the Fishermen of Catan have been expanded somewhat for this expansion through extra tiles and player pieces.

This compilation includes 5 scenarios:

The Fishermen of Catan - Originally released in the 05/2006 Spielbox magazine and then subsequently released in Games Quarterly magazine. Expanded in this edition.
The Rivers of Catan - Originally released in the Atlantis scenario box, then subsequently in Games Quarterly magazine as "The Great River". Expanded in this edition to include two rivers, one occupying 4 tiles, and one occupying 3.
The Great Caravan - Originally released as a free expansion in Germany.
Barbarian Invasion - New in this edition. - Barbarians are invading Catan and the players have to try to stop them with new knight pieces. This plays very similarly to the flood mechanic in the Atlantis scenario from the Atlantis and Das Buch scenario packs.
Traders & Barbarians - New in this edition. - You get new hexes, one for the castle, one to produce glass, and one to produce marble. You try to rebuild Catan after the invasion. You get gold and victory points if you finish tasks in the castle, but to do so you have to travel back and forth to the castle on roads and undeveloped paths. There are still some barbarians around who interfere with trade routes.

It also includes 4 minor variants:

2-Player Rules - Use the new "Commercial Chips" to force trade with your opponent. Use 3rd and 4th neutral player to block your opponent. Also available online: Klaus2player.pdf
Catan Event Cards - Originally released in the Atlantis scenario box, then subsequently released for sale separately. Replaces the dice with a deck of cards to minimize randomness.
The Harbormaster Card - Originally released in the Atlantis scenario box, then subsequently available online: harbormaster.pdf. Gives two victory points to the player with the most harbor points.
Friendly Robber Rules

This game belongs to the Catan Series.

Graenaland

In 982, a Viking jarl called Erik the Red sailed from the western coast of Iceland and discovered a new land. He named it Graenaland, a green land. Four years later the first colonists arrived to Greanaland and founded settlements that lasted more than four centuries.

Take the role of one of the jarls leading their clans to the new home. You have to settle the coast and to agree with your neighbors on how to distribute the spare resources the land is giving away. As Eric wants no fights amongst Vikings, any conflicts are solving by voting. You could improve your position in order to gain more votes; however, you can also try to be righteous and to keep good relations with all your neighbors. Cooperating with them, you can fertilize and improve the land easier than when struggling for influence; just keep your position strong enough for the case something goes wrong.

At first glance, it might remind you just another settler-like game – there are tiles of different terrains, there are villages and other buildings built on the tiles, and there are resources produced to build more of them. However, Graenaland uses these elements by very unusual way, and offers brand new player interaction.

The main difference is that villages produce no resources; the tile produces them. They remain placed next to the tile, until players agree how to distribute them. Every village on the tile gives one vote to its owner, as well as the traveling heroes just visiting the tile – and you need more than half of the votes total for your proposal how to distribute the resources.

A tile produces only one resource per turn, no matter how many villages of how many players is built on it. Building more villages on the same tile strengthens your position here; however, if another player does the same, you both are spending lots of efforts and resources struggling for still the one resource card. May be it would be wise to live in peace instead. If you are able to come to an agreement, you can take turns taking the resource. You can vote together in the case an intruder appears. You can build some improvements on the tile together, increasing its resource production. You can spread your villages to other tiles and let your hero travel where it is more needed, rather than struggling for influence on this tile.

If you trust each other, you can work much more efficiently. However: does your neighbor deserve your trust? What if he returns with his hero unexpectedly, and confiscates the whole harvest of several turns? What if he builds another village here instead of the improvement he promised? And especially – what would you do if you get such an opportunity yourself?
The game mechanics – simultaneous movement of heroes, small anomalies in player roles (one player has special role every turn), and decent randomness and uncertainty in resource harvesting (each terrain produces resources of more types, with different probabilities) lead to enough interesting asymmetric situations, and it is up to you whether you take any advantage you have, or whether you try to appear fair and righteous to the others instead. As the others take it in to account when searching for partners for their deals.

Sylla

Sylla was the name of a Roman Consul and dictator; the name of the game is a reference to his person. The designer tried to bring together "Res Publica Romana" and "Saint Petersburg," furthermore playable in one hour.

The players will try to become the premier Consul of Rome. Each of the five years (turns) is subdivided into seven phases in which the players take their actions. It will be semi-cooperative as one player alone cannot influence all parts of the Roman social or political life. They also have to prepare for negative events like epidemic plague or persecution of the Christians and also decadence.

The Ystari games website has downloadable rules for the game for 2 players.