Worker Placement

Prior to Essen 1999, a group of students created Splotter Spellen to sell some of their own game designs. This game is regarded as one of the highlights of that group. The object of the game is to deliver as many people to their destinations as you can. To accomplish this, players place route markers on the board to connect passengers to their destinations. However, the destination types (work, bar, home) vary from turn to turn, so you can follow certain passengers as they make their way through the daily grind.

Players may buy more buses (they start off with one), build onto their bus route, bring new passengers to the city (via the trains), expand the city by adding more buildings, and run their buses. There is another option, the clock, but more on that later. The action board has one other clever feature. On some actions, route expansion and building, the first player to choose that action actually gets to execute the action last! Which leads to some interesting games of chicken and some painful decisions.

Buying more buses allows a player to carry one more passenger every time they run their buses - hence scoring, in the best case, one more point. Depending on how the city gets built, however, finding lots of passengers on the street can be tricky.

Bus routes extend from either end of a Settlers-style initial placement. Extensions are appended to either end. Routes may only run parallel if a route is completely blocked at both ends - seems pretty rare - so getting one end pinched off can be painful (but isn't it always?). All new passengers will arrive at one of two train stations so that is one concern when route building. One must also be careful to run by a nice mix of building types. And, when building, one must always have an eye towards spoiling other players' routes by placing a mix of building types at each of their intersection so that all of their passengers just walk! Finally, when carrying passengers, one wants to be careful to set up to carry the same passenger next turn.

The deluxe edition of Coloma includes content not found in the retail edition.

Besides the base game components and retail edition stretch goals, the Deluxe Edition of Coloma includes 40 Chips, 30 custom Gold Nuggets, 5 custom Score Markers, 1 custom Round Marker, 1 Metal First Player Marker and all of the "Deluxe Only/Kickstarter Exclusive" Stretch Goals that were unlocked which included 6 new characters each with a unique ability not found on characters from the base game!

They are:
Robber - You may spend 1 Wagon action (forgoing its usual movement Ability) to gain 3 Gold Nuggets from the Gold Cart (not the Gold Supply on the board!).

Homesteader - You may spend 1 Tent to build a Town Building card from your hand, paying the Saw cost on the card.

Renegade - Each time you add a Dude to your Graveyard, draw 3 cards.

Range Rider - Each time your Wagon moves over (or stops on) a vacant Horseshoe space on the Frontier Map, draw 1 card.

Maverick - Discard 1 card to gain either 1 Buck or 1 Dude.

Vigilante - Discard 1 used Barrel to place Dudes according to the usual rules.

The custom components in the Deluxe Edition replace the standard components from the Retail Edition.

The Deluxe Edition is for Kickstarter backers only and will not be available in retail (except the retail stores that backed the Kickstarter). However, it will be available in limited supply at conventions, through contests, online at the BGG promo store, and directly from the publisher's website.

About the game:
Coloma is the town where an unexpected event happened that shaped history of the Western Frontier. In the winter of 1848 a man building a sawmill on the South Fork of the American River spotted some bright nuggets in the tailrace waters below. Sure enough, it was gold! Though he tried to keep his discovery a secret, word spread quickly and it triggered the California Gold Rush of ‘49.

Thousands of people arrived from far and wide, making Coloma one of the fastest growing boomtowns in the country. Claims were staked, camps and makeshift homes were built, and hotels and saloons sprung up almost overnight. Everyone wanted their cut of the land’s wealth. For many it was Coloma or Bust!

In the game of Coloma, you are a pioneer who has recently traveled out West to strike it rich and make a name for yourself. You will prospect for gold and use your windfalls to recruit workers, rustle up horses, and establish businesses. You will also get opportunities to explore the surrounding riverways and frontier lands. But alas! You are not alone—every other pioneer seems to have gotten the same idea! Therefore, it will take extra cunning tactics on your part to not go Bust with the rest of them…

Overview of Play
At the beginning of each chapter, you and the other players will simultaneously select an action to perform on the board. Once your selections are revealed, you must check if a majority of players chose the same action. If so, it is a Bust—which disables the Boom bonus that would be included otherwise. Then the players take turns performing actions, such as gaining resources, moving wagons on the map, building bridges and businesses, and placing camps and gunmen. After that, a section of the board is rotated—slightly changing the layout of the actions for the upcoming chapter.

When the rotating section hits high noon, the round ends with a bang: a shootout against an ever-growing number of outlaws! If you and the other players can outnumber the outlaws with your combined gunmen, you will get your fair share of the rewards. But if not, the rewards drop, and some of the gunmen will go to the graveyard... The game ends after the third shootout, and the player with the most points wins!

Coloma is a fast moving game with many paths to victory. It offers unique twists on simultaneous action selection, resource management, and engine-building. The town cards in your tableau allow you to play more efficiently, gain extra actions, and bend the rules to your advantage. With these cards and the bridge tiles (which add points based on what you achieve), you can create the perfect combination for your strategy and play style.

—description from the publisher

You are a rogue archaeologist, traveling the world for history’s lost artifacts. But the market for artifacts can shift like the rains of Africa: One minute, treasures from a lost pharaoh’s pyramid are all the rage with collectors, and the next minute religious artifacts discovered in a remote temple are what’s in demand.

In Curios, players acquire artifacts from various treasure sites without knowing their worth. Using the cards in your hand and those revealed by others, you can deduce the possible value of your artifacts, allowing you to focus your efforts on the more profitable ventures.

Curios is a game of worker placement, deduction, and bluffing like no other. This simple and intuitive game is quick to learn and even quicker to play!

—description from the publisher

PARKS is a celebration of the US National Parks featuring illustrious art from Fifty-Nine Parks.

In PARKS, players will take on the role of two hikers as they trek through different trails across four seasons of the year. While on the trail, these hikers will take actions and collect memories of the places your hikers visit. These memories are represented by various resource tokens like mountains and forests. Collecting these memories in sets will allow players to trade them in to visit a National Park at the end of each hike.

Each trail represents one season of the year, and each season, the trails will change and grow steadily longer. The trails, represented by tiles, get shuffled in between each season and laid out anew for the next round. Resources can be tough to come by especially when someone is at the place you’re trying to reach! Campfires allow you to share a space and time with other hikers. Canteens and Gear can also be used to improve your access to resources through the game. It’ll be tough to manage building up your engine versus spending resources on parks, but we bet you’re up to the challenge. Welcome to PARKS!

—description from the publisher

It's been twenty years since Victor Frankenstein died on a ship in the arctic, but his vengeful creature lives on, as does Robert Walton, the sea captain who vowed to kill the fiend before mercy stayed his hand. It's now 1819, and a sinister darkness descends upon the city of Paris. A mysterious benefactor of gigantic stature has emerged in the scientific community, never showing his face, claiming to possess the late Frankenstein's research. He sponsors a grand competition, offering an even grander prize: unlocking the mystery of mortality!

Renowned scientists from around the world come to take part: some drawn to solve this eternal riddle, others coerced against their will. But a certain captain comes as well, one deeply suspicious of the secretive patron, hoping to finally fulfill his vow.

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a competitive game of strategic monster building for 2-4 players, inspired by Mary Shelley's classic novel of gothic horror. In the game, the creature demands your help to accomplish what his own creator would not: to bring to life an abomination like itself, a companion to end its miserable solitude. Through worker placement and careful management of decomposing resources, you'll gather materials from the cemeteries and morgues around the city, conduct valuable research at the Academy of Science, hire less-than-reputable associates, and toil away in your lab — all in an effort to assemble a new form of life and infuse it with a "spark of being". Do well, and the creature may reward you during one of its surprise visits; do poorly, and you may come to regret not putting forth more effort. Narrative elements come into play throughout the game, guided by your decisions, leading to potentially unsavory outcomes.

The game ends when you succeed in bringing your creation to life or when the Captain kills the creature, whichever happens first. Then the player with the most points fulfills Frankenstein's dark legacy, becoming his heir, for good or ill...

—description from the publisher