Science Fiction

Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz

The crew of the Normandy has one more mission. It is the year 2186, and the Reapers have invaded the galaxy. Because the Council ignored Commander Shepard's warnings, the Citadel Races are overwhelmed and on the verge of losing the war. Aboard the Normandy, Shepard carries out missions to prepare the Crucible, an ancient alien superweapon, for a last-chance attempt to defeat the Reapers. It's a race against time, and Shepard must seize every possible advantage.

On the remote world Hagalaz, a research cruiser from the terrorist organization Cerberus has crashed directly in the path of a deadly storm. With little time before the storm hits, Shepard must lead a squad through the cruiser to uncover its sinister secrets and keep them out of the hands of the enemy. However, the ship holds more dangers than just its former crew. Deep within the shattered cruiser stir creatures and enemies far worse than the Cerberus forces that guard them...

Mass Effect: The Board Game – Priority: Hagalaz is a co-operative, story-driven game set during the events of the video game Mass Effect 3. A branching, narrative campaign allows for multiple playthroughs with a different experience every time. Card-driven AI and evolving stories respond to your actions, with your early choices influencing later missions.

Gather Shepard's squad from a selection of teammates from the Mass Effect trilogy: Liara, Tali, Wrex, and Garrus. Customize and upgrade your squad's abilities, equipment, and powers as they gain experience. Enhance them further by unlocking unique powers with optional loyalty missions.

--description from the publisher

The Mandalorian: Adventures

When offered a lucrative job, a lone bounty hunter begins a journey that will put his skills to the test and redefine his world.

The Mandalorian: Adventures allows players to experience a new part of the Star Wars universe on their tabletops. Navigating unique maps and missions, players must co-operate to accomplish their goals and avoid defeat. Play as one of eight unique characters, each with their own deck of cards and strategies that will help you fight enemies and solve dilemmas to complete mission objectives. All of the action takes place in an illustrated map book as players recreate iconic moments from season 1 of the hit Disney+ series. With an intuitive system that's easy to teach, the game grows with new rules, components, and mission types added over time – some even featuring a hidden traitor mechanism...

CoLab

The dawn of a new age approaches and we stand at the precipice. The unbridled power of nature awakens something within. Mysteries demand to be explored and the results are not always what we expect. Creepy creatures, dangerous devices, precarious potions, CoLaboratory Incorporated provides a shared laboratory space that is the perfect home for your and your outlandish creations.

Build interesting devices that open new possibilities. Brew potions that grant you fantastic on-demand abilities. Create strange monsters and earn great renown. All while keeping an eye on your fellow scientist and their minions. Scientists bring research into the lab to use on their experiments but they are not the only ones who benefit. Occupy a space adjacent to the research dice held by any minion and you can use it for your own creations.

Collect monster, device, or potion dice to generate more research that can be used on your creations.

Expand the laboratory giving everyone new opportunities.

With each new creation, your collection grows and the placement of each creation in your grid can create new opportunities or gain more renown. Once a player builds their 12th creation the end of the game is triggered and the player with the most renown (points) wins.

CoLab worker and dice placement game with dice collection. Players compete to gain the most renown through building monster, device, or potion cards over the course of the game. Each turn you send a minion to a tower space to gather resources or return a minion. Your minions also hold your resource dice. This resource can be used by players at either adjacent laboratory location. Then you place your player miniature on a laboratory location and either put the adjacent minions to work collecting more resources or build cards according to what is available at that lab. As the game progresses the board expands giving new opportunities for all players who visit that location.

Build a wide variety of monsters, potions, and devices or focus on one type to gain the most renown and win the game.

CoLab employs a series of '“take this”' mechanics where players provide resources, minions, or other opportunities to their opponents in exchange for resources or points. Balancing how much you give away with the opportunities your opponents may create is the real trick to becoming the most renowned scientist in CoLab.

—description from the publisher

Omicron Protocol

In the year 2050, the utopian city of San Lazaro is locked down and crippled by a mysterious computer virus, turning once-ordinary people into maddeningly violent and unpredictable “CyMS”, Cyber-Memetic Sociopaths.

Omicron Protocol is an “intra-apocalyptic”, cyberpunk-themed miniatures skirmish board game for 1-4 players, where you control a squad of unique characters, and take turns controlling a 3rd party enemy to harass your opponent. Or play solo/cooperatively as a team to fight enemies, complete objectives, and survive!

Every character is represented by a detailed 32mm-scale miniature, possessing their own rich history and personality, as well as powerful cybernetic abilities! Play the competitive or solo/cooperative modes through various narrative scenarios to survive the crisis! With innovative game mechanics like the Action Store and Luck Tokens, every game is thrilling and exciting. Enjoy a deeply tactical game in under an hour and introduce your gaming friends to skirmish games with Omicron Protocol!

In the game, you play with a squad of 1-4 characters, either competitively against another player/team, solo, or cooperatively with friends. Each round consists of spending a shared pool of action points on your characters, activating them one-by-one, and using movement and tactics to survive the onslaught of the Cyber-Memetic Sociopaths (CyMS). All games are based on scenarios derived from the lore of the world (120K+ word collection of stories), and the game can be linked together into a light campaign in both competitive and cooperative modes.

In competitive scenarios, the team that scores the most victory points wins. In solo/cooperative scenarios, the players win if they reach the VP goal within a specified number of rounds.

Background:

Everything can change in a month. The cutting edge West Coast city of San Lazaro had been the epicenter of a cybernetics tech revolution in 2044, ushering all of humanity into the future...but in the year 2050, a mysterious viral menace the likes of which the world had never seen toppled the utopian city in a sea of infection and death. The disease could not be stopped; it evolved to surpass any countermeasure, mutated to answer any cure. In mere days San Lazaro was overwhelmed by the infected.

Martial law descended on the city immediately. Barricades and armed soldiers divided its streets into isolated sectors. Efforts to contain the outbreak were as useless as the attempts to control the surging numbers of mysteriously insane and violent residents, a second catastrophe on the heels of the first.. Dubbed ‘Cyber-Memetic Sociopaths’ by the media, with their actions being blamed on an over-immersion in virtual reality, these ‘CyMS’ were spreading across the city in a wave of mindless, indiscriminate violence. With the infection spreading and the murderous CyMS rampaging, the government abandoned San Lazaro and its people after a mere two weeks.

All that remains of the city now is a twisted hellscape. The few survivors have banded together in hopes of escaping, while gangs once suppressed by the government have seized control. The CyMS have grown into a constant threat on the streets, sowing fear and terror in their path. In this waking nightmare, your only chance of salvation is to join a faction powerful enough to dominate the foes that stand in your way.