24, The board Game - Description: Players become CTU agents trying to collect clues and prevent terrorist attacks in this thrilling DVD game based on the award-winning 24 television series! Participate in the on-screen games and challenges, and analyze the vital and potentially misleading clues in your quest to thwart terrorism and become the top agent!Throughout the game, the DVD also acts as a timer, counting down the 24 hours to the terrorist attack that the players are working to prevent. A "virtual CTU office" allows players to analyze data. Future expansions are promised, adding new cases to be solved.
Contents: DVD, game board, game cards, label sheet, player tokens. For 2 or more players, ages 13 and up.
Our comments and reviews: We are almost fanatical about this TV series, so of course when we saw the game, we HAD to have it. Yet to play though.
Acquire -Description: This Sid Sackson classic has taken many different forms over the years depending on the publisher. Each player strategically invests in businesses, trying to retain a majority of stock. As the businesses grow with tile placements, they also start merging, giving the majority stockholders of the acquired business sizeable bonuses, which can then be used to reinvest into other chains. All of the investors in the acquired company can then cash in their stocks for current value or trade them 2-for-1 for shares of the newer, larger business. The game is a race to acquire the greatest wealth.
The original version is part of the 3M Bookshelf Series.
Our comments and reviews: This is an excellent game which we are still learning.
Africa - Description: Players take on the role of Explorers in uncharted Africa. The circular playing counters are placed upside down in random locations upon the various circles of the board. Each turn the player may elect to move his explorer to a revealed location anywhere on the board, or move twice, each turn moving 0, 1 or 2 adjacent revealed spaces. The explorer may then take an action, such as reveal an unrevealed tile, or move various revealed tiles to other locations. Needless to say the theme is a bit of a veneer upon what is essentially an abstract game.The tiles represent trade goods (of various sets), nomads, herds of animals, gold/ diamonds, and monuments. When the 11th monument is revealed, the game ends.
This being a Knizia game there are various methods of scoring the revealed tiles, including immediate points, delayed points, opportunity points and end points.
The game components are well made in thick card, with some nice blue plastic pyramids(tents) and are likely to stand up to usage. The artwork is colorful without being garish, clearly presented and functional without being fussy. Each player also is provided with a very useful index card sized thick card reference sheet, which more or less encapsulates all the game rules upon it- a good idea which is to be commended to other designers.
Awarded "Best Family Game" title by Games Magazine in 2002.
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Autobridge - Description: Autobridge is a bridge teaching and solitaire playing device and series of play sheets dating back to at least 1938 (according to Encarta). At least two major versions have been produced. A large sized version about 18x11 inches and smaller version about 8x6 inches. While the specific materials and details of design have varied over the years, the fundamental design has remained. It is a board which may be opened to insert a sheet with cards indices and suits printed on it. The covering board is closed and the hand is played by opening windows. The player decides on their own play and reveals the next window to see what the expert recommends. An accompanying booklet explains the expert's recommendation.The system can be used to teach the completely naive novice to highly advanced players. Many supplementary sheets were produced over the decades.
Mainly a teaching aide, there is no scoring, per se.
Experts who have contributed to the Autobridge system include: Ely and Josephine Culbertson, Charles Goren, Alfred Sheinwold, Alan Truscott, Barry Rigal, Albert Morehead, and Richard Frey.
Most versions found in online auctions appear to date from the 1950s.
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Battleships - Description: An age-old pencil-and-paper public domain game, kept continuously in print by Milton Bradley (now owned by Hasbro) since 1967.Each player deploys his ships (of lengths varying from 2 to 5 squares) secretly on a square grid. Then each player shoots at the other's grid by calling a location. The defender responds by "Hit!" or "Miss!". You try to deduce where the enemy ships are and sink them. First to do so wins.
An electronic version exists that adds sound effects, and I think there even is one that allows you to soak the opponent when you win. A computer game version is also published by MB, which mercifully adds a whole slew of variants.
Some history of the published versions of the game:
1931: Starex Novelty Co. of NY publishes SALVO.
1933: The Strathmore Co. publishes COMBAT, THE BATTLESHIP GAME.
1943: Milton Bradley publishes the pad-and-pencil game BROADSIDES, THE GAME OF NAVAL STRATEGY.
1940's: Maurice L. Freedman Co. of RI publishes WARFARE NAVAL COMBAT.
1961: Ideal publishes SALVO.
Other titles over the years have included SWISS NAVY, SUNK (Parker Bros.), CONVOY (Transogram), WINGS (Strategy Games Co. of California),.
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Caylus - Description: Once upon a time ...1289. To strengthen the borders of the Kingdom of France, King Philip the Fair decided to have a new castle built. For the time being, Caylus is but a humble village, but soon, workers and craftsmen will be flocking by the cartload, attracted by the great prospects. Around the building side, a city is slowly rising up.
The players embody master builders. By building the King's castle and developing the city around it, they earn prestige points and gain the King's favor. When the castle is finished, the player who has earned the most prestige wins the game.
Winner of the 2006 International Gamers Award, the 2006 Deutscher Spiele Preis, 2006 Nederlandse Spellenprijs, Tric Trac d'Or 2005, 2006 Spiel des Jahres Special Award for Complex Game, and the 2006 BoardGameGeek Golden Geek awards for both Game of the Year and Best Gamer's Game.
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Cities & Knights of Catan - Description: Adds several new aspects to Settlers of Catan but the two major ones are creating knights to protect the land from invading barbarians and building city improvements that confer benefits upon that city's owner. Adds tactical complexity to the game and game length.Belongs to the Catan Series.
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Cities & Knights of Catan (5-6 player expansion) - Description: Now up to six players can muster their knights against the scourge threatening Catan! The 5-6 Player Expansion for The Cities and Knights of Catan allows you to expand and inject more excitement into your games without sacrificing ease of play. Designed for five or six players, it adds even more drama to the award-winning game of culture, politics, and warfare.Belongs to the Catan Series.
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Cranium - Description: Cranium bills itself as the "whole-brain" game. It's a party game that borrows from a host of other popular party games of recent times. Players have to successfully complete activities in each of four sections to win: In- Creative Cat : A player must clue a word to his or her teammates by drawing it, sculpting it in clay, or drawing it with his or her eyes closed.
- Data Head : A variety of trivia questions.
- Word Worm : Players unscramble words, spell challenging words, guess definitions, identify words with letters left out, or spell words backwords.
- Star Performer : players must whistle a song, impersonate a celebrity, or act out a clue.
Cranium has elements similar to those of Pictionary, Charades, Trivial Pursuit, Celebrities, Huggermugger, Claymania, etc.
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Dominoes - Description: Various different rules apply. The more popular adds the numbers to make a multiple of five for scoring. Light strategy with math and eye coordination. An ancient game that has become popular in Europe in recent centuries.Our comments and reviews: Our game of dominoes is the Double 9 version (Cuban Dominoes) - is there any other version?? One of our favorite games to play.
Da Vinci's Challenge - Description: The ancient game of secret symbols is a classic strategy game with hidden mysteries as old as the pyramids! Take turns placing shapes on the board to reveal 9 different patterns. The more complex the design, the more points you score.Our comments and reviews:
Da Vinci's Dilemma - Description: The Authentic Da Vinci Dilemma is an exciting new board game that tests your Da Vinci knowlege while creating a timeless masterpiece. Players are challenged to a series of Da Vinci Riddles and trivia from four categories: Earth, Air, Water and Man. The correct answers to these challenges allow players to win a piece of the puzzle, moving them one step closer toa solution and the creation of a Da Vinci Masterpiece.Our comments and reviews:
Da Vinci's Mancala - Description: An intelligent adaption of Da Vinci's Challenge to classic mancala. Probably the first mancala with tile placement and pattern building. Subtle strategies guarantee an excellent challenge.Our comments and reviews:
El Grande Decennial - Description: In this Spiel des Jahres (1996) winner, players take on the roles of Grandes in medieval Spain. The king's power is flagging, and these powerful lords are vying for control of the various provinces. To that end, you draft caballeros (knights) into your court and subsequently move them onto the board to help seize control of provinces. After every third turn, the regions are scored, and after the ninth turn, the Grande with the most points is deemed the winner.Awards: 1995 Meeples' Choice Award
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Gemlok - Description: From the Press Release:In Gemlok 2-4 players from ages 7 up roll the dice hoping to land on a square where they can acquire a rare gemstone, but just landing on the square doesn't guarantee acquisition and other players will try and "bump" you off and seize your bling. The action can be fast and furious in this board game that imports all the anti-social aspects of croquet and can be played in just 30-40 minutes.
2007 Mensa Select
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Gheos - Description: The players are gods at the dawn of time, creating earth's landscape and inhabiting it with people. They can command the creation and destruction of continents and the rise and fall of civilizations.As gods players seek to gain followers among the civilizations. They offer those followers luxuries, and oversee the building of pyramids and temples on their continents. In the end the god with the most loyal, wealthy, and powerful followers will become ruler of gods, and wins the game...
Play involves placing triangular tiles to form islands, coastlines and continents. Players can also replace tiles to reform the topography of the planet.
Each civilization is represented by a color and once a civilization is “born” a player can gain worshipers in that civilization, which in turn may score points for that player in various ways.
The placement or replacement of tiles may result in civilizations migrating, or going to war with other civilizations. These things are resolved by the various icons on the tiles.
The game is fairly simple, but offers quite a lot of tactical possibilities.
2007 Mensa Select
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Gobblet - Description: Gobblet is a nice wooden game. The game is pure abstract. The game is played on a 4 squares by 4 squares playing surface. Each player (2-player game) has 12 pieces (also wood). The pieces are 'nested' into 3 stacks of 4 pieces. Each group's 4 pieces are successively smaller wooden pieces (the 3 largest of each group are cups and the 4th is solid wood). The object of the game is to get 4 of your color in a row (horizontal, vertical or diagonal). Your pieces start nested and you can only play exposed pieces on your turn, so 1 of your 3 largest pieces always is placed 1st. On your turn you may play 1 exposed piece from your 3 piles, or you may move 1 piece on the board to any other spot on the board where it will fit. Larger pieces may cover any smaller pieces (even your own). A piece being played from off the board may not cover an opponent's piece unless it is in a row where your opponent has three of his color. Your memory is also tested as you try to remember what color your larger piece is covering, before you move it. One of the rules is that ANY time someone has 4 in a row they win. This means that if you lift one of your pieces on your turn and exposed one of your opponents pieces, giving him 4 in a row, you immediately lose! Deep thinkers could bog down in all the possible moves.Our comments and reviews:
Ingenious - Description: Anyone who knows a little about Reiner Knizia’s games will know that the good Doctor loves games that deal with trying to get points in various different categories and then only score that category in which the player has the least. In the past, Knizia has used this mechanic to develop highly complicated games, but with Einfach Genial, he has distilled the mechanic down to its purest form.The game is played on a hex board. 120 equally sized pieces, each consisting of two joined hexes come with the game. There are symbols on each hex that makes up the piece – some pieces have two identical symbols, some have two different symbols (not unlike dominoes). The pieces go into a cloth bag so that they get drawn randomly. Each player receives six pieces to start the game, which are placed onto a rack and visible to them alone.
The goal of the game is, through clever placement, to obtain points in the different symbol colours. Points are claimed by placing a piece such that the symbols on it lie next to already-placed pieces with the same symbol. Pieces are placed onto any open spaces. So, for example, if a player places a piece with a purple circle on it such that it sits next to an unbroken line of four other purple circles already on the board, then the player scores four purple points. A newly placed symbol can lie next to at most five individual rows of symbols.
Each player uses a scoring track to keep track of his points – one track for each colour going from 1 to 18. If a player reaches the 18th space with any colour, then he gets to call out “Genial!” (or just think it if he’s not an extrovert) and take another turn.
At the end of their turn, players draw as many tiles out of the bag as required to bring their rack back up to six.
The game ends when no more tiles can be placed onto the board. Now each player looks to see how many points they scored in the colour they scored the least in. Whoever has the most points in their least-scored colour is the winner. Simple.
The author of the game has also come up with solitaire and team play, in which two teams of two play with each player not being able to see his partner’s tiles.
Winner of the 2006 BoardGameGeek Golden Geek award for Best Family Game.
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Leonardo Da Vinci - Description: Leonardo da Vinci is a “gamers’ game” for 2-5 players by Acchittocca (a team of Italian game designers). It’s a game where you buy resources to create your brilliant inventions in your laboratories. The game revolves around an innovative process where you deploy the same pawns to power your laboratory as to collect the necessary materials, taking turns committing the pawns at the beginning of each round.Winner of Tric Trac d'Argent 2006.
Expanded by: Maestro Leonardo - Codex Leonardi - II
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Marvel Heroes - Description: Marvel Heroes is a game set in the Marvel Universe for 2 to 4 players, with plenty of opportunities for cooperation and competition between the Super Heroes controlled by the players. Players take control of a group of Super Heroes (X-Men, Fantastic Four, Marvel Knights or the Avengers) as well as the Nemesis of one of the other player's group (Magneto, Dr. Doom, Kingpin or Red Skull). During the game, each player finds allies, enemies and power-ups, and face the menacing Super Villans controlled by the other players.High-quality plastic figures of many of the major Marvel Super Heroes, including Spider-Man, The Fantastic Four and The X-Men, as well as of the Nemesis characters, are included in the game. Each character featured in the game is represented by a detailed 40 mm plastic figure and an accompanying character card describing the character's special abilities. Power-ups can be added with special effects, which are different depending on who is acquiring these bonus items, so that all the different incarnations of the character can be played.
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Monopoly (Original) - Description: The classic real estate game. Buy properties, build houses and hotels, collect rent from fellow players. Repeat as necessary until everyone else is bankrupt.Monopoly was patented in 1935 by Charles Darrow and released by Parker Brothers. The game was actually one of a number of variants in existence at the time, all of which date back to an earlier, 1904 game by Elizabeth J. Magie, called The Landlord's Game. Her name is pronounced [MAG ee]. It's worth pronouncing correctly the name of the creative mind behind the most successful proprietary game of all time. Magie was a proponent of the Single Tax put forth by famous author Henry George. The game was designed to show how the Single Tax would work - players could choose to play under regular rules or alternate "Single Tax" rules.
The game didn't really go anywhere and Magie lost interest in it. Variations of the game evolved, however, and homemade versions traveled up and down the Atlantic coast and even as far west as Michigan and Texas, being developed all along the way. Eventually the game was noticed by Charles Darrow who introduced it to the world in its current form.
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Monopoly (Nostalgia) - Description: This special Nostalgia edition includes:- Nostalgic Game board
- Vintage Chance, Community Chest and Title Deed cards.
- 'Aged' Monopoly Money.
- Six antique Bronze finish tokens.
- Wooden houses and hotels.
- Built-in wooden banker's tray and storage area.
- Two ivory colored dice.
- Monopoly History.
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PIT - Description: The original game was invented by Harry E. Gavitt and published in 1903 by Gavitt Publishing and Printing. In that game players deal and trade cards to corner the railway stock market. Be the first to get all the cards of one railway line, call out “Topeka” and you’ll win the hand!But Pit, the more famous version, adapted by Edgar Cayce, was first published by Parker Brothers in 1904 and in many editions since. In this loud, real-time trading game, players are given the task of cornering the market in one type of commodity. There are as many suits as there are players, and all the cards are dealt out at the start of each round. When the trading begins, players offer sets of cards to each other in the hopes of completing a set for themselves. If you're successful, you score points. If you're not successful, then you could lose points for having a particularly bad card in your possession at the end of the trading.
Our comments and reviews: A card game that we got at a yard sale. We still have to play this
Power Grid - Description: Power Grid is the updated release of the Friedemann Friese crayon game Funkenschlag. The latest cooperative publishing effort from Friedemann Friese and Rio Grande Games, removes the crayon aspect from network building in the original edition while retaining the fluctuating commodities market like McMulti and an auction round intensity reminiscent of The Princes of Florence.The object of Power Grid is to supply the most cities with power when someone's network gains a predetermined size. In this new edition, players mark pre-existing routes between cities for connection, and then vie against other players to purchase the power plants that you use to supply the power. However, as plants are purchased, newer more efficient plants become available so you're potentially allowing others to access to superior equipment merely by purchasing at all. Additionally, players must acquire the raw materials, like coal, oil, garbage, or uranium, to power said plants (except for the highly valuable 'renewable energy' wind/solar plants), making it a constant struggle to upgrade your plants for maximum efficiency while still retaining enough wealth to quickly expand your network to get the cheapest routes.
Awards :
2004 Meeples' Choice Award
2007 Gra Roku
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Probe - Description: Players try to guess each other's hidden words. An activity deck spices things up a bit by altering scores or revealing letters. No player is left out of the game because even if their word is revealed they continue to guess opponent's letters and score points.Our comments and reviews:
Puerto Rico - Description: The players are plantation owners in Puerto Rico in the days when ships had sails. Growing up to five different kind of crops: Corn, Indigo, Coffee, Sugar and Tobacco, they must try to run their business more efficiently than their close competitors; growing crops and storing them efficiently, developing San Juan with useful buildings, deploying their colonists to best effect, selling crops at the right time and, most importantly, shipping their goods back to Europe for maximum benefit.A unique game system lets players choose the order of the phases in each turn by allowing each player to choose a role from those remaining when it is their turn. No role can be selected twice in the same round. The player who selects the best roles to advance their position during the game will win.
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Quinto - Description: Part of the 3M Bookshelf SeriesPlayers take turns placing their numbered tiles on the board so that their sum, both rank and file, is equal to a multiple of the "multile" number that is selected for that round. Highest score once all the tiles have been placed wins.
The red "multiles" were introduced in the 1968 edition; the previous (1964) edition didn't have those and played as if the "5" multile were always the one drawn.
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Risk - Description: Widely accepted as the first mainstream wargame. Players are given tons of little army units to place onto the map of the world. When it's your turn, you use your units to attack other players' positions, hopefully with superior numbers. Combat is a simple dice rolling affair that stresses attrition, and reinforcements are given to players who collect sets of cards.Our comments and reviews:
Risk 2210 A.D. - Description: Risk 2210 AD is the latest in a long series of Risk variants, but this one takes the game to the next level. Set in the not-so-distant future, battles are now fought by machines of destruction, known as MODS, for short. Human commanders still lead these mechanized troops, but these commanders each have special powers and abilities. These come into play via the use of Command cards, which really add a whole new dimension to the game and gives it a much-needed face-lift. Now, the battle is not just for the earth, but the sea and moon are also battlegrounds.Although much has been added, the basic flavor of the game is still Risk. One very welcome change has been the institution of a five-turn game limit, which allows the game to play to completion in about three hours. Further, players must also factor in economics in the form of energy. This energy is used to purchase Command cards, bid for Turn Order and purchase new commanders. There is much more strategy and planning involved in this new version, but it should still appeal to the classic Risk fans.
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Scene It? 007 Collectors Edition - Description: An updated version of Scene it?'s 007 game packaged in a collectible tin. This edition includes new questions and puzzlers from Casino Royale. Includes Cartamundi Playing cards featuring images from 20 Bond movies and 6 new collectible metal tokens. This edition also adds additional Casino Style playing rules on the DVD.Our comments and reviews:
Seafarers of Catan - Description: This is an expansion for The Settlers of Catan. Players can build shipping lanes, which are very similar to roads. Additionally, the game comes with many different water-hex-heavy variant setups. The American version (Mayfair) should only be used with the American base game, instead of the German one (Kosmos), because of matching components and for the same reason, the Kosmos German version should only be used with the German base game.Belongs to the Catan Series.
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Seafarers of Catan (5-6 Player Expansion) - Description: Now five to six players can sail into the uncharted and explore and settle the mysterious islands near Catan! The 5-6 Player Expansion for The Seafarers of Catan allows you to add 1-2 more opponents without sacrificing ease of play. Try one of ten new exciting scenarios! Designed for 5-6 players, it adds even more drama to the award-winning game of seafaring, exploration, and trade.Belongs to the Catan Series.
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Settlers of Catan - Description: In Settlers of Catan, players try to be the dominant force on the island of Catan by building settlements, cities, and roads. On each turn dice are rolled to determine the current production on the island. Players collect raw materials to build up their civilizations to gain enough victory points to win the game. This game is a Spiel des Jahres (German game of the year, 1995) winner, primarily because of its amazing ability to appeal to non-gamers and gamers alike.Winner of the 1995 Deutscher Spiele Preis.
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Settlers of Catan (5-6 Player Expansion) - Description: Allows you to add up to two more opponents to The Settlers of Catan. The only change in the rules is that there is a building round at the end of each turn in which any player can build.15 Hexagonal Region Tiles
2 Sets of Wooden Pieces (Settlements, Cities, Roads)
25 Resource Cards
9 Development Cards
28 Number Chits
Belongs to the Catan Series.
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Size Matters - Description: From the Publisher's website:Hilarious Fun as player's compete to determine the longest, fattest, thickest, and generally the biggest things in life. For four or more players or teams. Ages 13 to adult.
Contains:
400 Big Questions
200 Game Cards
28 Voting Cards
4 Gigantic Pawns
& 1 Extremely Long Game Board
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Skittle-Bowl - Description: Players take turns swinging a ball on the end of a chain so that it goes away from the playing field and then knocks down the pins on its return. Scoring is done exactly like regular bowling. A good family game because kids get the hang of it quickly and often end up doing better than adults (even without understanding how the scoring works).This is the next best thing to having a bowling alley in your living room according to all time PBA champion Dick Weber.
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Starfarers of Catan - Description: A variation on the Settlers theme as you set off into space to colonise planets and trade with the alien races. You start at one end of the board with colonies and a port around numbered planets. The usual mechanisms apply of rolling dice, collecting resource cards (no space sheep, sorry), trading and building, developing your colonies and earning Victory Points (VPs). The variation in this edition is when you send your little ships out across the final frontier.Each player has a huge mother ship to which they attach their bits. You can buy, earn, and win more engines, to go faster; cargo bays, to enable trading with aliens; guns, to fight off pirates; and little discs to show your reputation.
Where the flames for the rocket would be is a small clear bubble. Shake your mother ship and put it down and two colored balls fall into the bubble. If the are red, yellow or blue, your little ships move across the board. But if one is black, you face an adventure card. (A similar mechanism is used in Ab Die Post).
Another player draws and reads you the adventure, and you must make simple yes/no choices. A flowchart on each card reveals the consequences, some good, some bad, and often you shake your ships to see what happens. Roughly though, pirates try to rob resources and if you win a fight you keep your cards and gain reputation (worth VPs). Or traders welcome resources and give you good stuff and reputation in return. But if you flee the pirates or stiff the traders, you lose stuff and lose reputation. There are also wormholes and wandering folk.
If you land a trading ship at an alien planet, you befriend the aliens and gain VPs, and cards which enhance your game. If you land a colony, you increase your chances of collecting resources and gain 1 VP. If you turn a colony into a port, you can start your ships from there instead and gain an extra VP for it. Reputation converts into VPs too. The first player to reach 15 VPs wins (you start on 4 VPs).
The game is an interesting variation on Settlers, but the game takes longer than the original Settlers. There is plenty of luck involved and skill in trading is important. There are various ways to secure a win. Getting a spaceport in the centre of the board is crucial to success though.
Two cautions. If you have only passing German, don't bother with the German edition. While the adventure cards follow familiar patterns, there are enough subtle variations in the text to make this game impossible to play without a dictionary.
Secondly, if your box does not contain 4 grey plastic rings to fit over the mother ships, do not attach the engines onto the ships. The mother ships are made of a hard, brittle plastic, and when you put the engines on, or pull them off, the teeth break, no matter how careful you are. The makers learned this and now provide the 4 rings upon request.
If you love Settlers or enjoy a space trading theme, then strap yourself in for a rocket trip! Settlers In Spaaaaace!
Expanded by
Starfarers of Catan 5-6 Player Expansion
Starfarers of Catan Figures
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Super Scrabble - Description: The popular game of Scrabble (q.v.) supersized.The new gameboard is a 21 by 21 grid (the original is 15 by 15) with some quadruple premium bonus squares. The game includes two hundred tiles with a new distribution of letter tiles (not just a double set of the original distribution).
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Thurn and Taxis - Description: In Thurn & Taxis, players build post office routes across Bavaria and the regions around, collecting bonus points in various ways. The board shows a map of all the towns, with roads leading from each one to some its neighbors. There are various colored regions around the board, most with one or two towns, and a large region with all the Bavarian towns in the center.On your turn, you draw a card showing a particular town into your hand and play a card from your hand in front of you, building up your postal route. When it is at least three towns long, you can cash the route in, placing post houses on the towns. When you place a card, your route must follow the geography on the board. So if you find you can't extend the route legally, it's scrapped and you must start a fresh route! Often, you will have a card in hand to keep your route going, but when you start your turn by drawing a card, you might realize then this is your last chance to push the route, and it's time to cash in.
The trick is, when you cash the route in, you can either place one house in each different region on the route, OR place houses in all the towns of one region in the route. So on one route, you might switch from one region to another, so you can place a lot of houses in different places, or you might build a route which concentrates on one region especially, getting houses into just that region.
There are lots of stacked bonus tiles across the board, with the victory points decreasing as each stack is diminished. You can collect bonus tiles for getting houses in all the towns of a region (or paired regions), bonuses for building routes 5, 6 or 7 houses long, a bonus for having a house in every region (a change from the original rules which didn't require Bavaria) and one bonus point for ending the game.
In addition, as you complete routes, you take a card showing how your postal company is growing, starting at a three route up to a seven route. The latest gives you more victory points at the game end, but you have to grow your company steadily.
Finally, you have some help from the postal staff, who give you only one extra action a turn:
flush the six face up cards
pick up an extra card at the start of your turn
place two cards onto your route
gain two places when taking a company card (so a four route can let you take the 5 or 6 route company card for example).
But you only get one action, so if you drew two cards this turn, you don't get to place two as well. And when you cash in your route, you must discard your hand down to three cards. The game ends when one player places their last post house, or takes a 7 company card (everyone gets to finish the round). Total up all your bonuses, most points win.
Many people liken Thurn & Taxis to Ticket To Ride, and there are clear similarities. But Thurn & Taxis has little player interaction, except when you might see that I need a card and you take it before me, or flush the face up cards. Other than that, there is no blocking routes on the board. The board is open to every one, and you can usually tell when the game will end. It's more a question of nerve and timing.
Do you have enough time to build a longer route? Will the right cards come up to push your route longer? Or do you build lots of small routes and snatch the bonuses quickly? There are choices in Thurn & Taxis, but the game mostly turns on your own decisions and some luck in the cards.
From the publisher "A real challenge for strategists: build a new postal stagecoach operation. But what does the best connection look like? Do you plan a short but difficult route, play it safe instead? With the right strategy, this game lets players build routes and stagecoaches, found offices in cities and expand into new countries. All the while making good use of public departments and having a lucky hand when planning new routes. Thurn und Taxis: The mail's here!"
Winner of the 2006 Spiel des Jahres.
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Ticket to Ride - Description: With elegantly simple gameplay, Ticket to Ride can be learned in 3 minutes, while providing players with intense strategic and tactical decisions every turn. Players collect cards of various types of train cars they then use to claim railway routes in North America. The longer the routes, the more points they earn. Additional points come to those who fulfill Destination Tickets – goal cards that connect distant cities; and to the player who builds the longest continuous route."The rules are simple enough to write on a train ticket – each turn you either draw more cards, claim a route or get additional Destination Tickets", says Ticket to Ride author, Alan R. Moon. "The tension comes from being forced to balance greed – adding more cards to your hand; and fear – losing a critical route to a competitor."
Ticket to Ride continues in the tradition of Days of Wonder’s big format board games featuring high-quality illustrations and components including: an oversize board map of North America, 225 custom-molded train cars, 144 illustrated cards, and wooden scoring markers.
Since it's introduction and numerous subsequent awards, Ticket to Ride has become the BoardGameGeek epitome of a "gateway game" -- simple enough to be taught in a few minutes, and with enough action and tension to keep new players involved and in the game for the duration.
Winner of the 2004 Spiel des Jahres.
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Tigris & Euphrates - Description: Arguably Reiner Knizia's best game, this is certainly one of the highlights of his prolific career. The game is set in the ancient fertile crescent with players building civilizations through tile placement. Basically, players are given leaders in four different categories (farming, trading, religion, and government) and must use them to collect victory points in these categories. However, your score at the end of the game is the number of points in your weakest category, which encourages players not to get overly specialized.Part of the Knizia tile-laying trilogy.
Winner of the 1998 Deutscher Spiele Preis.
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Tripoley - Description: Casino-style game with cards and chips. Each hand has three phases (labeled "Hearts", "Poker", and "Michigan Rummy", though only the poker phase has any resemblance to its namesake game). All cards are dealt out, including one extra hand which remains unseen. The first phase pays off for holding certain cards or combinations; the second is a hand of poker, each player selecting five cards from his hand to play; in the third phase, players play out their cards Fan Tan-style, and the first to go out wins chips.Our comments and reviews:
Trivial Pursuit Volume 1 - Description: Trivial Pursuit is the original trivia game that started it all.Each player has a circular playing piece with six pie-shaped holes. The goal of the game is to collect a pie in each color. The colors correspond to different question categories.
The board consists of a circular track with spaces in seven different colors. Six of the colors correspond to question categories while the last color gives a new dice roll. Six spaces along the track are "pie spaces", and from these there are "spokes" of track leading to the middle of the board.
Players roll a die and move along the track in any direction they like. When a player stops on a color they get a question of the appropriate category. If the player answers a question correctly while on a pie space, they get a pie of that color (assuming they don't already have it). A correct answer on another square allows the player to roll again.
Once the player has one pie in each color, she can move along the spokes to the middle of the board to win the game.
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Trivial Pursuit Volume 3 - Description: From the back of the box:In the beginning, there was GENUS, the all-time bestselling TRIVIAL PURSUIT edition of General Knowledge questions. Now, there's GENUS III, with thousands of new questions in classic subjects. It's filled with fun facts from Afghanistan and Alcatraz to Zebra and Zorro...from Soup and Sing Sing to Nuts and the Nile...with plenty of intriguing tidbits about famous people.
Inside, the completely updated game board is filled with photographs, historic images of yesterday...and topical images of today. The question categories are: People & Places, Arts & Entertainment, History, Science & Nature, Sports & Leisure, and Wild Card
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Trivial Pursuit Volume 4 - Description: The trivia game of general knowledge questions. Updated with more current questions.Our comments and reviews:
Trivial Pursuit Volume 6 - Description: All-new edition. 4,800 new general knowledge questions in 6 categories. Answer questions correctly to collect all the wedges in your pie. Then race to the center of the game board to win. The same play and categories as past Trivial Pursuit games.Our comments and reviews:
Twilight Struggle - Description: "Now the trumpet summons us again, not as a call to bear arms, though arms we need; not as a call to battle, though embattled we are – but a call to bear the burden of a long twilight struggle..."– John F. Kennedy
In 1945, unlikely allies toppled Hitler's war machine, while humanity's most devastating weapons forced the Japanese Empire to its knees in a storm of fire. Where once there stood many great powers, there then stood only two. The world had scant months to sigh its collective relief before a new conflict threatened. Unlike the titanic struggles of the preceding decades, this conflict would be waged not primarily by soldiers and tanks, but by spies and politicians, scientists and intellectuals, artists and traitors. Twilight Struggle is a two-player game simulating the forty-five year dance of intrigue, prestige, and occasional flares of warfare between the Soviet Union and the United States. The entire world is the stage on which these two titans fight to make the world safe for their own ideologies and ways of life. The game begins amidst the ruins of Europe as the two new "superpowers" scramble over the wreckage of the Second World War, and ends in 1989, when only the United States remained standing.
Twilight Struggle inherits its fundamental systems from the card-driven classics We the People and Hannibal: Rome vs. Carthage. It is a quick-playing, low-complexity game in that tradition. The game map is a world map of the period, whereon players move units and exert influence in attempts to gain allies and control for their superpower. As with GMT's other card-driven games, decision-making is a challenge; how to best use one's cards and units given consistently limited resources?
Twilight Struggle's Event cards add detail and flavor to the game. They cover a vast array of historical happenings, from the Arab- Israeli conflicts of 1948 and 1967, to Vietnam and the U.S. peace movement, to the Cuban Missile Crisis and other such incidents that brought the world to the brink of nuclear annihilation. Subsystems capture the prestige-laden Space Race as well as nuclear tensions, with the possibility of game-ending nuclear war.
Twilight Struggle won the Charles S. Roberts award for Best Modern Era Boardgame for 2005.
Winner of the 2006 International Gamers Award and the 2006 BoardGameGeek Golden Geek awards for both Best Wargame and Best 2-Player game.
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Upwords - Description: Players must form words on an 8x8 (or in the new edition 10x10) grid. The words may be formed horizontally or vertically on the grid, as in Scrabble, but as the title suggests the letters may also be stacked, so that words can be changed by having letters substituted by stacking (up to a limit of 5 high). Scoring is also different to Scrabble; there are no letter values, instead, when a new word is formed the number of tiles used in that word is counted and used as the score. A word that is flat (no stacked tiles) scores double, but the words that score the most are those that have lots of stacking.Our comments and reviews:
Win, Lose or Draw - Description: A game similar to Pictionary in that players must convey words and phrases to their teammates by drawing images on paper.The instructions include two ways to play: team play and gameboard play. The object of the team play game is to be the first team to make 8 correct guesses. The object of the gameboard way is to be the first player to collect 4 different colored pawns and the Ace-In-The-Hole card.
Based on the hit TV game show with Bert Convy as syndicated host.
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Yahtzee - Description: Yahtzee is a classic dice game played with 5 dice. Each player's turn consists of rolling the dice up to 3 times in hope of making 1 of 13 categories. Examples of categories are 3 of a kind, 4 of a kind, straight, full house, etc. Each player tries to fill in a score for each category, but this is not always possible. When all players have entered a score or a zero for all 13 categories, the game ends and total scores are compared.The traditional (public domain) game Yacht predates the trademarked game, and has slightly different scoring.
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