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|  Maria | | | | | |
| ASYMMETRICAL STRATEGY WAR GAME
MARIA is a game based on the War of the Austrian Succession, where Austria was attacked by Prussia, France, Bavaria and Saxony, while only Great Britain, Hanover and the Netherlands (by forming the so-called Pragmatic Army) helped her.
MARIA is primarily a 3 player game. One player is Austria, the second is France plus Bavaria, while the third player has the schizophrenic role of playing Prussia (Austrias enemy) and the Pragmatic Army (Austrias ally) at the same time. This is made possible by the division of the map into two parts, the Flanders map and the Bohemia map.
MARIA is derived from the award-winning Friedrich, but has its very own character, including politics, hussars, force marches, imperial election, Saxonys betrayal and Prussias annexation of Silesia. Subtle maneuvers, seizure of fortresses, prudent retreats, and Machiavellian politics are the keys to victory. However, players must be careful: whoever uses his Tactical Cards unwisely in battle can suddenly find himself not on the highway to glory but on the road to ruin.
MARIA takes you to the era of the 18th centurys ruthless struggle for power. It can be played in 2 variants: the shorter, simplified introductory game or the longer but richer advanced game, with its simultaneous campaigns in Bohemia and Flanders.
Minimum Players: 2
Maximum Players: 3
Age & Difficulty: 13
Category1: Area Control
Category2: Political/Historical
Rating: 3
New Copy for sale: Can be ordered
In-store Play Copy: In Store
Year Published: 2009 |
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| Battle Beyond Space | | | | | |
| FAST PACE SPACESHIP WAR GAME
Battle Beyond Space is a massive, multi-player free-for-all space battle with 60–80 ships slugging it out IN SPACE.
In 45-60 minutes. And 9 turns. In an asteroid field.
The combat system is diceless and extremely deadly. On a turn, you choose one of your three squadrons, move and fire with it, then get to move one of your two capital ships.
The big difference between the players is the super-secret alien power of technology which they can spring on another player at any time. Some are one-use, amazingly powerful items (aka Death Blossom), some are more subtle, long-term effects.
Minimum Players: 3
Maximum Players: 4
Age & Difficulty: 13
Category1: War Strategy
Category2: Abstract Strategy
Rating: 4
New Copy for sale: Can be ordered
In-store Play Copy: In Store
Year Published: 2012 |
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| Inkognito | | | | | |
| THE GAME OF BLUFFING AND DEDUCTION BETWEEN TWO TEAMS
The goal of each agent in Inkognito is to complete a mission, together with his partner. At the beginning of the game, however, players dont know which mission they must fulfill!
In the standard four-player game, each player guides one of four secret agents. The four characters are allied in pairs: Lord Fiddlebottom and Colonel Bubble are always partnered against Agent X and Madame Zsa Zsa. Each of the four agents is represented by one of four different figures, with different builds: tall, short, fat, thin. Only one of them represents the actual character controlled by a player. The other three figures represent spies which are friendly to him and that are trying to confuse the opposition.
On a turn, a player shakes the Phantom of Prophecy randomizer to determine his three available actions, e.g., moving on a land route or a sea route. The player moves his figures, trying to reach spaces already occupied by the other players figures or the Ambassador. When figures are in the same space, the current player gets the right to ask questions and inspect some of the cards of that player. By deduction and a logical process of elimination, he can draw conclusions as to the identity and intentions of the other players.
The first goal of every agent is to discover which of the other players is his partner. This partner has the other half of the code indicating his secret mission. After discovering (or thinking he has discovered) the real identity of the other players, an agent must trade his secret mission card with his ally. This will reveal the final mission and what must be done to complete it. If either agent on a team completes the mission, both he and his partner win the game.
There is another character with an important role in the game: the Ambassador. He can be used to get clearer information about the other characters. Everyone wants to meet him because he is well-informed and can be useful to accomplish your purposes, but he can also help your rivals, so do everything you can to keep him far from them.
The 2013 version of Inkognito from Ares Games raises the maximum player count to five by allowing someone to play the Ambassador and move it during his turn. He can still gather clues when the other players question the Ambassador during their turn, and the other players can still gather clues from him. The goal of the Ambassadors player is to know everything about the other characters, guessing their identities and builds. If the Ambassador achieves perfect knowledge before a team accomplishes its secret missions, he wins the game.
Minimum Players: 3
Maximum Players: 4
Age & Difficulty: 12
Category1: Deduction
Category2: partnership
Rating: 5
New Copy for sale: Can be ordered
In-store Play Copy: In Store
Year Published: 1988 |
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| Talat | | | | | |
| ONE BRAIN AGAINST TWO BRAIN?
Talat, originally published in an all-wood edition under the name Drei, is an abstract strategy game specifically designed for three players. Each pair of players shares a game board, forcing each player to pay attention to two different gaming scenarios at once. The goal is to capture the opponents pieces and to move your own pieces to the opponents starting rows.
Players have nine towers in three heights and three shapes (squared, hexagonal and triangular prisms). To set up the game, players lay out the game boards, then take turns placing towers one by one on the starting edges of their game boards, five towers on one board and four on the other.
On a turn, a player must move one tower one space forward, either straight or diagonally; the player can choose freely which tower to move on which game board, but moving on one board precludes movement on the other, so choose wisely! A tower can capture another tower by moving onto its space, but only in the right circumstances. If the two towers are the same height, the capturing tower must have more sides than the one being captured; if their heights differ, the capturing tower must be one level taller than the tower being captured. The exception is the smallest triangular tower, which can capture the opponents tallest hexagonal tower. A tower can also move sideways when capturing, but not when merely moving on the game board; thus, even after a tower reaches the opponents back row, it might still be at risk of capture (or possibly the one doing the capturing).
If no captures are possible on a game board, that board is frozen and players can no longer move their pieces on it. As soon as two boards are frozen, the game ends. Players score five points for each tower theyve captured and three points for each of their own towers that has reached an opponents starting edge. The player with the highest score wins.
Minimum Players: 2
Maximum Players: 3
Age & Difficulty: 8
Category1: Abstract Strategy
Category2:
Rating: 4
New Copy for sale: Can be ordered
In-store Play Copy: In Store
Year Published: 2008 |
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| The Golden City | | | | | |
| BEAUTIFUL CITY BOARD FOR AREA INFLUENCE
From far away, the adventurers have come to the island with the golden city in its center. Just arrived, they open up the first shop directly at the coast. Already it is possible to open up other ones in the villages along the street connections.
Thats worth it because through that youll get goods, keys, money, and concessions that you need for getting ahead. And finally the first is able to establish himself in the golden City and thus get the most precious trading contracts.
Minimum Players: 3
Maximum Players: 4
Age & Difficulty: 10
Category1: Area Control
Category2:
Rating: 3
New Copy for sale: Can be ordered
In-store Play Copy: In Store
Year Published: 2009 |
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| Alans Adventureland | | | | | |
| In Alans Adventureland, players are a part of the design team for a new amusement park. There are four themed neighborhoods within the facility, and each player is responsible for constructing the attractions in one of those neighborhoods: Animal Kingdom, Tour America, Sky World, and Foreign Lands. Each turn represents the passage of one week.
During the game, players draw cards representing purchase orders (POs) for different types of attractions. These cards have two uses: first, as POs approved by the finance office to expedite construction of specific types of attractions each turn, and second, as the actual financing to construct the attraction represented on the card. At the end of each month, the review board meets, evaluates the progress of each neighborhood, and awards bonuses for meeting a set of predetermined preferences. These preferences relate to how attractions in a park are arranged. Points are awarded to the players who meet the review boards preferences.
Minimum Players: 3
Maximum Players: 4
Age & Difficulty: 14
Category1: Resource Management
Category2: set collection
Rating: 3
New Copy for sale: Can be ordered
In-store Play Copy: In Store
Year Published: 2016 |
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| Black Fleet | | | | | |
| In the tactical card-driven board game Black Fleet, youre in command of three different types of ships: your merchant ship earns you doubloons by conveying goods from one port to another, your pirate ship by attacking and stealing goods from merchants and burying them on islands, and the Navy ships by sinking your opponents pirate ships. With your (not-always-honestly-won) money, youll improve your ships by buying advancement cards, giving you powerful additional abilities.
Outwit your opponents with fortune cards and combos, earn money faster than they do, and pay the ransom for the governors daughter to win the game!
Minimum Players: 3
Maximum Players: 4
Age & Difficulty: 14
Category1: pick and deliever
Category2:
Rating: 3
New Copy for sale: In Stock
In-store Play Copy: In Store
Year Published: 2014 |
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| Zombie Tower 3D | | | | | |
| In Zombie Tower 3D, you will play as a one of the characters trapped inside a building crawling with zombies. Working with your teammates, you must try to evacuate the building before it collapses. But beware! Zombies will appear out of nowhere every so often, craving for your flesh. There are also other desperate survivors in the building, waiting to be rescued. You must search the building for various tools to fight off the zombies, save survivors, and evacuate from the building!
Zombie Tower features a revolutionary 3D stand-up board. During the game, you may only look at your own play space, so you will have to actively communicate with your teammates about your situation to call for help or offer rescue. Items are also passed through small slits between the walls, and not directly to other players. After fulfilling the escape conditions, each player will get victory points depending on the number of survivors saved and completion of their minor objective cards, and the true winner will be determined.
Minimum Players: 3
Maximum Players: 4
Age & Difficulty: 10
Category1: Cooperative
Category2:
Rating: Not Rated
New Copy for sale: Not available
In-store Play Copy: Not available
Year Published: 2015 |
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| Witness | | | | | |
| Witness is set in the world of Blake and Mortimer, a Belgian comic series started in the 1940s by writerartist Edgar P. Jacobs. In the game, which is playable strictly by four players, you each represent one of four characters and your goal is to solve mysteries or crimes by sharing information with one another — but you are quite restricted in how you can share information!
Witness includes 64 cases for you to solve, and each case starts with an explanatory scene or image or both that someone reads or shows to the group. Each player then looks in his personal casebook to find information available only to his character. Players randomly decide who shares information first and in which direction, e.g., player A might whisper information to player B while player C talks to player D. Next, B will share both his information and As information to C while D talks to A.
After two more rounds of the most inefficient crime-solving system ever created, players read the conclusion of the case, which might offer additional information or another visual, then they each individually answer three questions about the case, with the group scoring one point for each correct answer for a final score ranging from 0 to 12.
Minimum Players: 4
Maximum Players: 4
Age & Difficulty: 13
Category1: story telling
Category2: Deduction
Rating: 3
New Copy for sale: Can be ordered
In-store Play Copy: In Store
Year Published: 2014 |
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| Battle Line | | | | | |
| SIMPLE RULES LEADING TO STRATEGIC GAMING EXPERIENCE
Two opponents face off across a battle line and attempt to win the battle by taking 5 of 9 flags or 3 adjacent flags. Flags are decided by placing cards into 3 card poker-type hands on either side of the flag (similar to straight flush, 3 of a kind, straight, flush, etc). The side with the highest formation of cards wins the flag.
This is a rethemed version of Schotten-Totten with different graphics and wooden flag bits in place of the boundary stone cards. Game play is identical, except the cards run from 1 to 10 (not 9), you hold seven cards in your hand (not 6), and the rule that stones may only be claimed at the start of your turn is presented as an advanced variant. Also the tactics cards were introduced by Battle Line; these cards were only added to later editions of Schotten-Totten.
Some have reported that the production quality of the cards is inferior to the Schotten-Totten cards, however, for most readers Battle Line will be much easier to find in stores. In the second edition of GMTs Battle Line the card quality is higher.
Minimum Players: 2
Maximum Players: 3
Age & Difficulty: 12
Category1: Cards
Category2:
Rating: 5
New Copy for sale: Can be ordered
In-store Play Copy: In Store
Year Published: 2000 |
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