Ancient

Pergamon

Pergamon is a tactical collecting game with a theme based on excavating archaeological discoveries and managing their exhibition.

Set in the year 1878, the first excavations in what is now modern Turkey are uncovering the remains of ancient Pergamon. Soon the precious discoveries will make their way abroad to public exhibitions before a waiting audience, eliciting substantial honor and glory.

The players attempt to gain federal research grants to cover the costs of their excavations through a bidding mechanism. Whoever is modest and less demanding can travel to the excavating areas before his or her competitors, and the rule is first come, first dig. Only fragments will remain for the later expeditions. Recovered treasures are placed in valuable exhibitions, for which the discoverer receives glory and recognition.

The player who accumulates the most glory after 12 rounds wins the game.

The combination of soliciting funds and racing for the best locations to excavate makes Pergamon a variable game with rules that are easily accessible. Players are forced to make choices based on the money they can obtain and the sequence in which they choose where to dig.

Sobek: 2 Players

Construction is underway on a temple dedicated to Sobek. A huge market has emerged nearby, supplied by the continuous flow of feluccas and pirogues along the Nile. Your Guild of Merchants is determined to take advantage of this unbelievable opportunity, and ready to use any means to grab sumptuous goods out of the way of your opponent. Beware, though, as it will be crucial not to have accumulated too much corruption when the time of reckonings arrives.

How to play
In Sobek: 2 Players, both opponents collect and sell Goods to earn the most Victory Points. On their turn, the player chooses among 3 options: take a tile on the Market, sell a set of Goods or play a Character. When the player takes a tile, they select one on the Ankh pawn’s line and add it to their hand. They then place the Ankh pawn in the line that is indicated by the tile they just took, which determines the choices available to their opponent.
When they have enough in hand, a player can sell a set of at least 3 tiles of the same type. These tiles will earn them Victory Points at the end of the game, depending on both their quantity and the amount of Scarabs that they feature. A player can also use a Character to benefit from its powerful special ability.
In Sobek: 2 Players, everything is about timing. Planning ahead and analysing which opportunities you offer to you opponent on their next move is key to playing the best moves and winning the game.

—description from the publisher

Founders of Teotihuacan

Travel back in time to the founding of one of the greatest cities of Mesoamerica and become a part of its history once again. Design the foundations of a great pre-Columbian civilization, with its buildings, temples, and a grand pyramid in the center. Find perfect locations for production buildings and great temples, and build the might of the great pyramid overlooking your city. Establish yourself as the very best among competing architects, and your project will secure you a spot among the great Founders of Teotihuacan!

Founders of Teotihuacan is a strategy game where you compete against your friends to create the best design of the city of Teotihuacan. Over the course of three to four rounds you will place your action disks to the main board, forming towers of varying strength, strategically use the bonuses they offer, and construct temples, resource buildings and the pyramid central to your project of Teotihuacan. You will balance generating resources and using them, as finding good locations on your city board becomes increasingly more difficult, and you will try to outwit your opponents, making use of an innovative and interactive action system. Finally, once the eclipse comes, all designs will be assessed and the player with the most points will win and become the architect to join the ranks of Founders of Teotihuacan!

Founders of Teotihuacan is a stand-alone game, related to Teotihuacan: City of Gods only by the shared setting of the ancient city of Teotihuacan. Thematically, the events in Founders takes place at an earlier time in history, while what was to become a magnificent city was yet in its infancy and only few inhabited the area.

On your turn, you must either perform an Action or pass. To perform an Action, place between 1 and 3 of your Action disks on an Action space on the Main board that already contains at least one disk (minimum a Bonus disk and possibly also opponent disk(s)), and carry out a corresponding Action. The Action disk(s) should be placed on top of the disk(s) already on that space, forming a stack. Each Action space can hold a maximum of 4 Action disks—including Bonus disks!

Your personal player board is divided into four Districts or quadrants. Buildings and Temples can only be placed within the two Districts closest to your Architect. Pyramid tiles can only be placed within the six Pyramid squares closest to your Architect. Your Action Strength is equal to the total number of disks (whether yours, an opponent’s disks, or Bonus disks) on an Action space.

After performing an Action (not when passing), move your Architect clockwise to the next side of your Player board, signifying
the end of your turn. This changes your Architect's Reach for your next turn. After all players have passed, the current round ends.

After the game has ended, players score additional Victory Points for how well their Districts complement their Pyramid.

—description from the publisher

Factions: Battlegrounds

In Factions: Battlegrounds, you take on the role of a general who's leading an army of troops, spellcasters, beasts, and mythological monsters into battle. You and the opposing generals determine the battleground, gather resources, and score points by eliminating enemy units. Whoever first captures 25 points of units wins.

In more detail, to set up choose one of the six factions in the game; each faction has twelve unique units and five "home terrain" cards that work well with your units. Players then take turns building the battleground by placing one terrain card at a time into the 3x3 grid, each terrain card is divided into a 2x2 grid, so the entire grid of play is 6x6. Whoever places terrain first has an advantage since they have more home terrain than other players, while players who go later during set up determine the location of resource centers on the battleground or recruit their starting units last so that they can respond to the choices of opponents. Units cost 1-5 gold, and each player can spend up to 10 gold on starting units, keeping anything unspent.

During a round, all units have the chance to move, with the highest-ranked units moving first and with ties being broken in favor of whoever has the most captains, followed by whoever has the most units. Each unit has a movement, attack, and health value, along with an indication of whether it generates gold or mana and (possibly) a spell that it can cast. After moving a unit, you can attack with it, whether melee or ranged as indicated on the card. If you defeat an enemy unit, you can points equal to its cost in gold, so while expensive units tend to be the most powerful, they also provide an opponent with their biggest target for points.

Prior to activating a unit on your turn, you can pay gold to recruit new units, and those units will slip into rank order for the turn, possibly allowing you to put a high-ranking unit into play directly and giving an opponent someone on the battleground that they didn't expect.

Once all the units have moved, players collect resources for units that gain them automatically and for units located on resource centers. Rounds continue until someone has collected 25 points of captured units, at which point they win immediately.

Factions: Battlegrounds is centered on inclusion and diversity, incorporating mythology from all over the world and representing traditionally European-based fantasy elements with underrepresented cultural elements.

Darkness

Darkness is a strategy card game set in ancient Northern Europe where druids vie for control of powerful artifacts. It's a simultaneous action game where players play a progressing amount of colored cards in order to acquire unclaimed artifacts and relics, in a complex, and fun game of prediction, observation, and thought.

Game play takes place over the course of six rounds. In each round player try to acquire cards that give them end game points, and special abilities. The objective of the game is to score the most points at the end.

Each round is separated into four phases. In the first phase, players place three of their colored cards from their hand in front of them, face down. Then everybody reveals their cards.

Next, everybody places two cards down in front of them, and then reveals those. Then players play one final card face down and reveal that one, for a total of six revealed cards. Finally, there is a resolution phase where the players determine who has the largest amount of dominant, and sub-dominant colors for each of the available artifacts, and they are divided up accordingly.

Players have the same hand of 15 cards throughout the course of the game, thus limited luck. The 15 cards a comprised of five colors, with three cards of each color. Once a card is played during a round, it is put back in a player's hand at the end of the round and can be played again.

On each artifact card this is a dominant, and sub-dominant color. The card goes to the player that has played the most color cards that match the dominant color. In the case of a tie, the player with the largest number of color cards played that match the sub-dominant color gets the card. The reason the game is complex and fun is, there are many different dominant and sub colors on the board at the same time, and people have to predict what other people are going for based on set collection, and the optimization of color specialization.

The game ends after six rounds. The person who wins is the person with the most number of points, which is determined by how much of a type a player has in each of their sets, and how many gem relics they have.