Science Fiction

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.

Evacuation

"Hurry to the ship! Twelve houses from our town have already burned down!"

In Evacuation, life on our planet is being burned away thanks to increasingly intense sunlight, so everyone is trying to move all the people and factories in their territories from the "old" planet to a new one — and they have only four rounds in which to do so.

You start the game with a full functioning economy, and over the course of play, you must dismantle that economy and move it. Income on the old planet shrinks over time, and production probably won't be much better until you establish yourself on the new planet and kick things into action. Resources can't be mixed across the planets, so you need to take special care with your planning.

To do this, you choose actions from the player board, with the expert variant adding cards to your hand that allow you to choose additional actions and combine them. Each action has its own value, and the sum of these actions is important for an "end of the round" bonus. Additionally, players move their markers along the orbital track based on the value of their actions.

If you can raise production of three resources to level 8 and have three stadiums on the new planet, you win. Otherwise, players compare scores after four rounds. Evacuation includes modules to add new play options.

NOTE: A community FAQ is available here to provide some clarity on Frequently Misplayed Rules.

Black Hole Buccaneers

Great adventure, fame, and untold riches — all this is waiting for the Black Hole Buccaneers. In the game, the players' task is to collect ancient collectibles from the orbit of black holes, objects dumped there hundreds of years ago as mankind's chosen place for the final disposal of garbage. Among the 99 cards in the game are artifacts and relics that have powerful effects, as well as toys that are not particularly valuable in the year 2642, but that are in great demand by other species. In exchange, these species offer their help in escaping the black holes into which players will be drawn when the collected space debris exceeds their threshold for release. The player who best manages to master the dangers of outer space after three rounds of the drafting game and collects the most valuable items will win.

Black Hole Buccaneers is a fast-playing drafting game which not only offers new situations and a lot of interaction with other players, but also difficult decisions due to various card effects. In each round, everyone at the table plays one card and passes the remaining cards to their neighbor. Whoever can escape the black hole in the scoring phase of a round gets to score their collected items and thus comes a little closer to victory.

-description from publisher

Dune: Imperium – Uprising

In Dune: Imperium Uprising, you want to continue to balance military might with political intrigue, wielding new tools in pursuit of victory. Spies will shore up your plans, vital contracts will expand your resources, or you can learn the ways of the Fremen and ride mighty sandworms into battle!

Dune: Imperium Uprising is a standalone spinoff to Dune: Imperium that expands on that game's blend of deck-building and worker placement, while introducing a new six-player mode that pits two teams against one other in the biggest struggle yet.

The Dune: Imperium expansions Rise of Ix and Immortality work with Uprising, as do almost all of the cards from the base game, and elements of Uprising can be used with Dune: Imperium.

The choices are yours. The Imperium awaits!