Transportation

In the 6th century A.D., ruled by Emperor Iustinianus (commonly called 'Justinian'), Constantinopolis was the largest emporium in the East Roman 'Byzantine' Empire. Built on the shore of the Marmara sea, at the entrance of the Bosporus (Hellispontus), its position let it take on the role of one of the most important harbors. Its quickly expanding trade and exports to close cities were great opportunities for the local businessmen to expand their riches.

Take on the role of an ambitious merchant during this golden era of trade. The task set before you is to become the most successful entrepreneur in the city of Constantinopolis. Compete against your rivals and earn the most renown by completing contracts and establishing viable trade; your fame will be measured by your ability to expand your trade district while managing your delivery contracts.

Constantinopolis is a board game of resource management, economy, and trade for 2-5 players. With a moderate game time of 1 to 2 hours and intuitive rules, Constantinopolis strikes the perfect balance of accessibility and depth.

Tiles in Latin, consistent with Giustiniano's time, are both a reference to the high period of Constantinopolis and a way to make the game entirely language independent.

Crafters, builders and carriers — your help is needed to dispel the mists of Nebula! The people of the valley will reward you handsomely if you harvest and exploit our many resources, open paths through the mists, and help our settlers build new structures. Cooperate temporarily with other builders in order to create paths and share goods, but do not forget your own objectives. Will you have a statue erected in your honor on the Nebula City plaza?

A game of Via Nebula starts with a board showing a hexagonal grid, some production sites with a few available resources on them (wood, stone, wheat, and pigs), building sites in various areas scattered over the whole board, and a lot of mist.

Turn after turn, players have two actions at their disposal from these options: They may clear the mist of a hex to create new paths of transportation, open new production sites, open a building site in a city, carry resources from any production site to their own building sites, and, of course, achieve a construction. Resources and paths through the mist may be used by all the players. This initially induces a kind of cooperation, but eventually other players will take advantage of your actions!

To achieve a construction, you fulfill a contract on one of your cards. You start the game with two contracts, and four more contracts are available for all players to see and use on a first come, first served basis — and that's where the cooperation abruptly stops. Additionally, most contracts have special powers that are triggered on completion.

The game ends when a player finishes a fifth building. Opponents each take two final actions, then players score based on the number of cleared hexes and opened production sites and the point value of their contracts, with a bonus for the player who ended the game.

Drivers, start your engines! Will you cross the finish line first? Now is your chance to find out!

Automobiles is a deck‑building game in which the fun is cubed — because instead of using cards to build a deck, you build with your collection of cubes. These cubes not only allow you to race your car around the track, but they also allow you to improve your handling, optimize your pit crew, and boost your speed, all of which are your keys to victory!

The goal of the game is to cross the finish line first! You accomplish this by customizing your race car and surrounding yourself with the best crew. Your race car and crew are represented by a collection of cubes garnered from various options available to you. Starting with the same small set of cubes, each player builds their collection as they play the game. Use these cubes to enhance your performance, train your pit crew, and ensure your race car runs as effectively as possible. Be the first to cross the finish line and watch that checkered flag wave!

Designed by David Short, Automobiles is the third title in AEG's Destination Fun series! Continue your travels in the acclaimed Trains and Planes board games.

In a galaxy far, far away... they need sewer systems, too. Corporation Incorporated builds them. Everyone knows their drivers -- the brave men and women who fear no danger and would, if the pay was good enough, even fly through Hell.

Now you can join them. You will gain access to prefabricated spaceship components cleverly made from sewer pipes. Can you build a space ship durable enough to weather storms of meteors? Armed enough to defend against pirates? Big enough to carry a large crew and valuable cargo? Fast enough to get there first?

Of course you can. Become a Galaxy Trucker. It's loads of fun.

Galaxy Trucker is a tile laying game that plays out over two phases: building and flying. The goal is to have the most credits at the end of the game. You can earn credits by delivering goods, defeating pirates, building an efficient ship, and being the furthest along the track at the end of the flying phase.

Building happens in real time and has players build their personal space ships by grabbing tiles from the middle of the table before the timer runs out. Tiles start out facedown so they won't know what they have until they take it, but they may choose to return it faceup if they don't want it. They must place the tiles they keep in a legal manner in their space ship. Usually this just means lining up the connectors appropriately (single to single, double to double, universal to anything) but also includes proper positioning of guns and engines. Tiles represent a variety of things including guns, engines, storage containers, crew cabins, shields, and batteries. They may also peek at the cards they will encounter in phase 2, but they must sacrifice building time to do this. At any time players may call their ships finished and take an order marker from the center.

Once building is completed, and ships have been checked for errors, the flight begins. The flight cards are shuffled and player markers are placed on the flight board according to the order markers taken. Cards are revealed one at a time and players interact with them in order. They may include things such as pirates, abandoned vessels, disease outbreaks, meteor showers, worlds with goods to pick up, player-on-player combat zones, and other various things.

Most of the cards will cause players to move back on the flight track and they must decide if the delay is worth their efforts. When all the cards are encountered players sell any goods they have collected, collect their rewards for finishing in first, second, or third place or having the most intact ship, and then lose some credits for damaged components. Space can be a very dangerous place and it is not uncommon to see your ship break into smaller and smaller pieces or lose some very valuable cargo off the side. If your ship gets damaged too much you can get knocked out of the race, so be careful!

3 rounds of this are done, and in each round players get a bigger board to build a ship that can hold more components. After the 3rd round the player with the most credits wins!

Alvin & Dexter – A Ticket to Ride Monster Expansion can be added to any of the various standalone Ticket to Ride games that designer Alan R. Moon and publisher Days of Wonder have released since 2004.

These monsters stymie players both during the game and once it ends. During play, no routes can be built into or out of a city where Alvin or Dexter are currently nesting, and during the final score tallying, any destination ticket showing a city where either monster stands is worth only half its normal value.

Desperately need to build a route to Seattle, Paris, or wherever else a roaming monster has set up shop? Discard one (or two) wild locomotive cards, and you can move the monster up to three (or six) cities away from its current location. Move a monster more than any other player, and you'll pick up an endgame bonus for your role as monster minder.