Transportation

Become part of a U.S. National Institution of the early 20th Century, as you build the routes and reputation of The Most Famous Train in the World: the 20th Century Limited. You are American rail luminaries, creating small independent lines to serve local cities. Plying your business acumen, you plan to sell these lines to larger companies. Of course, you wouldn’t be where you are today without knowing a thing or two about turning tricky situations to your advantage: You have a scheme in mind to get the big companies what they need, without necessarily having, shall we say, exclusive ownership of it….

20th Century Limited condenses the history the American railroad into a sixty-minute game. Players take on the roles of the great railway robber barons as they set up small railroads, turn them into larger rail lines, then sell them off and start all over again. The spread of the North American rail system can happen on your game table in about an hour as the network develops in a fashion similar to the historical model.

The game possesses the simple route-building mechanisms that were used in Transamerica. The placement of pieces is easy to understand, and this simple feature is livened up by the Rail Line cards that dictate the placement of rail segments to recreate the various historical railways of America. The second piece of the puzzle are the Demand cards that serve as a pseudo pick-up-and-deliver system. Players are able to choose what path suits them in the game. You can go for the fulfillment of demands or you can try to build the great rail lines that shaped America. Everything from the Santa Fe to Boston & Maine and many other memorable lines are represented, including the game's namesake: the New York Central Railroad.

In Munich at the end of the 19th century, the successful new tramway needs expansion, and the two opposing players in Trambahn are competing for the contract.

To do this, in a grid marked by cards players use their cards in three different ways: as passengers on the trams, as suggested stops on new routes to be built, and as money to pay for these routes. When laying out cards for suggested stops, players need to both match colors and build them in ascending order — but they also need to bring passengers to this tram line in order to score victory points for it.

The cards resemble postcards that feature street cars in Munich and historical parts of the city.

The route-building game genre can be counted as the greatest passion of English game designer and history teacher Martin Wallace. And with La Strada, he has come up with a particularly clever road-building game. Everything – from the rules to the game play – is devilishly simple. The game lets players claim successes throughout the game, and turn-by-turn one reaches one or even multiple goals. But at the end, someone else wins? How did that happen?

The game features a variable game board, built up out of hex tiles that depict easily traveled flatland, forests, or hills. Before the start of the game, nineteen different settlements (ranging from cities to tiny villages) with varying victory point values are randomly placed onto those spaces featuring a gray symbol. Each player then places his or her starting marker onto a chosen flatland tile. The object here is of course to try to put your starting marker near as many high-value cities as possible.

The object of the game is to connect together as many settlements with your roads as possible, in order to get as many victory points as possible. The catch is that settlements award fewer and fewer victory points the more players connect to them. The cities are like pies: the more people want a slice, the smaller the slices have to be.

Building streets is very simple. One a player’s turn, he receives six gold pieces. Each street segment costs two gold to build over flatland, three over forest, and four over hills. Players can build as many segments as they can afford on their turn, provided that they end at a settlement and don’t intersect any other streets on the way. Put simply: players can’t end a street in the middle of nowhere and then keep building next turn. Streets have to reach their destination at the end of each turn.

Once a settlement has been reached, and then the player gets to put one of their trade markers on it. Note that streets can intersect each other only at the settlement locations. If a player doesn’t use up all of his gold on his turn, then he can save it for the next turn (where he will also get another six gold to play with again). Players aren’t allowed to spend more than ten gold pieces on their turn, though, so you can’t save forever.

The game ends when one player can’t build any more roads or doesn’t have any trade markers left.

Scoring then occurs. A scoring example for a city: The city is worth five victory points, but only if it was connected to by a single player. A doubly connected city is worth four points for each player, while a triply connected city is only worth three each. Cities connected to by four players are only worth two points. This decreasing point system also counts for smaller settlements, worth between four and two victory points. A nicely thought out sorting system ensures that the end game scoring doesn’t turn into a math exercise. Naturally, the player with the most victory points is the winner. In the case of a tie, then the tied player with the most gold left is the winner.

La Strada is a very simple game: build roads and connect cities. But it’s not that easy to get ahead with the scores. It’s every player’s dream to claim a fat five point city all to themselves – but a player who spends too much energy trying to protect an investment will find that his other road-building options become tighter.

[Text is from a preview by Spielbox]

Merchants & Marauders lets you live the life of an influential merchant or a dreaded pirate in the Caribbean during the Golden Age of Piracy. Seek your fortune through trade, rumor hunting, missions, and of course, plundering. Modify your ship, buy impressive vessels, load deadly special ammunition, and hire specialist crew members. Will your captain gain eternal glory and immense wealth - or find his wet grave under the stormy surface of the Caribbean Sea?

In Merchants and Marauders, players take on the role of a captain of a small vessel in the Caribbean. The goal is to be the first to achieve 10 "glory" points through performing daring deeds (through the completion of missions or rumors), crushing your enemies (through defeating opponents and NPCs in combat), amassing gold, performing an epic plunder or pulling off the trade of a lifetime, and buying a grand ship. While some points earned from performing various tasks are permanent, players earn points for amassing gold, which can be stolen or lost (or at least diminished) if their captain is killed. Points due to gold are hidden so there's some uncertainty about when the game will end.

A big component of the game is whether (or when) to turn "pirate" or remain as a trader or neutral party. Both careers are fraught with danger: pirates are hunted by NPCs (and other players) for their bounty and blocked to certain ports while traders are hunted by non-player pirates as well as their opponents and generally have to sacrifice combat capability for cargo capacity. Although players can kill each other, there is no player elimination as players may draw a new captain (with a penalty) so it's possible to come back from defeat.

Your small island is peaceful and prosperous – so prosperous that your tribe has grown beyond its ability to sustain you! Fortunately, being a peaceful people you have chosen not to fight over what little there is. Instead, you set out in your seagoing Wa’a (canoe) to fish and gather crops from the many nearby islands. The fertility goddess Haumea has blessed these islands, and they are rich with fruits, vegetables, and spices. It is a matter of pride to collect the finest harvest for the village. Can you win the race against time and the sea, and prove that you are the best gatherer of all?

In Tahiti the goal is to collect crops (coconuts, taro, bananas, spice) and fish from the surrounding islands to score points with bonuses for making full sets and acquiring the most of their family favorites which are hidden from the other players.

The game starts off with just your home island and its immediate neighboring islands. Players build up the archipelago of fertile islands with the guidance of Haumea for the first part of the game until all islands are in play. Players seed the islands each turn giving them some control over where crops replenish. Once the archipelago is formed, the late season is triggered when crops start becoming scarce, with players occasionally stopping an island from producing altogether. Although the late season may not be as good for crops, fishing becomes easier with bonuses given to the waters around some of the islands.
During all this the players travel by Wa’a from island to island using action points to collect the crops they want or can get to before the others take them. As the Wa’a fills, it becomes slower limiting the number of actions they have. There are also treacherous reefs around the islands that require you go around them or risk losing some of the crops aboard your Wa’a. At the end of the year, the one who most efficiently gathers food for their family wins.