Ancient

King Solomon presided over a golden age of peace and prosperity in ancient Israel. During this time Solomon instituted an unprecedented building program. As one of Solomon's chief governors, you must procure materials and oversee construction of buildings and roads across the land for the glory of Solomon. You will also help to construct the Temple, one of the wonders of the ancient world.

Kingdom of Solomon is a worker-placement game with a few new twists and turns. Do you claim a resource space, an action space or throw in all your remaining pawns to grab a powerful Bonus Space? Will you spend your resources to extend Solomon's kingdom, take some points in the Market or add to the Temple? These and many other choices await you in this highly interactive game.

You play Kingdom of Solomon in rounds of four phases. You start the round placing your pawns to get resources, take actions or get a bonus. In this placement phase players take turns, each placing one pawn at a time. After all pawns have been placed, players resolve what they get from placing their pawns. This is called the resolution phase, and each player, in turn, resolves the placement of all their pawns before the next player. Next the players can go to the Market to sell or buy resources. In this market phase, like the placement phase, players alternate taking turns, except that players take turns in reverse order. The last shall be first, and the first shall be last. Finally, you build in the building phase. Players, one at a time, can build a building, roads and add blocks to the Temple.

When you place pawns to take actions, you can get an additional resource for a resource space, trade one resource for another, steal a resource from an opponent, get victory points or draw Fortune cards. You can play Fortune cards at any time. Fortune cards provide resources, victory points or special actions. Bonuses your pawns can gain for you include one of every resource, three Fortune cards or victory points with a rearrangement of turn order so you become the new first player.

You use resources to build things. Each thing costs a specific set of resources. The buildings you build give you victory points and additional spots to place pawns for resources or actions. Roads link resource spaces into resource regions so you can get more resources per pawn placed in the resource region. Building Temple blocks give you either victory points or temple tokens that help you gain or keep the High Priest. The High Priest lets you take advantage of another player’s resource region and gives you victory points at the end of the game.

The game ends at the end the round when a player places all his building tokens on building sites, there is a building token on each of the building sites, or the Temple is complete. The player with the most victory points wins.

Tzolkin: The Mayan Calendar presents a new game mechanism: dynamic worker placement. Players representing different Mayan tribes place their workers on giant connected gears, and as the gears rotate they take the workers to different action spots.

During a turn, players can either (a) place one or more workers on the lowest visible spot of the gears or (b) pick up one or more workers. When placing workers, they must pay corn, which is used as a currency in the game. When they pick up a worker, they perform certain actions depending on the position of the worker. Actions located "later" on the gears are more valuable, so it's wise to let the time work for you – but players cannot skip their turn; if they have all their workers on the gears, they have to pick some up. 

The game ends after one full revolution of the central Tzolkin gear. There are many paths to victory. Pleasing the gods by placing crystal skulls in deep caves or building many temples are just two of those many paths...

In Kemet, players each deploy the troops of an Egyptian tribe and use the mystical powers of the gods of ancient Egypt – along with their powerful armies – to score points in glorious battles or through invasion of rich territories. A game is typically played to 8 or 10 victory points, which may be accrued through winning attacks, controlling temples, controlling fully-developed pyramids, sacrificing to the gods, and wielding particular magical powers.

The conquest for the land of Kemet takes place over two phases: Day and Night. During the day, choose an action amongst the nine possible choices provided by your player mat and perform it immediately. Once every player has taken five actions, night falls, with players gathering Prayer Points from their temples, drawing Divine Intervention cards, and determining the turn order before the start of the new day.

As the game progresses, they can use Prayer Points to acquire power tiles. Some of these enroll magical creatures and have them join their troops. In addition to intimidating enemies, these creatures provide special powers!

Detailed miniature components represent the combat units and the supernatural creatures that are summoned to enhance them. Combat is resolved through cards chosen from a diminishing six-card hand and enhanced by bonuses.

This game uses the very popular card system which first appeared in Avalon Hill's We the People game to detail the struggle between Carthage's Hannibal and the Roman Republic in approximately 200 BC.

(from Valley Games website:)

One of the greatest military commanders and tacticians in history descends on the Roman Empire once again. Do you face him as Rome and try to ward the invasion that comes from the North, or do you climb atop your war elephant and show Rome you will take that which they hold most dear: their territory.

Players use strategic-level cards for multiple purposes: moving generals, levying new troops, reinforcing existing armies, gaining political control of the provinces involved in the war, and generating historical events. When two armies meet on the battlefield, a second set of cards, called Battle Cards, are used to determine the winner. Ultimately both players seek victory by dominating both fronts: military and political.

Grand Conquest is very similar to earlier versions of Donald Benge's Conquest. However it adds some interesting features. Now there are camels, catapults, siege engines and a moat around the five home points. The tube package comes with a vinyl roll out map, pieces in more distinguishable colors than previous versions, and a separate puzzle book (The Conquest games have had collections of puzzles developed similar to chess puzzles that are quite entertaining and engaging for abstract strategy players).

Re-implements:

Conquest