Area Majority / Influence

A certain something filled the air. While energizing the magic crystal in his wand, Orly suddenly felt a change he couldn’t name. Usually this ritual took only seconds before the crystal power kicked in. Not today … it took him minutes to obtain the desired power required to load his wand for the adventurous travel ahead of him. While waiting for the blessing of the crystal power he noticed something dark. Something was lurking in the mist absorbing the essential and much needed crystal power from the crystal fragments orbiting around their world, Amanaar. In light of the immense threat to their habitat, Orly decided to set off on a journey, visiting some of the remarkable creatures of Amanaar in order to seek out the dark power that threatens their very lives. Never in his humble existence would he have imagined that some of his friends would turn against him in a battle for the Lost Lights of Amanaar.

In Lost Lights, two players battle with their party of diverse animalistic characters for control over the Regions of Amanaar. In the beginning each player drafts 10 out of 27 beautifully and individually illustrated cards. On your turn you play a card from your hand and take a number of actions equal to the action point value on the card.

Actions allow you to reinforce your party with new followers or to move your followers between the Areas on the map. In Areas where both parties meet, you’ll battle each other. To resolve battles both of you secretly choose one character card from your hand as a leader in this battle, using their special ability. After the special abilities are resolved, your combined battle strength is added up. If you lose the battle, remove your party from the contested area. If you win you are now the dominant force in that area.

The game ends immediately if one of you has no party members left on the map or if both of you run out of cards. When the game ends you add up your scores for each Area. Whoever achieved the higher score wins.

—description from the publisher

Welcome to the Roaring Twenties! Gatsby is a two-player game in which you take on the role of either Dorothy Williams or James Miller, competing to spread their influence and draw the attention of the great Jay Gatsby.

On the board are three locations, each offering different opportunities to get character tiles: the cabaret, the finance center, and the racetrack. To claim these characters, each player will take turns moving the action marker on one of the four action spaces — but not the one just taken by the opponent — then activating it.

These actions let you place two influence tokens on one or two locations, allowing you to claim characters in different ways, depending on the location. In the cabaret, your tokens must form a continuous line from one side of the board to the opposite side or cover the four-star icons at the same time. In the finance center, influence lets you climb up the track. In the racetrack, your tokens are placed in races, trying to be the player with the most tokens on that race line when it's filled.

On all three locations, some special spaces on the board grant bonuses when you place a token on them: swapping two tokens on the board, forcing your opponent to take a specific action, or gaining a special action tile!

A player wins immediately if they control three characters of the same color or one character of each of the five colors. If all character tiles from a single location have been claimed before one of these conditions is met, the player with the most stars on their characters wins.

—description from the publisher

In Sunrise Lane, players take on the role of construction companies attempting to build up a residential neighborhood, and to do this, they need to pick prestigious plots of land on which to build houses and town structures.

In more detail, the game board depicts a grid of spaces that each show 1-5 dots in a single color, and each player has a set of colored House pieces, with the colors having no connection to the space on the board. On a turn, you either draw 2 colored cards from the deck and add them to your hand (with a limit of 5 cards in hand) or discard cards to place a building, then draw a card.

When you build, you must build adjacent to a pre-existing structure (or the central space at the start of the game), and you must discard 1 or more cards of the same color as the dots in the space on which you want to build. You can discard 1-5 cards, after which you place 1-5 of your House pieces on this space, then score points equal to the number of dots on the space multiplied by the number of House pieces you placed. You can build multiple buildings on a turn as long as you build your next one adjacent to the last one you built.

When a player has 2 or less House pieces in their supply, the game ends, then players score endgame points, with two of the districts awarding points for the highest buildings and the other two for the most buildings. Additionally, points go to the player with the longest group of adjacent buildings.

"And yet it moves", he said.

Galileo Galilei is a Euro-style game in which you take on the role of an astronomer who will discover new planets, find unknown star systems, develop their telescope, and make a scientific breakthrough in the difficult ages of obscurantism.

Use your telescope to select one of the five actions available, with you being able to evolve these actions into better ones. Collect cards of different planets and star systems. Collect lenses of the three main colors to make a discovery. Be wary of inquisitors as they might arrive unwelcomed and ruin your fame in no time. Better find a way to profit from their visit instead.

—description from the publisher

In the far-off future, the solar system is inhabited by 3 races: Humans, Robots, and Animods.
Civilization runs off of Zenithium, a clean and renewable energy source, but coexistence is a struggle.
Your goal: unite the planets to gain control of the senate!

Players will struggle to gain Influence on the 5 planets: Mercury, Venus, Earth, Mars, and Jupiter. This Influence is represented by discs in different colors.

In Zenith, there are 3 victory conditions:

Absolute victory: Gain 3 Influence discs from the same planet.
Democratic victory: Gain 4 Influence discs from strictly different planets.
Popular victory: Gain 5 Influence discs (from any planets).

The game ends immediately as soon as one player meets 1 of these three conditions.

—description from the publisher