Area Majority / Influence

Evermore have they walked the world of Iwari. Evermore have they embodied its spirit and shaped its lands. They are stewards of the earth. Five Titans that make the cosmos breath. On Iwari, there are no teeming masses, no continent-wide civilizations. Humanity is in its infancy, living in scattered tribes in forest, tundra, and desert.

Now we have left our ancestral homelands to explore the vast uncharted regions, encountering other fellow tribes and exchanging knowledge, culture and wisdom. In our journey, we all live in harmony with the Titans, and though distant to us, they decide our fate. And yet only we don't know if they created us, or we created them.

Iwari is an abstract-like Eurogame in which players represent different tribes looking for their identity by traveling around far lands and expanding their settlements into five different regions on the board. In the game, players use cards for two different actions:

1) Place tents and expand their settlements into five different regions on the board in a majority game that scores on each territory.
2) Construct nature totems to bond with the Titans by placing them on regions and score points based on the totem majorities in adjacent territories.

During the game, players can complete missions that grant small perks and score points by having the majority of tents in each territory after the end of the first card cycle. At game end, the majority of tents will be scored again, along with the majorities of nature totems in two adjacent regions and settlements that players have created (i.e., four or more tents in an uninterrupted sequence along one of the roads on the board).

Iwari reimagines the award-winning game Web of Power by Michael Schacht by adding new layers of strategy, tribe player boards, different maps with their own set of rules, modules that can be added to the game, and unique co-operative and solo modes.

The Neo-Babylonian empire, especially under the reign of Nebuchadnezzar II (605-562 B.C.), was a period of rebirth for southern Mesopotamia. Irrigation systems improved and expanded, increasing agricultural production. Urban life flourished with the creation of new cities, monuments and temples, and the consequent increase in trade.

In Babylonia, you try to make your clan prosper under the peace and imperial power of that era. You have to place your nobles, priests, and craftsmen tokens on the map to make your relations with the cities as profitable as possible. Properly placing these counters next to the court also allows you to gain the special power of some rulers. Finally, the good use of your peasants in the fertile areas gives more value to your crops. The player who gets the most points through all these actions wins.

—description from the publisher

Blue Moon City - the board game - picks up where the two-player game, (Blue Moon), ended: the reconstruction of the destroyed city of Blue Moon. The board, illustrated by Franz Vohwinkel as well as many well-known American fantasy artists, consists of 21 large building tiles, which show building plans on one side and the buildings in their reconstructed glory on the other. As in the 2-player game, the game includes 3 large molded plastic dragons.

At the start of the game, the board tiles all show their building plan sides. The object of the game is to use cards featuring the races of Blue Moon to help rebuild the city and, at the end, put the large Crystal of the Obelisk in the middle of the city back together. Whenever a building is completely rebuilt, its tile is turned back over to its rebuilt side. The players who helped with a building get crystals and dragon favors, which can be traded in for crystals at certain times.

The player who first manages to add the required number of markers by paying crystals to the Obelisk wins the game. (four markers in a 4-player game, five markers in a 3-player game, and six markers in a 2-player game)

There are two mini-expansions for this game (Blue Moon City: Expansion Tile Sets 1 & 2), each consisting of two tiles that can be added to the main game either separately or combined. The first mini-expansion was included with the Der Knizia Almanach. The second mini-expansion was included in the 6/06 issue of Spielbox.

Original Knizia design--after dragon scales score, ALL players discard scales. This rule was modified by the publisher. [citation needed]

In Topiary, players try to position their visitors on the outer edge of a beautiful topiary garden in order to give them the best view possible. Visitors can see the closest topiary sculpture to them and any behind that, in the same sight line, that are larger. You can score bonus points for visitors who see multiple topiary sculptures of the same type. Players slowly fill in the garden by adding tiles until everyone has placed all their visitors.

In Ctrl, players try to dominate a cube by crawling over it with their colored bricks, preferably covering other players' bricks along the way.

In more detail, you start with a 3×3×3 cube that has one block of each player color stuck into one of the cube's holes. (In a two-player game, each player controls two colors, but at the start of play they secretly choose one of those colors to be their scoring color, with the other color serving only as a blocking mechanism.) Each player has a matching colored flag that sticks out of their block.

On a turn, a player removes their flag from its current location, adds one cube of their color to the side of any of their blocks (where such a move can be made), then they "grow" their color by adding two blocks in a straight line from the block they just added, crawling around corners and covering other players' blocks if needed. To end your turn, plant your flag in one of your final blocks, ideally blocking where someone else might like to play while also preserving future ground in which you can play.

Once all the blocks have been placed, you calculate your score by looking at the structure from all four surrounding sides, as well as from the top, and counting each unblocked square of your color that is visible. Thus, if you plant a block high up on the cube, you can possibly score 5 points for it since it would be seen from all sides and the top. Climb high, and block others from blocking you!