Area Majority / Influence

Smash Up: Disney Edition

The "shuffle building" game Smash Up begins with a simple premise: Take the 20-card decks of two factions, shuffle them into a deck of forty cards, then compete to crush more bases than your opponents! Each faction involves a different gaming mechanism, and each combination of factions brings a different gaming experience.

In Smash Up: Disney Edition, players choose two decks of fan-favorite Disney factions and combine their powers to take over bases, earn the most points, and win! Choose two from Frozen, Big Hero 6, Wreck-It Ralph, The Lion King, Mulan, Aladdin, The Nightmare Before Christmas, and Beauty & the Beast to create the most exciting team-ups imaginable!

During the game, base cards — each with their own difficulties and abilities — are at stake. By playing cards from your hand, you try to have the most powerful set of minions on a base when the base is broken. When this happens, the three most powerful players on that base score points. When a player has 15 or more points at the end of a turn, they win. If two or more players have more than 15 VP, the one with the most points wins.

Power Plants

Every wizard in the neighborhood knows that the best spell components are grown fresh. Unfortunately, only one particular plot of fertile soil in the area is the best for growing magical plants. Everyone agrees to "share" the garden, but you have a plan: Your team of loyal sprites will use the powers of the plants to infiltrate the garden as it grows, so that when everything is in full bloom, the most potent patches will belong to you!

In Power Plants, you are a wizard growing a shared garden of magical plants with your rivals. Each turn, you choose one of the patch tiles from your hand and add it to the growing garden. You can activate the added tile for its dynamic "plant" power or activate all the tiles it touches for their slightly weaker (but still very cool) "grow" powers. As the fields expand, you strategically deploy your sprites to gain control of more and more of the fantastic flora. Will your magical horticulture skills pay off?

Manipulate the garden's growth, gather magical gems, and deploy your team of loyal sprites to repel your competition and be in control of the most valuable fields when the garden is complete!

—description from the publisher

The Way of the Bear

Long long time ago, before age of human, there were four bear clans who help the king to reign over Northeast Asia. The time has come for the king to decide who will be the heir to the throne. The clans send their princes to the world to acquire all the qualifications to be the next king. They travel from town to town and build sacred bear statues; they inherit knowledge of religion, education, military, and commerce in return. The new journey is about to begin. Who will succeed to the throne?
—description from the publisher

Summary of Game Play
1. Place the bear steles to acquire a knowledge token.
2. Pay the equivalent in number and color to the temples.
3. If a player has completed to collect tokens, the game ends.

Renature

Renature is a majority game with dominoes for 2-4 players.

Each player gets a board with large pieces of wood in the form of turf, bushes, pines and oaks. These plants are used for the majorities on the large valley board and are available in a neutral color and in the respective player color. In addition, each player gets a stack of dominoes with two out of ten animal motifs on each of them.

On your turn, place one of the three dominoes in your hand on two brook spaces of the valley board. Of course, the domino must be adjacent to another domino that shows the same animal. If the placed domino borders a free space of a brown area, you can decide whether a tuft of grass or any other of your plants should be placed on that space. Tufts of turf have a value of 1, bushes of 2, pines of 3 and oaks of 4. After placing the plant, you score points for it and every plant piece that is already in this brown area and has the same or a lower value.

Once a brown area is framed with dominoes, the majority is scored and the player with the highest total plant value in the area gets the points that are printed as a large number on that area's flower token. Whoever has the second highest value gets the lower number. Two things make this especially tricky: The neutral pieces count as their own color and not among the majority of the player who has used them. Also, if colors are tied, they a treated as though they are not present at all in the area. After the area has been scored, the player who framed the area receives its flower token, which will give them extra points at game end.

In the course of the game, you may run out of plants, but these can be bought back from the game board with clouds. Clouds can also be used to buy another turn and to appoint a new joker animal. This animal then counts as all animals and makes it easier to put on. At the end of a player's turn, a domino is drawn and it is the next player's turn.

Once all players have run out of dominoes, the game ends with a final scoring.

Mille Fiori

In Reiner Knizia's Mille Fiori (millefiori is a glasswork technique for decorative patterns, the name means Thousand Flowers), you take the role of glass manufacturers and traders who want to profit as much as they can from their role in the production of fine glass art.

The game board features different aspects of the glass production cycle: workshops where the glass is created, houses where it's installed, people who support your work, trade shops where it's sold, and the harbor where ships take the glass to faraway locations. You want to be present in all of these areas, preferably at just the right time to maximize your earnings. The gameboard features 109 spaces, with one card in the deck for each of those spaces.

At the start of a round, each player receives a hand of five cards. Each player chooses a card from hand, then passes the remaining cards to the next player, then each player plays their card in turn, beginning with the round's start player and typically placing a diamond-shaped token of their color in the location depicted on that card:

In the Workshops, you score 1 point for each of your tokens in a connected group with the newly placed token, doubling that score if you played on a pigment field.
In the Residences, you score the listed number of points, and if your token is preceded in the line by one or more tokens of your color, you score those previously played tokens again.
In the Townspeople area, you score 1, 3 or 6 points based on the height of your token in the pyramids, but you can only place at higher levels if the lower spaces are filled. Double your points if the card symbol matches the space your filled. Supporting tokens score again as higher tokens are placed.
In the Trade shops, four types of goods are present, and when you place a token, each token on that goods type scores for its owner points equal to the number of goods of that type now covered.
In the Harbor, you move your ship equal to the number on the played card, scoring points based on the space where you land, then place a token in one of the five rows. When that row is filled with three ships, each token in that row scores for its owner 1/3/6/10 points depending on the number of trade goods in that row.

Alternatively, you can play a card for ship movement points and not place a token on the game board.

Each player plays four cards in a round (in a 3 or 4 player game), then adds the last card in hand to those displayed beside the game board, then the start player marker rotates and you begin a new round.

For each of the five areas, you can meet a certain condition that allows you to play a bonus card from those beside the game board, e.g., in the Workshops when you place the third card that surrounds a bonus card symbol, or in the Trade shops when you score a goods type that gives someone else more points than you. When you play a bonus card, you might trigger another bonus card... and then another!

Additionally, there are five different ways to score substantial bonus points for the areas, e.g., in the Residences you need to place tokens on houses of four different values, and in the Townspeople area you need to place tokens on all three types in a pyramid. You can only score each area's bonus once, and importantly each time a bonus is claimed then the value available for later players is reduced.

When someone has placed their final diamond token or when you can't deal a new hand of five cards to each player, then the game ends and the player with the most successful glass dynasty (most points) is declared the winner.