Area Movement

Paradise Fallen: The Card Game

Things aren't what they once were. Here in paradise, breathtaking views were a dime a dozen and awe-inspiring beauty was a blasé norm. The days of beauty and awe are few and far between now and are to be soaked up as if they could be your last because they just might be. The ground is broken as are the people. Paradise is no more, it is dark, it is cold. Paradise has fallen.

In Paradise Fallen: The Card Game, 2-4 players take on the role of tribes that are attempting to explore and navigate a fallen paradise through hand management to gather valuable powers that will enable them to survive and continue their journey. By drawing cards from the Exploration Deck on their turn, players gather the necessary rations and powers needed to explore. Throughout their journey, tribes will have to navigate islands with obstacles placed in their paths by others. The first tribe to successfully explore a certain number of islands for their powers wins.

Origin

Starting from the heart of Africa, players in Origin will determine the course of mankind's expansion on our planet, with the tribes gradually growing more diversified over time while still maintaining links to their ancestors and to all inhabitants of Earth.

The game tokens in Origin come in three colors, three heights, and three thicknesses, and at the start of the game one of the smallest, skinniest pieces is placed in the center of Africa. In addition, you place three technology tiles at random on the tan, orange and violet sections of the tech chart and six random tiles on the brown section; the tech tiles show 1-5 arrows. You also shuffle tan, orange and violet decks of cards and place them in the appropriate places. Tan cards provide an one-shot effect, orange cards give you a permanent power, and violet cards present you with an objective you must meet; if you do so, you can play the objective card on your turn, and immediately draw another. You can play at most one card of each color each turn.

On a turn, a player takes one of three actions:

Place a new piece on a region of the game board, with this piece sharing two of the three characteristics of a piece in a neighboring region; the new piece cannot be shorter than the original piece. Mark this piece with a token of your player color.
Move one of your pieces on the board to an empty region, with short pieces moving only one space, medium height pieces moving up to two spaces, and tall pieces up to three.
Take over a region controlled by an opponent by moving one of your pieces into this region and relocating the opponent's piece to the region your piece left. You can do this only if the attacking piece is thicker than the opponent's piece.

When you place a new piece on the board or move an existing piece, you're rewarded based on the color of the space you occupy. If you place in or move into a tan, orange or violet region, either you take a tile and the top card of this color or you draw three cards of this color and keep one of them. For a brown region, you either draw two tiles from the brown section of the tech board or draw one tile from anywhere. The technology tiles must be acquired from low to high – so you can't acquire a 4 unless you have a 3 – but you can have multiple tech stacks. You must meet a certain technology threshold in order to play the orange cards and acquire their special power.

In addition, you can score points during the game by occupying a grassland on a continent or the two regions on opposite sides of a waterway strait.

Players take turns until either all of the pieces are on the game board or all the tiles have been acquired or all the cards of one color have been drawn. Once this happens, players tally their points for objectives, grasslands, straits, tech tiles, and cards still in hand to see who wins!

Mystery of the Abbey with The Pilgrims' Chronicles

Mystery of the Abbey is a whodunit game with a twist. A monk has been murdered in a medieval French Abbey. Players maneuver their way through the Abbey examining clues and questioning each other to find out who is the culprit. A masterful game of deduction!

The Pilgrims' Chronicles is a 12 card-expansion for Mystery of the Abbey published for the Essen 2005 Fair.

The 2007 Days of Wonder reprint of Mystery of the Abbey included the Pilgrims' Chronicles expansion.

Runebound (2nd Edition)

Runebound is a classic adventure game from Fantasy Flight Games in which mighty heroes must take on the perils of Terrinoth. The game can be largely played without conflict between the players but victory can only be claimed by the first player to defeat the Dragonlord Margath, so the players are actually in a race to level up and acquire powerful weapons, armour and allies in order to take on the final adversary.

Runebound features a series of 4 Adventure Decks that helps to pace the speed of the game and ensures that the players level up by acquiring experience before they are ready to take on a harder set of challenges (events and monsters).

Several of the key features of Runebound are that combat is played out in 3 phases, Ranged, Melee and Magic and a player has the ability to specialise in a particular discipline, although this may make them vulnerable against certain creatures. The game also features a novel movement system using a series of terrain dice.

Runebound is playable solo and is expandable by many adventure packs that alter the final challenge (replacing the Dragonlord for example). Runebound 2nd Edition also has a series of big box expansions that provide a new map or central map overlay to alter the game in some way.

Runebound 2nd Edition is different from 1st Edition in that the original game featured a d20 and this was replaced by 2 10-sided dice, which helped to better balance the luck factor.

Imperial

Europe is in the age of imperialism. Internationally operating financial investors aim for the highest political influence in Europe. Great Britain, German Reich, Russian Empire, Austria-Hungary, Kingdom of Italy, and Republic of France are each controlled by different investors. The six imperial nations build factories, troops and fleets to expand their power in Europe. They collect taxes from occupied regions to pay interests to their investors. As financial control over the imperial nations changes, there are always new strategic alliances and conflicts emerging between them.

The players represent internationally operating investors who stay in the background. There are always six imperial nations acting in the game, no matter how many investors take part. Only the investor who gets the best return on his investments, who controls the most powerful imperial nations, and who shows the best diplomatic skill, may win the game!

Imperial is a challenging strategy game without any luck of cards or dice. Players take over the role of internationally operating financial investors and control European diplomacy in imperial times.