A fascinating game for dominance set in the distant past when all the world's land masses were joined in a single super-continent: Pangea. This unique game promotes battle and migration as the world breaks into pieces. The player-controlled species advance and evolve based on the in-game action. Featuring satisfying depth and near limitless possibilities, you will discover new facets to game-play each time you join in the Conquest of Pangea.
In 2001, 2F-Spiele published the original Funkenschlag.
In 2011, it is time to look back...a long time back! To celebrate the tenth anniversary of the original Funkenschlag, designer Friedemann Friese will take you back in time and let you relive the early beginnings of mankind. True to the name of the German edition (a literal translation of which is "Flying Sparks"), it is time for Funkenschlag: Die ersten Funken, or "The First Sparks".
The First Sparks transports the Funkenschlag mechanisms into the Stone Age. The order of phases during a game round, the player order, the technology cards: you know all these parts from “Funkenschlag”. But what is new? What is different?
The First Sparks is much faster and far more direct. You are immediately part of the action. Each turn, each decision is important. As a clan leader you decide on the well-being of your clan during the Stone Age. You need to develop new hunting technologies and get new knowledge - to successfully hunt food or to learn to control fire. With the help of these skills, you will harvest enough food to feed your clan and spread it far enough to reach new hunting areas.
In a game of The First Sparks you are always confronted with many decisions: Which technology cards offer you the biggest advantages? When is the right time to spread your clan on the game board? Which hunting areas will grant the most food? Reaching new hunting areas or trying to secure parts of the game board for your own clan are important factors for your strategy. Empty spaces are cheaper for you to settle compared to spaces in which other clans are already settled. If you are the first to increase your clan size to 13 clan members, you win The First Sparks.
The kingdom of Legitimant is in turmoil. The old king has died, leaving no legitimate heir... He has, however, left several illegitimate ones.
Since you were an infant, your mother has told you of the royal blood that runs in your veins. Now the time has come for you and your trusty animal sidekick to set out on an epic quest to fulfil your destiny and claim the throne that is your birthright.
Whether you choose to follow a path of righteousness or use every dirty trick in the book, you’ll need nerve, cunning and just a little luck as you assemble an assortment of strange creatures and magical objects to out-manouver and overpower your rivals and prove that you are, indeed, the one true heir of Legitimacy!
From GMT's web site:
The Fast Action Battle (FAB) games, designed by Rick Young (Europe Engulfed, Asia Engulfed, and FAB: The Bulge), takes you to the Allied invasion of Sicily for volume II of the series.
As the Allied player, you will choose your invasion beaches after seeing where the Axis player has deployed his units. Do you choose Montgomery’s historical ‘Husky’ plan, Patton’s alternate plan, or a hybrid plan of your own?
In this game you will find a few new unit and asset types, and also new challenges for both sides. For the attacker, the challenge is the tough Sicilian terrain; and for the defenders, it’s the worsening Italian morale.
Each victory area and functioning port that the Allies secure adds a ‘Fading Italian Morale’ Event Chit into the selection cup, and as each of those are drawn, worsening effects on Italian units are felt along the entire front.
If one side has not secured an automatic victory by the end of turn 9, the Axis player receives bonuses, both for German units that have exited off the island through Messina and also for areas on Sicily that are still Axis-controlled, so there is pressure on both sides to fight for every area.
Event Chits include:
Replacements
Fading Italian Morale,
the Patton Soldier Slap, and
flanking battalion-sized invasions.
The 2012 rerelease of Wallenstein tweaks the 2002 title from designer Dirk Henn and publisher Queen Games, while including two new expansions.
The setting and game play of the two games are mostly the same. In 1625, the Thirty Years' War is underway, and military leaders like Albrecht von Wallenstein and Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim are roaming the country, fighting for land, and trying to establish the best of everything for themselves. The game lasts two "years," with players taking actions in the spring, summer, and fall, then possibly suffering from grain shortage and revolts in the winter before scoring points for the year. After two years, the player with the most points – with points being scored for land and buildings under one's control – wins.
In each of the "action" seasons, ten action cards are shuffled, then laid out, with five face-up and the rest face-down. The five bonus tiles (which provide extra money, grain, or armies) are also laid out. Each player then secretly assigns one of his county cards (or a blank card) to each of the ten actions on his individual player board, in addition to bidding for player order and choice of bonus tile.
After revealing that round's event card and determining player order, players carry out actions in the order determined earlier, revealing which county is taking the current action, then revealing the next face-down action, thus giving players some information about when actions will occur, but not all. Taxing a county or taking grain from it can increase the chance of a revolt during winter, but without money you can't deploy troops or build palaces or churches and without grain you increase the chance of revolt.
Combat and revolts are handled via a dice tower in which players drop army units and peasants (colored wooden cubes) into the top of the tower and see which ones emerge in the bottom tray (representing the fighting forces for that combat) and which get stuck in the tower's baffles to possibly emerge in the future.
Wallenstein includes two expansions: "Emperor's Court," in which a player's army tokens that fall from the dice tower at the start of the game become courtiers who compete for favors (special actions) from the emperor; a player can convert armies to courtiers during the game, and whoever has the most courtiers in the court's entrance hall each turn gets first shot at the favors available. "Landsknechte," which can be used with "Emperor's Court" or on its own, consists of a set of four cards for each player stacked in a particular order. If after determining turn order, a player controls counties in four different regions, he removes the top card from the stack, then takes one of the bonuses (such as money or armies in the tray) shown on the newly revealed card. This stack resets after winter ends.
Reimplements:
Wallenstein (first edition)
Similar to:
Shogun