Area Movement

FAB: Sicily

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.

Pirates 2ed: Governor's Daughter

The Governor`s Daughter has been kidnapped again! The villainous and insatiable Dread Pirate Roberts has again claimed his chance to acquire a ransom for the life and the chastity of a beautiful damsel in distress. This formidable act of villainy has shocked the other pirates of the Archipelago. Never had they witnessed such a breach of etiquette! Now, they set sail to find the fragments of the map leading to Robert`s hideout. But before they find it, adventures and isles await!

Pirates: Governor`s Daughter is a re-edition of an adventure-economical board game hit. Thanks to the brand new rules, you will experience fabulous sea adventures, sack the cities and trade routes of the Archipelago, get rich dealing with exotic wares or die trying to compel bloodthirsty pirates. And in the end, you will free the beauty in distress and save the world from the Dread Pirate Roberts! Arrgh!

Wallenstein

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

Axis & Allies

Axis & Allies (2004) aka Axis & Allies Revised Edition is the first Avalon Hill version of the classic light weight war game Axis & Allies. The game simulates the entire scope of World War II.

The game is nominally designed for five players, representing the Allies: United States of America, United Kingdom and Russia vs. the Axis: Germany and Japan. However, it is most often played as a two-player game.

Axis & Allies features a simple dice-based combat system; a small number of types of naval, air and land units; territory control; and technology research to improve unit capabilities.

Major new features of Axis & Allies (2004) include new units (e.g. destroyers, artillery), revised unit capabilities (e.g. armor defend at 3, fighters cost 10 IPCs), directed technology research, and totally new victory conditions (key territories must be controlled to win the game).

Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame

This entry covers the 2002 release of Sid Meier´s Civilization: The Boardgame by Eagle Games. This game is unrelated to the similarly named 2010 FFG game Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game.

A boardgame version of the award-winning PC strategy game. Create a civilization to stand the test of time! The game begins in 4000 BC where the players found a pair of villages of a fledgling people.

Each player’s civilization :

Explores the world around them, discovering resources and the native people that defend them.
Expands by sending settlers out to create new cities.
Researches new technologies to gain advantages over the other players.
Builds unique “Wonders of the World”.
Increases the size of their cities (4 sizes from village to metropolis) to increase production.
Builds military units to defend what’s theirs, and to conquer what’s not.

Features:

2 sets of rules (standard, and advanced) allow anyone to play the game.
784 plastic pieces featuring 22 different, professionally sculpted playing pieces that represent cities, settlers, armies, navies, artillery, and air units from 4 different eras.
Over 100 full color Technology and Wonder cards.
A giant 46” x 36” gameboard featuring the artwork of Paul Niemeyer.

This game has been reimplemented in 2007 as Civilization CHR ("open source" project)