Bluffing

Caesar & Cleopatra

Caesar and Cleopatra is a card laying game where players assume the roles of these two great leaders. Caesar wants Rome to invade Egypt while Cleopatra wants it to remain independent and both try to influence Roman officials to support their cause.

Players take turns and send their agents, i.e. play numbered cards from 1 to 5 to influence one group of Roman officials, Aedils, Quaestors, Senators, Pretorians and Censors. They can send fewer agents face-down or more agents face-up. Additionally they can play action cards like Assassins that take out opposing agents or scouts that reveal face-down agents. Players can decide if they want to refill their hand from the agent deck or the action card deck but once one of the decks is empty they don't have access to any more of these cards.

After each players turn, a card from the voting stack is revealed and the group of officials that is indicated on the card casts their vote. The player who has the most influence points next to that group wins one official from that group to his cause and then removes his strongest agent from that stack.

The game ends when all the officials have picked a side and the player who has influenced most of them wins the game, with bonus points for the majority in each group and some simple hidden objectives.

Molly House

In Molly House, players take the roles of the gender-defying mollies of early eighteenth century London. Throw grand masquerades and cruise back alleys while evading moralistic constables who seek to destroy your community. Be careful, there may even be informers in your midst!

Over the course of an hour, players will draft hands of vice cards representing the different gestures, desires, and encounters that were frowned upon by the Society for the Reformation of Manners, a citizen group that sought to stamp out any behavior it deemed deviant in late 17th and early 18th century London. These cards allow players to host festivities with the help of their fellow mollies and create joy. But, those same cards can also lead players to be arrested and to the ultimate ruin of the molly house.

As players encounter the Society’s enforcers, they will often have to pay bribes or may be coerced into becoming informers for the Society. Informers must try desperately to undermine the community around Mother Clap’s Molly House without being discovered by their fellow mollies.

Eggs and Empires

Eggs from the dragons of Ridback Mountain are valuable — not quite as valuable as gold following the last market fluctuation, but still TOTALLY worth the hassle, especially since it's not like YOU are climbing the mountain and searching through dragon caves. That's what peasants are for...

All the empires have sent their intrepid adventurers out to collect eggs, but not all will succeed! It gets crowded on Ridback Mountain, and there are only so many dragon eggs to go around — not to mention that the dragons have started mixing exploding eggs into their nests, and those hurt.

In the fast-playing card game Eggs and Empires, players use matching decks of empire cards that contain adventurers numbered 1-10. Starting with a hand of three empire cards, each turn all players select one card from their hand, then play them simultaneously in an attempt to collect egg cards. Typically, the player who played the highest empire card chooses an egg first, then the player with the second highest empire card, and so on until all revealed eggs are collected, if possible. However, each empire card has a unique power that can affect the order in which eggs are selected. The powers interact in strategic and awesome ways so that every hand is exciting and fun!

Outwit your opponents to collect as many good eggs as possible — that is, ones worth victory points (VPs) — while avoiding those nasty exploding eggs! Whoever collects the most VPs over three rounds wins.

I'm Kind of a Big Dill

A hilarious party game where you describe traits like your thirst for revenge, bedside manner, and ability to cut your own hair, but with a catch: You also draw a secret token that tells you how much you have to exaggerate your abilities, making them sound better or worse than you are in reality.

After they hear your description, everyone else guesses the number on your secret token. They score based on how close they guess to its actual value. But you only score if some — but not all — of the others guess correctly.

Are you kind of a Big Dill? Make sure everyone knows!

-description from designer

Secret Hitler

Secret Hitler is a dramatic game of political intrigue and betrayal set in 1930s Germany. Each player is randomly and secretly assigned to be a liberal or a fascist, and one player is Secret Hitler. The fascists coordinate to sow distrust and install their cold-blooded leader; the liberals must find and stop the Secret Hitler before it's too late. The liberal team always has a majority.

At the beginning of the game, players close their eyes, and the fascists reveal themselves to one another. Secret Hitler keeps his eyes closed, but puts his thumb up so the fascists can see who he is. The fascists learn who Hitler is, but Hitler doesn't know who his fellow fascists are, and the liberals don't know who anyone is.

Each round, players elect a President and a Chancellor who will work together to enact a law from a random deck. If the government passes a fascist law, players must try to figure out if they were betrayed or simply unlucky. Secret Hitler also features government powers that come into play as fascism advances. The fascists will use those powers to create chaos unless liberals can pull the nation back from the brink of war.

The objective of the liberal team is to pass five liberal policies or assassinate Secret Hitler. The objective of the fascist team is to pass six fascist policies or elect Secret Hitler chancellor after three fascist policies have passed.