Card Game

Splendor

Splendor is a fast-paced and addictive game of chip-collecting and card development. Players are merchants of the Renaissance trying to buy gem mines, means of transportation, shops — all in order to acquire the most prestige points. If you're wealthy enough, you might even receive a visit from a noble at some point, which of course will further increase your prestige.

On your turn, you may (1) collect chips (gems), or (2) buy and build a card, or (3) reserve one card. If you collect chips, you take either three different kinds of chips or two chips of the same kind. If you buy a card, you pay its price in chips and add it to your playing area. To reserve a card — in order to make sure you get it, or, why not, your opponents don't get it — you place it in front of you face down for later building; this costs you a round, but you also get gold in the form of a joker chip, which you can use as any gem.

All of the cards you buy increase your wealth as they give you a permanent gem bonus for later buys; some of the cards also give you prestige points. In order to win the game, you must reach 15 prestige points before your opponents do.

Doomtown: Reloaded

The classic collectible card game Deadlands: Doomtown returns as an Expandable Card Game in Doomtown: Reloaded. Featuring four factions fighting for control of Gomorra, California. Doomtown: Reloaded allows you to build your own deck from a fixed set of cards in the box. Play your dudes to control deeds in the town, and use actions, hexes, and more to thwart your opponents.

Shootouts are resolved via a poker mechanism as every card has a suit and value. Preparing for the hands you want to draw is as much a part of deck building as choosing the actions and dudes you'll want to play. Your deck is built around an Outfit, one of the four main groups attempting to control Gomorra, California, and these outfits are:

The Law Dogs: The Sheriff and his deputies, tasked with enforcing law and order in an extremely chaotic town.

The Sloane Gang: The main cause of a lot of the chaos, the Sloane Gang takes what they want, no matter who it costs.

The Morgan Cattle Company: Progress and investment, Morgan Cattle has moved into the surrounding ranch lands and uses its deep pockets to influence the town.

The Fourth Ring: It's that circus that's been here for months, but I swear it just arrived...

The base set of Doomtown: Reloaded will be followed by Saddlebag expansions, in-store OP events, and the Badge Series of tournaments.

Munchkin: Axe Cop

Munchkin Axe Cop is a simple, lightweight multiplayer "take that" style card game. Cards represent character abilities, items, monsters to fight, and cards to make monsters harder to defeat (for monsters other players are fighting) or easier to defeat (for you). Every time you defeat a monster, you go up a level. The first player to level 10 wins.

This is a core set for Steve Jackson's Munchkin game, based on the hit webcomic by Ethan Nicolle (age 29) and his brother Malachai (age 6). It can be combined with other games in the series.

The game doesn't have any new mechanics and should be easy to learn for anyone who's played one of the other Munchkin games. Hirelings are included and are called allies. There are four classes: Cop, Man, Soldier, and Warrior (which is identical to the class of the same name in fantasy Munchkin). This set also has powers; there are seven of them with two cards each, for a total of 14 cards. The mechanics of powers are exactly the same as in the other Munchkin sets that have them.

Several Santa monsters are included, as well as two new monster categories, Alien and Robot, which currently aren't recognized in any of the other Munchkin games.

It's not necessary to know anything about the Axe Cop webcomic in order to enjoy this set.

Part of the Munchkin series.

Modern Society

Modern Society is a game about our time, the world we live in. It covers aspects from Equality to Organic Food, from War in Iraq to Torture Scandal, to Youth Culture, Women's Priesthood and beyond. Those are but few aspects the players wrestle with as they try to convince the deep rows of the people behind their own agenda.

The players all live in the same society and seek influential power to leave their mark on the surrounding world. The people's opinions, what they feel and think, is determined by four societal values – militarism, economy, human values & green values.

The players have game cards which become ”hot topics” in the society once they are played. They will become the issues the imaginary townsfolk talk in coffee tables, what they read from the news and what shapes their view on the world. These issues then shape the four values, but also bring points through them. This means that the more militaristic the society is the more militaristic influence points you get from cards like 'Raise in Defence Budget' or 'War on Terrorism'. With these points you then push through laws that focus on that value. Only these law cards that the players have pushed through with their political influence they get victory points. And as each value has limited amount of laws there is a race who stands as the best advocate for each value.

Most cards have special abilities that makes them stronger with certain other cards (i.e. Feminism with Equality) or for example prevent certain points to be scored (i.e. Torture Scandal on militarism points or UN in Crisis on Human value points).

As the game proceeds the players try to sell their world view to the masses. But whether the well-being of the people is trampled as the players thirst for power and whether that society is still worth defending for? That is what the players decide all over again during each game they play the Modern Society.

Modern Art

Buying and selling paintings is a very lucrative business, at least that's what Hollywood's led us to believe, and that's the premise of this game. Five different artists have produced a bunch of paintings, and it's the player's task to be both the buyer and the seller, hopefully making a profit in both roles. He does this by putting a painting from his hand up for auction each turn. He gets the money if some other player buys it, but must pay the bank if he buys it for himself. After each round, paintings are valued by the number of paintings of that type that were sold. The broker with the most cash after four rounds is the winner.

Part of the Knizia auction trilogy.