Card Game

Museum: Pictura

Museum: Pictura is a standalone set collection game for 2-4 players by Olivier Melison and Eric Dubus, in which you take on the role of an aspiring curator in an art museum.

Set in the roaring 20’s, the game is gorgeously illustrated in art deco style by French artist Loïc Muzy, while the 180 paintings featured in the game have been individually brought to life by Ekaterina Varlamov.

Your goal is to create collections of some of History’s most iconic works of art. To do so, you will be acquiring Painting cards and exhibiting them into your Museum, represented by your player board, to create Collections. These Collection can be based either on the painting’s Period (ranging from the Renaissance period all the way to Impressionism), or its Domain (Historical, Landscape, Mythological…). The Collections you create will earn you Prestige points, and the player with the most Prestige at the end of the game wins.

During play, you will have to deal with the changing trends of the art world, acquiring and exhibiting Paintings depending on what is currently in highest demand. Exhibiting Paintings of the types that are currently in fashion will gain you additional points!

As your Collections grow, you will be able to open them briefly to the public with a Temporary Exhibition, which allows you to immediately score that Collection’s value and obtain special bonuses for the rest of the game. But beware, your visitors will quickly grow tired of seeing the same types of Collection again and again, so timing your exhibitions correctly is essential!

Museum: Pictura brings exciting new mechanisms and strategies to the table, while maintaining a strong family connection to its predecessor.

-description from publisher

Fairy Lights

Push your luck with Fairy Lights to collect as many points as possible!

To play, shuffle the deck and place it face down. Cards in the deck show 1 or 2 bulbs in one of five colors, and each card is worth 0-2 points. At the start of your turn, see how many cards are in the "shop", the central area of play:

If the shop has 5 cards, you can only take cards on your turn.
If the shop has 1-4 cards, you may draw from the deck.
If the shop has 0 cards, you must draw.

When you draw, place the revealed card at the end of the shop line. If it's the same color as the last card in the shop, your turn ends immediately. Otherwise, if the shop doesn't contain five cards, you can choose to draw again, or you can end your turn and take cards. If five cards are now in the shop, you must take cards.

When you take cards, if 1-4 cards are in the shop, take all cards of a single color from the shop and add them to your collection; if five cards are in the shop, take all cards of two colors from the shop instead. If the number of bulbs in a color in your collection is now a multiple of three (3, 6, 9, 12), score those cards, placing them face down in a corner of your playing area. If you have 1-2 bulbs of a color, leave those cards where they are. If you have four or more bulbs of a color and didn't score them, discard all bulbs of that color. The next player then takes their turn.

When the final card is revealed from the deck, the active player finishes their turn, then the game ends. Add the points on your scored cards, then subtract the points showing on all cards that remain in your playing area. Whoever ends up with the most points wins!

Astra

You and your fellow players are eager and curious astronomers, determined to explore and understand the constellations of the mysterious night sky. You are willing to assist each other and share your discoveries, but in the end, only one of you will become famous enough to be remembered throughout history.

Astra is a clever mix of tactics and strategy, with a streamlined and intuitive rule set that makes it easy to pick up and quick to play. A game of Astra consists of continuous player turns until a certain number of Constellation cards are taken, when, after an endgame scoring, the player with the most Fame points wins.

On your player turn, you may choose to either Observe or Rest.

The Observe action allows you to spend Stardust to discover stars on the Constellation cards using your dry erase marker. You may only mark stars in a straight continuous line, but you may spend Telescope tokens to start new observations. As soon as you mark the last star in a Constellation, you take the card from the Night Sky, granting you a powerful reusable ability for the rest of the game. But other players also benefit from the discovery: based on how many stars they marked, they may choose one of the card’s instant benefits (Boons) at the time it is discovered.

The Rest action allows you to not only refill your Stardust up to your capacity, but also to reactivate all of your card abilities that match the currently active Sphere. Your card abilities are very powerful and strategy-enabling, so a well-timed Rest action can give you a huge advantage.

—description from the publisher

Splendor Duel

Confront your rival guild in a race for victory. Take Gem and Pearl tokens from the common board, then purchase cards, gather bonuses, royal favours, and prestige.

Discover new twists and strategic opportunities derived from Splendor, the original best-selling game. Acquire cards with impressive powers, take advantage of special Privileges, and fight over scarce access to Pearls.

Splendor Duel is a two-player only standalone game based on Splendor that retains some of the main gameplay mechanisms of that design, while being a bit more complex, dynamic, interactive, rich, tense, and mean.

The game features a main board shared by both opponents, card powers, and three victory conditions.

Star Wars Villainous: Power of the Dark Side

In Star Wars Villainous: Power of the Dark Side, each player takes control of one of five Star Wars characters: Darth Vader, Asajj Ventress, Kylo Ren, Moff Gideon, or General Grievous. Each player has their own villain deck, fate deck, player board, and 3D character.

On a turn, the active player moves their character to a different location on their player board, takes one or more of the actions visible on that space (often by playing cards from their hand), then refills their hand to four cards. Cards are allies, items, effects, and other things. You need to use your cards to fulfill your unique win condition.

One of the actions allows you to choose another player, draw two cards from that player's fate deck, then play one of them on that player's board, covering two of the four action spaces on one of that player's locations. The fate deck contains heroes, items, and effects from that villain's storyline, and these cards allow other players to mess with that particular villain.

Depending on their villain's unique power, players can also use their villain's "ambition" to perform actions that power effects based on the villain's use of the Force, strategic leadership, or sheer luck. The game also incorporates villain-specific missions and rules for iconic ships and transports from all corners of the Star Wars galaxy.