Economic

Cashflow 101

Cashflow 101 is a serious game designed by investor, businessman, and self-help author Robert Kiyosaki to serve as a tool for learning basic financial strategies and accounting principles. Cashflow 101 is the first of several games created by Kiyosaki to reinforce the information in his books.

The board has two tracks: A "Rat Race" small circle where you only roll one die to advance, and a "Fast Track" where you roll two dice to advance. In the Rat Race you get paid for passing your Paycheck space, and then draw from one of four decks of cards depending on which space you've landed. Some of the deals are good, others are bad. Your main problem here is a shortage of cash. In the Fast Track your main problem is an excess of cash and finding investments to sink it into before you lose it to lawsuits, divorce or tax audits.

The heart of the game though are the player sheets where players learn how to fill out a financial statement. Players choose from a variety of starting careers (Truck Driver, Mechanic, Lawyer, Airline Pilot, etc.) and fill out their financial sheets appropriately. As they land cards and invest in different deals they dutifully log each change to their financial sheets as well. After a few games most people end up using the same financial sheets to fill out their own personal information.

With each card event the drawing player may buy at that price, but all players may sell at that price. Also, players may make co-investments with the drawing player or even buy the deal from him if they agree. Player deals are encouraged.

The game with few players is heavily biased towards real estate. With 5-6 players the cards are being drawn fast enough that the part time businesses pay off as well.

There are thousands of Cashflow 101 game clubs around the world.

Saint Petersburg (2nd Edition)

In Saint Petersburg, you'll be buying different types of cards: workers, buildings, aristocrats, trading cards, and the new market cards. In every phase, a new type of card will be available for purchase. You'll start with workers, who are good at bringing in rubles. The new market (yellow) cards bring in new resources. Having the majorities in these resources from round to round will earn you additional victory points. This battle for the lead enhances the game experience and expands the tactical and strategic possibilities of the players. In the next phase, buildings can be acquired, mostly granting victory points. Aristocrats provide a mix of victory points and rubles, and also lead to a large end-game point bonus that can't be ignored.

Trading cards allow already purchased cards to be improved. These phases will repeat until one of the card decks runs out. At this point, the final victory points are counted, and the winner is declared.

For this new edition of Saint Petersburg, we've kept the well-known and loved basic game, but also added an additional game phase. This will allow us to fully integrate the fifth player into the game. The new market phase will introduce a new mechanic providing additional victory points and rubles. The purple action cards from the banquet expansion will also have matching cards for the market phase. And, of course, for lovers of the old version, it will still be possible to play the game by the original rules.

Fields of Arle

In the worker placement game Fields of Arle, set in the German region of East Frisia, players develop an estate and expand their territory by cutting peat and building dikes.

The game lasts nine half-years with alternating summer and winter seasons, and each season allows or denies specific player actions. Different and detailed manufacturing processes allow a player to create goods needed to expand her estate. In addition, trades with adjoining municipalities can help a player gain the needed resources or goods for building and expanding.

Dungeon Lords: Festival Season

Dungeon Lords: Festival Season is a big expansion that includes lots of Dungeon Lording goodness.

The game is still played over two years, but now each year has five rounds instead of four: winter, spring, summer, autumn and festival season. More time to build your dungeon, but also more time for adventurers to gather a larger party. There are new monsters, rooms, and traps to prepare your dungeon for the battle, but also new nasty spells for the adventurers and sneaky bards who encourage them to perform so-called "heroic" deeds – not to mention two paladins for each year, now ready to punish up to two evil players.

Would you like to push other players toward evil instead of moving yourself toward good when visiting the city? What about making an investment instead of traditional gold digging? Or what about repairing conquered tunnels or rooms instead of digging new ones? Only eight actions are still available to you, but each season one of those actions is replaced by an alternate set of spaces that offer new and intriquing options.

And did we mention that it has recently become fashionable for Dungeon Lords to have their own personal pets?

Dungeon Lords: Festival Season includes the mini expansion Dungeon Lords: The New Paladins.

Dungeon Lords

In Dungeon Lords, you are an evil dungeonlord who is trying to build the best dungeon out there. You hire monsters, build rooms, buy traps and defeat the do-gooders who wish to bring you down.

From the publisher's webpage:

Have you ever ventured with party of heroes to conquer dungeons, gain pride, experiences and of course rich treasure? And has it ever occurred to you how hard it actually is to build and manage such underground complex filled with corridors and creatures? No? Well now you can try. Put yourself in role of the master of underground, summon your servants, dig complex of tunnels and rooms, set traps, hire creatures and try to stop filthy heroes from conquering and plundering your precious creation. We can guarantee you will look on dark corners, lairs and their inhabitant from completely different perspective!

Each turn, players use a hand of cards to choose where to place their worker. Actions vary from mining gold, hiring monsters, buying traps etc. Each action has three spots available - with each spot having different effects (e.g. mining gold lets you mine more gold in each spot).
When using the cards, two cards will become locked and will not be able to be used next turn.

There are 4 turns to place actions for each game "year" and two game years in a whole game.
Each turn is identified as a "season". Each season, players will get to see the heroes and events to come in the following season. Thus allowing them to prepare.

At the end of each season (after the first), heroes will be allocated to each player according to their level of evil. Heroes range from mighty heroes to sneaky thieves. Each hero has their own power for which the player needs to prepare for.
Finally, at the end of each year, the heroes will travel down into the dungeon to fight.

Scoring in the game is based upon what you have built, the monsters you have hired and the heroes you have captured.