Economic

At the Gates of Loyang is a trading game in which you are able to produce goods by planting them and later selling them to customers. You can use the abilities of some helpers to increase your income or production.

Fields, customers, helpers, and miscellaneous objects are represented by cards. Each player receives two of these cards per round distributed by a bidding/drawing mechanism in which you end up with one of the cards you draw and one of the cards of a public offer filled by all players. Additionally, to these cards you always receive one field for free each round.

Placing one good on a field fills the complete field with goods of this type. Each round, one unit per field is harvested. After planting, harvesting, and distributing cards, each player can use as many actions as he wants, only limited by the number of his cards or the number of goods he owns. At the end of his turn, he can invest the earned money on a scoring track, where early money is worth more than late money. The game ends after a certain number of rounds, and the player who is first on the scoring track wins.

Online Play

Yucata (turn-based)

Following along the same lines as its predecessor (Agricola), Caverna: The Cave Farmers is a worker-placement game at heart, with a focus on farming. In the game, you are the bearded leader of a small dwarf family that lives in a little cave in the mountains. You begin the game with a farmer and his spouse, and each member of the farming family represents an action that the player can take each turn. Together, you cultivate the forest in front of your cave and dig deeper into the mountain. You furnish the caves as dwellings for your offspring as well as working spaces for small enterprises.

It's up to you how much ore you want to mine. You will need it to forge weapons that allow you to go on expeditions to gain bonus items and actions. While digging through the mountain, you may come across water sources and find ore and ruby mines that help you increase your wealth. Right in front of your cave, you can increase your wealth even further with agriculture: You can cut down the forest to sow fields and fence in pastures to hold your animals. You can also expand your family while running your ever-growing farm. In the end, the player with the most efficiently developed home board wins.

You can also play the solo variant of this game to familiarize yourself with the 48 different furnishing tiles for your cave.

Caverna: The Cave Farmers, which has a playing time of roughly 30 minutes per player, is a complete redesign of Agricola that substitutes the card decks from the former game with a set of buildings while adding the ability to purchase weapons and send your farmers on quests to gain further resources. Designer Uwe Rosenberg says that the game includes parts of Agricola, but also has new ideas, especially the cave part of your game board, where you can build mines and search for rubies. The game also includes two new animals: dogs and donkeys.

Game description from the publisher:

Bremerhaven is a clearly structured but complex economic game about the famous harbor town in the north of Germany. Each player builds his own unique harbor and tries to reach the highest combination of money and prestige by the end of the game.

Each round, players are trying to get the most influence on the action fields they want to use. Since you place your influence cards face down, you have to watch closely what the other players might want to do. (You can even place more than one card on one spot.) The options are varied: Get a new ship with new goods into your harbor, close a new contract, change the values of the four different goods, improve your influence card-hand, expand your harbor, buy a new building, or simply rise in the nautical ranks to get more money. But you have to be careful: Every ship and every contract will stay in your harbor only for a short while. (The transporters and trains are waiting!) If you fail to coordinate the incoming and outgoing goods, you might have to pay penalty for not fulfilling a contract!

Bremerhaven ends after a defined number of rounds, and the rules include both a short version and solo rules. Visually the game will be in the vein of Le Havre.

You and your opponents represent powerful developers in a burgeoning Nevada city. You will earn money and prestige by building the biggest and most profitable casinos on "The Strip," the town's backbone of dust and sin. You start with nothing but parking lots and dreams, but from there you build, sprawl, reorganize and gamble your way to victory. Score the most points investing in the most profitable development companies and putting the best bosses in control of the richest casinos. Put your dollars on the line . . . it's time to roll!

The game board is broken into 8 different areas, each consisting of a number of empty 'lots'. Players build lots by paying money and placing a die of the value matching the one shown on the lot's space onto the lot, along with a casino tile of one of 7 colors. Adjoining lots of the same color are considered a single casino. The casino's boss is the player whose die value is higher than any other in the casino. On each players turn, players turn over a new card representing a new lot they get. The card also is one of the casino colors. Any built casinos of the matching color will score both money and VP. Money is earned for each lot in the casino, where each lot may be owned by a different player. VP goes only to the casino's owner. Players can expand their casinos; try to take over casinos owned by other players; make deals to trade lots, casinos and money; or gamble in opponents' casinos to make more money. Ultimately, though, only victory points matter, and that means making yourself boss of the biggest casinos.

Lords of Vegas contains:

Snazzy game board
4 turn summaries
55 cards
40 chips in 4 colors
48 dice in 4 colors
4 poker chips
Lots of money
45 casino blocks
Rules

For 200 years, the Knights Templar were a powerful political and economic force, helping to shape Europe during the Middle Ages. Founded to protect pilgrims on their journeys to the Holy Land, the "poor comrades-in-arms of Christ and the Temple of Solomon" would eventually grow a network of strongholds ("Commanderies") throughout the Christian world, where novice knights were trained, and trade goods could be managed and exchanged. By 1307, the “poor comrades-in-arms” were one of the richest organizations in Europe: one that would attract the covetous eyes of the French king.

In The Mystery of the Templars, players become the masters of this secretive organization. They must assign their knights to the critical task of escorting pilgrims, but also to seek out and discover long-lost artifacts of Christian lore. Using their holdings in the Holy Land, they procure valuable trade goods, which must then be transported to the hungry markets of Europe, using the profits to expand the Order’s holdings. But along the way brigands and pirates threaten the flow of goods and wealth, and must be challenged by valorous knights to safeguard the precious caravans and trade ships. To be successful, the players must balance the needs of trade, development, and battle.

In time, the powerful enemies of the Templars will strike, beginning the Persecution which will eventually cause the destruction of the Order. In those last desperate days, the players must flee from their Commanderies with all the wealth and relics they can carry, seeking refuge in the farthest corners of the world. The player who can best manage the resources of the Order during the days of wealth, and who can rescue the most important relics from the Persecution, will be the victor in The Mystery of the Templars.