Hand Management

Soothsayers

You are a powerful mystic in a tense race against rivals to control the fate of the universe. Capture the Empress, the Moon, even Death itself, and harness the arcane powers of the tarot to bend destiny to your will.

On your turn, choose an action: earn coins, draft cards, ascend to higher levels, or capture a tarot card. Rival soothsayers may choose to follow your action, but if you have a higher level, they must pay you for the privilege.

Each tarot card you capture grants you a new game-changing ability. Combine these with your leveled-up actions to create unstoppable combos.

Seize the tokens of Fate before your rivals to win the game!

Borealis: Arctic Expeditions

Become the leaders of scientific teams venturing into uncharted boreal territories to observe and photograph the Arctic’s most adorable inhabitants.

Play cards from your hand to one of 3 locations on your player board to snap a photo and send your scientists sliding to the left and to the right - but only if their colors match the ones printed on your card!

Line up vehicle symbols, race to claim objectives, and arrange animals in pre-determined end-game scoring patterns to earn the most points and gain everlasting fame at the Society for Polar Inquiry. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even get your own tiny snow-covered island named after you.

Chang'an

During the Tang dynasty, Chang'an was one of the largest cities in the world. It was a cosmopolitan urban center with thousands of travelers exploring it. As an important urbanist, compete against other players to build the best districts of Chang'an and to get the favors of the court.

Players will carefully project their plans by placing cards on the top part of their personal boards (the gates). Then they will move them into the city districts to build amazing buildings and to welcome influential characters in the neighborhood. Every new card built into the districts will provide players with different types of privileges and a certain number of victory points.

During your turn, you perform only one of the three main actions: research, play and/or move cards on the gates to produce resources and activate character effects, or build.

The game ends as soon as a player gets nine or more cards built in the districts of their City board (cards at the gates are not considered).

The player with the most victory points will be declared the best urbanist of Chang’an.

Apistocracy

Dearest Player, you have been invited, at the behest of your titled host, to make your debut during the 1851 social season of Victorian London.

Apistocracy is a 2-4 player game featuring worker placement, as well as a trick-taking game based on Whist. Each player has a season host with a unique ability. The hosts provide influence to open the first doors of the season, but players must make connections, thus building influence, to gain invitations to the most coveted events. Over the course of four weeks, players climb to the top of the social beehive to become Queen Victoria's favorite, commission painting sets in the gallery to become the artist's muse, make valuable connections in the ballroom to become the favored guest, learn secrets in the tea room, and curate their hand for the final whist game in the parlor. The player with the most Victoria points at the end of the season is named the "season's favorite" and wins.

The game offers players nuanced action selection, with opportunities for strategic decision making. Do you spend your resources to move up the beehive? Do you dance in the ballroom to gain a valuable card for your player mat? Do you commission your portrait and complete your painting set? Regardless of your choice, the main goal is to have fun! If you happen to create a buzz and become the season's favorite in the process, then bravo! If you do not achieve the coveted title, you need not give up — there's always next season!

Rewild: South America

Rewild: South America is a unique, medium-weight, card-driven, engine-building board game for nature enthusiasts with a heart for wildlife that can be enjoyed in 45-60 minutes.

The thematic focus of Rewild is on the fauna and flora of the South American ecoregions Caatinga, Gran Chaco, Cerrado, Pantanal, Amazon rainforest and Atlantic rainforest. These 6 ecoregions and all their inhabitants exhibit diverse interrelationships and dependencies. One of the core concerns of game author Bruno Liguori Sia, who lives in Brazil himself, was to depict and convey this complex network in a game.

In terms of game mechanics, Rewild has a straightforward foundation. On their turn, each player plays a card and chooses one of two depicted actions. After carrying out this action, the player can attract animals and plants on display to their ecosystem. As soon as a player has 8 (or 9) face-up animal cards in front of them, the end of the game is triggered.

However, you shouldn't be fooled by this essentially simple basis, as every game of Rewild features countless decisions and plays differently every time due to the enormous variety of cards. Questions that players are faced with include:
How do I generate enough resources (water, minerals, seeds) to expand my ecosystem? Where do I place which biomes so that their effects optimally promote the expansion of my ecosystem? Do I focus on one biome or several? Would it make sense to upgrade my existing biomes?
When do I get all my action cards back into my hand to have more options and resources available again? Do I do this once, twice or even three times and what are my opponents planning? Will I still have enough time to play all my cards in time for them to count towards the effects of my animal cards?
Which animal and plant cards do I bring into my ecosystem to create an optimally linked ecosystem that generates as many victory points as possible? Are there any cards with immediate effects that would be interesting for a retrigger? Do I keep an animal species until the end, or do I immediately generate points by making it the target of a predator?
The player who best answers and masters all these questions in a game of Rewild receives the most victory points and wins the game.