Hand Management

Patrician takes place in the Middle Ages when men were men and wealthy men were inspired to build magnificent towers in order to show off how prosperous they were. As the old saying goes, the taller the tower, the more influential the family.

Players are master builders trying to profit from these vanity-driven families. You build these towers floor by floor, ready to take credit for making them look good. From Mayfair’s description of the game: “You must shrewdly accept the building orders of the patrician families to position yourself in the right place at the right time. Play your cards right, and your name will be famous among the rich and powerful!”

Patrician comes with 149 wooden tower pieces, 55 building cards, 20 prestige tokens, and a double-sided playing board.

The board represents a number of cities, each of which will have 2 towers when the games ends. Players have a hand of 3 cards, each indicating one city. Playing a card allows that player to add a tower piece to the city indicated by the card. Each city will have a specific number of tower pieces. When the specified number of pieces are played to the city, the city is complete. The player with the most pieces in each of the two towers will score points when the city is completed. The player replaces the played card by taking the card from the city where he played a tower piece. As long as the city in uncompleted, a new card is added to the city to replace the one taken by the player.

In addition to indicating a city, cards have one of 4 secondary functions. They can have one or two Portraits from an influential family. They can add a second tower piece to the same city. they can allow the player to move the top piece from one tower in any other city where the player has at least one tower piece, to the top of the other tower in that same city. Finally, a card may allow the player to take a replacement card from any of the cities, not just the one where the player has added a tower piece. All cards played are kept by the player. At the end of the game, additional points are awarded for every complete set of 3 portraits from the influential families.

The game ends when all cities are completed, which will also be when all cards have been played.

The goal of the game is to be the most successful builder, indicated by having the most points.

Love Letter: The Hobbit – The Battle of the Five Armies is a game of risk, deduction, and luck for 2–4 players based on the original Love Letter game by Seiji Kanai. The deck consists of 17 cards, with the Arkenstone being valued #8, Bilbo Baggins #7, and so on down to The One Ring at #0.

In each round, each player starts with only one card in hand; one card is removed from play. On a turn, you draw one card, and play one card, using the power on that card to expose others and (possibly) knock them out of the round. If you're the final player active in the round or the player with the highest card when the deck runs out, then you score a point. In LL: The Hobbit, The One Ring does nothing during play, but it counts as a #7 when the game ends, possibly leading to a tie should someone else hold Bilbo.

In addition to the one extra card, LL: The Hobbit differs from the original game in that the Baron (#3) is represented by two separate cards: Tauriel and Legolas. When you use an elf's power to compare cards, Tauriel knocks out the player with the higher valued card while Legolas targets the lower valued card. (This change isn't in the German edition, where Legolas and Tauriel have the same text.)

Whoever first wins 4-7 rounds, with the number dependent on the number of players, wins the game!

"The Outlaws hunt the Sheriff. The Sheriff hunts the Outlaws. The Renegade plots secretly, ready to take one side or the other. Bullets fly. Who among the gunmen is a Deputy, ready to sacrifice himself for the Sheriff? And who is a merciless Outlaw, willing to kill him? If you want to find out, just draw (your cards)!" (From back of box)

The card game BANG! recreates an old-fashioned spaghetti western shoot-out, with each player randomly receiving a Character card to determine special abilities, and a secret Role card to determine their goal.

Four different Roles are available, each with a unique victory condition:

Sheriff - Kill all Outlaws and the Renegade
Deputy - Protect the Sheriff and kill any Outlaws
Outlaw - Kill the Sheriff
Renegade - Be the last person standing

A player's Role is kept secret, except for the Sheriff. Character cards are placed face up on table, and also track strength (hand limit) in addition to special ability.

There are 22 different types of cards in the draw deck. Most common are the BANG! cards, which let you shoot at another player, assuming the target is within "range" of your current gun. The target player can play a "MISSED!" card to dodge the shot. Other cards can provide temporary boosts while in play (for example, different guns to improve your firing range) and special one-time effects to help you or hinder your opponents (such as Beer to restore health, or Barrels to hide behind during a shootout). A horse is useful for keeping your distance from unruly neighbors, while the Winchester can hit a target at range 5. The Gatling is a deadly exception where range doesn't matter: it can only be used once, but targets all other players at the table!

Information on the cards is displayed using language-independent symbols, and 7 summary/reference cards are included.

Gang of Four™ is an exciting game of Cunning, Strategy and Power. The game's premise is simple - be the first to rid yourself of all your cards and ascend to supreme power. But beware - a strategic misstep may find you in a struggle to survive.

History
The term, Gang of Four, was first used to describe four powerful radicals in Communist China that rose to power during the Cultural Revolution (1966-1976) and dominated Chinese politics during the early 1970s. Led by Jiang Qing, a former actress and the power-hungry wife of Chairman Mao, the Gang of Four dominated political, economic and cultural life in China for years. One month after Mao's death, they were arrested and jailed, thus ending China's slide into radicalism.

The Gang of Four card game was first conceived during the upheaval of the Cultural Revolution. The game's inventor, Lee Yih, wanted to convey the mystery, intrigue and intense struggle for power that embodied not only China's recent political history - but also its past.
Like the political Gang of Four, the game embodies a never-ending battle for supremacy - where the weak perish and the strong dominate. Good players, like good politicians, must show cunning, flexibility and ruthlessness.

What's in the box?
Gang of Four features a special 64-card deck, illustrated using a traditional Chinese theme, plus 2 rules summary cards to make learning and playing the game easier, a full-color rules booklet, scorepad and a Days of Wonder Web-Card, providing you with access to Gang of Four Online at www.gangoffour.com

Gameplay
All the cards are dealt to the players. The player who was dealt the multi-colored "1" card starts the hand and must use this card on the first play. The players proceed taking turns clockwise and then counterclockwise on subsequent hands. On one's turn one must play the same number of cards but a higher ranked set than the previous player. A player may play more cards if those cards are four or more of a kind. A round continues until all players pass because they can not or choose not to play cards. All cards played are discarded and the winner of the previous round leads. The hand continues until one player has used all the cards in his or her hand. The other players are penalized points on an escalating scale according to the number of cards in their hands. The game is over when one player has scored one hundred and the player with the lowest score wins.

Pandemic: On the Brink includes new event cards, new role cards, rules for five players, and optional game challenges to increase the difficulty of the Pandemic base game. These new challenges, which can be used individually or combined for even more difficult play, are as follows:

The Virulent Strain challenge makes one disease become particularly deadly in unpredictable ways.

The Mutation challenge adds a fifth (purple) disease that behaves differently than the original four.

The Bio-Terrorist challenge pits one player against the others!