Hand Management

Game description from the publisher:

Gunship: First Strike! is Escape Pod Games' core release in a planned series of tactical space combat games. Players fight to win battles in a futuristic civil war with a variety of ship types. From the agile and speedy Fighters, to lethal Gunships and intimidating Capital Ships, every battle is a well-balanced slugfest that comes right down to the wire. Our new Trinity Mechanic uses boards, cards and dice together in an extremely innovative and easy-to-learn system that lets new players jump right in.

What makes the Gunship series unique are the numerous combinations of ships that the players "build" at the start of each battle. By choosing from an ever-growing selection (through expansions) of available Weapons and Upgrades, players are able to create a custom Gunship that is suited to their particular style of play or battle situation. Some guys are "defensive" minded; they'll choose Heavy Armor, +1 Shield Generators and 4 Blaster Cannons to fend off the enemy Gunship. But another player might prefer to build a "Carrier Killer" complete with wings full of Bombs and an Autoblaster Cannon to shred his way through the enemy Fighter Squadron. While most of the Upgrade cards are geared toward the Gunships (the true star of the show) you can also do some great things to your Fighters and Capital Ships. New kinds of ships will come with every expansion to further add to the possibilities. No two battles are ever the same!

In Gunship: First Strike!, the civil war has just started. Your orders are simple: Command a task force of one Assault Carrier and its Gunship and Fighters on a mission to destroy the enemy's Carrier. Guess what? He has the very same orders! Dogfights will ensue, Torpedoes will strike home and Thruster Bombs are going to pound the Capital Ships mercilessly. If your Gunship takes too much damage for comfort, or if the battle situation changes and you want a different weapon load, land inside your Carrier for a quick "pit stop". Make sure that you defend it with all your might because once your Carrier is gone, the only option left to you is to flee the battlespace and hope to take revenge another day.

As the Gunship universe grows, players will be able to fight bigger and bigger battles. Soon the objectives will include breaking through the enemy picket line to drop troops on the planet below. The Gunships will be called upon to not only assault other ships, but also to go dirtside and give air support to the land battle raging below A free Campaign System is planned where players can keep track of a fleet of ships and territories. Lose your Carrier in today's battle and you might lose a critical Outpost next week. Don't let the enemy find the Shipyard where your damaged Destroyers limped home last time – if he does, they're toast!

Game description from the publisher:

In front of you lies the untouched soil of Germany. No track is cutting through its plains, no station is telling of the great industrial progress – but you are about to change that.

In Express 01, you can invest in the construction and upgrading of railway lines and build stations for different companies. When you upgrade such a station, you may reassign it to another company. Your main focus is the acquisition of shares, and as soon as shares are issued, trains can run on behalf of the companies. This way money will be distributed to the shareholders and you get new capital. So keep an eye on the other players to earn money or obstruct their opportunities.

The game ends after the round in which a certain number of Base Cards is upgraded or a certain number of decks are used up. The player who managed to gain the most capital wins.

Global Warming is a tactical, card-driven game in which players score "happiness points" by providing goods to the public. Cards played can be either national industries, consumer goods, green technologies, or events; played industries require the roll of dice to determine pollution output. Collect enough happiness points and you win.

But by producing these goods, you influence the earth's ecology. The player's individual influence, as well as the overall influence, is shown by a marker on a second track, and if these markers reach certain (moveable) points on the warming track, bad things happen to the ecology and the players. If the third warming point is reached, the game ends and the player with the lowest contribution to the overall warming wins.

Thus, the players are embedded in a quite true setting in which they have to balance production and sustainable actions. Who will manage to control his industrial production in a way that minimizes the environmental impact while nevertheless allowing him to meet consumer demand?

Global Warming is the fourth game in Mücke Spiele's "Edition Bohrtürme" series that uses the game pieces from Kosmos' Giganten in the context of a new game.

In Space Mission, players explore eight planets (randomly selected from twelve in the game) by flying from planet to neighboring planet or passing through a "jump gate" that allows them to travel anywhere. Each planet has a different combination of values for jumping to it, scanning it and landing on it.

Each player has a hand of five cards, with each card having three color-coded values on it: blue for jumping, green for scanning, and orange for landing. On a turn, you take two actions from six possibilities, with the same action being possible:

—Top up: Discard any number of cards (including zero), then refill your hand to five cards.

—Jump: Move your spaceship from the jump gate (where players start the game) or a planet to any other planet by discarding a card that shows the landing value of the target planet. Place one of your tokens on the jump gate.

—Fly: Move your spaceship to either neighboring planet; this move is free.

—Scan: Discard a card with the scanning value of the planet where your spaceship is currently located; look through the face-down planet tiles, place one aside face-down with your marker on it, then return the tiles to that planet. This action is possible only on undeveloped planets.

—Develop: Develop the planet where your spaceship is located by discarding two cards that match the two landing values shown on that planet. Mark this planet with your space station token, hand out all scanned and claimed planet tiles to the appropriate players, claim one remaining planet tile for yourself, then place the remaining tiles face-down again. A planet can be developed only once.

—Discover: Take a planet tile of your choice from the developed planet where your spaceship is currently located.

If at any point, all of the planet tiles on a planet show only empty space, the player holding the tiles lays them face-up next to that planet. When 6-12 space tiles have been revealed, an amount based on the number of players, the game ends and players tally their points.

Each type of planet tile scores in a different way. With Minerals, for example, you multiply the number of mineral tiles you hold with the largest number of mineral tiles in a single color. Medals are worth three points each. A green-blue pair of Matter tiles is worth seven points, while a single Matter tile is worth only two. Each space station you've built is worth three points, and the players score 9, 6, 3 and 1 for having the most, secondmost, etc. tokens on the jump gate. The player with the most points wins.

Reimplements:

Jump Gate

Online Play

Yucata (turn-based)

Pagoda is a two-player only game in which players compete to build multiple layers of up to six pagodas. Each player has five face-up and two face-down colored cards, and they use these cards to build colored pillars and levels of the pagoda. Once a pillar has been placed on the ground floor, all other pillars placed must be of the same color. When someone places the fourth pillar on a level, he places a floor tile of the pillars' color on top, with this tile have colored dots to indicate which color of pillar can be placed on top.

Players score points each time they place a pillar, with a pillar on ground level being worth one point, a pillar on the second floor two points, and so on. When a player places a floor tile, he gains one point as well as two actions associated with that color on his individual action board. The fourth floor tile is placed upside-down to show only one colored dot. Two pillars can be placed on this dot, each worth five points, and once placed the pagoda is finished. After three pagodas are finished, players finish the round, then the player with the most points wins.