Hand Management

Game description from the publisher:

Cosmic Alliance, the third expansion set for the Fantasy Flight Games version of Cosmic Encounter, brings 20 alien races, both original and classic, exploding onto your tabletop. Players will now stand petrified by the hideous Gorgon, be baffled by the puzzle of the Schizoid, and feel obsolete before the bionics of the Cyborg.

Cosmic Alliance also makes the Cosmos even bigger, adding another player (white) as well as rules for large eight-player games (if you own all three expansions). Finally, Cosmic Alliance introduces a new variant – team rules, which allow steadfast allies to dominate the Cosmos together!

This optional Team Cosmic variant places players in randomly determined teams of two, in which they'll attempt to conquer the Cosmos cooperatively. Without discussing their race selection in advance, partners sit opposite each other at the table, where they can occasionally offer a helping hand; whenever a player gains a new foreign colony, he can choose to instead gift that colony to his partner.

Martin Wallace's streamlined redesign of Brass.

Players are tycoons in the early days of the Industrial Revolution; a time when traditional craftsman were being rapidly replaced with steam-powered machines. Players invest in the production of raw materials, the manufacture of goods, and the transportation networks needed to connect them to their markets.

Like Brass, the strategic space is vast, and player decisions are limited by cards. In Age of Industry, however, cards are color-coded to regions rather than specific cities, allowing the players to be more flexible with their plans, while at the same time continuing to limit the decisions available. The color-coded region cards will also support expansion maps.

In addition, the original Brass rules were simplified by eliminating the canal period; there is only one period, the railway era. There is also a new, non-specific industry, which will change with each map.

According to Wallace, "You can now play something with the depth of Brass, but in half the time. The game will have a double-sided map, with Germany on one side and southern New England on the other."

Die Tore der Welt / World Without End is based on the novel by Ken Follett, a sequel to his bestselling The Pillars of the Earth. This is the 2009 game in the Kosmos line of literature-based games.

World Without End shares the Kingsbridge location of the earlier novel, but occurs 200 years later. Similarly, the game shares many themes but is a new standalone game.

As citizens of Kingsbridge, players need to take care of the following areas: Building, Trading, Religion, Feeding, and Medical Knowledge. Each turn an event card is flipped that defines available player actions. Victory points can be won in numerous ways, e.g. by creating buildings or taking care of sick people.

In The Great Heartland Hauling Co. (originally announced as Over the Road), players take on the role of medium haul Midwest truck drivers doing their best to make a living by hauling goods for big suppliers. Players truck to various locations around America's Heartland, picking up and dropping off goods using matching cards from their hands. Most locations have native goods that require fewer cards to load; other locations may pay a premium for those goods but may also require more fuel – and time – to get there with the cargo. With limited space in each trailer and only five cards in hand at a time, players will have to expertly manage their resources, as well as play the odds and press their luck to be the best trucker on the road.

The Great Heartland Hauling Co. offers a lot of replay value through the use of cards to create a variable board set-up each game. The game includes 60 goods cubes, four thick cardboard trucks, and 46 resource cards – required for pick-up and delivery – that are drawn from a shared draft board, as well as 20 fuel cards, which are used to move about the Heartland.

The Concept:
Scientists in a lab are trying to create new elements, and they get it all wrong! In Wrong Chemistry (W.C.) you change a molecule in order to create new elements out of it. A fun, easy to learn, but hard to master, game, with funny references to the real elements from the periodic table.

Gameplay:
Players alternate rounds, during which they try to change the pieces on the board, in such a way that they can be the same shape represented by the cards in their hands. The cards represent new elements that the players discover, and when the board has the proper form, the player reveals from his hand the element he/she discovered and adds the card to his/her pile of earned points.

Game End:
The game ends when a player can no longer draw more cards.
The winner is the player with the most points or, in case of a tie, the one that discovered more elements that are next to each other in the Periodic Table of the Elements (chairs not included).