Hand Management

In the 2400s, mankind begins to terraform the planet Mars. Giant corporations, sponsored by the World Government on Earth, initiate huge projects to raise the temperature, the oxygen level, and the ocean coverage until the environment is habitable. In Terraforming Mars, you play one of those corporations and work together in the terraforming process, but compete for getting victory points that are awarded not only for your contribution to the terraforming, but also for advancing human infrastructure throughout the solar system, and doing other commendable things.

The players acquire unique project cards (from over two hundred different ones) by buying them to their hand. The projects (cards) can represent anything from introducing plant life or animals, hurling asteroids at the surface, building cities, to mining the moons of Jupiter and establishing greenhouse gas industries to heat up the atmosphere. The cards can give you immediate bonuses, as well as increasing your production of different resources. Many cards also have requirements and they become playable when the temperature, oxygen, or ocean coverage increases enough. Buying cards is costly, so there is a balance between buying cards (3 megacredits per card) and actually playing them (which can cost anything between 0 to 41 megacredits, depending on the project). Standard Projects are always available to complement your cards.

Your basic income, as well as your basic score, is based on your Terraform Rating (starting at 20), which increases every time you raise one of the three global parameters. However, your income is complemented with your production, and you also get VPs from many other sources.

Each player keeps track of their production and resources on their player boards, and the game uses six types of resources: MegaCredits, Steel, Titanium, Plants, Energy, and Heat. On the game board, you compete for the best places for your city tiles, ocean tiles, and greenery tiles. You also compete for different Milestones and Awards worth many VPs. Each round is called a generation (guess why) and consists of the following phases:

1) Player order shifts clockwise.
2) Research phase: All players buy cards from four privately drawn.
3) Action phase: Players take turns doing 1-2 actions from these options: Playing a card, claiming a Milestone, funding an Award, using a Standard project, converting plant into greenery tiles (and raising oxygen), converting heat into a temperature raise, and using the action of a card in play. The turn continues around the table until all players pass.
4) Production phase: Players get resources according to their terraform rating and production parameters.

When the three global parameters (temperature, oxygen, ocean) have all reached their goal, the terraforming is complete, and the game ends after that generation. Count your Terraform Rating and other VPs to determine the winning corporation!

Ticket to Ride: First Journey takes the gameplay of the Ticket to Ride series and scales it down for a younger audience.

In general, players collect train cards, claim routes on the map, and try to connect the cities shown on their tickets. In more detail, the game board shows a map of the United States with certain cities being connect by colored paths. Each player starts with four colored train cards in hand and two tickets; each ticket shows two cities, and you're trying to connect those two cities with a contiguous path of your trains in order to complete the ticket.

On a turn, you either draw two train cards from the deck or discard train cards to claim a route between two cities; for this latter option, you must discard cards matching the color and number of spaces on that route (e.g., two yellow cards for a yellow route that's two spaces long). If you connect the two cities shown on a ticket with a path of your trains, reveal the ticket, place it face up in front of you, then draw a new ticket. (If you can't connect cities on either ticket because the paths are blocked, you can take your entire turn to discard those tickets and draw two new ones.)

If you connect one of the West Coast cities to one of the East Coast cities with a path of your turns, you immediately claim a Coast-to-Coast ticket.

The first player to complete six tickets wins! Alternatively, if someone has placed all twenty of their trains on the game board, then whoever has completed the most tickets wins!

Description from the publisher:

Sushi Go Party!, an expanded version of the best-selling card game Sushi Go!, is a party platter of mega maki, super sashimi, and endless edamame. You still earn points by picking winning sushi combos, but now you can customize each game by choosing à la carte from a menu of more than twenty delectable dishes. What's more, up to eight players can join in on the sushi-feast. Let the good times roll!

Players compete to build the best resort for attracting fantasy heroes and tourists looking for fun and relaxation. The more you attract, the more likely monsters will attack!

Overview

Hire and train your workers, build and upgrade your attractions, and convince your battle weary heroes to fight just one more time so without letting too many tourists get eaten! Gain Victory points by upgrading attractions and giving Heroes the rest they need. The highest scoring player when all monsters are defeated is the winner.

Setup

Each player begins with a humble resort consisting of a Beach, a Tiki Hut and a small number of Tourists, placed at each attraction. Each player starts with their own worker Deck consisting of 7 Apprentices, 3 Street Performers, and 3 Lazy Peons.

Gameplay

Each round consists of 4 phases:

Phase I - Get to Work

Each Player draws a hand of 5 Workers from their Worker Deck.
Players simultaneously send worker cards from their hand to do work at each of their Attractions. Any missing units of work (are required by the Attraction) cause Tourists to leave before gathering resources.
Players gain the primary resource of Gold by having more tourists at each attraction, and Flair by having less tourists.

Phase II - Action: Attract, Hire & Upgrade

In order, players take one action per turn or pass. Players will be interacting with common draft areas, as well as using abilities from their own workers and attractions. Possible actions include:

Attract Tourists from the Dock (Spending Flair) - Tourists are placed at attractions, potentially increasing the Gold gained on the subsequent turn.
Attract a Hero from the Dock (Spending Flair) - Heroes start with low health, which is gained at the end of each round. Fully Rested Heroes are scored for Victory Points.
Upgrade an Attraction (Spending Gold) - Providing higher tourist capacity, better Gold payout, better abilities and more Victory Points. Upgraded attractions typically require more workers to keep them fully staffed.
Train or Hire new Workers (Spending Gold) - Upgrade your workers to provide more work, or better abilities. Training locks a worker draft pile, preventing other players from upgrading to that particular worker during the round. Training workers is a 1-for-1 exchange, keeping players' Worker Deck lean by design.
Pass - The first Player to Pass becomes the Start Player for the next round

Any time during a player's turn, he may use abilities from fully-staffed attractions, or discard worker cards to use their unique abilities.

Phase III - A Ship Arrives

The dock is refilled with new Heroes and Tourists from a center pile. While refilling, it's possible to trigger a Monster Attack!

If an Attack! card is revealed, the top Monster from the Monster Pile will choose which player it's attacking; typically by Most Tourists or Most Heroes at their resort, ties broken clockwise from the start player.
If a Hero defends against a Monster Attack, he loses 1 health. Any undefended damage causes tourists to be eaten by the Monster.
Heroes may dodge into, or out of, a Monster Attack up to one time per round.
If an attraction has no Hero or Tourists, a Monster will Damage it, potentially destroying the attraction.
A player may chose (if they have one) to throw a Lazy Peon at the monster, ending the attack and permenantly removing the Worker Card from the game.
The Dock Continues to refill, potentially triggering more Monster Attacks, until it is full.

Phase IV - Clean Up

Used and unused Workers are placed in players' discard piles.
Any fully-rested Heroes are scored - Placed to the side, each worth Victory Points at the end of the game. This Hero also removes the top Monster from the remaining Monster Deck.
Remaining Heroes gain 1 Health each.
Any Locked Worker Draft Piles and Attraction Abilities are made available for the next round.
Any unused Flair is sent back to the supply. Gold carries over to the next round.

Gameplay continues with Phase I

Game End

If at the end of the round there are no Monsters remaining, the game is over and players total Victory Points from Attractions, Scored Heroes, and 1 point for each remaining Hero at their resort. The player with the highest Victory Point total has built the most Epic Resort and is victorious!

In this classic word game, players use their seven drawn letter-tiles to form words on the gameboard. Each word laid out earns points based on the commonality of the letters used, with certain board spaces giving bonuses. But a word can only be played if it uses at least one already-played tile or adds to an already-played word. This leads to slightly tactical play, as potential words are rejected because they would give an opponent too much access to the better bonus spaces.

Skip-a-cross was licensed by Selchow & Righter and manufactured by Cadaco. Both games have identical rules but Skip-a-cross has tiles and racks made of cardboard instead of wood. The game was also published because not enough Scrabble games were manufactured to meet the demand.