Medieval

In Asara, you take on the role of a wealthy builder competing to bring the most prestige to your name through constructing the largest and most ornate towers in the city. The game is played over 4 rounds (years), during which you will be acquiring the pieces for your towers and assembling them.

Players are given a hand of cards with different colors. On their turn, players play a card from their hand to an action space on the board. These spaces allow players to acquire tower pieces, get money, build a portion of their towers, etc. Once a card has been played in one of the action spaces on the board, all subsequent cards played in that area have to follow the original card’s color. Turns continue around the table until all players are out of cards for that round.

Scoring happens at the end of each round based on the number of towers a player has and the ornamentation present on those towers. After the scoring at the end of round 4, a final scoring occurs and bonus prestige points are given to the players with the largest towers of each color, the most towers, and the largest tower overall. The player with the most prestige points is the winner.

Italy, late Middle Ages. The fabric merchants need to write down their contracts in a language that everyone can understand and the literates are looking for an alternative to the elite of the traditional Latin language. So, the Volgare, the language spoken by the common people, taken from the dialects spoken in the various Italian regions, starts to gain relevance.
During this period, Francesco D’Assisi writes his famous Canticle of the Sun and Dante writes the Divine Comedy both written in Volgare.

The players will have to do their part in the creation of this new language! But who will provide them the proper knowledge to understand the manuscripts in the different dialects? Who will succeed to uncover the secrets of the books inside the Papal Library? Who will embrace the religious life and who will remain a merchant? Some of the players can become a famous banker, someone else can climb the church’s hierarchy to be the next Pope! But in the end, who will be the most appreciated and respected for his status and his culture?

The aim of the game is to obtain more Volgare points. The players will gain VP from reading manuscripts, looking for important documents like the Canticle of the Sun or "The Riddle from Verona". Players can also gain VP by improving their social status, for example, if the merchant become a banker or the Friar becomes a Benedictine Monk or the Cardinal becomes Camerlengo or Pope.
Moreover, VP can be gotten with money and with the support of Politicians, Noblemen, Abbesses, and of the Amanuensis.

In 12th century Japan, the Minamoto and Taira clans vie for power while retired Emperor Go-Shirakawa plays his rivals against one another. One of the three factions will triumph to impose the coming social order. In the shadow of these elite powers, a few ninja scheme to exploit the chaos. Daring raids, skill mastery, and subtle intrigue are essential to establishing one’s honor. When the new era dawns, one ninja will flourish as the Ninjato, the Invisible Sword of the ruling family.

Ninjato is the newest board game from CrossCut Games, makers of Galactic Emperor, and published by Z-Man Games, IELLO, and White Goblin Games.

In Artus, the round table of legend is a turntable in the center of the game board with a space marked with a crown for the king, numbers on the edge from +10 to -15 counter-clockwise from the king, and a few spaces worth 0.

Each player has six cards in hand – two knight cards, two royalty cards, and two scoring cards – and plays two cards each turn. By doing this, players are able to place figures of their color or neutral figures around the table, score certain areas or figures under certain circumstances, and place rings on neutral figures or to move them. The neutral figure bearing three rings is the current king, and the table is always oriented to place this figure in the crown location. A new king can come into power though, which will find everyone sitting in a new location.

The player with the most points after eleven rounds wins the game. Artus has two sets of rules: basic rules for families and casual gamers and "professional rules" for more experienced gamers.

This text refers to the Queen 2007 reprint. The older edition had players write down their viking orders and was two rounds longer.

In Eketorp, players build Viking strongholds upon the Swedish island of Öland.

The goal of the game is to collect the most valuable blocks to build your own fortress, either by winning battles on the resource spaces or by stealing blocks from other vikings.

Each turn, new resources appear and the players secretly plan their viking movements. After all the placements are revealed, vikings battle each other for blocks (with the losers sent off to the field hospital to recover). The game ends after a set number of rounds, or when one of the players has succeeded in finishing their fortress.