Multi-Use Cards

12 Rivers

You are the leader of a tribe whose people explore the fabled twelve rivers flowing from a mystical lake high in the mountains. Your goal? To find the magical coloured pearls that roll down the rivers in the current. Perhaps a helpful fairy may help you on your quest! Where the rivers converge there is a village where many people and animals live in harmony. There you can make life-long friends and deliver the pearls you have collected, to be used to heal, grow, and ensure another prosperous year for all.

In each of 5 rounds of play, take turns paying camp cards (resources) to place your 3 tribe tokens into various slots along the rivers, to get the magic pearls you need. Pay more camp card resources to place higher up the rivers to pick pearls earlier. However, with clever placement and use of camp card powers, you can still get valuable pearls efficiently downstream. Use your Tribe tokens to block then collect magic pearls that flow down the 12 rivers. Collect pearls needed by villagers to ensure prosperity for the village at the bottom of the 12 Rivers.

Once all tribe tokens are placed, release the magic pearls to roll down the rivers. Then collect a pearl at each tribe token you placed, and store it on your Alpaca for now. Remaining pearls roll downstream to be blocked and picked at other tribe tokens, or end in the lake.

Along the way you will pick up helpful fairy tokens, and try to match Alpaca goals that reward you with points for collecting sets of particular pearl colours first.

To score the pearls you collect, transfer them to villagers you recruit from the village, and strive to score their bonus goals too. After 5 rounds the player with the most points wins.

—description from the publisher

Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor

Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor is a stand-alone game within the Forest Shuffle family and introduces a brand new habitat and features new species with new abilities and bonuses to explore. As in the earlier original Forest Shuffle, in Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor players compete to build the most valuable environment by placing trees and shrubs, then attracting species to these locations to create an ecologically balanced habitat for flora and fauna.

What's new in Dartmoor is the introduction of TERRAIN cards that are played horizontally and serve as a home or feeding ground for different species than trees or shrubs. Due to the nature of the terrain, species can only be placed above and below a terrain card. Deer and other species stay clear from bogs or peat areas in the moorland. They need their drink, but won't feel safe at dwells or next to rivulets. So players have to be watch out, where to place their species.

Like its predecessor, Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor comes with a unique back side: Each of the 180 cards of the deck can be placed face down, creating a bog, if the action allows it. The caves in Forest Shuffle: Dartmoor now will be drafted at the beginning of the game and offer asymmetrical starting conditions. On top, the number of tree symbols has been reduced from eight to six to enable bonuses more easily.

The game mechanism stays untouched: To start, each player has six cards in hand, with cards depicting either a particular type of tree, shrub or terrain or two moor dwellers (animal, plants), with these latter cards being divided in half, whether vertically or horizontally, with one dweller in each card half. On a turn, either draw two cards — whether face down from the deck or face up from the clearing — and add them to your hand, or play a card from your hand by discarding other cards to pay the cost, then putting that first card into play. In the end, the player with the highest score wins.

Bone Wars

In Bone Wars, players take on the role of a palaeontologist in the late 1800s. During this time, a bitter rivalry was waged between Othniel Marsh and Edward Cope, two world-renowned palaeontologists. They both tried to outdo the other in discovering new species of dinosaurs, going so far as to bribe workers, steal or even destroy bones. The players are palaeontologists working for one of these legendary men or are perhaps working on their own behalf – trying to outdo all competition.

During the game, players have to make clever use of their action cards, which they play in the slots under their player board. These action cards can either activate their team - digging up fossils and discovering new species in the field - or their paleontologist - who spend their time publishing species, debunking other players' papers and getting awards.

Published species cards are added to bonus slots at the top of your player board. Each added species card gives a bonus depending on how many species cards are already in that specific slot.

When your paleontologist publishes a paper, it is added to either Marsh's or Cope's side, depending on which side the player is working for. Specific actions will also reward loyalty points with your current patron. At the end of the game, players multiply the number of loyalty they have (both with Marsh and Cope) with the published papers to gain VP. Published papers, therefore, count for all players. It is up to you to make them count the most for yourself.

Comet

Comet is characterized by fast gameplay despite high variability and strategic depth. In the prehistoric past, you try to save extinct and endangered species from their final extinction. So you do nothing less than change the course of history! You can cleverly combine card skills to save the animals from the threatening comet.

The basic techniques and rules of the game are quickly learned. However, this does not mean that Comet is quickly mastered! Each game presents a new challenge as you must cleverly adapt to your opponent's actions in order to win.

1. You can make animals hatch to use their card abilities after you have moved them to the safe cavern. Saved animals will score rescue points in different ways at the end of the game. However, you also need other animal cards to move your saviors around the board (and thus move your animals to safety). Be careful how you use your cards!

2. Different types of cards deepen the strategic choices. Skillfully use the ability of your asymmetrical hero cards and optimize the possibilities of the silver and golden animal cards. When the pile of silver cards is used up, the comet phase begins and initiates the end of the game.

3. Even the movements on the game board want to be well planned. Opposing saviors can be jumped over to reach the save cavern faster - this can be good for you or your fellow players.

—description from the publisher

Galactic Cruise

Hello, and welcome to Galactic Cruise. Here, we offer our guests something special: the comfort of a luxury cruise with the innovation of space travel. As the first company to offer extended-stay space vacations, we are excited to have you working for us! As a supervisor of this company, you’ll be expected to not only build these ships and satisfy our guests, but also to help the company thrive by enhancing our company network, inventing new technologies, and growing our workforce. We are a united company, and you’ll often find that what another supervisor does will make your job easier. Let me be clear, though, this is a competition. Our current CEO will be stepping down in three years, and the supervisor who comes out on top will take his place.

On your turn, you will either place a worker to take two actions in the ever-expanding network, launch a ship and send one of your workers to space as a pilot, or recall all your earthbound workers to collect funding bonuses. Actions include acquiring blueprints, constructing ships, attracting guests, and building developments–connections between locations that increase action selection throughout the game. You will also be affecting resource markets that ebb and flow with the actions of all the players.

Throughout the game, you will also be competing with your fellow supervisors to complete company goals, which will earn you progress cubes throughout the game. Progress cubes are also placed when you launch ships, and when a certain number of cubes are placed onto the company’s progress track, the game ends, and the player with the most Victory Points becomes the new CEO of Galactic Cruise.

Do you still think you have what it takes to work for us? You do? Great. Let’s get started.

—description from the publisher