mythology

Gingerbread House

Once upon a time a witch lived alone in her house in the depths of the forest. Her favorite hobby was baking yummy gingerbread; in fact, she loved gingerbread so much that she built her entire house out of it. Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one who loved it! Rude fairy tale characters passing by were eating away her walls, windows, and doors! One day, the witch decided that she'd had enough of them all helping themselves and, paying attention to which types of gingerbread these greedy intruders liked the most, she came up with an idea on how to get rid of them once and for all...

In Gingerbread House, you place domino-like tiles in a 3 by 3 grid, covering symbols that provide you with four different types of gingerbread and special actions. Tiles may also be placed on existing types of tiles, forming a 3D structure in front of you. Covering two of the same symbol is extremely valuable as it provides a bonus gingerbread or action. Victory points are awarded for building the tallest structure, completing orders by discarding sets of gingerbread, as well as being the quickest to achieve certain conditions. In the end, the player with the most victory points wins.

Orbis

Orbis is a tactical game of world development and strategic resource management, in which players take on the roles of gods creating their best universes. Utilizing lands lost in the aether, players accumulate worshippers to spend on even more fruitful lands — some of which grant game-changing bonuses. The key to victory lies in having the most creation points (CPs) at the end of the game!

On your turn, you must take a tile from either the nine region tiles in the center of the table or the available God tiles. (A player may take only one God tile throughout the game.) Every time you take a region tile, worshippers of the same color as the tile taken are placed on adjacent tiles, making the tiles left behind more enticing for the next player. Restrictions apply to region tile placement, making each decision tougher than the last!

After fifteen rounds, the game ends when all players have created their universe, at which point CPs are calculated, bonus tiles awarded, and a winner is crowned. Beautifully simple yet rich in strategy, Orbis is a different game each and every time you play it.

Become the best god and craft your most prosperous universe!

They Who Were 8

Gods and Goddesses are mercurial beings, given to jealousy and treachery, but they can also possess compassion and valor.

Who among the pantheon can win enough glory among their believers, so that their story of mythic victory can be passed down through the generations?

They Who Were 8 is a game for 2-4 players where each player serves two Gods, seeking to praise them for their Glory, and trying to avoid stories of their Infamy.

The game can be played in two different ways:

• Titanomachy:
A game for 2-4 players trying to achieve an individual victory.

• Pantheon:
A partnership game for 4 players, played in two teams of 2.

In both of these games, the players take actions that represent a bard’s retelling of the ancient story of They Who Were 8. They may also call upon the powers of their Gods to control the narrative and establish their version of the saga as the one told for eternity.

Note: They Who Were 8 was inspired by a cycle of poems by Todd Sanders written in 1999. The poems are fragments of a larger ancient saga, lost to time.

Disney Villainous

In Villainous, each player takes control of one of six Disney characters, each one a villain in a different Disney movie. Each player has their own villain deck, fate deck, player board, and 3D character.

On a turn, the active player moves their character to a different location on their player board, takes one or more of the actions visible on that space (often by playing cards from their hand), then refills their hand to four cards. Cards are allies, items, effects, conditions, and (for some characters) curses. You need to use your cards to fulfill your unique win condition.

One of the actions allows you to choose another player, draw two cards from that player's fate deck, then play one of them on that player's board, covering two of the four action spaces on one of that player's locations. The fate deck contains heroes, items, and effects from that villain's movie, and these cards allow other players to mess with that particular villain.

Santa's Workshop

Description from the publisher:

It's the busiest time of the year at the North Pole, with only days to go until Santa leaves to make his yearly trip around the world! After his long night, and all the work that led up to it, Santa always takes a vacation somewhere sunny and warm. As a reward for helping bring joy to children around the world, Santa takes his hardest working team of elves with him!

Can you lead your team of elves to claim their well-deserved reward? Not only are there toys to be built, but reindeer to be tended and coal to be mined (sadly, not all the children are on the "nice" list). Candy canes and gingerbread houses are nice, but by working hard-and smartly-you and your team of elves may find yourselves on a beach drinking something with an umbrella in it.

A worker-placement game, taking place over 9 rounds, players use their elves to collect materials in order to build gifts, and tend to the reindeer. Players may customize their workforce by sending elves to be trained in certain aspects of the game, which provide a benefit for the rest of the game. For some gifts, plastic may be substituted for the standard materials of fabric, wood or metal. This will cause those gifts to score fewer "Christmas Cookies", but may allow a player to build more gifts in a shorter amount of time. This can be helpful when Santa comes around 3 times during the game for an inspection, to see which team has made the most gifts.

Players will have to decide when to visit the mail room in order to pick which gifts to build, and when to tend to the reindeer. The reindeer accumulate points the longer they go untended - and each of the eight reindeer provides a unique bonus to the player.