Negotiation

Quo Vadis?

In an interesting departure from his normally computational-heavy game structure, Reiner Knizia put together this negotiation game. Players are represented on the board by a group of politicians moving through a network of committees, and need to seek support from their competitors to advance upward toward the Senate. Supporting an opponent gains you prestige, needed in quantity at the end of the game. Once all five Senate positions are filled, the game is over, and only players who have a politician in the Senate are eligible to win. Of those players, whoever has the most prestige wins.

Mammut

Another day, another mammoth hunt. But the spoils of the hunt remains to be divided, and everyone tries to secure the largest share for themselves in this quick and clever family strategy game. Each round the tiles are shuffled in the bag and dropped onto the table. The face up symbols show the spoils of today's hunt.
The tiles are then divided by a unique mechanic: When it is your turn, you may either A) Take any number of tiles from the pool, or B) Claim that another player has been too greedy, taking all of that player's tiles, but returning at least one tile to the pool (you must of course show yourself to be a little less greedy).

The next player without tiles then follows in turn. This way the size of the pool will gradually increase, and the round is over once the last player without tiles decides to take what's left in the pool. Every player will then have a share of tiles, and a scoring phase follows.

Tactical play will help you get the meat, fur, tusks, animals, and tools you want (each tile has a different way of scoring), but you may also play cards for immediate effects or to secretly influence the scoring.

- Game material is language independent -

Cosmic Encounter: Cosmic Alliance

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.

Resistance

The Empire must fall. Our mission must succeed. By destroying their key bases, we will shatter Imperial strength and liberate our people. Yet spies have infiltrated our ranks, ready for sabotage. We must unmask them. In five nights we reshape destiny or die trying. We are the Resistance!

The Resistance is a party game of social deduction. It is designed for five to ten players, lasts about 30 minutes, and has no player elimination. The Resistance is inspired by Mafia/Werewolf, yet it is unique in its core mechanics, which increase the resources for informed decisions, intensify player interaction, and eliminate player elimination.

Players are either Resistance Operatives or Imperial Spies. For three to five rounds, they must depend on each other to carry out missions against the Empire. At the same time, they must try to deduce the other players’ identities and gain their trust. Each round begins with discussion. When ready, the Leader entrusts sets of Plans to a certain number of players (possibly including himself/herself). Everyone votes on whether or not to approve the assignment. Once an assignment passes, the chosen players secretly decide to Support or Sabotage the mission. Based on the results, the mission succeeds (Resistance win) or fails (Empire win). When a team wins three missions, they have won the game.

Rule Correction:

For first printing (2010 purchases), the expansion rules should read: "Games of 5-6 players use 7 plot cards, games with 7+ players use all 15 Plot Cards." and "...each Round, the leader draws Plot cards (1 for 5-6 players, 2 for 7-8 players, and 3 for 9-10 players)" - This has been corrected in the subsequent printings.

Sid Meier's Civilization: The Boardgame

This entry covers the 2002 release of Sid Meier´s Civilization: The Boardgame by Eagle Games. This game is unrelated to the similarly named 2010 FFG game Sid Meier's Civilization: The Board Game.

A boardgame version of the award-winning PC strategy game. Create a civilization to stand the test of time! The game begins in 4000 BC where the players found a pair of villages of a fledgling people.

Each player’s civilization :

Explores the world around them, discovering resources and the native people that defend them.
Expands by sending settlers out to create new cities.
Researches new technologies to gain advantages over the other players.
Builds unique “Wonders of the World”.
Increases the size of their cities (4 sizes from village to metropolis) to increase production.
Builds military units to defend what’s theirs, and to conquer what’s not.

Features:

2 sets of rules (standard, and advanced) allow anyone to play the game.
784 plastic pieces featuring 22 different, professionally sculpted playing pieces that represent cities, settlers, armies, navies, artillery, and air units from 4 different eras.
Over 100 full color Technology and Wonder cards.
A giant 46” x 36” gameboard featuring the artwork of Paul Niemeyer.

This game has been reimplemented in 2007 as Civilization CHR ("open source" project)