Pick-up and Deliver

Tahiti

Your small island is peaceful and prosperous – so prosperous that your tribe has grown beyond its ability to sustain you! Fortunately, being a peaceful people you have chosen not to fight over what little there is. Instead, you set out in your seagoing Wa’a (canoe) to fish and gather crops from the many nearby islands. The fertility goddess Haumea has blessed these islands, and they are rich with fruits, vegetables, and spices. It is a matter of pride to collect the finest harvest for the village. Can you win the race against time and the sea, and prove that you are the best gatherer of all?

In Tahiti the goal is to collect crops (coconuts, taro, bananas, spice) and fish from the surrounding islands to score points with bonuses for making full sets and acquiring the most of their family favorites which are hidden from the other players.

The game starts off with just your home island and its immediate neighboring islands. Players build up the archipelago of fertile islands with the guidance of Haumea for the first part of the game until all islands are in play. Players seed the islands each turn giving them some control over where crops replenish. Once the archipelago is formed, the late season is triggered when crops start becoming scarce, with players occasionally stopping an island from producing altogether. Although the late season may not be as good for crops, fishing becomes easier with bonuses given to the waters around some of the islands.
During all this the players travel by Wa’a from island to island using action points to collect the crops they want or can get to before the others take them. As the Wa’a fills, it becomes slower limiting the number of actions they have. There are also treacherous reefs around the islands that require you go around them or risk losing some of the crops aboard your Wa’a. At the end of the year, the one who most efficiently gathers food for their family wins.

Lords of Xidit

The Black Southern Host has arisen, corrupting the hearts of the indigenous creatures. Afflicted by a mysterious sickness, they are attacking human cities. The last remaining hope for restoring peace to Xidit lies with the Kingdom's noble heirs, the Idrakys. As one of them, you must roam the Kingdom recruiting brave soldiers and reclaiming threatened cities. Your bravery will not go unrewarded: accumulate wealth, send bards to sing your praises, and build Sorcerers' Guilds!

Lords of Xidit features simultaneous programming and an elimination-based scoring system that leaves no room for complacency! In more detail, at the end of the game players compare their influence in one category and the player with the least influence is eliminated and his pieces removed from the board; players then compare influence in another category, with a player again being removed. The order of elimination is randomly determined at the start of play, forcing you to thinking in different ways each game.

Prepare to ride out, Idrakys, and forge your legend!

Railways of the World

Railways of the World (2009) is the new edition of the base game for Eagle Games' popular Railways of the World series, first published as Railroad Tycoon in 2005. It reimplements the original game with several improvements.

Revisit the early days of the Age of Steam as you begin with a locomotive (the venerable John Bull, the first locomotive to run in North America) and a vision (your Tycoon "mission" card). From there, build your budding railroad network into a vast empire. Connect New York to Chicago, earn the most money, develop bigger and faster locomotives and maybe even span North America and build the Transcontinental Railway!

Multiple expansions featuring different maps are available. Railways of the World is the new base game for the system and includes the engine placards, railroad tiles, train tokens, money, bonds, and other items that are needed in almost all the Railways of the World series. A gameboard depicting the eastern half of the United States is included in the base game, as well as a mounted map of Mexico.

This game is preceded by the designer's other Winsome train games: Age of Steam, Australian Railways, Volldampf, New England Railways, Veld Spoorweg, Lancashire Railways, and Ferrocarriles Pampas. Railroad Tycoon was the result of a collaboration with Glenn Drover, in which the mechanics and game-play of Martin Wallace's Age of Steam were simplified and streamlined and attractive over-produced components were added, in order to make Railroad Tycoon more appealing to less hardcore gamers and more accessible to a wider audience.

A revised reprint was published at the end of 2010 which made some component improvements, such as the addition of Railroad Operation cards for the Mexico map.

Complete series overview - The Railways of the World Series: Introducing the family members of the ideal medium-weight train game

Note: The RailRoad Tycoon board itself is gigantic (about 36x45 inches, 91x114 cm) and requires a huge table or playing on the floor.

Similar to:

Steam

Coal Baron

Coal Baron – or Glück Auf in German, after a greeting German miners use when wishing one another luck – has players sending meeple miners underground to dig tunnels and acquire coal, which comes in four levels of quality and which is used to fulfill contracts.

The game lasts three rounds, and in each round players take turns placing their workers on action spaces; you can go on a space occupied by another player, but you need to place additional workers in order to do so. Each player has an individual elevator shaft, and he'll need to use workers to extract coal and bring it to the surface, while also competing for contracts and scrounging for cash in order to do everything else that needs to be done!