Territory Building

Game description from the publisher:

In an age of great battles, valiant leaders, and unscrupulous mercenary armies, fortune lies within your grasp.

Ventura is a board game of nobility and conquest for 2-4 players. Set in 14th century Italy, Ventura puts players in control of warring noble houses, each vying for control of the country's growing wealth. Balance your house’s earnings and maintain your hired soldiers to keep your family’s noble standing. Remember, the best armies are also the ones that cost the most!

With more than 120 plastic pieces, 40 Territory tiles, 4 Family Boards, a scoring board, and over 100 cards, Ventura will whisk players into a world of warring mercenaries and noble families, all seeking control of Italy’s burgeoning wealth.

Alexandros is an abstract strategy by Leo Colovini, thematically inspired by the military expansion of Alexander the Great. It includes the "triggered scoring for all" mechanism, which can be considered a trademark of the designer, implemented in many of his games. It forces players to evaluate their actions in relation to what other players can earn.

The goal of the game is to have more points than other players when the trail/border markers are depleted or someone scores 100 points first.

Gameplay is driven by cards, used for all actions. Clockwise, players are first obliged to move the figure representing Alexandros across a triangular grid. They do this by playing cards with symbols matching those on destination spots. This is the core concept of the game - when the figure of Alexandros is moved, it leaves a trail of borders behind it. Soon, these borders begin to form provinces composed of triangular spaces: either with symbols or empty.

After moving Alexandros, players either build their hand of cards by drawing them, take over provinces or trigger scorings if the situation on the board suits them.

Players can occupy provinces by playing cards from their hand and placing tokens representing their leaders on spaces with corresponding symbols. When a scoring is triggered, provinces earn points equal to the number of empty spaces in them. Players can take over empty provinces and/or those occupied by other players. Each player has only four generals and placing them costs valuable cards - the game requires careful hand management and point-to-point movement - to create worthy provinces for scoring.

Awarded title of "Best Family Strategy Game" by Games Magazine in 2005.

The 2012 rerelease of Wallenstein tweaks the 2002 title from designer Dirk Henn and publisher Queen Games, while including two new expansions.

The setting and game play of the two games are mostly the same. In 1625, the Thirty Years' War is underway, and military leaders like Albrecht von Wallenstein and Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim are roaming the country, fighting for land, and trying to establish the best of everything for themselves. The game lasts two "years," with players taking actions in the spring, summer, and fall, then possibly suffering from grain shortage and revolts in the winter before scoring points for the year. After two years, the player with the most points – with points being scored for land and buildings under one's control – wins.

In each of the "action" seasons, ten action cards are shuffled, then laid out, with five face-up and the rest face-down. The five bonus tiles (which provide extra money, grain, or armies) are also laid out. Each player then secretly assigns one of his county cards (or a blank card) to each of the ten actions on his individual player board, in addition to bidding for player order and choice of bonus tile.

After revealing that round's event card and determining player order, players carry out actions in the order determined earlier, revealing which county is taking the current action, then revealing the next face-down action, thus giving players some information about when actions will occur, but not all. Taxing a county or taking grain from it can increase the chance of a revolt during winter, but without money you can't deploy troops or build palaces or churches and without grain you increase the chance of revolt.

Combat and revolts are handled via a dice tower in which players drop army units and peasants (colored wooden cubes) into the top of the tower and see which ones emerge in the bottom tray (representing the fighting forces for that combat) and which get stuck in the tower's baffles to possibly emerge in the future.

Wallenstein includes two expansions: "Emperor's Court," in which a player's army tokens that fall from the dice tower at the start of the game become courtiers who compete for favors (special actions) from the emperor; a player can convert armies to courtiers during the game, and whoever has the most courtiers in the court's entrance hall each turn gets first shot at the favors available. "Landsknechte," which can be used with "Emperor's Court" or on its own, consists of a set of four cards for each player stacked in a particular order. If after determining turn order, a player controls counties in four different regions, he removes the top card from the stack, then takes one of the bonuses (such as money or armies in the tray) shown on the newly revealed card. This stack resets after winter ends.

Reimplements:

Wallenstein (first edition)

Similar to:

Shogun

In the mid-sixteenth century England Queen Elizabeth I rules without an heir. This leaves room for some maneuvering. Powers throughout, including you, believe that a family with great presence, wealth, and nobility might find itself in the right place at the right time.

In Noblemen, you are members of the British aristocracy. You will try to achieve influence and prestige for your family. You will grow your family's estate, earn the queen's favor, bear witness to scandalous behavior, gain influence with the church, bribe royalty, and leverage your political weight during masquerade balls; all in an effort to ensure your family's rightful place in history. After three decades, the player with the most victory points will be declared the winner.

This is a game of several races all going on at the same time. Players race the clock; you will never know exactly how many turns are remaining before the scoring round. Players will race each other – to build cheaper buildings, to be the first to build a folly, to have more prestige and therefore gain a higher noble title, and more. On your turn you can play one scandal card (if you choose) in addition to taking one action from the following possibilities:

Grow Estate – Play lands from behind your screen
Build Structure – Buy and play a building on a meadow
Bribe Royalty – Buy bribe tickets you can redeem later
Collect Taxes – Get money
Acquire Lands – Get more land from the bag of random lands
Donate to the Church – Redeem lands for victory points
Leisure Time – Get one victory point

On most of your turns, you will build your estate by playing land tiles or building structures. There are three commodities to concentrate on: lands, wealth, and prestige. Each commodity will help on your path to victory. It is for you to decide each turn which is the most needed for you to win the game.

The Earth is probably doomed, and rumors and speculation run rampant. Newspaper headlines from across the globe stir the populace to desperation:

"MELTING POLAR ICE CAPS" "RISING SEA LEVELS" "POLLUTION!" "OVERPOPULATION!" "NUCLEAR WINTER?" "RAVENOUS BLACK STAR GOATS?" "WILL METEORS STRIKE YOUR CHILDREN?" "DISASTER LOOMS!"

The race to escape Earth has begun! With the world's nations in decline, powerful corporations now stand as humanity's last hope. Take the reins of one such corporation, as CEO, and venture out into space. With your mission in hand; build ships, collect resources, research technologies, survive the dangers of space exploration, and, while ticket sales hold steady, preserve the human race. Remember to stay a step ahead of competing corporations, which can use slick marketing campaigns and 10 cent tchotchkes to buy the loyalty of the people you just saved from certain doom!

Players are rewarded points for sticking to the mission and building colonies, and saving colonists. As you are a CEO you are also rewarded points for filling the Corporate treasury, and building the company's value proposition by retaining rights to the best technologies. Game play is fast, and exciting. Events, and the vast variety of hazards that space has to offer will keep you on your toes, and your underlings busy on the paperwork for decades to come!

The game is played in 5 phases: Research, Fleet, Management, Revenue, and finally First Player Turn Auction. All players will complete each phase, in turn order, before proceeding to the next phase. This helps to keep the game moving, and keeps players engaged. In Research phase players can pay to research, or choose to license another players tech. In the Fleet phase players get one action with each ship they own. The Management phase is when players build new ships, special tech items, and sell technology to the public domain. The Revenue phase is when players collect their hard earned resources, including a small stipend from their home office on Earth. And finally, the turn auction phase is a bidding war for who goes first. Not that important at the start of the game, but monumental for the end.