variable player powers

Lupus in Tabula

Werewolves haunt the secluded village known as Tabula: every night some villagers turn into werewolves and slaughter an innocent victim to satisfy their hunger.
Surviving villagers gather every day to discuss the problem: at the end of the discussion, they lynch one person among them, thinking he could be a werewolf.
Can you survive the massacre? Can you solve the mystery of the full moon?

A game for large groups that is already a classic.
To win you need the intuition of a detective... or your best poker face!
The new edition includes:

Deluxe oversized cards featuring original characters
Updated high quality game components
Special Ghost rules that allow everyone to play until the mystery is solved
A new 8-player moderator-free variant
And, of course... The Werehamster!

Lupus takes inspiration from Werewolf, introducing several new and original rules, including the possibility to play a third faction other than werewolves and villagers. The box contains the classic cards representing the werewolves, the seer and the villagers, but it also adds some unique characters such as a werehamster and a medium. Players are not eliminated during the game, but keep playing as 'ghosts'.

Magic Maze

Description from the publisher:

After being stripped of all their possessions, a mage, a warrior, an elf, and a dwarf are forced to go rob the local Magic Maze shopping mall for all the equipment necessary for their next adventure. They agree to map out the labyrinth in its entirety first, then find each individual’s favorite store, and then locate the exit. In order to evade the surveillance of the guards who eyed their arrival suspiciously, all four will pull off their heists simultaneously, then dash to the exit. That's the plan anyway…but can they pull it off?

Magic Maze is a real-time, cooperative game. Each player can control any hero in order to make that hero perform a very specific action, to which the other players do not have access: Move north, explore a new area, ride an escalator… All this requires rigorous cooperation between the players in order to succeed at moving the heroes prudently. However, you are allowed to communicate only for short periods during the game; the rest of the time, you must play without giving any visual or audio cues to each other. If all of the heroes succeed in leaving the shopping mall in the limited time allotted for the game, each having stolen a very specific item, then everyone wins together.

At the start of the game, you have only three minutes in which to take actions. Hourglass spaces you encounter along the way give you more time. If the sand timer ever completely runs out, all players lose the game: Your loitering has aroused suspicion, and the mall security guards nab you!

Watson & Holmes

Watson & Holmes is a game of deduction set within the magnificent works of Arthur Conan Doyle. Two to seven aspiring detectives step into the shoes of Doctor Watson, working alongside the detective Sherlock Holmes to try to solve a series of so far unpublished cases directly extracted from Doctor John H. Watson's diaries. Those who accept the challenge relive the adventures of the crime-solving duo, visiting each of the locations where the inquiries were made. Following the trail, each clue brings players closer to solving the case.

The objective of the game is to immerse yourself in the Victorian world depicted in each story. Visit the right places, decipher the clues, and above all find the path that leads you to solve the mystery before anybody else. Victory goes to the player who accurately uses the deductive reasoning so famously and ingeniously implemented by the hero of 221B Baker Street.

The game consists of a series of separate cases, each of which raises a number of questions that each player tries to solve before anyone else. To do this, once the case and the questions have been read aloud, players proceed to visit the locations where the clues are located. Each location cannot be accessed by more than one player at any one time, so if two or more players want to go to the same place, the player who travels there the fastest (i.e., he who uses the largest number of Carriage Tokens) gets the clue, forcing the others to go to a different location. Once every player has a destination, they proceed to read in secret the clue that was discovered at that location. They can discreetly take any notes they deem appropriate. Once this is done, the cards are returned to their place so that others can read them in later turns.

This procedure is repeated during each turn until one player believes he has found the solutions to the case; at that time, he must go to 221B Baker Street to check if his answers are correct. If all the answers are correct, the player wins; if they are wrong, he will have lost and retires from the game, and the game continues.

Each detective will also have the invaluable assistance of a number of Sherlock Holmes' allies, above all, the good Dr Watson and of course of the detective himself.

•••

Watson & Holmes es un juego de deducción basado en la admirable obra de Sir Arthur Conan Doyle.
Cada uno de los dos a siete jugadores adoptará el papel del Dr. John Watson y acompañará a Sherlock Holmes en la investigación de una serie de casos inéditos hasta ahora, intentando resolver cada uno de ellos antes de que el gran detective le brinde la solución correcta. Para ello, cada jugador deberá sumergirse en la Inglaterra victoriana e ir recopilando, en distintas localizaciones, las pistas extraídas de los diarios del propio Dr. Watson, con el fin de encajarlas correctamente por medio de la lógica deductiva.

Y, todo esto, sin demorarse por el camino, pues solo aquél que resuelva el misterio antes que sus contrincantes se ganará la confianza del genio de Baker Street.

El juego se compone de una serie de casos independientes, cada uno de los cuáles plantea una serie de interrogantes que cada jugador tratará de resolver antes que los demás.
Para ello, una vez se lean el caso y las preguntas en voz alta, los jugadores procederán a visitar las localizaciones donde las pistas se encuentran. Cada localización no puede ser visitada por más de un jugador, de manera que, en caso de que dos o más quieran dirigirse a la misma, el jugador que más corra (utilizando un mayor número de fichas de Carruaje) obtendrá la pista correspondiente, debiendo los demás dirigirse a otras localizaciones.
Una vez cada jugador obtenga un destino, todos procederán a leer en secreto la pista aparejada a la localización correspondiente, pudiendo tomar discretamente las anotaciones que estimen pertinentes. Hecho esto, se devolverán las cartas de pista a su lugar para que los demás puedan leerla en rondas posteriores.
Este procedimiento se repetirá cada ronda, hasta que un jugador crea haber hallado la solución al caso: en ese momento, habrá de dirigirse al 221B para comprobar si sus respuestas son acertadas.
En caso de ser todas correctas, habrá ganado. En caso de error, habrá perdido y se retirará de la partida.
Cada detective contará, además, con la inestimable ayuda de una serie de aliados de Sherlock Holmes, así como con la del propio detective y, sobre todo, la del buen Dr. Watson.

Citadels (2016 edition)

In Citadels, players take on new roles each round to represent characters they hire in order to help them acquire gold and erect buildings. The game ends at the close of a round in which a player erects their eighth building. Players then tally their points, and the player with the highest score wins.

Players start the game with a number of building cards in their hand; buildings come in five colors, with the purple buildings typically having a special ability and the other colored buildings providing a benefit when you play particular characters. At the start of each round, the player who was king the previous round discards one of the eight character cards at random, chooses one, then passes the cards to the next player, etc. until each player has secretly chosen a character. Each character has a special ability, and the usefulness of any character depends upon your situation, and that of your opponents. The characters then carry out their actions in numerical order: the assassin eliminating another character for the round, the thief stealing all gold from another character, the wizard swapping building cards with another player, the warlord optionally destroys a building in play, and so on.

On a turn, a player earns two or more gold (or draws two building cards then discards one), then optionally constructs one building (or up to three if playing the architect this round). Buildings cost gold equal to the number of symbols on them, and each building is worth a certain number of points. In addition to points from buildings, at the end of the game a player scores bonus points for having eight buildings or buildings of all five colors.

The 2016 edition of Citadels includes twenty-seven characters — eight from the original Citadels, ten from the Dark City expansion, and nine new ones — along with thirty unique building districts, and the rulebook includes six preset lists of characters and districts beyond the starter list, each crafted to encourage a different style and intensity of gameplay.

Saltlands

The Earth has dried out and civilization with it. Some of the survivors have managed to eke out a living on the Saltlands: plains left behind by a once great ocean. Adapting to their environment they use land sails with wheels on these flats. But the Apocalypse is not done with the Saltlands, from the west a storm of raiders, a terrifying Horde on gas guzzling machines approaches in search of their lost God. Only those among the first to escape have a chance!

In Saltlands, the first group of players to find and reach an exit point wins, leaving the rest to the Horde. There are no fixed teams, players can decide to co-operate or backstab each other as they see fit. Each player starts the game with a single captain but may increase his crew as the game progresses. Each crew member represents an extra life and an action each turn. Players move with their land sails according to the wind direction: being able to criss-cross slowly upwind or speed in the fastest direction, sailing on a broad reach. Each player can choose which group of raiders to move at the end of their turn until all raiders have moved. This allows players to help each other or force confrontation with the raiders. Players can fight the raiders and take their vehicles as an alternate mode of transport.