variable player powers

The king is holding a great banquet for all the nobles in the realm so that they can bathe in his splendour. Artists and troubadours will bring the necessary entertainment. It is meant to be a feast that will long be remembered!

The guests attending the feast hall feel the same, for in the corners of the castle deadly plots are being developed. The guests are divided into two factions, with both planning to "dismiss" the king. One faction plans to smuggle a dagger into the feast hall to "open the king's heart to the realm" at the right time, while the other faction hopes to give the king "renewed motivation" with a poisoned drink.

In The Last Banquet, each player is a guest at the feast and needs to help his faction reach its goal and ensure that this will truly be the king's last banquet. The game includes 25 role cards, each portraying a person on the front and listing that person's skills on the back. In addition to "The Last Banquet", several other scenarios are provided in the rules that can be played with each of the roles. (GameHeads' Oliver Wolf notes, "Playing time ranges from 30 minutes up to 90 minutes or more, with more people tending to need more time to play." Also, some scenarios involve more than two factions.) Obstacle cards provide challenges for players to overcome.

When a faction succeeds in its goal, all players who belong to that faction win the game.

On the 11th of July, 1899 at 10 a.m., the Union Pacific Express has left Folsom, New Mexico, with 47 passengers on board. After a few minutes, gunfire and hurrying footsteps on the roof can be heard. Heavily armed bandits have come to rob honest citizens of their wallets and jewels. Will they succeed in stealing the suitcase holding the Nice Valley Coal Company's weekly pay, despite it having been placed under the supervision of Marshal Samuel Ford? Will these bandits hinder one another more than the Marshal since only the richest one of them can come out on top?

In Colt Express, you play a bandit robbing a train at the same time as other bandits, and your goal is to become the richest outlaw of the Old West. The game consists of five rounds, and each round has two phases:

Phase 1: Schemin' Each player plays 2-5 action cards on a common pile, with the cards being face up or face down depending on the type of the round. Instead of playing a card, a player can draw three cards from her deck.
Phase 2: Stealin' The action cards are carried out in the order they were played, with a player's best laid plans possibly not panning out due to mistakes and oversights!

The game takes place in a 3D train in which the bandits can move from one car to another, run on the roof, punch the other bandits, shoot them, rob the passengers, or draw the Marshal out of position. The train has as many cars as the number of players, and each car is seeded with gems, bags of loot or suitcases at the start of play.

Each player starts a round with six cards in hand, with each card showing one of these actions. At the start of a round, a round card is revealed, showing how many cards will be played; whether they'll be played face up or face down, or individually or in pairs; and what action will occur at the end of the round (e.g., all bandits on top of the train move to the engine). You can pick up loot, gems or suitcases only by playing a "steal" card when you're in a train car that holds one of these items — but since everyone is planning to get these goods, you'll need to move, punch and shoot to get others out of your way. You can punch someone only in the same car as you, and when you do, the other bandit drops one of the goods he's collected and is knocked into an adjacent car.

Each player's character has a special power, such as starting the round with an extra card, playing your first card face down, or pocketing a bag of loot when you punch someone instead of letting it hit the ground.

You can shoot someone in an adjacent car or (if you're running on top of the train) anyone in sight, and when you do, you give that player one of your six bullet cards; that card gets shuffled in the opponent's deck, possibly giving her a dead card in hand on a future turn and forcing her to draw instead of playing something. If the Marshal ends up in the same car as you, likely due to other bandits luring him through the train, he'll be happy to give you a bullet, too.

At the end of the game, whoever fired the most bullets receives a $1,000 braggart bonus, and whoever bagged the richest haul wins!

You and your fellow samurai companions are the only standing obstacle between one frightened village and a full horde of blood-thirsty villains. The fight seems unfair as the seven of you might not seem to measure up to the dozens of enemies who want to slice you to pieces — but this comparison doesn't take into account your strong combat skills and an efficient team spirit that binds your samurai squad enough to face the threat. Above all else, when everything seems desperate and lost, your enemies will discover that inside each of you lies a true beast, a warrior spirit ready to unleash its full power!

Samurai Spirit is a co-operative game in which each player is a fierce samurai defending a village surrounded by a horde of bandits. The game plays out over three turns during which each player takes turns drawing bandit cards, then choosing whether they want to fight the bandit, defend the village, or let the bandit pass in order to help the other samurai.

The challenge of the game consists of balancing your choices: Should you fight each enemy to quickly reach your beast capacities, while also coming closer to the death and risking further loss by not defending the village sufficiently? Should you mainly defend or help the other samurai, taking the risk of remaining human too long and therefore weaker, when you know that weakness will be a major problem when facing the lieutenant and the villain bosses? Each enemy presents a tough choice to you, your team, and ultimately the whole village! Each turn ends with farms and fences being destroyed, and since those aren't unlimited, you must do what's necessary to end the game with at least one undamaged farm and enough farmers to tend it. Do you have what it takes to stand against evil and become a true hero?

Fight with courage, smartly assist your teammates, defend the poor villagers, turn into a savage beast, and wreak havoc on the enemy lines — all of this is up to you! Ultimately it would be your honor to chose to die in a ultimate sacrifice in order to save the village. All of this is what makes the true samurai spirit!

In Relic Runners, each player takes on the role of a character keen to exploit and acquire relics that have been unearthed in a long lost part of the jungle. Each would-be archaeologist has a colorful past — retired university professor, former army captain, etc. — and wants to be the first to get their hands on the precious loot to earn the most victory points.

Players must navigate a series of paths in order to visit temples. The archaeologists are restricted in their movement by their access to rations, but thankfully they can place markers on paths to allow them to travel for free in future turns. The players also have a toolkit that can be upgraded in three particular ways to break the rules in some way or offer them an advantage as they move around.

Each time a player visits a temple, he takes a token. Initially the temples offer up victory points or some form of in-game bonus. When the final token is taken, a relic is placed there to be collected. The players earn large victory points for collecting relics of different types (set collection) and players can also earn bonus points for creating long routes and traveling along these to collect relics.

The mythical realm of Hyperborea was ruled by an ancient civilization that used magical crystals as their main source of energy. With time, the Hyperboreans became greedy, and their search for power in the deep made the crystals unstable, causing earthquakes, mutations, droughts and floods. Hyperboreans just dug deeper, and only a few wise mages, foreseeing the inevitable, built an unbreakable magical barrier. When the unharnessed magical energy was unleashed from the deep, the Hyperborean civilization was destroyed in a single day, only the magical barrier preventing the disappearance of life from the whole land. The survivors living in the small outposts outside Hyperborea were now sealed out by the barrier. The knowledge of crystals was declared forbidden it was because too dangerous, or simply forgotten.

Over centuries, six rival realms were born from the ashes of the Hyperborean civilization: the militarist Red Duchy; the Emerald Kingdom and its death-delivering archers; the Purple Matriarchy fanatically worshipping the goddess of life; the skilled diplomats and merchants of the Golden Barony; the Coral Throne with its efficiently organized society and finally the secluded and enigmatic Celestial Reign.

The fragile peace between the different realms was not intended to last. One day, the magical barrier suddenly collapsed. A whole new land stood in front of the six kingdoms, still haunted by the old Hyperboreans turned into harmless but ominous ghosts, full of ruins to discover and cities to explore. Each realm is now sending its best warriors and explorers to Hyperborea in order to achieve dominance over their rivals, but which will prevail? Brutal strength or deep understanding of science? The discovery of valuable artifacts in the lost ruins or the retaking of long, lost cities? Only you, as the leader of one of the factions, can lead your people to the ultimate dominance over Hyperborea!

Set in a mythical land of the same name, Hyperborea is a light civilization game for 2 to 6 players that takes 20-25 minutes per player. The game begins at the time when the magic barrier protecting access to the mythical continent of Hyperborea suddenly falls.

Each player takes the role of the leader of a small kingdom situated just outside the now open to be conquered and explored land. Her kingdom has limited knowledge of housing, trade, movement, warfare, research, and growth, but new and exciting powers are hidden in Hyperborea. During the game, this kingdom will grow in numbers and raise armies, extend its territory, explore and conquer, learn new technologies, etc...

The game's main mechanism, which can be described as "bag-building", involves you building a pool of "civilicubes". Each cube represents specializations for your kingdom: war, trade, movement, building, knowledge, growth. Grey cubes represent corruption and waste, and players will acquire them by developing new technologies. (Power corrupts by its own definition, and the more complex a society becomes, the more waste it generates.) Each turn, players draw three random cubes from their bags, then use them to activate knowledge (technologies) they own.