Worker Placement

An international colony ship has left an exhausted Earth, headed for a distant planet in the Epsilon Eridani system. Thirteen generations will be born on this vessel before it reaches its destination, each generation a steward of the hopes and ideals of the human species. For six generations, everything has gone as planned....

Now, just as a new command team takes control of the ship, a terrible mystery emerges that will threaten the entire mission. The commanders of Gen7 are about to discover that everything is not as it seems, and the fate of the human species will hang on the choices they make.

In the tradition of the award-winning Dead of Winter, Gen7: A Crossroads Game is a grand narrative game with multiple possibilities. The choices players make as they play will alter the direction of the story. Gen7 will constantly challenge its players with a variety of unique situations that force them to make difficult moral decisions. Will you compromise your integrity to ensure the safety of your crew? Will you value their lives over the safety of the mission?

—description from the publisher

You are a painter in Colors of Paris, and you've decided to participate in "Bateau Lavoir", a friendly competition between several painters in a workshop in Montmartre, Paris. The newspapers know about this challenge, so perhaps this is a good opportunity to become famous, following the path of Cézanne, Toulouse-Lautrec, Monet, or Renoir...

Colors of Paris is a management game in which you must take care of your paint tubes, mixtures, and time to create works, all the while anticipating others to perform as needed within a rotating set of actions.

The players are builders in Ancient Egypt, competing to get the most fame building different monuments requested by the Pharaoh (the Sphinx, the Obelisk, the Temple, and the Pyramid).

The game lasts 5 turns. In each turn, the players place their pawns on the board, along the banks of the Nile, getting the advantages shown on each square. On the right bank there are fixed squares where the players may get workers, improve their mercantile capabilities, influence the floods (and thus the fertility of the fields) and reserve the right to build the monuments (that are built only after all the placements are done). On the left bank the players may take cards that are deployed randomly on the 10 squares at the start of each turn; some of these cards are kept until the end of the game (cultivable fields, stone quarries, deities granting special advantages), while others are discarded after the use and offer multiple immediate advantages.

In Egizia, the twist on the worker placement mechanic is that the players must place their pawns following the course of the Nile, moving northwards (from the top to the bottom of the board, that is seen from the Mediterranean Sea). In this way, each placement not only blocks the opponents from choosing the same square (except monuments, where multiple players are always allowed), but also forces the player to place his remaining pawns only on the squares below the one he just occupied (note that "pawns" are placed, since "workers" are one of the resources of the game, like grain and stones).

When the placement phase is over, the workers of the players must be fed with the grain produced in the fields. The production of each field is based on the floods of the Nile, so some fields may not give grain each turn. If a player has not enough grain for all his workers, he has to buy it with Victory Points (the ratio is better for players with improved mercantile capabilities, recorded on a specific track on the board).

After that, stones are received from the owned quarries and used to build the monuments (if the right to do was reserved earlier) along with the workers.

When the game ends, the points scored during the game (mainly building the monuments) are added to the bonuses obtained fulfilling certain conditions on the Sphinx cards. Whoever has the highest total is the winner.

Online Play

Yucata (turn-based)

Alma Mater has players serving as a headmaster of one of the independent universities in the 15th century. Players seek to strengthen their school's reputation and standing. To achieve these goals, players need to recruit the best staff and students, exchange knowledge with other schools, and become experts in the school's four disciplines!

—description from the publisher

In the age of exploration the players arrive at a new home far away from their homeland. They try to settle the big island and each player tries to explore one part of it by placing landscape tiles. Landscape tiles grant resources and those are used to erect buildings with special abilities. Barriers on the island have to be removed in order to explore the island even further. Players build valuable statues and supply ships get them the supplies from the old world they need to be a successful settler on Cooper Island.

The special thing about Cooper Island is the way the players mark their victory points. They sail with ships around the island to show their progress. On their way around the island they find smaller islands inshore that grant valuable benefits. After five rounds, a game of Cooper Island ends and the player who developed the best and went on furthest with their ships will win.

•••

The second printing of the German and English versions of the game, along with the Spanish version of the game, include the Solo Against Cooper expansion that was originally available separately as a bonus item.

—description from the publisher