Worker Placement

Coloma: Deluxe Edition

The deluxe edition of Coloma includes content not found in the retail edition.

Besides the base game components and retail edition stretch goals, the Deluxe Edition of Coloma includes 40 Chips, 30 custom Gold Nuggets, 5 custom Score Markers, 1 custom Round Marker, 1 Metal First Player Marker and all of the "Deluxe Only/Kickstarter Exclusive" Stretch Goals that were unlocked which included 6 new characters each with a unique ability not found on characters from the base game!

They are:
Robber - You may spend 1 Wagon action (forgoing its usual movement Ability) to gain 3 Gold Nuggets from the Gold Cart (not the Gold Supply on the board!).

Homesteader - You may spend 1 Tent to build a Town Building card from your hand, paying the Saw cost on the card.

Renegade - Each time you add a Dude to your Graveyard, draw 3 cards.

Range Rider - Each time your Wagon moves over (or stops on) a vacant Horseshoe space on the Frontier Map, draw 1 card.

Maverick - Discard 1 card to gain either 1 Buck or 1 Dude.

Vigilante - Discard 1 used Barrel to place Dudes according to the usual rules.

The custom components in the Deluxe Edition replace the standard components from the Retail Edition.

The Deluxe Edition is for Kickstarter backers only and will not be available in retail (except the retail stores that backed the Kickstarter). However, it will be available in limited supply at conventions, through contests, online at the BGG promo store, and directly from the publisher's website.

About the game:
Coloma is the town where an unexpected event happened that shaped history of the Western Frontier. In the winter of 1848 a man building a sawmill on the South Fork of the American River spotted some bright nuggets in the tailrace waters below. Sure enough, it was gold! Though he tried to keep his discovery a secret, word spread quickly and it triggered the California Gold Rush of ‘49.

Thousands of people arrived from far and wide, making Coloma one of the fastest growing boomtowns in the country. Claims were staked, camps and makeshift homes were built, and hotels and saloons sprung up almost overnight. Everyone wanted their cut of the land’s wealth. For many it was Coloma or Bust!

In the game of Coloma, you are a pioneer who has recently traveled out West to strike it rich and make a name for yourself. You will prospect for gold and use your windfalls to recruit workers, rustle up horses, and establish businesses. You will also get opportunities to explore the surrounding riverways and frontier lands. But alas! You are not alone—every other pioneer seems to have gotten the same idea! Therefore, it will take extra cunning tactics on your part to not go Bust with the rest of them…

Overview of Play
At the beginning of each chapter, you and the other players will simultaneously select an action to perform on the board. Once your selections are revealed, you must check if a majority of players chose the same action. If so, it is a Bust—which disables the Boom bonus that would be included otherwise. Then the players take turns performing actions, such as gaining resources, moving wagons on the map, building bridges and businesses, and placing camps and gunmen. After that, a section of the board is rotated—slightly changing the layout of the actions for the upcoming chapter.

When the rotating section hits high noon, the round ends with a bang: a shootout against an ever-growing number of outlaws! If you and the other players can outnumber the outlaws with your combined gunmen, you will get your fair share of the rewards. But if not, the rewards drop, and some of the gunmen will go to the graveyard... The game ends after the third shootout, and the player with the most points wins!

Coloma is a fast moving game with many paths to victory. It offers unique twists on simultaneous action selection, resource management, and engine-building. The town cards in your tableau allow you to play more efficiently, gain extra actions, and bend the rules to your advantage. With these cards and the bridge tiles (which add points based on what you achieve), you can create the perfect combination for your strategy and play style.

—description from the publisher

Curios

You are a rogue archaeologist, traveling the world for history’s lost artifacts. But the market for artifacts can shift like the rains of Africa: One minute, treasures from a lost pharaoh’s pyramid are all the rage with collectors, and the next minute religious artifacts discovered in a remote temple are what’s in demand.

In Curios, players acquire artifacts from various treasure sites without knowing their worth. Using the cards in your hand and those revealed by others, you can deduce the possible value of your artifacts, allowing you to focus your efforts on the more profitable ventures.

Curios is a game of worker placement, deduction, and bluffing like no other. This simple and intuitive game is quick to learn and even quicker to play!

—description from the publisher

Parks

PARKS is a celebration of the US National Parks featuring illustrious art from Fifty-Nine Parks.

In PARKS, players will take on the role of two hikers as they trek through different trails across four seasons of the year. While on the trail, these hikers will take actions and collect memories of the places your hikers visit. These memories are represented by various resource tokens like mountains and forests. Collecting these memories in sets will allow players to trade them in to visit a National Park at the end of each hike.

Each trail represents one season of the year, and each season, the trails will change and grow steadily longer. The trails, represented by tiles, get shuffled in between each season and laid out anew for the next round. Resources can be tough to come by especially when someone is at the place you’re trying to reach! Campfires allow you to share a space and time with other hikers. Canteens and Gear can also be used to improve your access to resources through the game. It’ll be tough to manage building up your engine versus spending resources on parks, but we bet you’re up to the challenge. Welcome to PARKS!

—description from the publisher

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein

It's been twenty years since Victor Frankenstein died on a ship in the arctic, but his vengeful creature lives on, as does Robert Walton, the sea captain who vowed to kill the fiend before mercy stayed his hand. It's now 1819, and a sinister darkness descends upon the city of Paris. A mysterious benefactor of gigantic stature has emerged in the scientific community, never showing his face, claiming to possess the late Frankenstein's research. He sponsors a grand competition, offering an even grander prize: unlocking the mystery of mortality!

Renowned scientists from around the world come to take part: some drawn to solve this eternal riddle, others coerced against their will. But a certain captain comes as well, one deeply suspicious of the secretive patron, hoping to finally fulfill his vow.

Abomination: The Heir of Frankenstein is a competitive game of strategic monster building for 2-4 players, inspired by Mary Shelley's classic novel of gothic horror. In the game, the creature demands your help to accomplish what his own creator would not: to bring to life an abomination like itself, a companion to end its miserable solitude. Through worker placement and careful management of decomposing resources, you'll gather materials from the cemeteries and morgues around the city, conduct valuable research at the Academy of Science, hire less-than-reputable associates, and toil away in your lab — all in an effort to assemble a new form of life and infuse it with a "spark of being". Do well, and the creature may reward you during one of its surprise visits; do poorly, and you may come to regret not putting forth more effort. Narrative elements come into play throughout the game, guided by your decisions, leading to potentially unsavory outcomes.

The game ends when you succeed in bringing your creation to life or when the Captain kills the creature, whichever happens first. Then the player with the most points fulfills Frankenstein's dark legacy, becoming his heir, for good or ill...

—description from the publisher

Artemis Project

Europa, Jupiter's moon. Deep beneath the crust, the oceans are teeming with alien sea life. Shellfish, plants, corals, arthropods, even strange fish and larger sea creatures populate a wide-ranging interconnected web of hidden seas. Volcanism is rampant, warming the mineral-rich waters and creating excellent conditions for energy-harvesting.

The largest cavern close to the surface is known as The Pocket. This is where the initial teams of Stabilizers built their first outposts, with the intent to establish long-term communities capable of surviving indefinitely. Aqua-farming is well established; food and other sundries are efficiently gathered. The Pocket has many deposits of minerals and crystals that can be mined and processed to create strong and versatile construction materials locally.

Colonists arrive at the Doorstep at regular intervals when the Threshold is opened. The arrivals are of four general types: Pioneers (who are tasked with exploring the changing surface of the moon and the labyrinth of seas beneath), Engineers (who develop and operate the machinery and structures needed to run the colonies), Marines (who defend the colonies from hostile sea life, unwanted intruders, and other colonies), and Stewards (overseers responsible for strategy and negotiation).

Colony development mostly occurs beneath the ice; this is where all of the moon’s resources are concentrated, so this is where the effort is best spent. To keep close to the surface, most colony structures are built clinging onto the underside of the ice crust. Surface structures will be built only once an undersea outpost is well established and beginning to thrive. In addition to construction and resource-gathering, colonies spend a lot of effort on exploring this new environment. The volcanic action and mineral-heavy waters make long-range scanning unreliable, so physical exploration is required to plumb the depths.

As the Pocket is explored and expanded, the established colonies have been making some unusual discoveries beneath the ice. Deep in the trenches, artifacts of non-human origin are starting to be found. The dark seas hide many secrets. Squads of mercenaries occasionally appear on the surface and beneath the sea, penetrating the Threshold somehow to carry out an unknown mission on the moon. These aspects are worrisome but can’t distract the colonies from their main goals.

It is still early in the Artemis project. A foothold on life here has been gained, but it will take tenacious effort from the competing colonies to reach the point where Europa is truly viable as a home.

The Artemis Project is a dice (dis)placement and engine building game that has you fighting the planet as well as the other players. Roll your dice and place them tactically to thwart the other colonists. Harvest energy and minerals. Bid for buildings. Work together to go on Expeditions to earn rewards. Train workers. Will your efforts be enough to survive?