Worker Placement

In Arkwright players run up to four factories in England during the late 18th Century. Your goal is to have the most valuable block of own shares. Thus, you must increase your share value and buy shares from the bank.

To run the factories, you need workers. When hiring Workers, demand is automatically created. But of course you want to replace your expensive workers (wage 2-5) by machines (1). To have more output from your factories you may employ new Workers or improve your factory to the next technical level.

You fix the price for your goods during an action round. To enhance your chances of selling goods, you improve your factories to higher levels, increase the quality and make some sales promotion. The higher these factors, the better are your chances of success - the higher the price, the lower.

Each player has an own set of "action tokens" like "build and modernize factories", "employ new workers", "improve quality" etc. On your turn you place one of those tokens on one of the free spaces in your line of the "Administration board" and pay the according administration costs, ranging from 2 to 10 (odd numbers). Some actions depend on how much you paid, i.e. you may buy more machines with one single action, when you pay more (= use a higher space, which is then blocked for the rest of the round). During the game your actions become more and more effective by new tokens, i.e. allow you to buy 3 machines in a single turn instead of 2, increase quality 2 levels instead of only 1...).

After each round of actions one kind of factories is active and you have to pay for all your workers and machines there, then sell the manufactured products. The value of your shares increases for sold products and best quality.

Goods may also be traded to the colonies by ship - provided you have a contract with the monopoly of the East Indian Company.

After four turns each of the factories has produced and the round ends. Players remove the action tokens from the administration board and reveal an event token. After 5 rounds the player with the most valuable block of shares wins. Neither being to be the one with the most shares nor being the one with the highest share value guarantees victory.

Arkwright allows you to act in different ways. Run all four factories with most possible output, set the focus on only two factories and improve them more than the others can; use shipping to colony or focus on the home market. In any way you have to react to the opponents and their strategy. Enter markets with deficit in supply or give up business where the other players start to push you out. Buy shares when they are cheap and increase the value, or first make money and buy shares later.

To get familiar with the market mechanics you may start with a 120 minutes version "Spinning Jenny", but for those who like full strategy in economic themed games, the 240 minute "Waterframe"-Rules come with more options to improve your factory and use ships.

Dockmaster Schlibble and Constable O'Brady cordially invite you to visit their bustling Harbour town! Attend to business at the Trader's Guild or the Masoner's Hall. Break for lunch at the Sushi Shop, or stop off for a drink at the Pub. Don't forget to check out the Wizard's Traveling Imaginarium before you go! But no matter where you go, keep on the lookout for a bargain... the denizens of this town are always wheeling and dealing! Collect and trade resources as you visit the various buildings of Harbour, and cash them in to buy your way into the town. Whoever has the most points worth of buildings when the game ends, wins!

Harbour is a worker placement game where players move their worker from building to building, collecting and trading Fish, Livestock, Wood, and Stone; and cashing those resources in to purchase buildings (which are the worker placement spots) from the central pool. Once a building is purchased, it is replaced from the deck, and the central pool is a small subset of the deck, and is therefore different every game.

The game ends when a player has purchased his fourth building. After that round finishes, the player with the most points worth of buildings is the winner!

At the heart of Harbour is a dynamic market mechanism. Each time a player purchases a building, the value of the resources they used drops, while the value of the other resources rise. You'll have to carefully time your purchases to take advantage of the ebb and flow of market prices, or be prepared to waste some resources!

Central Italy in the year 753 B.C.: Many new villages have been founded in the region of Latium. This land is prosperous and a strong city here can easily control the trades between the Etruscan cities of the North and the Greek colonies of the South. The region is also rich in salt ponds, and the salt in this period is worth more than gold. There doesn't exist a better place for a new city!

The two grandsons of the King of Albalonga – the twins Romolo and Remo, descendants of Enea of Troy – don't want to miss an opportunity to dominate the region and, acting against each other, try to establish two cities close to the Tiber river. Their enterprise is not easy as the King of Antemnae and the King of Crustumerium will also fight to dominate this area! Who will prevail?

In Romolo o Remo?, players act as Kings of the new cities in the Latium and have to compete with each other in order to gain control of the whole Region. Players must manage their kingdom and their growing settlement. Two aspects are crucial: the citizens, as players act with citizens to take many different actions, and the territory, as players can act only in the territories they are able to control – excluding when they go to war, of course! If the population grows, they can take more actions, but they must feed all of them as well. Money, resources, trades, city buildings, and specialized characters increase a player's possibilites, and soldiers, mercenaries, and war declarations can change the game's storyline at any moment. Who will able to build the strongest city? Who will be the founder of a new civilization – or perhaps even an Empire?

The city of Karez was once the crowned jewel in the vast kingdom of King Tyrial, but as he lost grasp on his kingdom, the city fell to ruins at the hands of the dark forces surrounding it. Now the king has died, and his heir, King Tyrial II, has decided to dispatch his finest lords to raise the fallen city and stand ground against all its enemies, within and outside the city walls.

In Fallen City of Karez, each player will take the role of a lord of one of the guilds who seek to tighten their grasp on the rising city. The players will strive to maintain a balance between keeping the city safe for its citizens by sending exploration parties to defeat any threats, and at the same time attracting to the emerging city new adventurers wishing to fill their pockets with fortunes and their names with glory.

In the action phase at the start of each of the eight turns, players can assign two citizens or one adventurer to act on their behalf in the various buildings of Karez, send an exploration party to remove any threats that lurk near Karez, or buy new equipment to reinforce their parties of heroes. Some guild houses may choose to erect their own private Dungeons (!) in an attempt to inflict havoc and dismay on the other houses. After everyone performs their actions, the players must check how these actions affected migration to Karez; the results of this phase will reflect on the growth of Karez towards a city state, which is the common aspiration of all players.

Players start with different initial possessions and owned buildings. In addition to the common goal of raising the city, each house also has some unique goals (ambitions), which will eventually determine the sole winner. That said, the game is semi-cooperative in that while each guild has its own ambitions, all players must succeed in raising the city by the end of the game or else everyone loses.

In Assyria, players represent tribes living in Mesopotamia, trying to develop on the desert and a limted fertile area located between two rivers that divide the board. In their quest for power (points), players build Ziggurats (permanent outposts), wells, make sacrifices to gods and try to get along with nobles of Assur - the capital of Assyria. The game is a light-weight eurogame, built around the short-term rapid point gains vs long-term investments dilemma. General flow of play is as follows:

Phase 1: Players get resources for expansion and decide on play order

In this phase, players pick cards with resources that enable expansion on the board. In general he/she who gets most food, plays last. First player expands with least food.

Phase 2: Players expand on the board to earn points or money.

Players begin to form strings and/or clusters of huts and pay for placing them with their food cards. Depending on where huts are placed, they either score points or earn camels (money).

Phase 3: Players spend money/camels on various investments.

A player either goes for one-time bonuses from the nobles of Assur, or makes long-term investments by offerings to gods and building Ziggurats.

The game lasts for three eras, made up of 2-3 of such cycles. After each era comes the flood: the board is partially cleaned up, but players also capitalize on their investments from phase 3. Each round, players also score points for huts (those built on fertile land between the two rivers bring more points) and ziggurat tiles.

In comparison to other games from Ystari's series - Assyria is lighter than Caylus, Olympos, Ys or Sylla (in terms of complexity, available choices - represented by numerous tiles, cards, icons, cards etc. that need to be remembered and can be combined during play), but heavier than Yspahan, Mykerinos or Metropolis.