Worker Placement with Dice Workers

The Druids of Edora is a game of strategic dice placement. Walk through ancient forests in the footsteps of fairy folk, past monolithic menhirs, and under strands of mistletoe. As druids you will place dice to take actions to gather provisions, gain knowledge, brew potions, and gain bonuses. Build stone structures, collect herbs, and leave your mark in the sacred wood.

Each turn is a few simple steps that with the right strategy will earn you prestige points and bring you closer to victory.

Dive into this fantastic new strategy game from the team behind The Castles of Burgundy.

Prove yourself worthy of the ancient ones and bring glory to your forest.

Dark times loom over the kingdom of Thebes. The blind, old king Oedipus left the throne in disgrace and asked Polynices and Eteocles, his own sons, to rule the city together. But power corrupts and ancient feuds call for new blood to be spilled. Soon, Polynices finds himself leading an army from the rival city of Argos against his own brother. The Theban nobles support Eteocles as he maintains precarious rule over Thebes. The young king calls for defenders to man the seven gates of the city, while the invaders’ seven champions lead the attack on the gates. Meanwhile, the famous citadel of Thebes, the Cadmea, lies in disarray. It is as if the Fates themselves have lined everything up against the current rulers of Thebes!

While the common folks prepare for war, the noble families whisper among themselves that the time for new leadership has come, and the time to rebuild the Cadmea is now!

In Thebai, players assume the role of influential leaders from noble families during the tumultuous late Bronze Age. Throughout the game, players are tasked with rebuilding the Cadmea, the citadel of Thebes, while restoring the city’s exports, praying to the gods of the city, and protecting the lives of the citizens as grand heroes spill each other’s blood outside the gates.

The game lasts 10 rounds, each divided into an Action phase and a Fate phase. During the Action phase, players use one Citizen die, and then move their Archon on the Cadmea. During the Fate phase, players may get additional scoring opportunities, depending on their accomplishments and for protecting the city gates. After final scoring the player with the most Victory Points is the winner.

The generations before you have relied on harvesting the oceans. But as the 19th century ends, change and opportunity reach your fishing village in northern Norway. In Saltfjord, you must decide if you will expand your settlement with new buildings, send your boat to collect fish, engage in trade, or pioneer new technologies to make everyday life easier. How will you shape the destiny of your village?

Saltfjord is set in a Norwegian fishing village, and is loosely based on the dice drafting mechanisms from "Santa Maria", but the game has otherwise been completely redesigned and expanded with new elements.

Over three rounds, players draft dice to activate buildings in their settlement. This provides resources as well as activating actions such as sending out your fishing boat, advancing along the various technology tracks, completing trade orders, or erecting new buildings. Each player's player board shows a grid. When you draft a die, you activate all buildings in the row or column corresponding to that die. By erecting buildings in your settlement, each die can activate more buildings.

The technology tracks unlock special abilities, such as upgrading your fishing boat. And fishing is an important part of daily life in Saltfjord.

To add to the replayability, the game has lots of variable elements in the set-up, such as what special abilities and end scoring tiles are available.

—description from the publisher

In Nestlings, players assume the role of birds competing to gain priority across four biomes: savannah, alpine, freshwater, and desert.

Each round, players roll their biome dice, then place the dice in biomes one at a time, alternating in clockwise order. Once players have placed all their dice or have chosen to pass for the round, each biome is resolved.

The player who first placed dice in a particular biome gains priority and reaps the rewards of doing so: selecting a resource first, and discarding a resource to thwart their opponents' plans. However, if another player places more of their biome dice in that same biome, that player gains priority. Once priority order has been established for the biome, players each claim resources to feed their nestlings and gain the matching segment to add to their resource ring on their player board.

Once all biomes have been resolved – including the wild grasslands biome in the center of the board – players score points based on how many nestlings they fed and how many segments are in their resource ring, regardless of which round they were assigned.

As the game progresses, the tension rises as players must make key decisions along the way, decisions that could secure victory or usher in defeat. Will they feed their nestlings for more immediate points, or take a different resource to complete a section of their resource ring, thus earning a bonus and triggering a powerful chain reaction? Will they use in-game currency to activate another end-of-game nest goal or save it for victory points? Will they place a second die to secure priority or risk it and head to another biome to take other much-needed scraps?

At the conclusion of round four, the game ends and players reveal their endgame nest goals and tally their points.

In Nova Era, players guide their civilization from humble tribal beginnings to vast scientific empires, navigating the twists and turns through eras of history. Harness the power of technology, expand territories, and enlist famous (and sometimes infamous) personalities from across history. Civilizations face constant threats from rival nations, natural disasters, social unrest, and the ever-looming possibility of a dark age.

The objective of Nova Era is to build the greatest civilization. This is done by strategically choosing the most beneficial technologies, territories, and personalities from the tableau, evolving them as the players go through the annals of time. Players score by having a variety and/or majority of different technology types, as well as fulfilling various card objectives.

Gameplay revolves around drafting and spending dice, with different dice types providing different resources, bonuses, and penalties for players. Overextending your own dice leads to civil unrest, and dice unused by players fill up the progress bars of natural disasters and the Dark Age, affecting all players across the table. Once all dice actions are taken, an era ends and a new one begins. At the end of three eras, the game ends and the most prosperous civilization wins!

—description from the publisher