Tile Placement

Labyrinth

Labyrinth (formerly The aMAZEing Labyrinth) has spawned a whole line of Labyrinth games. The game board has a set of tiles fixed solidly onto it; the remaining tiles that make up the labyrinth slide in and out of the rows created by the tiles that are locked in place. One tile always remains outside the labyrinth, and players take turns taking this extra tile and sliding it into a row of the labyrinth, moving all those tiles and pushing one out the other side of the board; this newly removed tile becomes the piece for the next player to add to the maze.

Players move around the shifting paths of the labyrinth in a race to collect various treasures. Whoever collects all of his treasures first and returns to his home space wins!

Labyrinth is simple at first glance and an excellent puzzle-solving game for children; it can also be played by adults using more strategy and more of a cutthroat approach.

Aetherspire

The realm of Elementis, once a harmonious balance of earth, air, fire, and water, is now under siege. Elemental Aetherfiends have dispatched waves of invaders to drain our aethercore, the realm's lifeblood, causing chaos to reign. You and your companions must build powerful elemental spires to lure away and defeat these invaders. As each spire grows stronger, it will unleash a devastating resurgence against the Aetherfiends. Can you restore balance before it's too late?

Aetherspire is a cooperative 3D tile placement and tower defense game for 1-4 players.

You and your companions will take on the role of Elementis heroes, working together to mold elemental power into four spires, one of each element: earth, air, fire, and water. A spire is a set of four floor tiles, one on top of another, all of the same element. Each time you complete a spire, that element’s aether fiend is defeated. Once all four aether fiends have been defeated, the heroes share in glorious victory, having restored balance to the realm of Elementis!

However, if the precious aethercore is depleted, or if you take too long to defeat the aether fiends, then the heroes lose the game, and chaos will overtake your world!

Michael Coe's Dungeon Heroes

Welcome to the Dungeon!

Two players go Head-to-Head controlling opposing sides in a game of deduction and deceit. One player controls a party of four heroes adventuring into a dungeon for treasure. The other is the Dungeon Lord who reigns over the dungeon's traps, treasures, and monsters. The heroes' party consists of a Warrior, a Cleric, a Rogue, and a Wizard, who must work together, using each of their special abilities to overcome the puzzles presented by the scheming Dungeon Lord.

—description from the back of the box

Contains Dungeon Heroes, and the Dungeon Heroes Expansion Pack.

Railroad Tiles

Railroad Tiles, a sequel to the roll-and-write series Railroad Ink, is a quick-playing tile placement game in which you pick tiles and place routes to build an interconnected community.

The game is played over eight rounds. You start each round by drafting your tiles from the sets available in the common pool, then you place your routes in front of you, trying to make as many connections as possible; be careful not to lock yourself in with choices that are too constraining. Each round, you can also place cars, trains, or travelers to populate the tiny little landscape you're creating - as long as you have free space on your tiles. The available actions change from round to round, so you need to prepare in advance!

The more pieces of the same kind each new placement connects to, the more points you earn. You can also score bonus points at game's end for placing tiles in a large rectangle without gaps and for creating sets of three adjacent city tiles.

—description from the publisher

Raising Chicago

During the 19th century, the elevation of the Chicago area was just a few feet higher than the shoreline of Lake Michigan. For many years, there was little or no naturally occurring drainage from the city surface, and this lack of drainage caused unpleasant living conditions. Standing water harbored pathogens that caused numerous epidemics including typhoid fever and dysentery, culminating in the 1854 outbreak of cholera that killed six percent of the city's population. The crisis forced the city to take the drainage problem seriously. In 1856, engineer Ellis S. Chesbrough drafted a plan for the installation of a citywide sewerage system and submitted it to the city council, which adopted the plan.

However, due to the minimal elevation above the lake, the sewer could not be built underground and had to be built at street level. The city council then decided to implement a radical idea: Prevented from digging down, they instead decreed the buildings of the city would be raised to allow the new sewer system to be hidden under the new street level. Representing one of the four companies that were created to tackle the problem of raising the buildings of Chicago, it's up to you to gather resources, take on the most attractive projects, and help solve the sanitation crisis of the city.

On your turn in Raising Chicago, you place a tile on a resource slot associated with one of five building projects, then claim the resource you covered. After all players have placed tiles, each project is evaluated. The winning player pays resources to complete the project, claims the project reward, then places all of their tiles associated with that project as levels underneath the building onto a space on the board. Players earn points for placing buildings cleverly, doing the most work in a ward, and meeting the demands of council people.

Only the most successful player will win, so play strategically to prove you can raise buildings the best in Raising Chicago!

—description from the publisher