Action Point Allowance System

Here's a description of the game from Phalanx Games:

In the late 18th century, the fast growing population of the emerging United States of America showed an increasing interest in the Wild West. Millions of poor immigrants were arriving from Europe, and the population of cities on the East Coast swelled enormously. Endless plains and huge mountain ranges – thinly populated by Native Americans and rich in game, farmland and minerals - started luring large numbers of them. Settlers traveled in wagon trains, and established themselves ever further west until they finally reached California and the Pacific coast.

The players represent shrewd businessmen who benefit from passing wagon trains, continuously moving westward across the North American continent. It is divided into huge vertical tracts of land: New England, the East Coast, the Great Plains, the Midwest, the West and finally, California.

There are always 5 characters in this game: Dracula and 4 hunters. If there are fewer than 5 players, some players will play with more than 1 hunter. The hunters play together as a team.

The board shows three levels of Dracula's castle. In their turn, characters can move to an adjacent room, search the room for objects (e.g. garlic, holy water, daggers, or brides), or attack another character. If an attack is successful, the opponent loses "blood points". A hunter that loses his last blood point may be converted to a vampire; he changes sides and now works together with Dracula.

The hunters win if they kill Dracula; Dracula wins if he has converted all hunters to vampires. Dracula also wins if he returns to his coffin with 4 brides.

Each player chooses one of eight characters that spoof popular spy/action-movie characters or actors: James Blonde, Emma Shell, Austin Flowers, Indiana Smith, Jackie Chang, Dirty Larry, Shift, or Arnold Weissenmeiner. They wander around a sort of super-generic indoor area with corridors, rooms, and safes (somebody's HQ? no villains are in evidence), trying to wipe each other out with their character abilities and the weapons and specials they find in the safes. Obviously enough, the last man (or woman, or team) standing wins. Reminiscent of "Frag," but with more complicated mechanisms.

The modular boards are square grids on the same scale as most of Jolly Roger's other games; in fact, the boards for "Orcs at the Gates" and "Maul of America" can be used with this game.

Approximate playing time is totally arbitrary; it will vary depending on the number of players, the size of the playing area, and so forth. Two hours at least matches the standard length of Jolly Roger's timed games.

Online Play

Ludoholic (no longer available)

Game description from the publisher:

Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition) is a board game in which one player takes on the role of the treacherous overlord, and up to four other players take on the roles of courageous heroes. During each game, the heroes embark on quests and venture into dangerous caves, ancient ruins, dark dungeons, and cursed forests to battle monsters, earn riches, and attempt to stop the overlord from carrying out his vile plot.

With danger lurking in every shadow, combat is a necessity. For such times, Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition) uses a unique dice-based system. Players build their dice pools according to their character's abilities and weapons, and each die in the pool contributes to an attack in different ways. Surges, special symbols that appear on most dice, also let you trigger special effects to make the most of your attacks. And with the horrors awaiting you beneath the surface, you'll need every advantage you can take...

Featuring double-sided modular board pieces, countless hero and skill combinations, and an immersive story-driven campaign, Descent: Journeys in the Dark (Second Edition) transports heroes to a vibrant fantasy realm where they must stand together against an ancient evil.

Compared to the first edition of Descent: Journeys in the Dark, this game features:

Simpler rules for determining line of sight
Faster setup of each encounter
Defense dice to mitigate the tendency to "math out" attacks
Shorter quests with plenty of natural stopping points
Cards that list necessary statistics, conditions, and effects
A new mechanism for controlling the overlord powers
Enhanced hero selection and creation process
Experience system to allow for hero growth and development
Out-of-the-box campaign system

Reimplements

Descent: Journeys in the Dark

Descent 1st edition Conversion Kit

Descent: Journeys in the Dark (second edition) - Conversion Kit

The 2012 rerelease of Wallenstein tweaks the 2002 title from designer Dirk Henn and publisher Queen Games, while including two new expansions.

The setting and game play of the two games are mostly the same. In 1625, the Thirty Years' War is underway, and military leaders like Albrecht von Wallenstein and Gottfried Heinrich Graf zu Pappenheim are roaming the country, fighting for land, and trying to establish the best of everything for themselves. The game lasts two "years," with players taking actions in the spring, summer, and fall, then possibly suffering from grain shortage and revolts in the winter before scoring points for the year. After two years, the player with the most points – with points being scored for land and buildings under one's control – wins.

In each of the "action" seasons, ten action cards are shuffled, then laid out, with five face-up and the rest face-down. The five bonus tiles (which provide extra money, grain, or armies) are also laid out. Each player then secretly assigns one of his county cards (or a blank card) to each of the ten actions on his individual player board, in addition to bidding for player order and choice of bonus tile.

After revealing that round's event card and determining player order, players carry out actions in the order determined earlier, revealing which county is taking the current action, then revealing the next face-down action, thus giving players some information about when actions will occur, but not all. Taxing a county or taking grain from it can increase the chance of a revolt during winter, but without money you can't deploy troops or build palaces or churches and without grain you increase the chance of revolt.

Combat and revolts are handled via a dice tower in which players drop army units and peasants (colored wooden cubes) into the top of the tower and see which ones emerge in the bottom tray (representing the fighting forces for that combat) and which get stuck in the tower's baffles to possibly emerge in the future.

Wallenstein includes two expansions: "Emperor's Court," in which a player's army tokens that fall from the dice tower at the start of the game become courtiers who compete for favors (special actions) from the emperor; a player can convert armies to courtiers during the game, and whoever has the most courtiers in the court's entrance hall each turn gets first shot at the favors available. "Landsknechte," which can be used with "Emperor's Court" or on its own, consists of a set of four cards for each player stacked in a particular order. If after determining turn order, a player controls counties in four different regions, he removes the top card from the stack, then takes one of the bonuses (such as money or armies in the tray) shown on the newly revealed card. This stack resets after winter ends.

Reimplements:

Wallenstein (first edition)

Similar to:

Shogun