Economic

You finally have a new opponent for your Power Grid games: a robot that acts as an additional player. Thanks to his different actions and special abilities he is a strong opponent. You will manage the robot's "decisions" and can use him to act against the other opponent(s).

With this expansion, Power Grid is an exciting and fun experience for two (and more) players!

Power Grid: The Robots is designed especially for two players, but you can use a robot with up to five human players, too. You can even use more than one robot in a game.

The robot consists of five tiles, one tile with rules for each phase (except phase 1 »Determine Player Order« and phase 5 »bureaucracy«) plus a special ability, which the robot uses during the game.

With a total of 30 tiles - six different tiles for each phase - your Power Grid games will never be the same again!

Power Grid: The Robots FAQ has many Frequently Asked Questions which have appeared multiple times in the forum!

In Emira the players are Arabian Sheiks looking to expand their harem with more princesses. They try to make themselves more attractive to convince as many princesses as possible to come to live in their harem. Each round, another princess with different preferences comes into play and chooses the sheik that she is most attracted to.

The game is played in several rounds. The 3 to 5 players have auctions where they bid to perform actions: play event cards, buying spice caravans, palace sections, camels, or improve his appearance and status. After all players have performed an action the princess will chose which sheik she prefers (according to her preferences).

Each player has a goal card that defines his goal for the game, for example acquire 4 princesses with three specific skills or 6 princesses.

1st Place 2004 Hippodice Spieleautorenwettbewerb (as Harem).

Players are attempting to be in first or second place majorities in a variety of categories throughout the game. These include commodity markets, trading colonies, and warehouses in Amsterdam.

On a player's turn, that player draws three cards and decides how to resolve them for the turn. A player can either remove the card from the game, keep it for him or herself, or put it up for auction. The cards allow players to advance or place one of their markers in the various categories.

There are also time-marker cards which, when drawn, move the game through various "historical" phases until the last which ends the game. The historical phases follow a period of time in the history of Amsterdam which can range from no effect, to scoring rounds for particular categories, to bonuses, and towards the end of the game to some penalties as wars begin to disrupt business markets.

The unique twist in the game is that the game comes with a spring-driven auction clock to perform the Dutch auctions throughout the game. You start the clock and it ticks down as all of the players hold their hands ready close by. The idea is that as time passes the cost of the card lowers and it is simply an issue of who will pay for it first by slapping down on the clock and thus stopping it at a certain price.

El Capitán, a game that is based upon Tycoon but with many improvements and upgrades.
The game is now playable with 2-5 players (instead of 2-4); it has 11 new groundbreaking rules, and on top of it all, expansions and a whole new exciting look!
All together we have now the following changes/improvements for the basic game:
new grouping of the cities on the game board
new payout table for distribution
3 new Distribution Cards
new rules for the forts
start money is 20 florins instead of 15
place up 4 multi travel cards instead of 2
new rule for the loan cards (not allowed in the first round)
new start player after a payday (a special start player figure is added)
building up to 12 (instead of only 9) warehouses in a city
limitation of warehouses in series (limited to 3 now)
a rule for the first warehouse in a city

Also included is the first expansion "Portuguese Powers" with some extra city boards and strategy!!
There are now special rules for 2 or 3 players (extra renovation fields) and a special rule for 2 players (payday and additional warehouses).

The game was published in October 2007 by QWG Games in the Benelux, by Pro Ludo in Germany, by Ystari Games in France, and by Z-Man Games in USA, Canada, Australia, New Zealand, UK, and Ireland.

Ostia is an economic game of trading goods and donating them to the senate of Rome. You have to decide, whether you want to earn money for your goods or whether you want to donate some of them to the senate. The senate grants victory points for the most needed goods, but no money. Therefore you have to put some goods to the market, hoping that they are rarely sold there to earn enough money for the next trading phase.
The ranking of goods mostly needed changes each round and you can see the ranking for the next round. Accordingly you may decide to keep some of the goods for next round, when they are more valuable to the senate. But you can keep only one card of goods per storehouse and storehouses are expensive.