exploration

Above and Below

Your last village was ransacked by barbarians. You barely had time to pick up the baby and your favorite fishing pole before they started the burning and pillaging. You wandered over a cruel desert, braved frozen peaks, and even paddled a log across a rough sea, kicking at the sharks whenever they got too close, the baby strapped tightly to your back.

Then you found it! The perfect place to make your new home. But as soon as you had the first hut built, you discovered a vast network of caverns underground, brimming with shiny treasures, rare resources, and untold adventure. How could you limit your new village to the surface? You immediately start organizing expeditions and building houses underground as well as on the surface.

With any luck, you'll build a village even stronger than your last-- strong enough, even, to turn away the barbarians the next time they come knocking.

Above and Below is a mashup of town-building and storytelling where you and up to three friends compete to build the best village above and below ground. In the game, you send your villagers to perform jobs like exploring the cave, harvesting resources, and constructing houses. Each villager has unique skills and abilities, and you must decide how to best use them. You have your own personal village board, and you slide the villagers on this board to various areas to indicate that they've been given jobs to do. Will you send Hanna along on the expedition to the cave? Or should she instead spend her time teaching important skills to one of the young villagers?

A great cavern lies below the surface, ready for you to explore-- this is where the storytelling comes in. When you send a group of villagers to explore the depths, one of your friends reads what happens to you from a book of paragraphs. You'll be given a choice of how to react, and a lot will depend on which villagers you brought on the expedition, and who you're willing to sacrifice to succeed. The book of paragraphs is packed with encounters of amazing adventure, randomly chosen each time you visit the cavern.

At the end of the game, the player with the most well-developed village wins!

Francis Drake

Return to a bustling Plymouth Harbor in 1572 as an aspiring Elizabethan captain making preparations for three exciting voyages to the Spanish Main in search of fame and fortune! As captains, players will have to plan their missions and provision their ships accordingly.

Francis Drake is a race to see who can set sail and reach the Spanish Main first. The riches of the Aztec and Inca Empires await these swashbuckling captains. Many tough decisions must be made before each voyage:

How many crew members, guns, and trade goods will be needed?
What supplies will be needed to reach deep into the Caribbean?
Will a stronger galleon be needed to attack the treasure fleets?
Can special charts from the Spanish Admiral and Governor help?
Will the Queen or rich investors back the voyage?
What information can the informer give?
Will Drake himself be available to guide the voyage?
Who will get the use of the Golden Hind?

Each new voyage has its own challenges to overcome, but the captured gold, silver, and jewels should greatly please the Queen. Get ready for the voyage of a lifetime!

Hengist

Thirty years have passed since the Romans left Britain. The power of the Picts and the Scots is growing, and they are pushing inland. In order to save Britain, the great chieftain Vortigern has asked the Saxon brothers Hengist and Horsa to help defend Britain. You and your brother agree to help, but over the years Vortigern has become greedy and does not pay you enough.

It is time for you to take matters into your own hands and take what is rightfully yours! You have good maps, strong fighters, and stout boats. The coast is littered with villages, towns, monasteries, and estates. All are waiting to be pillaged! Who will win the thrilling hunt for fame and fortune: Hengist or Horsa?

In Hengist, both players compete for the same treasure tiles. The player who reaches a treasure tile with one of his raiding groups first gets the tile — but a part of the road is hidden and must be explored first. Not always is the direct path the most successful way. The player who uses their cards wisely and has a little bit of luck will get the more valuable treasure tiles and win the game.

Steam Time

Description from the publisher:

It's the year 1899, and strange phenomena is being observed in places like Stonehenge and the pyramids of Egypt. Time goes crazy, and newly discovered crystals have exhibited strange properties that allow for the creation of fantastic apparatuses.

In a race to exploit these discoveries, the rapidly industrializing nations have used them to construct gigantic steam-driven airships to travel through time and space. In Steam Time, the race is on for long-lost knowledge, vanished cultures, and hidden treasures. Travel to past ages, search for crystals, and use your crystals wisely to stay ahead of your competitors.

Doom: The Boardgame Expansion Set

Doom: The Boardgame Expansion Set promises to dramatically expand and improve the basic game. It includes 36 new figures, including new Invaders (the famous cacodemons from the first Doom game, zombie commandos, winged cherubs, revenants, and maggots) and three new marine types.

The expansion also includes a brand new Invader deck that can be used instead of the old one, new map pieces that include airless terrain, rules for competitive deathmatch and capture the flag games, new marine skill cards, and special cards that allow players to tune the difficulty of the game to their liking. New equipment, weapons (the Soul Cube), terrain features, replacement "Dud" cards that rebalance the original game, and an assortment of tokens for the new scenarios round this expansion out.