Industry / Manufacturing

Global Warming is a tactical, card-driven game in which players score "happiness points" by providing goods to the public. Cards played can be either national industries, consumer goods, green technologies, or events; played industries require the roll of dice to determine pollution output. Collect enough happiness points and you win.

But by producing these goods, you influence the earth's ecology. The player's individual influence, as well as the overall influence, is shown by a marker on a second track, and if these markers reach certain (moveable) points on the warming track, bad things happen to the ecology and the players. If the third warming point is reached, the game ends and the player with the lowest contribution to the overall warming wins.

Thus, the players are embedded in a quite true setting in which they have to balance production and sustainable actions. Who will manage to control his industrial production in a way that minimizes the environmental impact while nevertheless allowing him to meet consumer demand?

Global Warming is the fourth game in Mücke Spiele's "Edition Bohrtürme" series that uses the game pieces from Kosmos' Giganten in the context of a new game.

In Russian Railroads, players compete in an exciting race to build the largest and most advanced railway network. In order to do so, the players appoint their workers to various important tasks.

The development of simple tracks will quickly bring the players to important places, while the modernization of their railway network will improve the efficiency of their machinery. Newer locomotives cover greater distances and factories churn out improved technology. Engineers, when used effectively, can be the extra boost that an empire needs to race past the competition.

There are many paths to victory: Who will ride into the future full steam ahead and who will be run off the rails? Whose empire will overcome the challenges ahead and emerge victorious?

Description from publisher:

By cleverly combining the three colored dice with the values on the cards, you take part in building zeppelins and finally the famous Hindenburg.

Renè from spielbox.de:

"Giganten der Lüfte (working-title "Zeppelin") is a very tactical dice-game. You need mechanics, engines, and workshops.... Only the player with the best combination of those will successfully take part in building the Hindenburg."

Giganten der Lüfte is not comparable to Lucky Loop or Alhambra - the dice game.
It is comparable to games like Kingsburg and To Court the King, where you use the dice as a form of resources to manage, as well as a method of purchasing other resources.

Artwork by Jo Hartwig.

Microbadges:

In TECH-BUBBLE, 3 to 6 players ride the technology market roller coaster at the turn of the 21st century as it surges and eventually plunges. The players represent various market sectors during the "Dot.Com Bubble". They make decisions to stay in the market and ride out the surge or get out before the bubble bursts. Timing and nerves of steel are everything. And along the way players can affect each other's investments and decisions by crafty play.

Due out October 2009

In Brass the players represent industrialists in northern England during the hay-day of the industrial revolution. Each player needs to build an economic engine that surpasses the other by the time railways are established and the foreign markets have been saturated with English cotton.

The goal of the game is to have the most points at the end of the game. These are obtained in three ways:
1) Building industries and having them successfully utilized
2) Building canal or rail connections to cities that have many successfully utilized industries
3) money at the end of the game (very inefficient).

Game play is divided into two phases - the Canal Phase and the Rail Phase. At the beginning of each phase players are dealt a hand of cards that represent a mix of the cities and the available industries.

On his turn, a player has two actions (except first turn of the game where there is only one action) and must spend a card for each one. Available actions include:
1) building an industry
2) building a connection [either canals or rails based on phase of the game]
3) develop their own industries which removes lower victory point industries from a player's board in favor of higher victory point ones
4) sell cotton
5) take a loan (absolutely necessary a few times a game.

At the end of a player's turn they replace the two cards they played with two more from the deck. Turn order is determined by how much money a player spent on the previous turn - from lowest spent first to highest spent. This turn order mechanic opens some strategic options for players going later in the turn order allowing possibility of back-to-back turns.

After all the cards have been played the first time (deck size adjusted for number of players) the Canal phase ends and a scoring round commences. After scoring, all canals and all of the lowest level industries are removed for the game, new cards are dealt and the Rail Phase begins. Rail phase is identical to Canal Phase except players may now occupy more than one location in a city and a double connection build (though expensive) is possible. At the end of the Rail Phase there is another scoring round and a winner is crowned.

The use of the cards limit where you can build your industries but any card can be used for the develop, sell cotton or building connections actions. This leads to a strategic timing/storing of cards. Resources are common so that if one player builds a rail line (which requires coal) they have to use the coal from the nearest source which may be an opponent's coal mine which gets that coal mine closer to scoring (i.e. being utilized).

[Side Note]
Brass provides a game of timing and positioning yourself to have your opponents propel you victory. The rule book is notorious for being difficult to understand (though has been significantly fixed in the most recent edition). After a few turns the game reveals itself to being far more simple than the rules suggest. A teacher or viewing a how to play video is definitely worth the time.