Industry / Manufacturing

During the second half of the nineteenth century in what was then Ceylon, today known to all as the nation of Sri Lanka, a deadly fungus killed off all the coffee plantations on the island thus causing a serious economic crisis. The Scot James Taylor, and later many other entrepreneurs, set about substituting coffee plantations for tea plantations and hence creating what many connoisseurs today consider to be the best tea in the world.

In Ceylon, players take on the role of the pioneers who developed the Ceylon tea industry. As such, they build plantations in different districts and at different altitudes. They produce tea and try to sell it to the most important export companies. To favor this task, they must win the favor of the counselors of each district and develop the necessary technology that allows them to get ahead of their competitors.

At the end of the game, players score points for having plantations in each district, for meeting demands that have been set, for the level of technological development reached, and for the amount of money collected. In the end, the player who has the most points wins.

—description from the publisher

In Underwater Cities, which takes about 30-45 minutes per player, players represent the most powerful brains in the world, brains nominated due to the overpopulation of Earth to establish the best and most livable underwater areas possible.

The main principle of the game is card placement. Three colored cards are placed along the edge of the main board into 3 x 5 slots, which are also colored. Ideally players can place cards into slots of the same color. Then they can take both actions and advantages: the action depicted in the slot on the main board and also the advantage of the card. Actions and advantages can allow players to intake raw materials; to build and upgrade city domes, tunnels and production buildings such as farms, desalination devices and laboratories in their personal underwater area; to move their marker on the initiative track (which is important for player order in the next turn); to activate the player's "A-cards"; and to collect cards, both special ones and basic ones that allow for better decision possibilities during gameplay.

All of the nearly 220 cards — whether special or basic — are divided into four types according to the way and time of use. Underwater areas are planned to be double-sided, giving players many opportunities to achieve VPs and finally win.

The city of Essen, Germany at the turn of the 20th century was a center for coal mining in Europe. Immerse yourself in the dark world of coal mining as you extract coal from pits, load coal to wagon trains, and then rail your coal off to distant locations in search of fortunes.

Coal Baron: The Great Card Game is a standalone game based on the very popular board game, Coal Baron, originally published in 2013. With innovative mechanisms and almost 240 cards, Coal Baron: The Great Card Game creates an experience that feels very distinct from, yet is just as intense as, the original game.

The "Arte di Calimala" — the guild of cloth finishers and merchants in foreign cloth — was one of the greater guilds of Florence, who arrogated to themselves the civic power of the Republic of Florence during the Late Middle Ages. The woolen cloth trade was the engine that drove the city’s economy and the members of the Calimala were the elite of Florence.

Throughout its long history, the Arte di Calimala supervised the execution of artistic and architectural works. Most Florentine guilds performed such activities, but the Calimala distinguished itself from other guilds through the number and prestige of the projects and the sites administered, including the construction and decoration of some of the major churches of the city.

Players of Calimala are cloth merchants in medieval Florence, with a number of trusted employees that they assign to various streets within the city to carry out actions. (Each street connects two places where particular actions can be taken.) While taking these actions, players produce and deliver cloth and contribute to the construction and decoration of various buildings across the city. Employees stay on their assigned places for a while, carrying out their actions whenever the street is activated, and eventually are promoted into the city council, triggering a scoring phase.

Depending on the number of players, each player has a number of action discs. In turn order, they can put one on a space between two actions, performing both actions and activating all other discs on the same space. When the fourth disc is placed on an action space, the lowest one is promoted to the city council, which triggers a scoring. After the last action disc is placed or the last scoring phase in the council is triggered, the game ends. The positions of the action spaces and sequence of scoring phases vary from game to game, making each game very different. Secret scoring objectives and action cards add uncertainty.

Subatomic: An Atom Building Game is a deck-building game in which players compete to build a number of available elements, which score them points.

Each player starts with the same small deck of cards that consist of proton, neutron, and electron cards. They use these cards to build upon their current atom (by playing these cards face-up as subatomic particles) in an attempt to construct one of the available element cards. Alternatively, players may use their hand of cards to purchase more powerful cards for later use (by playing them in combinations of face-down cards as energy and face-up cards as subatomic particles). Subatomic introduces a unique variation on deck-building with a highly accurate chemistry theme, with the ultimate goal of building elements to score points, but allowing many varying types of strategies.