pattern building

Intarsia

For countless years, the Café de Paris has offered moments of carefree relaxation and a wonderful opportunity to pause and breathe amid a bustling city. Unfortunately, the café must close for emergency renovation to ensure that it continues to attract numerous guests.

In Intarsia, players compete for the contract for the coveted redesign work on the parquet, embellishing it with stylish intarsias. To win the contract, players have to prove their skills by refining the floor with stylish inlays and outdoing their competitors with new tools.

Each floor ornament can consist of one to four filigree wooden elements that are puzzled together from the outside inwards. The more pieces the ornament consists of, the more victory points it scores! During the building phase, wooden elements can be paid for with material cards and built according to the building rules. Whoever fulfills the requirement for a tool receives the tile that scores points. Only the person with the best building skills can secure the contract and give the café a new lease of life!

The B-side of the floor plan offers variation for this clever and high-quality placement game.

—description from the publisher

Superstore 3000

Welcome to Superstore 3000, the retro-futuristic mall building game where you must build the tallest and most incredible mall to satisfy as many customers as possible.

In Superstore 3000, each player builds their own mall by placing shop tiles and being the first to meet the criteria to collect the unique attraction tiles that will make your building even more exceptional.

In the year 2964, become a visionary mall engineer with the thrilling board game, Superstore 3000. Set against the backdrop of interstellar commerce, players race to construct the most customer-friendly and aesthetically pleasing shopping haven. Each round is a dive into strategic decision-making, from choosing the optimal Mall Elements from the innovative Dispenser 3000 to strategically positioning attractions to draw in more visitors.

This game is not only about building but also about foreseeing customer needs and cleverly managing your resources. The Dispenser 3000 enhances the tactical depth, requiring you to think ahead as you invest in valuable tiles. With over 96 Mall Elements to choose from and dynamic setup changes, no two games are alike, ensuring that each playthrough remains exciting and full of new challenges.

Superstore 3000 is beautifully crafted with detailed components that include food courts, fashion stores, and hobby shops, each tile vividly illustrated to reflect its unique identity. The game scales impressively from 2 to 4 players, making it an excellent choice for both intimate friend gatherings and lively family game nights. Aim to satisfy your customers, outsmart your competitors, and watch your futuristic mall come to life!

This game offers not just a play experience but an engaging narrative that blends commerce, architecture, and a hint of cosmic adventure. It's perfect for anyone who loves strategy games with a creative twist. Whether you're buying your first board game or adding to a growing collection, Superstore 3000 promises endless fun and strategic depth. Join the race to build the ultimate space mall and be the envy of the galaxy!

—description from the publisher

boop the Halls!

A deceptively cute, deceivingly challenging abstract strategy game for two players.

The Mensa award winning, Game of the Year, boop, is back with a new Holiday edition and has really leveled up game play (literally!!).

The hoomans are hanging ornaments on the highest boughs of the tree, but those clever cats are leaping up and boopin’ them right off. You can win “Naughty” by knocking off 3 of your opponent’s ornaments or “Nice” by lining up three cats in a row!

The 4-tiered game board ‘tree’ presents a surprisingly mind-bending 3D challenge for players. And the alternate win condition of knocking off 3 of your opponent's ornaments creates new strategic problems to solve, elevating the play experience to a new high!

—description from the publisher

Wild Duo

Wild Duo is a game collection that includes 5 games for 2 players. You can play these games with two players or in larger groups (4/6/8/10), in which case the games are rotated between the groups of two. There is definitely enough variety, as each of the games is a unique gaming experience.

The games are perfectly playable for both children and adult players, as the gaming experience depends entirely on your, respectively, your fellow player's skills. That's why some games can be decided after only 5 minutes, while others last 30 minutes.

Each of the games deals with a different animal species or a specific behavior of this animal species and thus takes the players on a journey into one of 5 worlds. Each of the five rule explanations therefore always includes an exciting, thematic text on the corresponding animal species.

—description from the publisher

Codex Naturalis

In CODEX Naturalis, you must continue the work of the illuminating monk Tybor Kwelein, assembling the pages of a manuscript that lists the living species in primary forests. Can you put the pages together in the best order possible? And are you prepared to sacrifice a species to develop your manuscript?

In the game, each player starts with a single card on the table, a card that shows some combination of the four possible resources in the middle of the card, in the corners of the card, or both. Players also have two resource cards and one gold card in hand, while two of each type of card are visible on the table.

On a turn, you place a card from your hand overlapping the corners of one or more cards you already have in play. Your starting card has four overlappable corners, while resource and gold cards have only three.

Resource cards have no cost to be played, and they often depict resource symbols in their corners.
Gold cards deliver points when played, but they often have a resource requirement, e.g., three fungi or two plant/one animal/one insect, and you must have those resources visible in your manuscript at the time you play the gold card. You score points from this card immediately, with some cards having a fixed value and others a variable one depending on how many of a certain symbol are showing or how many corners you covered this turn.

If you wish, you can play a card from your hand face down; such a card has four corners and one resource, but provides no points. After you play, draw a face-up card or the top card of either deck to refill your hand.

When a player reaches 20 points, you complete the round, and each player takes one additional turn. Players then score points based on how well they matched two public objective cards and one secret objective card, after which the player with the most points wins.