Strategy

The small island of Kuchinoshima has been hit by a terrible storm, leaving the village with only a single fishing boat. Each hoping to prove themselves the village’s best fisherman, 2-4 players take turns moving the boat marker around the island, collecting any fish tiles they land upon. At the end of the day, the player with the best haul wins, but there’s a twist – with 3 or 4 players, each player’s score is added to the player to their right’s score before determining the winner!

—description from the publisher

In the two-player game Watergate, one player represents the Nixon administration and tries not to resign before the end of the game while the other player represents The Washington Post and tries to show the connections between Nixon and some of his informers.

Maracaibo, the new strategy game for 1-4 players by Alexander Pfister, is set in the Caribbean during the 17th century. The players try to increase their influence in three nations in four rounds with a play time of 40 minutes per player.

The players sail on a round course through the Caribbean. E.g., you have city tiles where you are able to perform various actions or deliver goods to. One special feature is an implemented quest mode over more and various tiles, which tells the player, who chase after it, a little story.

As a player, you move with your ship around the course, managing it by using cards like in other games from Alexander Pfister.

Imaginarium is a strategy, combination and development game.

From its Kickstarter description:

Through the mist, you can just about see the gigantic form of the factory. This is where the essence of dreams is shaped! We will enter the factory through the grand entrance. Here are the famous machines! You can repair, combine or dismantle them. They will produce the resources needed to repair more powerful machines. I am sure that you will quickly make the best use of your resources and the space available in your workshop to carry out the projects of the design office and gain Victory points!

Prior to Essen 1999, a group of students created Splotter Spellen to sell some of their own game designs. This game is regarded as one of the highlights of that group. The object of the game is to deliver as many people to their destinations as you can. To accomplish this, players place route markers on the board to connect passengers to their destinations. However, the destination types (work, bar, home) vary from turn to turn, so you can follow certain passengers as they make their way through the daily grind.

Players may buy more buses (they start off with one), build onto their bus route, bring new passengers to the city (via the trains), expand the city by adding more buildings, and run their buses. There is another option, the clock, but more on that later. The action board has one other clever feature. On some actions, route expansion and building, the first player to choose that action actually gets to execute the action last! Which leads to some interesting games of chicken and some painful decisions.

Buying more buses allows a player to carry one more passenger every time they run their buses - hence scoring, in the best case, one more point. Depending on how the city gets built, however, finding lots of passengers on the street can be tricky.

Bus routes extend from either end of a Settlers-style initial placement. Extensions are appended to either end. Routes may only run parallel if a route is completely blocked at both ends - seems pretty rare - so getting one end pinched off can be painful (but isn't it always?). All new passengers will arrive at one of two train stations so that is one concern when route building. One must also be careful to run by a nice mix of building types. And, when building, one must always have an eye towards spoiling other players' routes by placing a mix of building types at each of their intersection so that all of their passengers just walk! Finally, when carrying passengers, one wants to be careful to set up to carry the same passenger next turn.