Tile Placement

Arboretum is a strategy card game for 2-4 players, aged 10 and up, that combines set collection, tile-laying and hand management while playing in about 25 minutes. Players try to have the most points at the end of the game by creating beautiful garden paths for their visitors.

The deck has 80 cards in ten different colors, with each color featuring a different species of tree; each color has cards numbered 1 through 8, and the number of colors used depends on the number of players. Players start with a hand of seven cards. On each turn, a player draws two cards (from the deck or one or more of the discard piles), lays a card on the table as part of her arboretum, then discards a card to her personal discard pile.

When the deck is exhausted, players compare the cards that remain in their hands to determine who can score each color. For each color, the player with the highest value of cards in hand of that color scores for a path of trees in her arboretum that begins and ends with that color; a path is a orthogonally adjacent chain of cards with increasing values. For each card in a path that scores, the player earns one point; if the path consists solely of trees of the color being scored, the player scores two points per card. If a player doesn't have the most value for a color, she scores zero points for a path that begins and ends with that color. Whoever has the most points wins.

Once upon a time a witch lived alone in her house in the depths of the forest. Her favorite hobby was baking yummy gingerbread; in fact, she loved gingerbread so much that she built her entire house out of it. Unfortunately, she wasn't the only one who loved it! Rude fairy tale characters passing by were eating away her walls, windows, and doors! One day, the witch decided that she'd had enough of them all helping themselves and, paying attention to which types of gingerbread these greedy intruders liked the most, she came up with an idea on how to get rid of them once and for all...

In Gingerbread House, you place domino-like tiles in a 3 by 3 grid, covering symbols that provide you with four different types of gingerbread and special actions. Tiles may also be placed on existing types of tiles, forming a 3D structure in front of you. Covering two of the same symbol is extremely valuable as it provides a bonus gingerbread or action. Victory points are awarded for building the tallest structure, completing orders by discarding sets of gingerbread, as well as being the quickest to achieve certain conditions. In the end, the player with the most victory points wins.

Created by Michael Kiesling, Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra challenges players to carefully select glass panes to complete their windows while being careful not to damage or waste supplies in the process. The window panels are double-sided, providing players with a dynamic player board that affords nearly infinite variability!

Players can expect to discover new unique art and components in Azul: Stained Glass of Sintra, including translucent window pane pieces, a tower to hold discarded glass panes, and double-sided player boards and window pane panels, in addition to many other beautiful components!

—description from the publisher

In The River, you and the other mayoral players each struggle to create the best pioneer settlement by developing land along a river bed in your town, collecting resources from the area, and constructing buildings. As you explore and build up the untouched frontier, your workers will settle down along the way, meaning that your other workers will shoulder more of the burden to do what you want to do, which includes making nicely organized landscapes to please the aestheticians in town.

Every decision counts in this fast and streamlined tile-placement game, and in the end the player with the most impressive settlement will win!

Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is published by Stonemaier Games as part of a collaboration with Bezier Games.

The king demands a castle! You are a world-renowned master builder who has been asked by the Mad King Ludwig to help design his castles. Projects of such significance require the expertise of more than one person, so for each assignment you are paired with another master builder to execute your grandiose plans. Will your planning and collaborative skills be enough to design the most impressive castles in the world?

Between Two Castles of Mad King Ludwig is a competitive tile-drafting game in which each tile is a room in a castle. You work together with the player on your left to design one castle, and with the player on your right on another castle. On each turn you select two tiles from your hand, reveal them, then work with your partners to place them. To win, you have to share your attention and your devotion between two castles.

This game includes 147 regular room tiles with unique art, 83 other tiles, 20 bonus cards, 7 custom wooden castle tokens, 1 full-color, double-sided scorepad, and a 4-piece Game Trayz custom insert that reduces setup time to less than 60 seconds.

—description from the publisher