Tile Placement

Part of the Knizia tile-laying trilogy, this game is set in medieval Japan. Players compete to gain the favor of three factions: samurai, peasants, and priests, represented by helmet, rice paddy, and Buddha tokens scattered about the board, which represents some of the islands of Japan. The competition is waged through the use of hexagonal tiles, each of which help curry favor of one of the three factions (or all three at once!). Players can make lightning-quick strikes with horseback ronin and ships or approach more methodically. As each token (helmets, rice paddies, and Buddhas) is surrounded, it is awarded to the player with who has gained the most favor with the corresponding group.

Gameplay continues until all the symbols of one type have been removed from the board or four symbols have been removed due to a tie for influence.

At the end of the game, players compare captured symbols of each type, competing for majorities in each of the 3 types. Ties are not uncommon and are broken based on the number of other, "non-majority" symbols each player has collected.

In The Princes of Florence, players attract artists and scholars to their palace while trying to become the most prestigious family in Florence.

Over seven rounds, players attempt to score points in various ways, with most points being earned by playing profession cards to generate "work points", which can be exchanged for money or victory points. The game includes a variety of professions, such astronomers, organists, and architects; each profession is attracted to a particular combination of building, landscape feature, and social freedom, and players acquire these items via auctions. The more that a player can match these preferences, the more work points they earn — but the minimum requirement of work points increases each round, and you must meet that threshold in order to convert the work points.

Reef Encounters of the Second Kind was released at Essen 2006. It is an expansion set for Reef Encounter, introducing new creatures, opportunities, and tactics to the basic game.

The crown of thorns starfish with their voracious appetites have now found the reef and will consume any corals that they can reach. Blue shrimps will assist host shrimps in protecting the larger corals, but these blue shrimps are notoriously unreliable. Meanwhile, the polyp tiles now come in a variety of different forms, and even the rocks are liable to change shape.

A selection of cards provides one-off opportunities to influence the game, to introduce or to move the blue shrimps, or to affect the scoring at the end of the game. An appropriate card is also required before a parrot fish can consume its first coral.

Contents: 4 blue wooden shrimps, 48 special tiles, 56 cards (28 in English and 28 in German), and 2 rules sheets, one in English and one in German.

Expands:

Reef Encounter

Reef Encounters of the Second Kind Microbadge :

Reef Encounter is about life on a coral reef! Using polyp tiles, players grow different types of corals, which they can protect from being attacked by other corals through judicious placing of their four shrimp counters. To be successful players must consume polyps from neighboring corals in order to acquire the 'consumed' polyp tiles that are the key to the game. The consumed polyp tiles have a myriad of uses (and have a similar effect to the action points in games like Tikal and Java). Most importantly they can be used to flip over or lock the coral tiles, which determine the respective values of the different types of coral at the end of the game.

Description from the designer, Richard Breese.

Expanded by:

Reef Encounter of the Second Kind

Although referred to as a sequel to El Grande, El Caballero shares few aspects with its namesake, being a fun but intense brain-burner in which players explore and attempt to control the lands and waterways of the New World.

The players are following Columbus by exploring the islands he discovered. Players slowly explore the islands – by picking and placing land tiles that are most favorable to them – and discover wealth in the form of gold and fish. As they learn about the land and sea areas of this new land, they position their caballeros to try to maintain control of the important regions. Castillos give them a measure of protection from others, and ships allow them to establish trade and to fish for food. Success is measured in the size of land and sea areas they control. Their success is measured twice, and in the end these scores are summed and the winner declared.