variable player powers

Beyond Baker Street

A heinous crime has been committed. A team of the Kingdom's finest detectives has been assembled and put on the case. They have a prime suspect, they have a motive, and they know what the opportunity to commit the crime was. Now all they have to do is prove it.

Using powers of deduction and communication, the players work as a team to eliminate dead leads and find clues to prove who, how, and why. All the relevant clues are available to them to do so. They just won't know it. On top of that, Sherlock Holmes himself is already on the case. Can they solve the crime before he does?

At the start of Beyond Baker Street, players select one of the crimes to solve, and a number of suspects, motives, and opportunities will be available for the players to convict of the crime. Each player holds a set of clues, but they won't be able to see their own clues — only those of their counterparts. Each turn, a player must take exactly one of the following actions:

ASSIST another detective
INVESTIGATE crime scene
CONFIRM evidence
ELIMINATE dead leads
PURSUE new leads

Players win together if they can gather enough evidence to make a conviction before Holmes does; otherwise, they crumble under the stress of the case.

Arkham Horror (3rd Edition)

The year is 1926, and it is the height of the Roaring Twenties. Flappers dance till dawn in smoke-filled speakeasies, drinking alcohol supplied by rum runners and the mob. It’s a celebration to end all celebrations in the aftermath of the War to End All Wars.

Yet a dark shadow grows in the city of Arkham. Alien entities known as Ancient Ones lurk in the emptiness beyond space and time, writhing at the thresholds between worlds. Occult rituals must be stopped and alien creatures destroyed before the Ancient Ones make our world their ruined dominion.

Only a handful of investigators stand against the Arkham Horror. Will they prevail?

Arkham Horror (Third Edition) is a cooperative board game for one to six players who take on the roles of investigators trying to rid the world of eldritch beings known as Ancient Ones. Based on the works of H.P. Lovecraft, players will have to gather clues, defeat terrifying monsters, and find tools and allies if they are to stand any chance of defeating the creatures that dwell just beyond the veil of our reality.

The game is split into a series of rounds made up of four phases.

The Action Phase
The Monster Phase
The Encounter Phase
The Mythos Phase

The Action Phase sees your investigators fighting back against the dark power of the mythos. During this phase, each investigator can perform two different actions.

Move – Investigators can move up to two spaces in the city, spending money to hire speedy transport and move additional spaces. The space where you end your turn will determine what encounter card you draw later in the turn.
Gather Resources – Gain one dollar token, which can be used to purchase items and goods as well as increase how far you can move
Focus – Focus one of your skills, increasing its value.
Ward – Attempt to remove doom from your location. Increasing doom means danger for the investigators, and removing doom can delay these apocalyptic heraldings.
Attack – Attack a monster engaged with you.
Evade – Try to escape from a monster engaged with you.
Research – Search for clues at your location.
Trade – Trade money, clues, items, and more with other investigators at your location.

—description from the publisher

Forbidden Sky

Soar to dizzying heights in the electrifying cooperative adventure. Work as a team to explore a mysterious platform that floats at the center of a savage storm. Connect a circuit of cables to launch a secret rocket — all before you are struck by lightning or blown off to the depths below. It's a high-wire act that will test your team's capacity for courage and cooperation. One false step and you all could be grounded…permanently!

This latest installment in the Forbidden... game series takes you to new heights with several novel challenges, including collectively planning a terrain using only limited information and constructing a real electrical circuit.

They Who Were 8

Gods and Goddesses are mercurial beings, given to jealousy and treachery, but they can also possess compassion and valor.

Who among the pantheon can win enough glory among their believers, so that their story of mythic victory can be passed down through the generations?

They Who Were 8 is a game for 2-4 players where each player serves two Gods, seeking to praise them for their Glory, and trying to avoid stories of their Infamy.

The game can be played in two different ways:

• Titanomachy:
A game for 2-4 players trying to achieve an individual victory.

• Pantheon:
A partnership game for 4 players, played in two teams of 2.

In both of these games, the players take actions that represent a bard’s retelling of the ancient story of They Who Were 8. They may also call upon the powers of their Gods to control the narrative and establish their version of the saga as the one told for eternity.

Note: They Who Were 8 was inspired by a cycle of poems by Todd Sanders written in 1999. The poems are fragments of a larger ancient saga, lost to time.

Dominant Species

Game Overview
90,000 B.C. — A great ice age is fast approaching. Another titanic struggle for global supremacy has unwittingly commenced between the varying animal species.
Dominant Species is a game that abstractly recreates a tiny portion of ancient history: the ponderous encroachment of an ice age and what that entails for the living creatures trying to adapt to the slowly-changing earth.
Each player will assume the role of one of six major animal classes—mammal, reptile, bird, amphibian, arachnid, or insect. Each begins the game more or less in a state of natural balance in relation to one another. But that won’t last: It is indeed "survival of the fittest".
Through wily action pawn placement, players will strive to become dominant on as many different terrain tiles as possible in order to claim powerful card effects. Players will also want to propagate their individual species in order to earn victory points for their particular animal. Players will be aided in these endeavors via speciation, migration, and adaptation actions, among others.
All of this eventually leads to the end game—the final ascent of the ice age—where the player having accumulated the most victory points will have his animal crowned the Dominant Species.
But somebody better become dominant quickly, because it’s getting mighty cold...

Game Play
The large hexagonal tiles are used throughout the game to create an ever-expanding interpretation of earth as it might have appeared a thousand centuries ago. The smaller tundra tiles will be placed atop the larger tiles—converting them into tundra in the process—as the ice age encroaches.
The cylindrical action pawns (or "AP"s) drive the game. Each AP will allow a player to perform the various actions that can be taken, such as speciation, environmental change, migration, or glaciation. After being placed on the action display during the Planning Phase, an AP will trigger that particular action for the owning player during the Execution Phase.
Generally, players will be trying to enhance their own animal’s survivability while simultaneously trying to hinder that of their opponents’—hopefully collecting valuable victory points (or "VP"s) along the way. The various cards will aid in these efforts, giving players useful one-time abilities or an opportunity for recurring VP gains.
Throughout the game, species cubes will be added to, moved about in, and removed from the tiles in play (the "earth"). Element disks will be added to and removed from both animals and earth.
When the game ends, players will conduct a final scoring of each tile—after which the player controlling the animal with the highest VP total wins the game.