variable player powers

Theme:
"In the untamed wild, villains lurk in wait, terrors haunt dark lairs, tradesfolk seek riches, and heroes come to prove their valor." As the mayor of a frontier town, you stand in the center, eyeing the roads for talent and trouble. Will you take on challenges or hire help, develop your town or command its heroes? Your strategies, risks, and fortune can transform your village into a thriving city or forgotten ruins.

Overview:
Villagers and Villains is a card game with over 100 unique cards. The game is played over several rounds. Each round has 6 distinct Phases. During each Phase, all players (Mayors) have a chance to take specific actions. The Mayor who builds the most successful village wins.

Game play:
Villagers and Villains is a building game. In the 1st phase players recruit cards from a common pool neutral to all players. 4 classes of cards could appear in the pool: Challenges, citizens, buildings, and heroes. Each card has different game play applications and different effects on end scoring. In the 2nd phase each player has a chance to defend their town from challenges. In the 3rd phase challenges loot towns left unprotected. The 4th phase is when each town earns money. In the 5th phase money can be spent to expand a town by hiring heroes and citizens or creating buildings. The final phase resets the board for a new round of phases. The starting player changes and rounds continue until a town reaches a fixed size. At that time the game is scored.

Goal:
In the end each town is scored based on a variety of facets and features. Players have to assess which facet will score the most points as the game is played--and circumstances dictate.

Features:
The game ships with a basic and advanced version for experienced and novice gamers and special 2-player game rules. In the advanced game players gain access to the king's favor, special card powers, and pairing options for final scoring. In addition, the home site offers a variety of rules variations for added game play. While chance plays a part in the game (via a die-roll for certain elements) choices in recruiting, and how to use town's abilities and resources play a large role.

The game includes:
100 different playing cards (challenges, citizens, heroes, buildings)
10 starting cards (5 citizens, 5 angry mobs)
5 player aid cards
a die
1 kings favor token
1 start marker
1 score pad
2 punch-out sheets of gold coin tokens
rules sheet.

Description from the publisher:

The largest, richest, and most diverse city on Earth, New Angeles is home to the Space Elevator that rises along its buckyweave tether and connects us to Luna and its invaluable Helium-3 deposits. It is here, in New Angeles, that you'll find the global headquarters for the worlds' most powerful megacorps: Haas-Bioroid, Globalsec, Jinteki, Melange Mining, NBN, and the Weyland Consortium. And it is here, in this shining beacon of human achievement and advancement, that these powerful megacorps enjoy a uniquely fertile breeding ground for their projects and their rivalries.

In New Angeles, you gain control of one of these megacorporations, then you use your wealth and influence to create more wealth and more influence. To do this, you cut deals and forge temporary alliances. You leverage your credits and assets to gain financial superiority over your corporate rivals. All the while, you also need to keep an eye toward the masses, striking deals with the other corps as necessary in order to keep a lid on crime, disease, and unrest. If you want to maximize your profit, you need to keep New Angeles open for business!

Description from the publisher:

In Game of Thrones: The Iron Throne, which uses the game systems from Cosmic Encounter, you and your friends each command one of the Great Houses of Westeros, pitting iconic characters against each other in epic battles and schemes. Negotiate, bluff, forge alliances, threaten your rivals — use every tool at your disposal to spread your influence, establish supremacy, and claim the ultimate prize: the Iron Throne!

In more detail, each turn centers around the resolution of an encounter between two players. These encounters can result in hostilities, startling conquests, and the spread of influence, or they can result in the formation of temporary alliances. And though only two players in any encounter will be the "active" players, your friends might offer you their support — or turn around and offer it to someone else.

The encounters of The Iron Throne resolve quickly, but they are full of opportunities for cunning strategy, devious intrigues, and brokered alliances. Each features a challenger and a defender, and after these players assign characters to resolve the encounter on the behalf of their Houses, other players may offer their support to either side. In this way, an encounter that starts as a contest between the Lannisters and the Starks may escalate and draw in the support of the Tyrells or other Houses.

However, there's more to the encounters of The Iron Throne than this initial jostling for power, even with all the alliances and betrayals it can entail. There are still schemes within schemes, and the bluffs, negotiations, and hidden information that color these encounters as the active players discuss the House cards they intend to play. Of course, there's a very good chance that one or both of them may be lying, but they can offer and even agree to a truce. Or they can bid cards from their hands, hoping to win hostilities with the higher total power.

In the event of a truce, the active players discuss what they may give each other in order to maintain the peace. In the event of hostilities, however, one side will win, and the other will suffer. You might seize influence or take hostages, or you may even have your characters put to the sword.

Win enough of these encounters, though — and find the right ones to lose — and you might find yourself in position to seize the Iron Throne. The goal of the game is to spread five of your influence to your opponents' House cards and take the crown for yourself.

Prophecy (originally released as Proroctví) is a Talisman-style game by Czech designer Vladimír Chvátil. The players represent fantasy characters on a path through a land full of adventure with the goal of grabbing ancient artifacts from the claws of demons guarding the surrounding astral realms.

Instead of rolling dice to move around the game board, players in Prophecy use a variety of means of transport. The game includes an experience system and loads of skills and spells that your character can learn. A large number of monsters that you can meet and fight also await you, as do random events that will keep taxing your abilities because after you cast a spell or lose a fight, your strength or willpower declines until it is recharged by healing.

Whoever holds four of the five hidden artifacts wins the game and becomes the next king of the land.

Expanded by:

Prophecy: Dragon Realm (2003)
Prophecy: Water Realm (2006)

Beings of ancient evil, known as Old Ones, are threatening to break out of their cosmic prison and awake into the world. Everything you know and love could be destroyed by chaos and madness. Can you and your fellow investigators manage to find and seal every portal in time? Hurry before you lose yourself to insanity.

In Pandemic: Reign of Cthulhu, you'll experience the classic Pandemic gameplay with an horrific twist that'll have you face twelve Old Ones, each threatening the world with their unique powers. As players take on the roles of investigators attempting to seal a series of portals before monsters of unspeakable horror pour into our world there is, of course, a high risk of the investigators losing their own minds.

Instead of curing diseases like in the original Pandemic, players seal portals and shut down cults in the classic New England fictional towns of Arkham, Dunwich, Innsmouth, and Kingsport. Can you and your fellow investigators manage to find and seal every portal in time? Hurry before you lose yourself to insanity and the evil that lurks beneath your feet...