Worker Placement

Cellulose: A Plant Cell Biology Game is a worker placement game that puts 1-5 players inside a plant cell, where they will compete over limited resources in order to undergo photosynthesis, produce carbohydrates, and build the cell wall. With everyone vying for the same actions, players must time their use of proteins, hormones, and cell component cards in order to diversify their strategies and outplay the competition.

Cellulose is the standalone sequel to Cytosis (2017). It has some of the same DNA, but Cellulose expands familiar game systems, allowing players greater control over available resources, strategic paths, and even game length.

—description from the publisher

In Little Town, you lead a team of architects and must dispatch workers to the town, collect resources and money, build buildings, and develop this little town.

In the game, which lasts four rounds, you can acquire resources such as wood, stones, fish, and wheat from the surrounding squares by putting workers on the board, with three workers being placed each round. When you place a worker, you acquire the resources available in all eight surrounding spaces. You can build buildings by using these resources, and you — or any other player — can gain the effect of the building when place a worker next to it; if you place next to a building owned by another, however, you must pay them a coin before you can collect those resources.

Players collect victory points by using the powers of buildings, by constructing buildings, and by achieving goals dealt to them at the beginning of the game. After four rounds, whoever has the most victory points wins.

—description from the publisher

In a game of Cosmogenesis, each player creates their own planet system, starting from a star and an asteroid belt. To do this, they use the elements available on the different sections of the central board. In each round, players obtain one element from each of the four sections over four turns and with these elements players form planets and moons. These then collide with each other, causing them to increase in size, develop rings, form atmospheres, and of course create life. Players do all of this in order to fulfill their own objectives, which like the rest of the elements of the game, are obtained from the central board; at the end of the game, these provide the victory points that determine the overall winner.

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En una partida de Cosmogénesis, cada jugador creará su propio sistema planetario partiendo de una estrella y un cinturón de asteroides. Para ello se valdrá de los elementos que ofrecen los diferentes sectores de la nebulosa representada en el tablero central. En cada ronda, cada jugador obtendrá un elemento de cada uno de los 4 sectores a lo largo de 4 turnos. Con estos elementos, formarán planetas y lunas, colisionarán unos con otros para aumentarlos de tamaño, formarán sistemas de anillos, crearán atmósferas y por supuesto vida. Todo ello con el fin de cumplir sus propios objetivos, que también se obtendrán del tablero central, y que al final de la partida, proporcionarán los puntos de victoria que determinarán el vencedor.

Jinja is colorful worker placement game about building shrines across Japan. You must place workers at key locations around Japan to activate one of thirteen different actions or build at one of seven different territories. To earn the highest honor, you must plan your strategy, time your construction, and be a little bit lucky. Jinja features evocative illustrations and high-quality components, with custom plastic miniatures representing the shrines, painted meeples to represent the workers, screenprinted score trackers, and a custom multi-color Mask die.

The game board is an illustrated map of Japan divided into territories with a limited number of temple sites. Over five seasons, players place workers on one of the thirteen actions or seven territories as they work towards their different goals. Building a Shrine earns honor and special abilities

Jinja adds replayability with variable goals and events. Omikuji, or "fortunes," are secret goals that score you bonus points if your shrines are on key locations. Kitsune cards are randomly chosen for each game, providing different discounts, bonuses, and abilities that change with the seasons.

Throughout the game you can exchange deed cards for territory, leave it up to luck by rolling the mask die for bonuses, and revisit your territories to build up your resource supply. At the end of the game, players also get bonuses for having the most shrines in each region.

—description from the publisher

Autumn is not the best time to climb up on a scaffold in Moscow, but it is still far better than doing so in the winter. Tsar Ivan wants to see results and our team will prove to him that we are the best builders in the city. We are sure to finish off those decorative arches with the brightest shining stones and ensure our place on the list of the government’s trusted workers.

Sheila Santos and Israel Cendrero make up the game designing duo known as Llama Dice. To date they have put out various titles with different Spanish publishers (1987 Channel Tunnel, Mondrian, Smoothies), and The Red Cathedral is the first game they have published with Devir. Pedro Soto (Holmes, Sherlock & Mycroft, Papua) and Chema Román (El mundo de Águila Roja) took care of the graphic elements of the game with a grand homage to Ivan Bilibin, an iconic Russian artist from the turn of the twentieth century. Despite being from a far later period, his mark is very recognizable in the game.

The Red Cathedral is a strategic, “Euro” board game in which the players take the roles of construction teams. Their job is to work together to put up St. Basil's cathedral in Moscow, as ordered by Ivan the Terrible. However, only one of them will be able to gain the favor of the Tsar.

During the game, the players can carry out one of these three actions: assign a section of the cathedral, send resources to that section to build it, or go to the game board to achieve more resources. Each of these actions has its own mechanism and requires that the players pay close attention to what the other players are doing.

When the sections of the cathedral are assigned the players take possession of the spaces in each of the columns that make up their section. The more sections built and the completion of each with its own tower, the more points the player will be given at the end of the game.

The players can send resources to the cathedral sections that they have claimed. When they complete each of those sections they will obtain rewards in money and prestige points. They will also be able to install decorations on the completed sections to achieve even more recognition from the Tsar. This part of the game also works as a clock, since once any player completes the construction of their sixth section it brings about the end of the game.

The game board shows us the iconic rondel of The Red Cathedral. It is where the players obtain all the resource types needed to complete their work on the cathedral, as well as to get favors from the guilds and professionals to make the most of their trip to the market. In the central rondel the players choose the die they wish to use and move forward as many spaces as is shown on the top side of said die, in order to obtain the resources indicated in the space destined by the die.

The Red Cathedral is a very accessible game with regard to its rules because it is very easy to understand the various levels of the game, but it remains very interesting with regard to strategy. It is sure to please those who are more interested in the challenge offered by trying to strategically optimize their position in each game rather than the complexity of the rules.