Victory Points as a Resource

Become the leaders of scientific teams venturing into uncharted boreal territories to observe and photograph the Arctic’s most adorable inhabitants.

Play cards from your hand to one of 3 locations on your player board to snap a photo and send your scientists sliding to the left and to the right - but only if their colors match the ones printed on your card!

Line up vehicle symbols, race to claim objectives, and arrange animals in pre-determined end-game scoring patterns to earn the most points and gain everlasting fame at the Society for Polar Inquiry. Who knows? Maybe you’ll even get your own tiny snow-covered island named after you.

In Patchwork, two players compete to build the most aesthetic (and high-scoring) patchwork quilt on a personal 9x9 game board. To start play, lay out all of the patches at random in a circle and place a marker directly clockwise of the 2-1 patch. Each player takes five buttons — the currency/points in the game — and someone is chosen as the start player.

On a turn, a player either purchases one of the three patches standing clockwise of the spool or passes. To purchase a patch, you pay the cost in buttons shown on the patch, move the spool to that patch's location in the circle, add the patch to your game board, then advance your time token on the time track a number of spaces equal to the time shown on the patch. You're free to place the patch anywhere on your board that doesn't overlap other patches, but you probably want to fit things together as tightly as possible. If your time token is behind or on top of the other player's time token, then you take another turn; otherwise the opponent now goes. Instead of purchasing a patch, you can choose to pass; to do this, you move your time token to the space immediately in front of the opponent's time token, then take one button from the bank for each space you moved.

In addition to a button cost and time cost, each patch also features 0-3 buttons, and when you move your time token past a button on the time track, you earn "button income": sum the number of buttons depicted on your personal game board, then take this many buttons from the bank.

What's more, the time track depicts five 1x1 patches on it, and during set-up you place five actual 1x1 patches on these spaces. Whoever first passes a patch on the time track claims this patch and immediately places it on his game board.

Additionally, the first player to completely fill in a 7x7 square on his game board earns a bonus tile worth 7 extra points at the end of the game. (Of course, this doesn't happen in every game.)

When a player takes an action that moves his time token to the central square of the time track, he takes one final button income from the bank. Once both players are in the center, the game ends and scoring takes place. Each player scores one point per button in his possession, then loses two points for each empty square on his game board. Scores can be negative. The player with the most points wins.

In the tile-laying game Click A Tree, players embody Ghanaian farmers. They have adapted to climatic conditions and learned to make use of their surroundings, planting their crops in the shade of trees. In this game, you want to plant trees in a strategic arrangement, deploy your harvest workers skillfully, and reap the most harvest.

To set up, randomly draw nine of fifteen tasks; each player places the matching task strips in the empty spaces at the top of their player board, then places seven fruit markers on level 1 of their board. Each player shuffles their fourteen harvest tiles and reveals two of them. Place the seven fruit markers in a circle, then place a random landscape tile between each pair of markers to form the market. Each tile shows one of six trees, one or two fruit types, and either A, B, or AB. Each player starts with a random landscape tile in front of them.

On a turn, choose a fruit marker on your player board, lower it by one space, then collect the two landscape tiles surrounding this marker in the market. Add these tiles to your board, then choose one of your face-up harvest tiles and add it to your forest. Each sickle on the harvest tile adjacent to a landscape tile earns you one fruit of that type for each tile in that fruit group, e.g., placing a sickle next to avocados in a connected group of four tiles will raise your avocado marker four spaces on your player board.

Except sometimes it won't. A fruit marker can't rise to level 2 until you complete a task and remove that strip from your board. To complete a task, you need to arrange trees of the same type in specific configurations, or create a long line of trees, or connect trees with the same letter, or use harvest tiles in defined ways. Whenever you complete a task, you remove that strip, then push all remaining tasks up, giving your fruit markers room to move up.

You also harvest fruit when you place a landscape tile next to a sickle already in play. When all sickles on a harvest have been used, that tile is fulfilled, which lets you lower a number marker on your player board. When enough of your fruit markers move past a number marker — e.g., two past the 2 near the top of the player board, five past the 5, or all seven past the 7 — the game ends at the end of that round. If only one player has triggered the end of the game, they win; if multiple players have, they sum the value of their fruit to determine a winner.

It’s time to cast the next great animated show! A top talent agent like you knows a star when you see one, and the director needs you to fill six roles for the big production. Search Flip Valley for the perfect toon characters, and make sure they’re ready to work together on the silver screen!

FlipToons is a quick deck-building game. You’ll begin with a deck of hopeful toon actors. Each round, flip six of these toons out from your deck into your screen grid to audition together.

Each toon card in your 3-by-2 grid has different talent effects. Some are resolved as soon as they are flipped. Many will interact with one another and (hopefully) earn Fame for your studio. But they won’t all have that special on-screen chemistry you’re looking for. Some won’t work well together at all!

After each Flip, tally up your current grid of toons’ Fame points, then spend them to hire more stars for your cast. Purchase these new toon cards from the market and add them to your deck. Or, spend some of your Fame to dismiss a card, and get that bad actor off the stage. Sorry kid, you just don’t have what it takes to be a star in this show.

If your Flip is the first to generate 30+ Fame, you’ll earn the Critic’s Choice award (worth extra Fame points) and trigger the end of the game. After that turn’s market phase, it’s time for one Final Flip. The player who earns the most Fame during the Final Flip is declared the winner. Applause!

Hello, and welcome to Galactic Cruise. Here, we offer our guests something special: the comfort of a luxury cruise with the innovation of space travel. As the first company to offer extended-stay space vacations, we are excited to have you working for us! As a supervisor of this company, you’ll be expected to not only build these ships and satisfy our guests, but also to help the company thrive by enhancing our company network, inventing new technologies, and growing our workforce. We are a united company, and you’ll often find that what another supervisor does will make your job easier. Let me be clear, though, this is a competition. Our current CEO will be stepping down in three years, and the supervisor who comes out on top will take his place.

On your turn, you will either place a worker to take two actions in the ever-expanding network, launch a ship and send one of your workers to space as a pilot, or recall all your earthbound workers to collect funding bonuses. Actions include acquiring blueprints, constructing ships, attracting guests, and building developments–connections between locations that increase action selection throughout the game. You will also be affecting resource markets that ebb and flow with the actions of all the players.

Throughout the game, you will also be competing with your fellow supervisors to complete company goals, which will earn you progress cubes throughout the game. Progress cubes are also placed when you launch ships, and when a certain number of cubes are placed onto the company’s progress track, the game ends, and the player with the most Victory Points becomes the new CEO of Galactic Cruise.

Do you still think you have what it takes to work for us? You do? Great. Let’s get started.

—description from the publisher