Nautical

Description from the designer:

Nautilion is a dice game in the Oniverse series!

Take the helm of a Nautilion submarine and recruit a heroic crew to vanquish the treacherous Darkhouse that lurks in the oceanic depths. You must get to the Abyss, lair of the Darkhouse, before the Phantom Submarine (his henchman) reaches your homeland, the Happy Isles — but to defeat the Darkhouse, not only must you be faster than the Phantom Submarine, you must also assemble the submarine's crew along the way.

Each turn, you roll three dice and give one to each of these figures: the Nautilion, the Phantom Submarine, and the Darkhouse. The dice of the Nautilion and the Phantom Submarine move those figures along a path formed by Crew tokens: the Nautilion from the Happy Isles towards the Abyss; the Phantom Submarine in the opposite direction. The crew token on which your Nautilion ends its move joins your submarine, the one the Phantom Submarine reaches is lost!

Only four copies exist of each of the nine different tokens, so you have to decide carefully which die you need and which you can leave to your enemies. (The Darkhouse doesn't move, but inflicts damage to you each time he gets a die with a high value.) To win, you need to reach the Abyss with a full crew of nine different tokens.

Five expansions are included with the game, adding new crew members, powers, treacheries and challenges.

In the age of exploration the players arrive at a new home far away from their homeland. They try to settle the big island and each player tries to explore one part of it by placing landscape tiles. Landscape tiles grant resources and those are used to erect buildings with special abilities. Barriers on the island have to be removed in order to explore the island even further. Players build valuable statues and supply ships get them the supplies from the old world they need to be a successful settler on Cooper Island.

The special thing about Cooper Island is the way the players mark their victory points. They sail with ships around the island to show their progress. On their way around the island they find smaller islands inshore that grant valuable benefits. After five rounds, a game of Cooper Island ends and the player who developed the best and went on furthest with their ships will win.

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The second printing of the German and English versions of the game, along with the Spanish version of the game, include the Solo Against Cooper expansion that was originally available separately as a bonus item.

—description from the publisher

Hoist your sails and mind those tricky tides! Take command of a merchant ship and manage your hand of navigation cards and the goods in your ship’s cargo hold while charting the best course on the map.

Travel from island to island collecting goods and delivering them to earn the most gold.

Tricky Tides is a pick-up-and-deliver game that uniquely employs trick taking to determine turn order and the direction players can move their ships.

—description from the publisher

A fun twist of the classic game! Rule the High Seas! Your mission is to gain control of five of the world's oceans. You must establish strong Task Forces to defeat your opponent. Dispatch your Fleet to any or all of the 5 oceans as you plan your strategy. Issue special commands that could block your opponent's movements. When you're ready to battle, engage your opponent in head-to-head combat. Take control of 3 oceans and you win! Contents: 2 decks of 36 fleet cards, 5 ocean cards, and rules booklet.

In Raids, players sail from island to island to collect vikings and viking-related paraphernalia, using them fight one another for good spaces and fight monsters for points.

In more detail, the game lasts four rounds, and at the start of each round tiles are laid out at the various locations on the path that all players must follow. On a turn, a player moves to either an empty spot on the path to claim one of the tiles located there or to an occupied spot. In the latter case, the attacking player must sacrifice a viking, then the defending player must sacrifice two vikings or vacate the space; if they sac two vikings, then the attacker must remove three or leave. Eventually, someone must leave.

You can collect runes with an eye toward having lots of the same type or collect goods to sell at the end of the round. You might gather axes to give you better odds against monsters. You can collect more vikings for your crew.

At the end of each round, players score majority bonuses depending on the tiles that were revealed before the round started. After four rounds, whoever has the most points wins!