Push Your Luck

A terrible pandemic is spreading through the population. Hospitals are filling up with patients in need of care. Acting as the front-line soldiers against the epidemic are scores of healthcare professionals. They must battle against limited resources and the twin dangers of getting sick and mental breakdown as they try and treat everyone. All hope rests on their capable shoulders.

We Care — based on The Grizzled and inspired by current world events — puts players deep in the trenches as healthcare professionals battling a terrible disease. Working together, players must use their limited resources wisely. The stress of the job is a constant worry, as is possibly contracting the illness themselves.

Part of the proceeds from sales of We Care will go to a healthcare NGO, letting players actually fight against the real-world pandemic.

Lately, it feels like we’re all just dinosaurs trying to avoid the falling meteors. In this game, you’ll try to dodge all of life’s little disasters. You might fall into a pit of hot lava or get ghosted by your dino date, but the dino who survives it all wins the game!

In Happy Little Dinosaurs, the first person to reach 50 points, or be the last Dinosaur standing, wins the game! During each round, you’ll flip a Disaster card featuring a Natural, Predatory, or Emotional disaster. Each player will play a Point card in hopes of collecting points and avoiding the disaster.

You will work to avoid all of life’s little disasters and laugh as they happen to your friends. If you collect 3 Disaster cards of the same type OR 3 different types of Disaster cards, you will be out of the game. Point cards feature weapons, trinkets, and good luck charms that you use to collect points and avoid disasters. Each card has a point value between 0 and 9 that you will use when scoring a round. You can use Instant cards at different points during the game to tip the odds in your favor or save your Dinosaur from certain death.

Player boards include your Dinosaur's traits, an Escape Route you use to track your score, and a Disaster Area where you will collect Disaster cards. Player boards include your Dinosaur's traits, an Escape Route you use to track your score, and a Disaster Area where you will collect Disaster cards. You'll move your Dinosaur meeple along the Excape Route on your player board to track your score. Will you successfully dodge the disasters or get eaten by a prehistoric whale? Only the cards can decide.

You are one of the Dream Sheep, the sheep that people count in order to drift off to Dreamland! Each time you jump the fence, you help your person fall asleep easier — but the Nightmares that haunt these dreams threaten a rude awakening...

On a turn in Sheepy Time, you play one of two cards in your hand to move around the circle, potentially activating neat effects, while jumping the fence each time you complete a lap to put yourself in position to earn more points. When refilling your hand, however, if you draw a Nightmare card, you have to activate the Nightmare — and if it crosses your path, your human may be scared awake, which means you'll earn no points this round. How far do you dare push your Zzzs to prove you're the dreamiest sheep of all!

—description from the publisher

A "roll and write" version of the popular Biblios.

The life of a monastic scribe is not easy. Every day you spend long hours in the monastery copying books, praying, and performing tasks. Through hard work and prayer, earn the abbot’s trust and display your dedication to the pious life.

The object of the game is to score the most piety points. The game consists of 8 days (i.e., rounds). In the first 4 days, players simultaneously roll their own dice (that show various book types, abbot influence and travel points) and may do so up to 3 times. After each roll, the players have 3 options: (1) to keep the dice as shown, (2) to reroll exactly one die or (3) to roll all the dice.

Most of the dice are resource dice showing books monks are copying, but there are also abbot influence dice (abbot influences is accrued in the first half, but spent in the second half of the game), and a travel die (allowing a player's novice to go out into towns to do good works and find more books).

In the last 4 rounds, players use their abbot influence to bid for a priority of tasks.

This is a rare (if not unique) "roll + write" game that includes auctions and, unlike many roll + write game; it is highly interactive.

After 8 days, the game ends and the players calculate scores. As in the original Biblios, the relative value of books changes during the game, so players are unsure of which books will be most valuable until the end of the game.

—description from the designer

In Herbaceous, herb collectors compete to grow and store the most valuable medley of herbs. Everyone starts with four containers, each of which allows a different grouping action:

Group herbs of same type
Group different types
Group pairs
Group any three types (same or different)

On your turn, you draw a herb, then decide to either keep it in your personal collection or put in into the communal pile. If kept, the next card goes to the communal pile; if placed in the communal pile, the next card goes in your personal collection.

At the start of your turn, you can decide to use a container. If so, you assemble cards from personal and communal spaces, group them, then turn them all over. You have then "collected" those and can't use the container again.

At the end of the game, collectors determine the best collection as a combination of value from their collection, matching herbs, and herb sets.