Worker Placement

A city as large and crowded as Tempest depends on the daily arrival of supplies and foodstuffs, and the wealthiest echelons of society demand the latest goods and luxuries almost as frequently. Domination of this bustling trade is the ultimate goal of every merchant house in the city.

In Mercante, you control one of these merchant houses. Deploy your trusted agents to purchase goods from arriving ships and sell them into the most profitable markets. You must also do more – from "enticing" senators to outright skulduggery – to claim your rightful place at the pinnacle of Tempest's merchant class. Do you have the business acumen and ruthlessness required to claw your way to the top?

Designed for 3–5 players, Mercante is a game of economic warfare. At the beginning of the game, each player controls one warehouse and two agents. On each turn, goods are purchased at auction and stored in the warehouse to be sold at the various markets when the time is right.

Players compete to accumulate crowns to finance their operations, and senatorial favors (victory points) to win the game. The player who accumulates the most money and favors will control all trade and profit in the City-State of Tempest!

Number 2 in the Tempest Shared World Game Series

Aquileia, the second most important city of the Roman Empire, had been originally founded as an outpost against the Barbarian invaders. From its military origin comes the peculiar quadrilateral structure divided by the main streets. Later, the city developed to become an important political and cultural center and a prosperous trading city, especially for precious goods, thanks to its convenient and efficient river port. Important monuments such as the Gladiator Arena, the horse-racing Stadium, and the famous theater were built, as well as craftsmen's workshops, patrician villas which completed the architectural network of the city.

In Aquileia, players want to become the most powerful figure in the city by trading and building. Each player, representing a wealthy Aquileian patrician, owns a certain number of henchmen (pawns) which he uses for these main activities: sports playing, culture, trading, and building. Each activity can bring expenses, earnings and sometimes victory points (VPs).

Each round begins with a placement phase in which players take turns placing their henchmen on action spaces and their tiebreaker disc on the tiebreaker track. Placing the tiebreaker is mandatory; placing henchmen is not (but you probably want to place them). Once everyone has passed or placed all of their tokens, players resolve the action spaces in numerical order:

The Mercatus allows players to buy weapons, arms and slave cards, collect money through a die roll, claim four blue dice for use with the Arena and Stadium, and trade one currency for another. (This is the only way to make change, and some actions require specific currencies; if you must pay bronze and have only silver and gold, then you cannot take that action!)
At the Arena, players compare fighting strength, with that number determined by the starting strength on the action space claimed, the roll of three dice and the playing of slave and weapon cards. The winner gets three bronze coins and either double his strength in VPs or a slave card. The second and third best players receive lesser rewards.
The Stadium is similar to the Arena, with the horse cards coming into play and the winner receiving gold or silver coins and his choice of two laurel cards; laurel cards deliver 3-10 VPs or are a multiplier for endgame scoring.
The Theatrum brings a bid for a dual-colored laurel card, with players needing to ante and raise in particular currencies.
In the Forum, players build villas and private banks, sometimes scoring points for doing so when they pay the specific costs with the proper coins.
Finally, the Portus gives players a chance to activate their buildings, thereby earning them VPs or money.

After six rounds, the game ends and players score VPs for their hidden point cards and the product of their villas' values times laurel cards of a matching color. (For example, a total of 8 points of blue villas and three blue villa cards equals 24 points.) The player with the most victory points wins.

Stake your fortunes in the mysterious island world of Bora Bora. Journey across islands, building huts where the resilient men and women of your tribes can settle, discovering fishing grounds and collecting shells. Send priests to the temples, and gather offerings to curry favor with the gods.

In Bora Bora, players use dice to perform a variety of actions using careful insight and tactical planning. The heart of the game is its action resolution system in which 5-7 actions are available each round, the exact number depending on the number of players. Each player rolls three dice at the start of the round, then they take turns placing one die at a time on one action. Place a high number on an action, and you'll generally get a better version of that action: more places to build, more choices of people to take, better positioning on the temple track, and so on. Place a low number and you'll get a worse action – but you'll possibly block other players from taking the action at all as in order to take an action you must place a die on it with a lower number than any die already on the action.

Three task tiles on a player's individual game board provide some direction as to what he might want to do, while god tiles allow for special actions and rule-breaking, as gods are wont to do. The player who best watches how the game develops and uses the most effective strategy will prevail.

The peaks of Snowdonia rise before you, encased in mist, their summits barely visible. The highest is Snowdon (Wyddfa) herself at 1,085 metres. The year is 1894, and the Snowdon Mountain Tramroad and Hotels Company Limited has been formed to build a branch line from Llanberis to the summit. You can scarcely believe it's possible!

In Snowdonia players represent work gangs providing labour for the construction of the Snowdon Mountain Railway. Unlike other train games you will have to excavate your way up a mountain side, as well as make and lay the track, construct viaducts and stations. All this in competition with the weather of the Welsh mountains (and the game itself)!

You may be assisted by a train (though that's not always best) and you'll be able to collect essential materials from the Stock Yard. You will obtain special work contracts that give you bonuses.

Can you contribute more than the other players to the magnificence of the Snowdon Mountain Railway?

In the Ancient Greece, the poleis (city-states) thrived increasing their population and culture, occasionally waging war against each other, erecting buildings and celebrating ceremonies to get the favour of the deities abiding on Mount Olympus. The players will lead one of these city-states (like Athens, Sparta, Corinth, Thebes, Argos and others) expanding it and worshipping the various gods in order to become the hegemonic power of the Peloponnesus!

Olympus is a deterministic (i.e., non-random) strategy game, based on worker-placement, resource management and building an efficient engine to score victory points (VPs). It also features a few more aggressive options than the average game based on the same premises (but the savvy player knows how to defend against them, if he prefers to quietly develop his own position).

Each player leads a city-state that is defined by six values representing population, culture, military and productivity of the three resources (grain, venison and fish). During your turn, you send one of your three priests to worship one of the ten deities (Zeus, Hera, Demetra, Artemis, Poseidon, Athena, Aphrodite, Ares, Hephaestus or Apollo). Each opponent can now send one of his priests to celebrate the ceremony with you. After that, the deity grants his favor to whoever has sent a worshipper: the favor is larger for the leading priest (the one of the active player) and smaller for all the others (for example, Athena boosts culture by two points for the city of leading priest and by one point for the others; of course no boost is given to those who refused to send a priest to worship her). That deity cannot be chosen again in the current turn.

Since almost all deities are specialized in a certain field, the players must choose which ones they prefer to worship sooner (also guessing which ones may be of interest for the opponents and which ones are safer to skip as they will not be chosen until later) and when it is better to get a smaller benefit following the priest of another player rather than saving a priest to get a greater boon but in a field that may not interest them as much (sort of quality over quantity).

The resources your city produces (worshipping the correct deities) can be spent (worshipping other deities) to create buildings giving a variety of effects (and VPs), thus offering a lot of different strategic approaches to the game. Victory can be achieved with a plethora of buildings but also with very few ones. There are 45 different buildings: 33 can be built by anyone (even if someone else already did), while the other 12 are unique as only one copy of each can exist (introducing another element of contention between the players). You can also wage war to steal the resources of the other cities (if they were so foolish to keep their warehouses full and their military underdeveloped, it's just what they deserve) or invoke a terrible plague to decimate their population.

All the actions (development, production, building, war, scoring, etc.) are done by worshipping the proper deity (and some gods give you a choice like "do you develop your grain productivity – thus receiving more grain the next time you will produce it – or do you produce it now even if you won't get much?", adding crucial tactical decisions to the game).

When all the priests have been used, there's a brief upkeep to check some simple conditions (e.g., players with more than five unused resources must discard those in excess) and then a new turn begins (all priests return home and all deities can be worshipped again).

Being the first to reach the maximum value in a certain field (e.g. culture 10) gives you an award worth two VPs. When four of these awards are claimed, the game ends. Each player receives bonus points based on how developed his city is and the highest score wins.