The Rebel Alliance fights valiantly against the tyranny of the Galactic Empire. Each new victory brings the Rebels hope, and each heroic sacrifice strengthens their resolve. Still, the Empire's resources are vast, and the firepower of its Empire Navy is unmatched. With neither side willing to accept defeat, their war rages across the galaxy...In Star Wars: The Deckbuilding Game, a head-to-head game for two players, the galaxy-spanning war between the Galactic Empire and the Rebel Alliance comes alive on your tabletop. In this easy-to-learn game, you and your opponent each choose a side, playing as either the Empire or the Rebels, and as the game progresses you both strengthen the power of your starting decks and work to destroy each other's bases. The first player to destroy three of their opponent's bases wins.In more detail, each player starts with a unique ten-card deck, with seven of those cards providing only resources to acquire new cards. Six cards from a galaxy deck are always on display, with Rebel cards facing the Rebel player, Empire cards the Empire player, and neutral cards turned sideways. You can spend resources to acquire cards in the galaxy row that don't belong to the opponent, and you can use attack power to take out cards that do belong to them, gaining a reward in the process.Each player starts with a base that lacks abilities (Dantooine for the Rebels and Lothal for the Empire), but when that base is destroyed, you get to choose a replacement from your base deck, with each base having a special ability. Choose wisely to counter your opponent's plans! In addition to having special abilities, capital ships absorb damage meant for your base.Players also fight for control of a Force track to gain additional resources or make use of "If the Force is with you..." abilities on their cards.

Read more less

In the most distant reaches of the world, magic still exists, embodied by spirits of the land, of the sky, and of every natural thing. As the great powers of Europe stretch their colonial empires further and further, they will inevitably lay claim to a place where spirits still hold power - and when they do, the land itself will fight back alongside the islanders who live there.Spirit Island is a complex and thematic cooperative game about defending your island home from colonizing Invaders. Players are different spirits of the land, each with its own unique elemental powers. Every turn, players simultaneously choose which of their power cards to play, paying energy to do so. Using combinations of power cards that match a spirit's elemental affinities can grant free bonus effects. Faster powers take effect immediately, before the Invaders spread and ravage, but other magics are slower, requiring forethought and planning to use effectively. In the Spirit phase, spirits gain energy, and choose how / whether to Grow: to reclaim used power cards, to seek for new power, or to spread presence into new areas of the island.The Invaders expand across the island map in a semi-predictable fashion. Each turn they explore into some lands (portions of the island); the next turn, they build in those lands, forming settlements and cities. The turn after that, they ravage there, bringing blight to the land and attacking any native islanders present.The islanders fight back against the Invaders when attacked, and lend the spirits some other aid, but may not always do so exactly as you'd hoped. Some Powers work through the islanders, helping them (eg) drive out the Invaders or clean the land of blight.The game escalates as it progresses: spirits spread their presence to new parts of the island and seek out new and more potent powers, while the Invaders step up their colonization efforts. Each turn represents 1-3 years of alternate-history.At game start, winning requires destroying every last settlement and city on the board - but as you frighten the Invaders more and more, victory becomes easier: they'll run away even if some number of settlements or cities remain. Defeat comes if any spirit is destroyed, if the island is overrun by blight, or if the Invader deck is depleted before achieving victory.The game includes different adversaries to fight against (eg: a Swedish Mining Colony, or a Remote British Colony). Each changes play in different ways, and offers a different path of difficulty boosts to keep the game challenging as you gain skill.

Read more less

In Pandemic, several virulent diseases have broken out simultaneously all over the world! The players are disease-fighting specialists whose mission is to treat disease hotspots while researching cures for each of four plagues before they get out of hand.The game board depicts several major population centers on Earth. On each turn, a player can use up to four actions to travel between cities, treat infected populaces, discover a cure, or build a research station. A deck of cards provides the players with these abilities, but sprinkled throughout this deck are Epidemic! cards that accelerate and intensify the diseases' activity. A second, separate deck of cards controls the "normal" spread of the infections.Taking a unique role within the team, players must plan their strategy to mesh with their specialists' strengths in order to conquer the diseases. For example, the Operations Expert can build research stations which are needed to find cures for the diseases and which allow for greater mobility between cities; the Scientist needs only four cards of a particular disease to cure it instead of the normal five—but the diseases are spreading quickly and time is running out. If one or more diseases spreads beyond recovery or if too much time elapses, the players all lose. If they cure the four diseases, they all win!The 2013 edition of Pandemic includes two new characters—the Contingency Planner and the Quarantine Specialist—not available in earlier editions of the game.Pandemic is the first game in the Pandemic series.

Read more less

With MicroMacro: Crime City – All In, the next district of the crime-ridden black-and-white metropolis Crime City now opens up for the players. On a new, huge city map, which seamlessly follows the previous plans, 16 tricky crime cases are again waiting to be solved by one to four amateur detectives. These are brand new stories, more sophisticated and criminal than ever before! The aim is to determine motives, find evidence and convict the perpetrators. An attentive eye is just as much in demand as creative powers of deduction to unravel everything on the 75 x 110 cm game board. As a little help, a magnifying glass is included in the game and the individual cases are again marked with symbols, so that parents can decide which cases even the youngest investigators may investigate and uncover. MicroMacro: Crime City 3 - All In can be played completely independently, no previous knowledge from the other two parts is required.—description from the publisher

Read more less

Sam Wilson has always helped people, serving as a prodigious social worker even before he became a soaring superhero. Once he donned a pair of high-tech vibranium wings, Sam—also known as the Falcon—used his aerial ability and empathic connection with birds to provide his fellow Avengers a powerful tactical advantage, and now he’s flying into your games of Marvel Champions: The Card Game! With his keen eyesight and ability to detect incoming threats, Falcon is an adaptable hero and a great addition to any team. Within this hero pack, you will find Falcon, his fifteen signature cards, and a full assortment of Leadership cards to help you command your allies from the skies. This pack also includes a bonus modular encounter set featuring Fixer of the Thunderbolts!Anyone looking to take on the agents of A.I.M. will want to add the Falcon Hero Pack to their collection! This expansion comes with a 40-card pre-built deck, giving you the chance to start playing from the moment you open the box.—description from the publisher

Read more less

In Kingdomino, you are a lord seeking new lands in which to expand your kingdom. You must explore all the lands, including wheat fields, lakes, and mountains, in order to spot the best plots, while competing with other lords to acquire them first.The game uses tiles with two sections, similar to Dominoes. Each turn, each player will select a new domino to connect to their existing kingdom, making sure at least one of its sides connects to a matching terrain type already in play. The order of who picks first depends on which tile was previously chosen, with better tiles forcing players to pick later in the next round. The game ends when each player has completed a 5x5 grid (or failed to do so), and points are counted based on number of connecting tiles and valuable crown symbols.

Read more less

Do we really have free will? Who decides this? Are we controlled by what we hear and what we see, even while thinking we decide freely? Insider is a game that deals with these questions. While communicating to others, you have to find the right answers to a quiz or find the "insider" who is manipulating the discussion. The insider will do everything to hide their identity while misleading the others.In more detail, players are assigned roles at random. One player is the "master", and they secretly select a word from a set given in a deck of cards. (In a variant given in the rulebook, they can freely select and write down a word.) The "insider" player, whose role is not known to the other players, will then secretly view the word. The rest of the players are known as "commons". The commons then have approximately five minutes in which to ask the master "yes" or "no"-type questions so that they can deduce the secret word. The insider attempts to secretly lead the commons towards the correct word. If the commons fail to guess the correct word, everyone loses.If, however, the word is correctly guessed in the allowable time, the master flips the sand timer, and the commons and master have until the sand runs out to discuss the game and deduce the identity of the insider. If they guess correctly, they win the game together; if they do not, the insider wins.

Read more less