Hardback is a deck-building word game, a prequel to Paperback. As an aspiring 19th-century novelist, you work to pen your next masterpiece, earning prestige along the way. Specialize your deck in certain genres to exploit card combinations, and press your luck to draw extra cards — but make sure you can still string a word together!Players build a deck of letters with various powers and race to 60 fame points to win. Some of the features: No wilds in your deck - any card can be wild. Push your luck for more cards with the Ink system. Match genre colors to gain bonus abilities on your cards. New "Timeless Classic" letter cards stay in play until an opponent uses them.In addition to the competitive race mode for 2-5 players, the base game includes several variant rules, including Literary Awards, Adverts, Player Powers, and Events; and a co-op mode for 1-4 players, in which players join forces against one of four simulated opponents, each of which is proficient in a different deck genre.

Read more less

The rails have progressed further to the north, which opens new opportunities for you to deliver your cattle farther than before, even to cities outside American borders. Those locations can be highly advantageous, but they require more work and effort, such as constructing branchlets to give you more opportunities to deliver and gain different rewards.Much of the content in Great Western Trail: Rails to the North (Second Edition) was included in the original Rails to the North expansion, but it has been reworked and upgraded, with the player boards being dual-layered, a game board extension that features different rail paths, and the medium town tiles being modified. Other elements included in this expansion are new objective cards, a revised building 13a-13b, new solo-mode materials for Sam, and a new breed of orange cows.

Read more less

In Great Western Trail: Argentina, you own a vast estancia in Argentina at the end of the 19th century, and you will need to travel the plains of the Pampas with your cattle to deliver them to the main train station in Buenos Aires.Great Western Trail: Argentina features gameplay elements similar to Great Western Trail such as deck management, the rondel mechanism, and the ability to upgrade your player board, along with twists on these elements and new features.The player board features a new type of worker — farmers — and different paths await on the game board to confront you with more choices. Will you take the road with buildings or a path past farmers? Maybe you'll have the chance to use your cows — well, the strength on your cow cards — to help farmers, getting them on your side and adding grain, a new type of resource, to your income, with grain being used for boat and city tiles.Perhaps you can unlock shortcuts that allow you to deliver your herd to Buenos Aires more quickly. Sure, you'll forfeit the use of action buildings, but maybe you can catch others unaware, with the ships leaving before they deliver. The timing of reaching the central train station to deliver your herd has never been so crucial, and valuable bonuses await on the city's port tiles.Money is easier to get in Great Western Trail: Argentina, but you have more to manage in terms of action options, shortcuts, and cards (including the new exhaustion cards), so the challenges won't let up.Great Western Trail: Argentina also includes a solitaire challenge in which Pedro is waiting for you to try to beat his score.

Read more less

The world of Gloom is a sad and benighted place. The sky is gray, the tea is cold, and a new tragedy lies around every corner. Debt, disease, heartache, and packs of rabid flesh-eating mice—just when it seems like things can't get any worse, they do. But some say that one's reward in the afterlife is based on the misery endured in life. If so, there may yet be hope—if not in this world, then in the peace that lies beyond.In the Gloom card game, you assume control of the fate of an eccentric family of misfits and misanthropes. The goal of the game is sad, but simple: you want your characters to suffer the greatest tragedies possible before passing on to the well-deserved respite of death. You'll play horrible mishaps like Pursued by Poodles or Mocked by Midgets on your own characters to lower their Self-Worth scores, while trying to cheer your opponents' characters with marriages and other happy occasions that pile on positive points. The player with the lowest total Family Value wins.Printed on transparent plastic cards, Gloom features an innovative design by noted RPG author Keith Baker. Multiple modifier cards can be played on top of the same character card; since the cards are transparent, elements from previously played modifier cards either show through or are obscured by those played above them. You'll immediately and easily know the worth of every character, no matter how many modifiers they have. You've got to see (through) this game to believe it!Each of the three expansions for Gloom adds one more player, thus with all three expansions, this should be playable with seven players.

Read more less

The cooperative game Ghost Stories often has players on the edge of their seats with uncertainty over whether their monks will be able to protect a village against the many aspects of Wu-Feng that threaten it. With Ghost Stories: Black Secret, the players will face an even more powerful dilemma: Wu-Feng himself.Yes, the player count for Black Secret is 2-5 (instead of 1-4) as one player will take on the role of Wu-Feng and harass the monks in a more direct manner than they've experienced previously. Wu-Feng now chooses where the incoming ghosts will be placed on the individual monk boards. Instead of placing the ghost on the board, Wu-Feng can use that ghost to power colored spells matching the color of the ghost (while casting the spells bring Wu-Feng access to stronger spells) or to bring new demon miniatures in play that scour the catacombs underneath the village; these figures are searching for the remains of Wu-Feng by digging in the dirt located there, and should they find the three icons required, the shadow of Wu-Feng descends on the village to fight directly with the monks.To aid the monks in their fight against this more devious incarnation of Wu-Feng, they have access to blood mantras, special abilities that come in different levels to adjust for the difficulty of play. When a monk loses a life, the Qi token is placed on the mantra. When two tokens are on one of the level-2-mantras, one monk of the players' choice gains a Qi. When 4 Qi are collected on one of the level-4-mantras, all village tiles are dehaunted.

Read more less

The Breaking Point, an expansion for Gen7: A Crossroads Game, includes more story content, a competitive play mode and more barracks, allowing for games with up to six players.

Read more less

Ganymede is a development and tableau-building game in which players are corporations specialized in sending settlers to colonize the universe. To do so, you will recruit settlers on Earth, use shuttles to transport them to Mars, then to Ganymede where the settlers' ships launch base is located.The game ends when a player has launched four settlers' ships into space. Players score VP from their launched ships and from their reputation track.

Read more less

Description from the publisher:When the members of the underworld start to cross the bridge that leads to their headquarters, nobody knows who will reach the other side. Dash, crash, and cash in Gang Rush Breakout — whoever meets the Godfather with the most loot wins!

Read more less

The woods are old-growth, dappled with sunlight. Delicious mushrooms beckon from every grove and hollow. Morels may be the most sought-after in these woods, but there are many tasty and valuable varieties awaiting the savvy collector. Bring a basket if you think it's your lucky day. Forage at night and you will be all alone when you stumble upon a bonanza. If you're hungry, put a pan on the fire and bask in the aroma of chanterelles as you sauté them in butter. Feeling mercantile? Sell porcini to local aficionados for information that will help you find what you seek deep in the forest.Fungi, a strategic card game for two players, uses two decks: a Day Deck (84 cards) that includes ten different types of mushrooms as well as baskets, cider, butter, pans, and moons; and a smaller Night Deck (8 cards) of mushrooms to be foraged by moonlight. Each mushroom card has two values: one for selling and one for cooking. Selling two or more like mushrooms grants foraging sticks that expand your options in the forest (that is, the running tableau of eight face-up cards on the table), enabling offensive or defensive plays that change with every game played. Cooking sets of three or more like mushrooms – sizzling in butter or cider if the set is large enough – earns points toward winning the game. With poisonous mushrooms wielding their wrath and a hand-size limit to manage, card selection is a tricky proposition at every turn.Following each turn, one card from the forest moves into a decay pile that is available for only a short time. The Day Deck then refills the forest from the back, creating the effect of a walk in the woods in which some strategic morsels are collected, some are passed by, and others lay ahead.

Read more less

In Forest Shuffle, players compete to gather the most valuable trees, then attract species to these trees, thus creating an ecologically balanced habitat for flora and fauna.To start, each player has six cards in hand, with cards depicting either a particular type of tree or two forest dwellers (animal, plant, mushroom, etc.), with these latter cards being divided in half, whether vertically or horizontally, with one dweller in each card half.On a turn, either draw two cards — whether face down from the deck or face up from the clearing — and add them to your hand, or play a card from your hand by paying the cost, then putting it into play.Each tree and dweller shows a cost, and to pay this cost, you must discard cards from your hand into the clearing face up. If you play a tree, flip the top card of the deck into the clearing, then place the tree in front of you. If you play a dweller, pay only the cost on the dweller you choose, then slide this card under a tree that has an empty side that matches the dweller you want to play. (A tree can have cards played on all four sides of it: top, bottom, left, and right.)Alternatively, you can play a card face down as a tree sapling. This card costs nothing and can have dwellers played on it, but it has no species, whereas each tree is one of eight species.After you play a card, you can use the effect on this card (drawing cards, placing additional cards, taking another turn, etc.) or gain the bonus you gained if you paid for this card with cards of the same color — or both, if applicable, with the effect taking place before the bonus.If at the end of your turn the clearing contains more than nine cards, place all of these cards in the box out of play.During set-up, three winter cards were placed into the bottom third of the deck. When the third winter card is drawn, the game ends immediately, then players tally their points based on the trees and dwellers in their forest. Whoever scores the most points wins.Forest Shuffle is the first in a line of Lookout games sporting the Lookout Greenline label, produced on FSC certified paper and avoiding plastic completely.

Read more less

In Forbidden Jungle, your team has crash-landed on a mysterious jungle planet, and you need to work together to survive. Search the ruins of an abandoned outpost for an elusive escape portal, all while fending off an ever-growing horde of venomous creatures and an escalating chain of collapsing locations. Shift tiles to power up the portal and live to see another day!

Read more less

Forbidden Island is a visually stunning cooperative board game. Instead of winning by competing with other players like most games, everyone must work together to win the game. Players take turns moving their pawns around the 'island', which is built by arranging the many beautifully screen-printed tiles before play begins. As the game progresses, more and more island tiles sink, becoming unavailable, and the pace increases. Players use strategies to keep the island from sinking, while trying to collect treasures and items. As the water level rises, it gets more difficult- sacrifices must be made.What causes this game to truly stand out among co-op and competitive games alike is the extreme detail that has been paid to the physical components of the game. It comes in a sturdy and organized tin of good shelf storage size. The plastic treasure pieces and wooden pawns are well crafted and they fit just right into the box. The cards are durable, well printed, and easy to understand. The island tiles are the real gem: they are screen-printed with vibrant colors, each with a unique and pleasing image.With multiple levels of difficulty, different characters to choose from (each with a special ability of their own), many optional island formats and game variations available, Forbidden Island has huge replay value. The game can be played by as few as two players and up to four (though it can accommodate five). More players translates into a faster and more difficult game, though the extra help can make all the difference. This is a fun game, tricky for players of almost any age. Selling for under twenty dollars, oddly, Forbidden Island is a rare game of both quality and affordable price. For those who enjoy Forbidden Island, a follow-up project by Gamewright titled Forbidden Desert was released in 2013.Dare to discover Forbidden Island! Join a team of fearless adventurers on a do-or-die mission to capture four sacred treasures from the ruins of this perilous paradise. Your team will have to work together and make some pulse-pounding maneuvers, as the island will sink beneath every step! Race to collect the treasures and make a triumphant escape before you are swallowed into the watery abyss!

Read more less