The 12 Days of Gaming

News and Notes

How to play what is on our tables

Joe

Dale’s Question for Joe and James….

JAMES

The big moment has arrived. You have been named "dragon trainer", and you have the chance to meet them on a mysterious island. But you are not the only trainer sent to these lands. Who among you will discover the most baby dragons?

Dragomino features gameplay similar to Kingdomino, but with gameplay suitable for younger players. At the start of a round, you reveal four domino tiles, with each domino featuring two types of landscapes. Starting with whoever has the mommy dragon figure, players draft a tile and add it to their landscape. If the newly placed tile matches the landscape of one or more adjacent tiles, then you draw an egg tile for that type of landscape and place it face up where those tiles meet. Some eggs feature a baby dragon, which is worth 1 point; others feature an empty shell, which allows you to take the mommy dragon, giving you first pick next round.

After seven rounds, the game ends, and the player who holds the mommy dragon scores 1 additional point.

The Abyss power is once again vacant, so the time has come to get your hands on the throne and its privileges. Use all of your cunning to win or buy votes in the Council. Recruit the most influential Lords and abuse their powers to take control of the most strategic territories. Finally, impose yourself as the only one able to rule the Abyssal people!

Abyss is a game of development, combination and collection in which players try to take control of strategic locations in an underwater city. To achieve this, players must develop on three levels: first by collecting allies, then using them to recruit Lords of the Abyss, who will then grant access to different parts of the city. Players acquire cards through a draft of sorts, and the Lords of the Abyss acquired on those cards grant special powers to the cardholder — but once you use the cards to acquire a location, that power is shut off, so players need to time their land grabs well in order to put themselves in the best position for when the game ends.

Say Anything is a light-hearted game about what you and your friends think. It gives you the chance to settle questions that have been hotly debated for centuries. For instance, "What is the most overrated band of all time?" or "Which celebrity would be the most fun to hang out with for a day?" So dig deep into your heart or just come up with something witty - this is your chance to Say Anything!

New to the Collection

Joe

Speakeasy will transport you to the roaring 1920s during the era of Prohibition. Manhattan was under the firm control of Lucky Luciano, a prominent mobster. To strengthen his grip on the territory, he implemented a well-structured system. He divided Manhattan into different districts, each assigned to a specific mobster responsible for handling their "business" operations.

In this worker-placement and card-management game, you take on the role of one of those mobsters, managing and operating your very own speakeasy empire in Manhattan. To do so, you'll need to use all your cunning and resources to stay ahead of the competition. As you improve your operation, become more infamous, and upgrade to more lavish speakeasies and even casinos, you'll attract the attention of the outside mafia and the police. You need to use your leverage to keep your business running and receive your share from Lucky Luciano.

You need to hire goons to help you take over Manhattan during this exciting and dangerous time. You can associate with outside mobsters — and even attack and rob rum runners to gain valuable resources to gain an edge over your rivals. You need to manage your cards carefully, placing your workers strategically to deliver illicit liquor and reach Manhattan's goals to earn income. You will cook your books to fill your safes with free tax money by achieving some goals.

The ultimate goal is simple: accumulate the most money and become the most successful mobster in the city. Do you have what it takes to rise to the top of the speakeasy scene and take over Manhattan during Prohibition? It's time to grab your fedora and find out in Speakeasy.

Welcome back to the Rococo era! Louis XV reigns in France and is hosting a grand festival in the gardens of Versailles. Everyone is clamoring for you to provide tantalizing and delicious pastries for the event. This isn't just about your pâtisserie – it's about creating a presence at the most prestigious festival of the era that provides the chance to gain everlasting fame, prestige, and opportunities to gain favor with important nobles.

In La Pâtisserie Rococo, players represent the pastry shops (les pâtisseries) and pastry chefs (les pâtissiers) that are preparing pastries for sale and for show at the Versailles Garden Festival. Using the unique deck-building mechanism from Rococo, players hire staff to create recipes, acquire quality ingredients, and bake delicious desserts. Then comes the challenging decision of whether to sell these delectable creations for profit or present them for possible awards. The player who creates the most acclaimed desserts will gain fame and the respect of the king and his nobles.

Vantage is an open-world, co-operative, non-campaign adventure game that features an entire planet to explore, with players communicating while scattered across the world. With nearly eight hundred interconnected locations on four hundred cards and over nine hundred other discoverable cards, the world is your sandbox.

In addition to a mission victory, a destiny victory, or an epic victory (completing both the mission and a destiny), you may define success in Vantagethrough anything you pursue and achieve.

Vantage is not a campaign game. Each game is a standalone experience; you bring to future sessions only what you’ve learned about the world. It is completely self-contained with no expansions — just a few accessories like metal coins.

Kickstarter

Joe

James