The Christmas presents are all opened now and there are 4 new games in my collection ^^
I got:
Le Havre: From BGG: a player’s turn consists of two parts: First, distribute newly supplied goods onto the offer spaces; then take an action. As an action, players may choose either to take all goods of one type from an offer space or to use one of the available buildings. Building actions allow players to upgrade goods, sell them or use them to build their own buildings and ships. Buildings are both an investment opportunity and a revenue stream, as players must pay an entry fee to use buildings that they do not own. Ships, on the other hand, are primarily used to provide the food that is needed to feed the workers.
After every seven turns, the round ends: players’ cattle and grain may multiply through a Harvest, and players must feed their workers. After a fixed number of rounds, each player may carry out one final action, and then the game ends. Players add the value of their buildings and ships to their cash reserves. The player who has amassed the largest fortune is the winner.
Kingsburg: From BGG: In Kingsburg, players are Lords sent from the King to administer frontier territories.
The game takes place over five years, a total of 20 turns. In every year, there are 3 production seasons for collecting resources, building structures, and training troops. Every fourth turn is the winter, in which all the players must fight an invading army. Each player must face the invaders, so this is not a cooperative game.
The resources to build structures and train troops are collected by influencing the advisers in the King's Council. Players place their influence dice on members of the Council. The player with the lowest influence dice sum will be the first one to choose where to spend his/her influence; this acts as a way of balancing poor dice rolling. Even with a very unlucky roll, a clever player can still come out from the Council with a good number of resources and/or soldiers.
Each adviser on the King's Council will award different resources or allocate soldiers, victory points, and other advantages to the player who was able to influence him/her for the current turn.
At the end of five years, the player who best developed his assigned territory and most pleased the King through the Council is the winner.
Many alternate strategies are possible to win: will you go for the military way, disregarding economic and prestige buildings, or will you aim to complete the big Cathedral to please the King? Will you use the Merchant's Guild to gain more influence in the Council, or will you go for balanced development?
Seasons: From BGG: Seasons is a game of cards and dice which takes place in two phases:
The first phase consists of a draft: the goal during this phase will be to establish a strategy for the rest of the game with 9 cards that can be selected (Each card has a specific effect and earns victory points).
Once the draft is complete, each player must separate his 9 cards into 3 packs of 3 cards. He will begin the second phase of the game with his first pack of three cards, then gradually as the game progresses, he will receive the other two packets of three cards.
Next comes the second phase of play: at the beginning of each round a player will roll the seasons dice (dice = number of players +1).
These cubes offer a variety of actions to the players:
- Increase your invocation (maximum number of cards you may have placed on table)
- Harvesting energy (water, earth, fire, air) to pay the cost of invocation maps
- Crystallization energy (during the current season) to collect crystals. These serve both as a resource to rely on some cards, but also many victory points in the endgame.
- Draw new cards
Each player can choose only one die per turn. The first player will choose among those launched, then the following among those remaining and so on. At each turn, the dice indicate how many remaining cells (1, 2 or 3 boxes) the marker of the seasons ahead.
In addition, all the dice are different depending on the season. For example, there are not the same energies to a particular season. Throughout the game, players will therefore have to adapt to these changes.
At the end of the game, we add the points of victory on the cards, given the number of crystals possessed. The player with the most victory points wins.
and
Cyclades:Hades: Cyclades: Hades, an expansion for Cathala and Maublanc's Cyclades, consists of four modules that can be used individually or combined in various ways. In the Cyclades base game, players fight for domination over archipelagos in ancient Greece. They make offerings to gods to secure their favors and summon mythological creatures. The Hades expansion allows players to add Hades (no surprise there) to other gods present in the base game: Zeus, Ares, Athena, Poseidon and Apollo. Players will be able to build a Necropolis and summon undead armies when they gain favors of Hades.
I'm most intrigued by Seasons and Kingsburg so I'm guessing they'll be hitting the table first ^^. I like the others too since they're on my Want To Buy list... That list is growing every day though.. so many games and so little time (or sometimes people) to play!
Brought my entire Memoir collection with me on vacation. Will be good to dig back into. Some of it (like the Air Pack) I've barely touched.
