Vendor: Stronghold Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 58.85

Vendor: Lookout Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 134.95

Vendor: Capstone Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 74.95

In Black Forest, you start out with a small domain in need of new buildings and livestock. You’ll travel from village to village to enlist the aid of the best specialists. Exploiting the abilities of these specialists lets you collect resources, lay out new landscape tiles (e.g., ponds and fields), and build a variety of buildings, which come in four types:

"Immediate" buildings with a one-time effect
Processing buildings and buildings with an ongoing effect
Buildings that provide bonus points at the end of the game for various accomplishments

Choose the right buildings, place landscapes, fire up your glass production, and expand your domain.
Two resource wheels on your tableau help you keep track of your resources and production.
A wide selection of buildings and their different effects offer many different paths to victory.

Uwe Rosenberg’s legendary resource wheels are making once again making their presence, made famous in Glass Road (2013). Black Forest continues the story - as the name suggests — in the Black Forest. Among others, the main difference between the two games is the the action selection (Worker Placement/Black Forest vs. Simultaneous Action Selection/Glass Road).

—description from publisher

Vendor: Devir
Type: Board Games
Price: 67.95

"It was our darkest hour. The warnings, the desperate cries … Nobody wanted to hear them. Until it was almost too late. When almost only burned soil was left. We were not saved by ourselves. It was the trees. As if they knew what the hour has struck. They showed us what mattered. But we understood and embraced them. Now we know what to do and help. As good as we can. With those few technologies that we have left. With new natural technologies that we gained from the Arbors. Green energy and oxygen are needed to overgrow burned soil with live-giving greenery. To find hope in our new world of Overgrown …"
(Dr. Ayleen Espero, specialist on oxygen)

In Planta Nubo players grow energy-rich flowers and plants in cloudy gardens – the treetops of the Arbors. Deliver them to bee-like airships which transport them to the biomass converters to be transformed into green energy. Sow woods on the freshly harvested soil. Energize helpful modules while your woods, your bots and the Arbor produce desperately needed oxygen. Make good use of your tools to perform actions and use your garden bot to help you grow flowers. Supply your platform bot with energy to use modules and operate Oxyfarms. Turn your Arbor into the best oxygen production facility! If you produce the most oxygen by the end of the game you win!

—description from the designer

Vendor: Lookout Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 35.95

ETA Q4 2024

In Patchwork, two players compete to build the most aesthetic (and high-scoring) patchwork quilt on a personal 9x9 game board. To start play, lay out all of the patches at random in a circle and place a marker directly clockwise of the 2-1 patch. Each player takes five buttons — the currency/points in the game — and someone is chosen as the start player.

On a turn, a player either purchases one of the three patches standing clockwise of the spool or passes. To purchase a patch, you pay the cost in buttons shown on the patch, move the spool to that patch's location in the circle, add the patch to your game board, then advance your time token on the time track a number of spaces equal to the time shown on the patch. You're free to place the patch anywhere on your board that doesn't overlap other patches, but you probably want to fit things together as tightly as possible. If your time token is behind or on top of the other player's time token, then you take another turn; otherwise the opponent now goes. Instead of purchasing a patch, you can choose to pass; to do this, you move your time token to the space immediately in front of the opponent's time token, then take one button from the bank for each space you moved.

In addition to a button cost and time cost, each patch also features 0-3 buttons, and when you move your time token past a button on the time track, you earn "button income": sum the number of buttons depicted on your personal game board, then take this many buttons from the bank.

What's more, the time track depicts five 1x1 patches on it, and during set-up you place five actual 1x1 patches on these spaces. Whoever first passes a patch on the time track claims this patch and immediately places it on his game board.

Additionally, the first player to completely fill in a 7x7 square on his game board earns a bonus tile worth 7 extra points at the end of the game. (Of course, this doesn't happen in every game.)

When a player takes an action that moves his time token to the central square of the time track, he takes one final button income from the bank. Once both players are in the center, the game ends and scoring takes place. Each player scores one point per button in his possession, then loses two points for each empty square on his game board. Scores can be negative. The player with the most points wins.

Vendor: Lookout Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 69.95

ETA Q4 2024

A best-of-BIGBOX of the well known Nusfjord by Uwe Rosenberg. This Big Box includes Nusfjord base game, 2 former expansions (Plaice and Salmon) and 2 completely new expansions, both with extra components for more entertainment!

Note: The above image is for game presentation only and not the actual box.

Vendor: Z-Man Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 45.95

ETA Q4 2024

The first large expansion for A Feast for Odin, The Norwegians includes four new islands (Isle of Man, Isle of Skye, Islay, Outer Hebrides) with Irish coastal viking-settlements on the backside (Waterford, Wexford, Cork, Limerick), where people from Norway came to stay through the winter (longphort), to trade at, and to settle nearby. This offers new strategies and new puzzle-pieces like horse (6VP, 2x5 spaces)/pregnant horse/leather(green)/vadmal(blue) and pigs (1 VP, breed every round; 2x3 - 1 = 5 spaces)/herbal (orange)/ antler (green)/tools (blue). The game will have a third box for the pieces and the four old islands, too (little different VPs and new graphic-aspects of mini-expansion islands Lofoten/Orkneys/Tierra del Fuego).

The expansion includes another mountain-strip, more two-silver coins, meat/beans and runes/oil and a "little emigration" piece that covers one food instead of two. You get it on a new action-plan for giving away a whaling boat. The plan has three pieces that can be turned around for different numbers of players (version for 1-2, 3, and 4 players), which increases the chances of players getting in each other's way. It contains new opportunities like butchering, elk-hunting, fishing, and thievery, along with changes for some old actions. It's now easier, for example, to play an animal strategy, also because you can now get two of the same animals in one action. There is also a new fifth row to make a (better) action with your last viking. You can smith, for example, now a grey piece with maximum of eight swords by using an ore and only one action. Also for this, there are five new grey puzzle-pieces like pan, hauberk or anvil and a little board for smith-able pieces with fewer than nine swords.

Totally new is also the idea of a random start-building. Everybody gets one of the six boards and can build the front or back with one wood and one action. These buildings offer, covered like stonehouse and longhouse, some stuff (pieces, weapons, commodities), VPs and one silver (horse stable 2 silver), so everybody has another different start-opportunity - like the profession card. In this expansion, you choose the best of two cards to start with. Another new option is, that instead of puting a profession card into the game, you can throw it away for a VP-chip. A nice little competitive element, because there are only two 4-VP-chips, six 3-VP-chips and eight (endless) 2-VP-chips.

As before, the expansion includes an almanac about game-elements and their viking-history, again written by Gernot Köpke as a "historical-science"-journalist and learnd lokal newspaper editor.

—description from the designer

Vendor: IELLO
Type: Board Games
Price: 23.95

In the two-player game Clash of Magic Schools, each player is the headmaster of one of the magic schools facing each other in the finals of the Tournament of Sorcerers. Be prepared to do anything it takes to help your school win this prestigious challenge.

During the game, send your students to face danger in a series of perilous trials across different arenas, while knowing that the rival school will try to steal victory from you at any cost, even by using forbidden magic. Tensions are high...

Who will win the Tournament of Sorcerers this year?

—description from the publisher

Vendor: Capstone Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 32.95

As a prestigious city planner, you have been ordered by the queen herself to build a harmonious city. Take care to balance the human and natural realms by creating equal amounts of building (black) and park (green) tiles, and do not forget to incorporate the shape of a rectangle — the shape most important for fortification. Can you build a city worthy of the queen?

In Tangram City, players place tangram-shaped tiles in a randomly determined order in a square field while trying to balance the amount of building (black) and park (green) tiles. The more balanced these are and the more often you have built a rectangle shape, the more bonus points players receive.

Vendor: Feuerland Spiele
Type: Board Games
Price: 104.95

Using the central board in A Feast for Odin, players have to hunt, gather basic materials, refine those materials, develop their production-buildings, build/buy ships, and raid settlements.

The resulting earnings are placed on the players' board in the best possible pattern to produce income and (later) victory points.

Vendor: Rio Grande Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 14.95

Designer Uwe Rosenberg has a talent for dreaming up new and inventive card games, and Mamma Mia! is a perfect example of this talent, with players placing pizza ingredients into a combined pool, then trying to time their pizza baking in order to make use of what's available in the kitchen.

Each player starts the game with eight different pizza orders to fill, with one of those order cards in hand; each player also starts with a hand of ingredient cards (showing pepperoni, mushroom, pineapple, green pepper or olive). On a turn, a player lays down one or more ingredient cards of a single type into a common stack, then optionally adds a pizza order card to that stack. He then refills his hand by drawing as many cards as he played from either the shared ingredient deck or his own order deck.

After the draw pile is exhausted, the shared pile of cards is flipped over and sorted by ingredients until an order comes up. If enough ingredient cards are available to fill that order, the owner scores it; if not, the player can make up the difference by playing cards from his hand (and thereby scoring the order) or else return the card to the bottom of his order deck.

Once all the orders are scored or returned, shuffle the ingredients used in pizzas and start another round of play. After three complete rounds, the player who's filled the most orders wins!

Vendor: Lookout Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 27.95

In Stack'n Stuff, a more streamlined version of Patchwork, players are on the move. However, packing all of your stuff into a moving truck is quite tricky, costly, and time consuming — and the day runs out fast!

During the game, the last player on the time track chooses one of the next three furniture items. After paying the transportation cost and spending the loading time, the player places the patch on their truck game board. Whoever manages to pack their truck best, as well as earns the most money during the game, is a moving master and wins!

—description from the designer

Vendor: Z-Man Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 43.95

Vendor: Z-Man Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 90.95

In the worker placement game Arler Erde, set in the German region of East Frisia, players develop an estate and expand their territory by cutting peat and building dikes.

The game lasts nine half-years with alternating summer and winter seasons, and each season allows or denies specific player actions. Different and detailed manufacturing processes allow a player to create goods needed to expand her estate. In addition, trades with adjoining municipalities can help a player gain the needed resources or goods for building and expanding.

Vendor: Lookout Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 23.95

Vendor: Capstone Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 9.95

Vendor: The Game Builders
Type: Board Games
Price: 79.95

Note: This game is in German. For a preview, English rule can be found here.

"It was our darkest hour. The warnings, the desperate cries … Nobody wanted to hear them. Until it was almost too late. When almost only burned soil was left. We were not saved by ourselves. It was the trees. As if they knew what the hour has struck. They showed us what mattered. But we understood and embraced them. Now we know what to do and help. As good as we can. With those few technologies that we have left. With new natural technologies that we gained from the Arbors. Green energy and oxygen are needed to overgrow burned soil with live-giving greenery. To find hope in our new world of Overgrown …"
(Dr. Ayleen Espero, specialist on oxygen)

In Planta Nubo players grow energy-rich flowers and plants in cloudy gardens – the treetops of the Arbors. Deliver them to bee-like airships which transport them to the biomass converters to be transformed into green energy. Sow woods on the freshly harvested soil. Energize helpful modules while your woods, your bots and the Arbor produce desperately needed oxygen. Make good use of your tools to perform actions and use your garden bot to help you grow flowers. Supply your platform bot with energy to use modules and operate Oxyfarms. Turn your Arbor into the best oxygen production facility! If you produce the most oxygen by the end of the game you win!

—description from the designer

Vendor: Lookout Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 77.95

In Le Havre, 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.

Vendor: AMIGO
Type: Board Games
Price: 22.95

Vendor: Stronghold Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 58.95

Vendor: AMIGO
Type: Board Games
Price: 13.95

Vendor: Lookout Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 15.95

Vendor: Spielworxx
Type: Board Games
Price: 109.95

The Oranienburg canal, which gave this game its name, was built between 1832 and 1837 in Brandenburg. The Havel River was difficult to navigate near the Oranienburg mills, so a canal was built from the Havel that crossed the older Ruppin canal, thereby forming the Oranienburg canal cross. During the industrialization in the 19th century, lots of companies and businesses were formed at this important waterway. Moreover, additional streets and railways were built.

In Oranienburger Kanal, you erect new industries and shape the infrastructure by building pathways, streets, railways, and canals. Most important of all are bridges that connect buildings. To do all of this, you have access to various actions that you select in the right moments.

At the end of the game, the player with the best industrial area and the best infrastructure wins.

Oranienburger Kanal also includes a solo game!

—description from the publisher

Vendor: Lookout Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 39.95

Vendor: Lookout Games
Type: Board Games
Price: 64.95

 
The Atiwa Range is a region of southeastern Ghana in Africa, consisting of steep-sided hills with rather flat summits. A large portion of the range comprises an evergreen forest reserve, which is home to many an endangered species. However, logging and hunting for bushmeat as well as mining for gold and bauxite are putting the reserve under a lot of pressure.

Meanwhile, in the nearby town of Kibi, the mayor is causing a stir by giving shelter to a large number of fruit bats in his own garden. This man has recognized the great value the animals have in deforested regions of our planet: Fruit bats sleep during the day and take off at sunset in search of food, looking for suitable fruit trees up to 60 miles away. They excrete the seeds of the consumed fruit, disseminating them across large areas as the fly home: A single colony of 150,000 fruit bats can reforest an area of up to 2,000 acres a year.

Just like that mayor, in this game, you will develop a small community near the Atiwa Range, creating housing for new families and sharing your newly gained knowledge on the negative effects of mining and the importance that the fruit bats have for the environment. Acquire new land, manage your animals and resources, and make your community prosper. The player who best balances the needs of their community and the environment wins.