Boardgames.co.za: New Strategy & Adventure Games

Published December 1, 2015

This entry is part 4 of 7 in the series Boardgames.co.za Christmas Catalog Boardgames.co.za has released their Christmas 2015 Catalog and I am here to share the news of these amazing games with you!

We take a look at their New Strategy & Adventure Games. (Please bear in mind that this isn’t the only games they have available but merely some popular ones for this Holiday season)

All these games are available from Boardgames.co.za or one of their amazing retailers country wide! You can now look for one near you with their nifty Store Locator Tool !

Visit their Facebook page here ! Twitter @ ChiefKid_ZA

NEW STRATEGY & ADVENTURE GAMES

Thunderbirds

In Thunderbirds, you and your friends take on the role of International Rescue – a secret organization formed to render aid when all other means have failed. Meanwhile, your arch nemesis, The Hood, is threatening to trigger terrible disasters around the world in an effort to learn your secrets. If you can foil his scheme while completing your missions, then you and your fellow players win the game!

Each person plays different character in the game, for example, you might be Scott Tracy or Lady Penelope. All the different characters can operate any of the different vehicles. You might load up the Mole, fly Thunderbird 2 to Tracy Island, then hop into Thunderbird 3 with Alan and dock with Thunderbird 5 in Geo-stationary orbit. You’ll use all of the vehicles to complete different missions around the world and in outer space. And you’ll be continually weighing the threat of any of these individual missions against the overall danger of The Hood’s scheme.

Arctic Scavengers: Recon

The world of Arctic Scavengers pits players against one another in an attempt to survive a post-apocalyptic ice age. As the competing tribes developed and grew, headquarters were established for each tribe (supported via the HQ expansion included with the Arctic Scavengers base game from Rio Grande Games).

As the tribes have evolved further and struggled for dominance, information has become the most valuable currency. In the new world mapped out in Arctic Scavengers: Recon, deception reigns, leading to a need for reconnaissance. This expansion adds new tribe leader roles, new mercenaries, new equipment, and new levels of player interaction (i.e., new ways to make your opponents feel pain).

Puzzle Strike

Puzzle Strike is a card game played with cardboard chips instead of cards that simulates a puzzle video game such as Puzzle Fighter or Tetris.

It’s a deckbuilding game, which means you build your deck as you play. There are lots of deck-building games, but Puzzle Strike is the premiere competitive deck-building game. It’s highly interactive due to the crash gem system, it’s asymmetric with 10 characters to choose from in the base set, it gets to the action quickly because you start with character chips in your deck, and games tend to be exciting and close because whenever you’re on the edge of losing, you’re also able to do even more combos than usual. Years of Puzzle Strike tournaments have shown that it’s still interesting after even thousands of plays against the best players.

Puzzle Strike is also appropriate as a casual game though. The millions of different starting conditions from the different bank configurations and character matchups means there’s tons of variety. The comeback mechanics that lead to excitingly close games in expert play work just as well for beginners. In addition, casual players love the 4-player free-for-all mode. It has no player elimination.

Lord$ of Vega$

Las Vegas. The Strip. To the untrained eye, it’s a sleepy desert crossroads. A wasteland of cheap hotels, gas stations, and dust. But to you, it is Paradise.

Your brilliant plan? You will construct a magnificent chain of casinos and fill them with light. You will manufacture the ultimate dream of easy money and impossible luxury. You will sell-basically-nothing. You are not alone in this plan. In Lords of Vegas, you and your friends play rival developers, building on the Las Vegas Strip. You can get ahead by building the glitziest, most glamorous, and most popular casinos. But you can fall behind by letting your enemy become your boss.

Lords of Vegas is a clever strategy game with all the thrills, risks, and rewards of the casino business. You start out with empty lots, build small casinos, and expand them as your bankroll grows. Your rivals can build next door, and they just might take you over with a clever paint job or a lucky roll of the dice.

Buy, sell, trade, and gamble your way to the top as you build your empire along the storied Strip.So come on, roll the dice, and build your piece of Paradise!

Shadows over Normandie

The game features three opposing armies controlled by the players. These forces include the German Cult of the Black Sun, the ancient Deep Ones and the US Rangers. Each force is made up of infantry, tanks or creatures and of course, heroes and villains. Each unit has its own set of unique characteristics and skills depicted on the high quality chunky tokens.

EPIC

Epic is a card game designed to start quickly but also to reward deep, strategic plays. In Epic, you take on the role of an elder god, in conflict with other elder gods. The cards in your deck are your champions, who fight for you, and events, which represent your will imposed on the mortal realm.

In Epic, the turn sequence is easy but there are so many options to choose from. You begin the game with a hand of five cards – each card costs either one gold or is free. You get one gold each turn — you don’t need to draw special resource cards or energy cards just to play with your other cards. Instead of figuring out which cards you might be allowed to play, you choose which card you want to play. With this game, the fun starts on turn one.

Saint Petersburg

In Saint Petersburg, you’ll be buying different types of cards: workers, buildings, aristocrats, trading cards, and the new market cards. In every phase, a new type of card will be available for purchase. You’ll start with workers, who are good at bringing in rubles. The new market (yellow) cards bring in new resources. Having the majorities in these resources from round to round will earn you additional victory points. This battle for the lead enhances the game experience and expands the tactical and strategic possibilities of the players. In the next phase, buildings can be acquired, mostly granting victory points. Aristocrats provide a mix of victory points and rubles, and also lead to a large end-game point bonus that can’t be ignored.

Trading cards allow already purchased cards to be improved. These phases will repeat until one of the card decks runs out. At this point, the final victory points are counted, and the winner is declared.

Caylus

Once upon a time …

1289. To strengthen the borders of the Kingdom of France, King Philip the Fair decided to have a new castle built. For the time being, Caylus is but a humble village, but soon, workers and craftsmen will be flocking by the cartload, attracted by the great prospects. Around the building site, a city is slowly rising up.

The players embody master builders. By building the King’s castle and developing the city around it, they earn prestige points and gain the King’s favor. When the castle is finished, the player who has earned the most prestige wins the game. The expansion Caylus Expansion: The Jeweller was included in the 2nd Edition.

Each turn, players pay to place their workers in various buildings in the village. These buildings allow players to gather resources or money, or to build or upgrade buildings with those resources. Players can also use their resources to help build the castle itself, earning points and favors from the king, which provide larger bonuses. Building a building provides some immediate points, and potentially income throughout the game, since players receive bonuses when others use their buildings. The buildings chosen by the players have a heavy impact on the course of the game, since they determine the actions that will be available to all the players.

As new buildings are built, they stretch along a road stretching away from the castle, and not all buildings can be used every turn. Players have some control over which buildings are active by paying to influence the movement of the Provost marker. The final position of the marker is the newest building that can be used that turn. The Provost marker also helps determine the movement of the Bailiff marker, which determines the end of the game. Generally, if players are building many buildings and the Provost is generous in allowing them to be used, the game ends more quickly.

Star Trek: Five Year Mission

Star Trek: Five-Year Mission is a cooperative dice placement game for 3-7 players who take the roles of crew members of either the USS Enterprise (from the original Star Trek series) or the USS Enterprise-D (from Star Trek: The Next Generation). Each crew member has a different ability and the crew’s ability’s differ on each crew. In these roles, players try to cooperatively solve a series of blue (easy), yellow (medium) and red (difficult) alerts to score point attempting one of 6 different difficulty levels to win before failing five such alerts, or the Enterprise being destroyed. Players must deal with injuries which lock dice out of play, ship damage that can force players to attempt harder alerts, urgent events that must be completed in 3 minutes, the prime directive, as well as yellow and red alerts that force additional alerts cards to come into play pushing you closer to failing.

El Grande: Big Box

In El Grande, players take on the roles of Grandes in medieval Spain. The king’s power is flagging, and these powerful lords are vying for control of the various regions. To that end, you draft caballeros (knights in the form of meeples) into your court and subsequently move them onto the board to help seize control of regions. After every third round, the regions are scored, and after the ninth round, the player with the most points is the winner.

NYET!

A trick taking card game with an opening round in which players remove various options, such as trump and super-trump by putting markers on a display, to leave the actual playing conditions for that hand.

This entry is part of 7 in the series Boardgames.co.za Christmas Catalog << Boardgames.co.za: New Party & Trivia Games Boardgames.co.za: New Two-player Games >>

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Pyro

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Pyro is a rambling pyromaniac of unknown origin who has a burning passion for all things fire related. (And board games). Controller by day gamer by night. He turns caffeine into reviews.