Whether you're a nameless Dark Lord looking to conquer the known world, a Champion of Light holding out against the forces of evil or a Northern barbarian facing claimants to a stolen throne, Dragon Rampant allows you to bring those battles to the tabletop.
Developed from the popular Lion Rampant system, Dragon Rampant is a standalone wargame that recreates the great battles of Fantasy fiction. Scenarios, army lists, and full rules for magic and monsters give players the opportunity to command unruly orc warbands, raise armies of the undead, campaign across an antediluvian world as the warchief of a barbarian tribe, or exploit the power of mighty creatures and extraordinary sorcery.
An army usually consists of 6-8 units comprised of 6-12 individually based figures. These small units move and fight independently, assuming that they follow your orders rather than just doing their own thing. Command and control is just as important on the battlefield as the power of a troll chieftain or the magic of an archmage.
It was a time of wealth and intrigue. A turbulent time, when wars were fought over religion and territory. A time when artists, architects and writers explored the nature and potential of man and a time when horizons were broadened so far, that a whole new world was discovered!
In Renaissance Wars you play the game as a Renaissance Luminary... someone whose influence and fame has transcended his own time! Using only your unique Luminary powers, the cards in your hand and cunning strategy, you will battle up to 3 opponents to accumulate the wealth and power necessary to dominate each era of the game.
But be careful... because when you least expect it, something may occur that completely upsets the balance of power and may destroy even the most carefully laid plans!
The base game contains 6 playable Luminaries - William Shakespeare, Martin Luther, Fillipo Brunelleschi, St. Ignatius of Loyola, Christopher Columbus and Francis Bacon - all of which come with their own unique Luminary Mats, cards and portraits. Up to 6 more Luminaries will be available in Special Editions.
Unique Event and Intrusion cards are randomly seeded into the game during set-up, so you never know exactly what you may encounter!
Featuring beautiful art and history, Renaissance Wars explores the people and events that made the Renaissance one of most interesting, creative and important historical eras.
Empires: Age of Discovery allows you to revisit the age of exploration and discovery. Take on the role of a colonial power seeking fame, glory, and riches in the New World. As you proceed through three ages, you launch expeditions of discovery, colonize regions, expand your merchant fleet, build capital buildings that give your nation distinct advantages, develop your economy, and (if necessary) declare war.
Empires: Age of Discovery is a reimplementation of Age of Empires III but without that name due to the expense of renewing the license from Microsoft. This edition includes the Empires: Builder Expansion along with its capital buildings; its National Advantage tiles have been built into the new player boards.
Classic game of fantasy empires clashing. Each player controls a unique realm and attempts to use diplomacy and might to ascend to rulership. A colorful map and a host of fantastic creatures bring out a fleshed out fantasy world.You expected more? Maybe it does need some additions . . . such as:
The mechanics of this game are fine if you like wargames. If you're more of a modern-era boardgamer, it might be too fiddly. The base game is fairly simple once you know how movement, sieges, and combat work. The Advanced game adds tons of additional factions, powers, magic, that all are basically sub-systems and work in their own peculiar ways. A sentence or two explains each one but with dozens of them, it requires keeping the rule book to hand.
A long time ago in Europe, ages were pretty dark. The distribution of wealth back then left a lot to be desired. Greedy people banded together to take things from other people so that the rich could get richer and the poor could have even less. Twas ever thus. Step into the middle of the normal state of human affairs as a Baron or Baroness somewhere almost in Europe a long time ago. Thanks to your birth you have a lot of little people working to make you richer, and you, in turn, are doing your best to make your king even more prosperous. If you do things right, you might someday be king.
Each player starts with a Fiefdom Management card, divided into 64 squares (49 of which can have tiles played on them. Into four of these squares you deploy your Keep, in which you will put your fortification of some sort, and your soldiers. Elsewhere in your land you deploy assorted resource gatherers and buildings in an effort to grow, prosper, and score victory points. Along the way there may be wars, invasions, tournaments, taxes, and a lot of other nonsense.
In Catan (formerly The Settlers of Catan), players try to be the dominant force on the island of Catan by building settlements, cities, and roads. On each turn dice are rolled to determine what resources the island produces. Players collect these resources (cards)—wood, grain, brick, sheep, or stone—to build up their civilizations to get to 10 victory points and win the game.
Setup includes randomly placing large hexagonal tiles (each showing a resource or the desert) in a honeycomb shape and surrounding them with water tiles, some of which contain ports of exchange. Number disks, which will correspond to die rolls (two 6-sided dice are used), are placed on each resource tile. Each player is given two settlements (think: houses) and roads (sticks) which are, in turn, placed on intersections and borders of the resource tiles. Players collect a hand of resource cards based on which hex tiles their last-placed house is adjacent to. A robber pawn is placed on the desert tile.
A turn consists of possibly playing a development card, rolling the dice, everyone (perhaps) collecting resource cards based on the roll and position of houses (or upgraded cities—think: hotels) unless a 7 is rolled, turning in resource cards (if possible and desired) for improvements, trading cards at a port, and trading resource cards with other players. If a 7 is rolled, the active player moves the robber to a new hex tile and steals resource cards from other players who have built structures adjacent to that tile.
Points are accumulated by building settlements and cities, having the longest road and the largest army (from some of the development cards), and gathering certain development cards that simply award victory points. When a player has gathered 10 points (some of which may be held in secret), he announces his total and claims the win.
Just last week, the offspring of the authors of Chainmail (1971) got together at Lake Geneva Games to play the classic Battle for the Brow...
